Graeme Davis's Blog, page 5

WFRP 1 Memories: Deities and Religion, Part 5

Welcome to the fifth part of this series on my work developing the Old World pantheon for WFRP first edition. After covering the somewhat haphazard development of the gods of Humans, let’s move on to the fantastically haphazard origins of the three nonhuman deities from the core rulebook: Liadriel, Grungni, and Esmeralda.

Far too late in the process of writing the Religion and Belief chapter, I realized that I’d blown most of the allotted time and page count on deities who were worshiped by Humans, and I’d completely overlooked the fact that there were three other playable races in the book: Elves, Dwarfs, and Halflings. In a panic – and in less than an hour, to the best of my recollection – I hammered down these three to fill the gap, at least for now. I promised myself I would do better in Realms of Divine Magic, but that opportunity never came.

Let’s just say that, although not all of the mythology that was subsequently written around nonhuman deities resonates strongly with me, I’m very glad that their pantheons were built out to a respectable degree. The tiny amount in the WFRP 1 rulebook still embarrasses me a little.

Liadriel

So – the Elves needed at least one deity in the core book. Okay – what things are important to Elves? Wine. Wine and song. Perfect – he’s a deity of wine and song, his symbol is a mash-up of a wine bottle and a lyre – boom, done. On to the next one.

Honestly, that’s about as much thought as went into the creation of Liadriel. The name was plucked out of the air, sounding sufficiently Elvish thanks to the paired vowels and repeated L-sound. I filled in the blanks in the deity description format quickly and simply, stating that he had no temples and no holy days to save time rather than to communicate anything profound about Elven culture and psychology, and that was it.

Grungni

Creating Grungni took a very similar course, although I tried to hide it by making Grungni the god of mining rather than the god of mining and ale. The name was picked out of the air – suitably guttural, with a vaguely Norse cadence and vowel array to it – and his other attributes were filled in as obviously as possible, without thinking too deeply about being original or interesting.

WFRP 1 superfan “Mad” Alfred Nunez expanded the Dwarven pantheon significantly in his book Dwarfs: Stone and Steel for Hogshead, and I’m very glad he did. By that time I had also created a Slayer god named Grimnir (Slayers being a grim lot and -nir being a fairly common name ending from Norse lore), but I never got him farther than a name and a concept. When Realms of Divine Magic never happened, that work was left to others.

Esmeralda

Halflings like hearth and home, and that concept works well with a feminine deity – which is good, given that the other two nonhuman deities are both male – and Esmeralda came to me as a name that sounded cozy and Halfling-like, especially since it could be shortened to Esme for informal use. I forgot to add that part to the description, though. Her symbol was a ladle, symbolizing cooking, and a triangle that represented fire, or the hearth.

I did think I was being rather clever with the stricture against using cooking utensils for anything else, because most players I knew at the time would immediately load up on kitchen knives, meat tenderizers, and similar gear and then be quite surprised that they weren’t allowed to use it in battle. I also thought that Pie Week was a good festival for Halflings, along the lines of European harvest festivals.

That’s all I remember about nonhuman deities, but if you’ve come across anything else, let me know in the comments and I’ll see what I can tell you about them.

Next time, I’ll look at the Gods of Law and Chaos – including the Renegade God Malal and the two lesser Chaos Gods I created for Something Rotten in Kislev.

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WFRP 1 Memories: Deities and Religion, Part 4

Welcome to the fourth part of this series on my work developing the Old World pantheon for WFRP first edition. So far, I’ve looked at the Northern, or Country Gods and their more sophisticated counterparts the Southern, or Town Gods. This time, here’s a look at the Lesser Gods.

They’re a miscellaneous bunch, and many of them – but not all – have some local association. I had a vague idea, stolen from Terry Pratchett, that a deity’s power depended directly on the number and devotion of their followers, and therefore it could vary from time to time and place to place. However, I never got to codify this idea or develop rules for it, so – although few if any of them received a full-length treatment – the lesser gods in WFRP 1st edition worked exactly the same as all other gods.

Well, except the Gods of Chaos, of course. More about them in a future instalment.

Rhya

Rhya is listed as a lesser deity in the WFRP 1st edition rulebook, and with the clarity of hindsight, I think this was a mistake. I wanted to get her name and her basic information into the book, partly because she was going to be a big part of the Old Faith whenever I got to flesh out the Druids and their religion more thoroughly – which I never did, of course – and partly because I had an idea that followers of Taal outside the Old Faith would know her name as his consort, even though the cult of Taal had become more popular than the worship of Rhya.

I was showing my archaeological side here, I think. I wanted a snapshot of the way in which earth-mother religions died out when farming reached an area, but remnants of the old faith lingered in rural parts. On Earth, the earth-mother is usually supplanted by a sky-father deity because weather is of vital importance to farmers, but although Taal was not a sky-father I felt that, like Cernunnos, he could evolve and overshadow Rhya. The fact that I could only find one paragraph to write about her, and that was mostly a reference to the section on the Old Faith, shows just how unformed these ideas were at that stage.

Khaine

Khaine arose from a conversation I had with Jes Goodwin while I was writing the Religion and Belief chapter. Jes suggested the idea that Morr should have a darker, younger brother, who was embittered by Morr’s dominion over death and the dead and became a deity of murder both to spite his brother and to populate a realm of his own with victims of murder and other forms of violent death.

He would also make a handy patron for assassins and similar types, as well as providing us with an evil deity and a patron of violent cultists who didn’t have to be a Chaos God. At the time, WFRP still used a crude alignment system, in which evil was one step short of Chaos.

In the end, nothing was done with him in anything for WFRP 1 – so far as I remember, at least – but of course he went on to become a major deity of the Dark Elves when Jes developed their culture. That was after I left GW, though, so I have no further insights on him.

Khaine’s name, of course, is directly stolen from Cain in the Old Testament. That was Jes’s idea, as were the accents in the original versions of Khaine’s name and Morr’s in 1st edition. The accents were subsequently dropped in order to make typesetting easier.

Sigmar

Hard as it may be to believe these days, Sigmar was originally designed as a lesser deity. While Jim and Phil were developing the Empire setting for the first instalment of The Enemy Within campaign, they decided that the Empire should have a patron deity who could symbolize the Empire and serve as a focus for patriotic zeal and national unity. This was especially important given the Empire’s political structure, as a fragile patchwork of semi-autonomous Grand Duchies and city-states.

Sigmar’s history and legend as the founder of the Empire were written up in The Enemy Within, and so was Sigmar himself, receiving a full treatment in the same format as the deities in the core book. I’ve written more on Sigmar and his origins in a recent post, titled When Harry Met Sigmar.

Bögenauer and Handrich

I created these two for Shadows Over Bögenhafen because I felt that a market town would have a god of commerce and a patron deity for the river that brought most of its trade. Later, I re-used Handrich in some Marienburg material (under the Dutchified name Handrijk) and he has survived and thrived down through the years. So has Bögenauer, making an appearance in the WFRP 4th edition core book.

My goal with these two was to present deities that reflected mortal interests, and, following the Terry Pratchett idea mentioned above, might even have been created by them. It was also an opportunity to present two small, and specialized cults (one by location, the other by sphere of influence).

There wasn’t room to create a fully detailed treatment of either one, but that actually suited me quite well, because I didn’t want to commit myself as to whether or not they were real. I wanted the opportunity to play further with the idea that they might be no more than a pair of names and images used by mortals as a focus for hopeful prayers, praise when things went well, and blame when things went badly, which had been built up over centuries by priests who saw them as opportunities to advance their own wealth and social position. They might even believe in the gods they were exploiting – or at least, not disbelieve. A cynical thought, perhaps, but cynical humor was a major factor in a lot of WFRP’s early history.

The names were simple enough: Bögenauer from the River Bögen (intended in Reikspiel to reflect its winding course) and Hand + Rich seemed appropriate for a god of merchants, as well as being Germanic enough at first glance to work in the Empire.

Stromfels

Stromfels (from the German words for “current” and “rock”) was originally designed as an evil aspect of Manannan, worshiped by wreckers, pirates, and other seaborne evildoers. I think I created him for the WFRP 1 core book, or perhaps with the intention of developing him further in Realms of Divine Magic, but as far as I know the first mention of him was in the White Dwarf Marienburg material. Like many of the lesser gods at this time, Stromfels was little more than a concept awaiting a future opportunity for development, and like some of them, he has been more fully fleshed out in subsequent publications.

And that’s the lesser gods – or at least, as many of them as I remember from WFRP 1st edition sources. If I’ve missed any, let me know!

Next week, I’ll move on to the three deities that I threw together in no time at all after realizing far too late that there were no deities for nonhuman characters. It wasn’t pretty, but in the end it was just enough!

See you then!

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Monster of the Month Club: A New Post

In addition to a system-agnostic rpg monster treatment of 4-8 pages each and every month (plus bonus monsters from time to time), members of the Monster of the Month Club get weekly posts on monsters and related topics.

Yesterday, I posted March’s book review. This time, it’s the art book that inspired the game (which I reviewed in an earlier post) – and it’s gorgeous.

Join at patreon.com/MonsteroftheMonthClub and don’t miss a thing! Free and paid memberships are available.

Here are some free samples, so you can try before you buy!

These are some of the creatures already available. Each treatment features the Club’s unique and exhaustively tested system-agnostic stat block, plus descriptions of basic and optional abilities for maximum customization options, and adventure seeds for fantasy, historical, and modern settings. Where available, these are backed up with case studies from myth, folklore and literature, plus notes on similar creatures from around the world.

Each Monster of the Month is a comprehensive toolkit that you can use to create unique and memorable monsters and encounters for any tabletop roleplaying game.

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WFRP 1 Memories: Deities and Religion, Part 3

Welcome to the third part of this series on my work developing the Old World pantheon for WFRP first edition. Last week, I looked at the Northern, or Country Gods. This week, their more sophisticated counterparts: the Southern, or Town Gods.

As I’ve said before, the process of creating and developing these deities took place in a rush and with little or no planning. That makes this series anything but a masterclass on creating deities for a fantasy setting. It is what happened, though, to the best of my recollection, so treat it for what it’s worth: part history and part cautionary tale.

The Southern Gods, or Town Gods, consist of Verena, Myrmidia, Shallya, Morr, and Ranald. Most, but not all, are based on Graeco-Roman deities from Earth, which is why I thought of them as the Southern Gods. Their worship would have spread into the Empire through trade and mercenary service and stayed mainly in the cities, which is why I thought of them as the Town Gods.

Verena

Verena started out with a completely different name and personality. In Rick’s draft, she (I don’t remember his name for her) was a very domestic goddess of home and family, clearly based on someone’s mother. There were cult passwords that involved the price of eggs, and looking back I should have taken this goddess and developed her for the Halflings, and then created Verena from scratch. As it happened, that’s pretty much what I did: although I wasn’t aware of doing it at the time, the results are the same.

Many people have observed, quite rightly, that Verena was inspired by Athena in her role as the patron deity of Athens. I gave her the owl as a symbol, standing for wisdom just as it did on Athenian coins of 2300 years ago, and the sword and scales of justice because she was also partly based on the more abstract Roman deity Justitia, whose statues can be found atop court houses across the western world.

My intention was to establish Verena (whose name I fudged from the Latin veritas, for truth) as a patron of knowledge for wizards and other academics as well as a deity of truth and justice. I had an idea for an order of Verenan templars who traveled the remoter parts of the Old World like the knights errant of chivalric romance, hearing complaints and dispensing justice as they went. I even had a name for them – the Knights Justiciar – though I never had the opportunity to write them up properly. I’ll add them to the list of possible future blog posts.

Morr

Morr lacks the clear Classical antecedents of Verena and Myrmidia, but I made him a Town God because I wanted him and Verena to be married, with Myrmidia and Shallya as their twin daughters, each reflecting their parents’ interests in a different way.

Morr originally came out of a conversation with Jes Goodwin, in which we established his link to ravens, his gates of death emblem (inspired in part by the Gates of Morpheus from Greek myth) and his resemblance to the late actor Sir Christopher Lee. We needed a protector of the dead and a patron for vampire hunters and similar characters, and I must admit I had far too much fun with his cult -especially in Apocrypha 2, where I developed the Mourners’ Guild to oversee funerals and protect burial grounds and the Raven Knights to hunt undead. This was long before the Vampire Counts and the Tomb Kings of Khemri came along, and Warhammer undead were far less organized.

His name, as many have observed, is drawn from the Latin mors, meaning death. Originally it had an accent over the o – Mórr – at Jes’s suggestion, but over the years that became too much trouble for typesetters and he became just plain Morr.

So, why was he married to Verena? Read on…

Myrmidia

Looking at Ulric (covered in the previous instalment), I thought he made a splendid god for berserkers and warriors, but I felt that there should also be a deity to cover more scientific, strategic approaches to warfare. So, I created Myrmidia. Her name came from the Myrmidons, the elite company led by Achilles in Homer’s Iliad (and incidentally, the level 6 title for fighters in the AD&D first edition Players’ Handbook). In some of the flavor text I wrote for Warhammer Siege and other books, Tilean mercenaries and others would regularly swear by “Mamma Myrmidia,” showing how popular her worship was in the south of the Old World.

Myrmidia herself was unapologetically based on Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess in her martial aspect, and that is one reason I decided to make her a daughter of Verena. Morr became her father because I saw scientific warfare standing at the intersection of wisdom and death: she applied her mother’s wisdom to the process of filling her father’s kingdom.

Shallya

Another obvious vacancy in the Old World pantheon was for a deity of healing. Although WFRP Clerics weren’t as strongly typecast into the role of healers as their D&D counterparts, it was already evident that combat in WFRP was going to be a dangerous business, making the need for magical healing all the more urgent.

Shallya is not based on an particular deity from Earth’s mythologies, although I did think a little of Isis (who restored her husband Osiris to life after his jealous brother Set cut him into tiny little pieces and scattered them the length and breadth of Egypt). Other mythologies had other candidates, such as Dian Cécht from the Irish Tuatha Dé Danann, but I liked the idea of Myrmidia and Shallya being sisters. Shallya embodied a different combination of her parents’ interests, using her mother’s wisdom to ensure that no one had to enter her father’s realm before it was their time.

Her name was completely made up. I just formed a soft, soothing kind of sound in my mind and turned it into a name. Tony Ackland never tired of teasing me about it, suggesting that she should have a sister named Shan’t-ya – but by that time the name was already in print, and it’s remained there ever since!

Ranald

Ranald was one of Rick’s creations. At the time, there were two famous criminals named Ronald – Great Train Robber Ronald Biggs and feared London gangster Ronald Kray – which is where he got the name for this patron of thieves. I expanded on his initial concept quite a bit, making Ranald a protector of the poor and downtrodden as well as of thieves and other criminals. I added the concept of neighborhood shrine clubs and charitable donations, and laid out different aspects of the god according to who worshiped him and why.

I had wanted to explore the idea of a deity having multiple aspects further, but there wasn’t time to do so in the core book. It was another task that was deferred until we could do Realms of Divine Magic, and of course that never happened.

Another thing that never happened was my proposed book of Old World myths, which is a shame because I had in idea for Ranald’s origin myth that I longed to write up. In this telling, Ranald was a mortal thief, con artist, and all-round rogue who seduced soft-hearted Shallya by convincing her that he would die unless she made him immortal – which she did, whereupon he gleefully abandoned her and took his criminal activities to a higher level until other criminals – and the poor upon whom he bestowed some of his haul in the manner of Robin Hood – began to worship him and he became a full-fledged god. This explains, among other things, why the cults of Ranald and Verena are traditional enemies.

So there we are: that’s the Southern Gods. Next time, I’ll look at the lesser gods.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

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Ask Me Anything, Part 1

Just posted on the Monster of the Month Club’s Patreon page: the first in my monthly Ask Me Anything series for free and paying members. Leave your questions in the comments (or in a comment here, if you prefer) and I’ll answer as many as I can. https://www.patreon.com/MonsteroftheMonthClub

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WFRP Memories: Deities and Religion, Part 2

Welcome to the second post in the series on my work developing the Old World pantheon for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay’s first edition.

Keen-eyed readers have noticed over the years that the deities of the Old World – as distinct from the Gods of Law and Chaos and the deities sketched out for nonhumans in the WFRP 1 rulebook – owe more than a little to those of European mythologies. In particular, some are reminiscent of Graeco-Roman gods and others are clearly inspired by Norse or Celtic mythology. This was intentional (if not particularly systematic, as you’ll see), and I felt it was in keeping with the cultural similarities between the Old World’s nations and those of late Medieval Europe.

As I worked on fleshing out the handful of deities who had already been named and filling the most glaring gaps in the pantheon, I found myself dealing with the differences between the two groups. I came to think of them as the Northern Gods and the Southern Gods – or sometimes, the Town Gods and the Country gods, based on the idea that the Old World’s cities would be more cosmopolitan than the rural areas and the cults of the ancient Classical civilization (visualized as an amalgam of Greek and Roman influences) would have spread into the cities through trade and mercenary service.

This time, though, I’ll be focusing on the Northern Gods and showing how they developed into the forms presented in the WFRP 1 rulebook and other first edition sources. Full disclosure: it was a very rapid, ad hoc process, as you’ll see. This series isn’t a masterclass in designing deities and pantheons, by any means – but it will be an insight into what actually happened, as accurately as I can remember it after all these years.

So, to quote the BBC children’s radio programme Listen With Mother from the dim and distant recesses of my early childhood, “Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.”

The Northern Gods, or the Country Gods, consist of Manann, Taal, Rhya, and Ulric. The Old Faith, followed by the Druids who were cut from Warhammer canon somewhere between WFRP’s first and second editions, was based on the worship of Taal and Rhya, but was only followed in the remotest areas.

Taal

Taal, the god of wild places and the patron of Talabheim, was in the early draft that I developed. I think he was created by Rick Priestley. I developed him with the Celtic Cernunnos and the wiccan Horned Lord in mind, as many people have observed.

In the myth I wrote for the opening pages of Warhammer City, I made him the older brother of Ulric. He had previously been named, albeit indirectly, as the patron of the remote monastery of La Maisontaal (“the House of Taal”) in the mountains that separated the Empire from Bretonnia. Rick had created this location for the scenario The Vengeance of the Lichemaster in the third Citadel Journal, which was published just a few weeks before I arrived at Games Workshop in May of 1986, and it was re-used a few years alter in Carl Sargent’s WFRP sequel, Flame Publications’ Lichemaster.

Taal’s name remains unchanged from that early draft, and I’m sorry to say I don’t know what inspired it. I certainly can’t see a way to derive it from the name of any mythological deity from Earth. If I had to guess, I’d say that the name of Talabheim was established first, and Taal was named to match as the city’s patron deity.

Rhya

Having a perfectly serviceable Horned Lord and god of the wilds, my mind immediately went to the question of a consort. In wiccan lore and the ancient traditions on which wicca is based, the Horned Lord and the Goddess are consorts, reflecting the bounty of the earth as well as the animals that depend on it. In my mind, there had to be an earth-mother goddess, not only to maintain this dualistic view of nature but also because the game included Druids and in my mind they had to follow a more ancient religion – ideally one with a Celtic/wiccan feel.

The name “Rhya” is not based on any name from mythology. From time to time, when inspiration eluded me, I would simply pick a syllable or two that felt like they would work. Calling her “The Goddess” in the wiccan and neopagan style, I felt, risked confusing readers who were not as familiar with these real-world sources as I was. She needed a name, and I needed to come up with one fast, so Rhya it was.

I never had occasion to use Rhya in anything I wrote for WFRP 1, though a little while ago I did mention her as a possible patron for the Viydagg when I wrote that old Citadel miniature up for WFRP 4 on this blog, replacing the vague assertion in the WFRP 1 rulebook that the Viydagg was a Demon (to use the first edition spelling) of Law. I’ve come to believe that she makes a much better avatar or servitor of Rhya, the source of life and fertility.

Ulric

My memory fails me on the origins of Ulric. Part of me wants to say that he was already in the early draft of the core book as the patron of Middenheim, mirroring the role of Taal as the patron of Talabheim. Another part wants to say that Ulric didn’t exist before we started planning the city section of Power Behind the Throne, which became so extensive that is was published separately as Warhammer City. I have a vague idea that Phil came up with the name, possibly as a riff on Elric even though Ulric had far more in common with Conan, the other Greatest Fantasy Warrior of the time.

Be that as it may, Ulric was conceived from the start as a war god. People have seem glimpses of the Greek Ares, the Norse Thor, Robert E. Howard’s Conan, and others in the early descriptions of him. His association with wolves and winter came, I think, from Jim and Phil: no one seemed to mind at the time that the phrase “the White Wolf” brought to mind both Michael Moorcock’s Elric and the fledgling game publisher that would shortly become huge by publishing Vampire: The Masquerade and the other World of Darkness games (and who had also stolen the name from Moorcock).

As I’ve already said, I was thinking in terms of pantheons rather than individual deities. I wanted to establish relationships between the various deities that would inform the relationships between their mortal followers. I wanted family dynamics, as we see in the soapier Greek myths, and I wanted to develop actual myths that could be published in a rules-free background book with plenty of gorgeous art. The opening myth in Warhammer City was as far as I got down that particular road, but I submitted more than one proposal to GW management, all of which were ignored.

Manann

Manann was the deity on whom I spent the least time, back in 1986. There had been much talk of ports and long-distance trade. I think – but I’m not certain – that the idea of a Marienburg sourcebook was first mooted about this time, three years or more before the first instalment appeared in White Dwarf.

At any rate, the Old World’s merchants and explorers needed a sea god, so I grabbed the name of the Irish Manannan mac Lir and built a sea god as quickly as I could. His five-pointed crown, as far as I recall, was intended to evoke a multi-pronged fishing spear like Poseidon’s trident, and I threw in the name Mathlann as an Elvish variant because the Sea Elves were potentially going to be developed just as soon as we got to write a supplement on ocean voyages and the lands beyond the Old World – which, of course, we never did.

And that’s all I can remember about the Northern Gods. I don’t recall any plans for developing others, though at various points there was a plan to develop a Norsca supplement, and I would probably have wanted to expand this pantheon there, if it had happened. I do recall seeing a manuscript submission for a Norsca supplement, which I thought had been written by Paul Vernon, but in the second part of his interview on the Awesome Lies blog he says he only discussed Norsca with GW management, but didn’t actually write anything.

Next week, I’ll cover the Southern Gods, for which I had a little more of a coherent plan – but only a little more. Until then, I’ll look forward to your comments!

WFRP 1 Memories: Deities and Religion, Part 1

When I arrived at Games Workshop in May of 1986, some parts of the Warhammer Roleplay rules (as it was called then) were more complete than others. One of the sketchier parts was the religion chapter, and I took it upon myself to flesh it out. As I did so, I took the opportunity to deal with some things that had always bothered me about the way AD&D handled the relationship between clerics and their deities.

Before I start, one note: this series deals only with the deities that were published in material for WFRP 1st edition, because that’s where I was directly involved. Since then, the various pantheons have grown and changed along with the rest of Warhammer canon – but others are far better placed than I am to comment on those developments.

The Rules

The draft that awaited me at Games Workshop consisted of little more than a handful of half-finished descriptions of deities and their interests, mostly written in the joking tone for which Warhammer’s earlier editions are known. There were no real rules, so the first thing I did was to create some.

I wanted rules for prayer and blessings, and the effects of being on ground that had been consecrated to a particular deity, such as temples and shrines. In addition to clerical magic, I wanted clerics – anyone, in fact – to be able to pray for other things, and to either receive blessings or be denied them according to the individual’s standing with their patron deity. That meant that I had to write rules that allowed the GM to track a character’s standing with their deity as the game progressed. I also wanted a system that could support things like visions and oracles, so they could be a powerful and flexible narrative tool for the GM even when they weren’t specifically scripted in a particular scenario.

I designed a format for describing deities, which included strictures (the rules they expected their worshipers to follow), additional skills reflecting the deity’s interests, the skills and challenges where a blessing from the deity might confer a bonus, and the trials that the deity might set a follower who needed to atone for some infraction. Also covered were requirements for joining a particular religion, where it was based, who its particular friends and enemies are (of which more in a later post) – and, since Phil was concurrently laying out the Old World’s calendar – the main holy days and festivals.

Divine magic used the same spell lists as arcane magic at that time (something we intended to address in the never-written Realms of Divine Magic), so I included a section on favored spells and spell classes. Then, it was on to the deities themselves. I’ll be covering them individually.

In creating this format for quantifying a deity, and the rules to govern how, when, and why a deity would intervene in the life of a mortal follower, my objective was to make deities and religions matter in the lives of the player characters. Most mythology and quite a bit of fantasy is driven by deities complicating things for mortals, after all: think of all the Greek heroes tormented by Hera because Zeus had fathered them on some nymph or mortal princess; or think of the Volsung Saga (better known for its musical adaptation, The Ring Cycle) in which Odin takes a not entirely benign interest in the mortals of the Volsung clan.

In AD&D, which was the gold standard for fantasy roleplaying games at the time, there were no rules to cover this, which relegated deities to the role of batteries that powered a cleric’s magic use. Sure, there were vague mentions of alignment change if a character acted up wildly and consistently, but they only made it clear that alignment was more important than religion. Deities & Demigods, when it was published in 1980, included a few notes for the Dungeon Master, but the overwhelming bulk of the book was nothing more or less than a Monster Manual for the big boys, clearly intended to allow high-powered characters to fight and possibly defeat the gods of various mythologies.

That wasn’t how I wanted WFRP to handle things at all. I found it unthinkable that any mortal would ever reach that level of power in WFRP – characters like Nagash and Constant Drachenfels hadn’t even been thought of at that point, and certainly no player character could ever become as powerful within the advancement rules.

The rules only took a couple of pages at the start of the “Religion and Belief” chapter – about as much space as it had taken Deities & Demigods to provide far less useful information – and I certainly hoped to expand upon them in Realms of Divine Magic, but that opportunity never came. Still, I like to think that they made deities more active and interesting in a campaign without destroying game balance or creating too much of a deus ex machina system, and by and large I’ve found it worked well enough for my own games.

If you played WFRP 1st edition, how did the religion rules work for you? Do you have any good stories, or any bad ones? Let me know in the comments.

Next week, I’ll be starting to cover the deities: who wrote which ones, how I developed them and why, and the hopes I had for using them in adventures and other supplements. Bye for now!

Advanced Heroquest: New Equipment

The final outtake from Advanced Heroquest Undead Supplement (published as Terror in the Dark) offers a few items of equipment for adventurers who are expecting to confront the undead.

As with everything in this series, it is presented exactly as I wrote it in 1991. I probably haven’t thought about AHQ since then, so I can offer no guarantees about how well it works – but I welcome your feedback in the comments.

Also, I have been approached about making this available as a free electronic publication. Is that something that would be of interest to the community? Honestly, when I posted the first instalment I had no idea that AHQ was still popular. Anyway, let me know.

Next Saturday, I’ll do… something else. I’m thinking of kicking off a series about the gods of the Old World, as presented in the WFRP 1 rulebook and other 1st edition sources. Does that sound like it would be of interest? Again, let me know.

NEW EQUIPMENT

Heroes who are going hunting undead can invest in a range of specialised equipment to help them in their Quests. This section gives you the costs and some special rules for various items that will be useful against undead.

Stake and Mallet

The surest way to deal with a Vampire is by staking it through the heart. This is easy enough if you can catch the Vampire sleeping in its coffin, but when you’re faced with a fully awake and distinctly hostile Vampire Lord in the darkness of the catacombs, it’s easier said than done!

The stake and mallet occupy both hands – a Hero can’t use a shield while wielding them, and loses the Toughness bonus (optional rule: he may still claim the Toughness bonus against attacks from the three squares to his rear, since his is carrying the shield slung over his back).

The stake and mallet is an unwieldy weapon, to say the least – a Hero trying to stake a Vampire in hand-to-hand combat suffers a -4 penalty to all hit rolls. It cannot score a critical hit, and it fumbles on a roll of 4 or less. However, if the attack is successful there is no need to roll damage dice – the Vampire is automatically destroyed unless the GM uses a Fate Dungeon Counter to convert the success into a failure.

Garlic

Garlic is a popular folk-remedy against Vampires. A Vampire attacking Hero who wears a garland of garlic around his neck in hand-to-hand combat suffer a -2 penalty to all hit rolls.

Blessed Weapons

In exchange for a small donation to their temple, many priests will bless a weapon, making it more effective against undead. If you use Priest Hero from the Advanced Heroquest Companion, note that priests controlled by players cannot do this – only those who are safely settled in their own temples and don’t go adventuring hsave the time to learn rituals like this!

A blessed weapon rolls one extra damage die when rolling to wound an undead target. However, blessings don’t last for ever – before the player makes the wound roll, the GM should roll a D12 – on a result of 1, the blessing has worn off and the weapon only rolls the normal number of damage dice!

Holy Water

Holy water can be obtained from temples between expeditions. A flask of holy water is a ranged weapon, with a maximum range of 4. It can be thrown even if the Hero has moved that turn. If it hits an undead creature or a Daemon (ie a Daemonette, Bloodthirster or Greater Daemon of Tzeentch), the holy water rolls a number of damage dice equal to the target’s Toughness score. The more powerful an undead creature or Daemon is, the better chance the holy water has of hurting it!

Mirror

Vampires and spirits (Ghosts, Spectres, Wights and Wraiths) don’t reflect in mirrors, and the fact seems to upset them quite a bit. Holding up a mirror to a Vampire or spirit will repel it, so that it must make a Bravery test in order to enter the Hero’s death zone. Note that a Hero must be facing a creature in order to hold up a mirror to it!

Salt

Due to a peculiarity in the magical process by which they are made, Zombies simply can’t stand salt. This weakness can be used by Heroes in two ways:

If a bag of salt is sprinkled on the floor, no Zombie can enter that square. A Hero can only sprinkle salt into a square in his death zone. The salt remains there permanently – it can’t be gathered up and used again!

A bag of salt can be thrown at a Zombie as a missile. It has a range of 3 squares, and can be thrown even if the Hero has moved that turn. If it hits a Zombie it causes no damage as such, but the Zombie must roll its Toughness or less on a D12 or it is immediately destroyed. The bag bursts on contact with the Zombie (or with the floor if the throw is missed), and cannot be used again. If the throw misses, roll on the table for Skaven Plague Censers in the Advanced Heroquest rulebook to find out where it landed.

Card counters are provided for marking squares which are filled with salt.

COSTS TABLE

Item                                                                 Cost

Stake & Mallet                                                5 GCs

Garlic, 1 garland                                             5 GCs

Blessing a weapon*                                        20 GCs

Holy Water, 1 flask                                         10 GCs

Mirror                                                              5 GCs

Salt, 1 bag                                                       1 GC

* Note that an arrow or crossbow bolt counts as a single weapon.

The Monster of the Month Club: Try Before You Buy

Back in December, I launched a Patreon project called The Monster of the Month Club. It’s still a little wobbly on its legs, and I’m planning a lot of improvements, but the first three products are available for paying members. Plus, there are various other posts for paying members, free members, and the general public.

There are also several freebies, including an FAQ, a sample creature, and the Conversion Guide to help you derive stats and rules for your tabletop rpg of choice from the club’s unique system-agnostic description format.

The Monster of the Month Club is slowly building momentum, but of course new members are always welcome. You’ll find links below, but here are some free downloads so you can take a look, try the system out (and send feedback – please!), and hopefully like it enough to join!

Monster of the Month Club – FAQDownloadMonster of the Month Club – SampleDownloadMonster of the Month Club – Conversion GuideDownload

If you’d like to know more about the project, here’s the backgrounder that I’ve been sending out to the gaming press. Hopefully you’ll start seeing reviews and announcements soon.

Links

Here are all the ways to reach the Monster of the Month Club online. I hope to see you there!

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MonsteroftheMonthClub

Discord: https://discord.gg/J3dbnav5YJ

Email: rpgmonsterclub@yahoo.com

Bluesky: @motmclub.bsky.social

Instagram, Threads: @motmclub

As someone once said, “the journey of ten thousand miles begins with a single step.” I hope you’ll enjoy the monsters as much as I do, and join me!

Advanced Heroquest: Magic Treasures

The outtakes from Advanced Heroquest Undead Supplement (published as Terror in the Dark) continue this week with a selection of magical treasures that I submitted with the original manuscript. Next week, I’ll post the final instalment, on mundane equipment.

All Posts in this Series

Fiction

New Hazards

Undead Monsters

Dark Wizards

Other New Monsters

The Quest Machine, Part 1: Royal Tombs and Monument

The Quest Machine, Part 2: Monastery Catacombs and Sanctuary of Morr

The Quest Machine, Part 3: Cemetery and Place of Legend

The Quest Machine, Part 4: Underground Battlefield and Dwarfhold Tomb Complex

The Quest Machine, Part 5: Necromancer’s Lair and Evil City

The Quest Machine, Part 6: Overrun Necropolis and Vampire’s Stronghold

Side-Quests and Cardboard

The Monster Tables

Magic Treasures

New Magic Treasures

Here are some new magic treasures, each with a special relevance to the undead. To include these in your games, use the Treasure Chests Table as usual. If a  Magic treasure is indicated, do not roll on the Magic Treasure Table straight away. First, roll a D12 – on a roll of 12, roll on the table below; on a roll of 1-11, roll on the Magic Treasure Table as normal.

D12     Item

1          Scarab of Ra

2          Raven talisman of Morr

3          Sword of Sanctity

4          Scroll of Sanctuary

5          Arrows/Bolt of Life

6          Amulet of Strength

7          Amulet of Courage

8          Amulet of Life Protection

9          Amulet of Proof Against Poison

10        Sword of Life

11        Amulet of Life Warding

12        Wand of Light

Scarab of Ra

A magical gem from far-off Araby, the Scarab of Ra is a polished stone carved into the form of a desert beetle. Any Mummy struck by the Scarab is immediately destroyed. The Scarab may be thrown, with a range of 4 squares, even if the Hero has moved that turn. It may also be used to strike a Mummy in hand-to-hand combat, although this is a lot more risky! A thrown Scarab may be recovered and used again.

Raven Talisman of Morr

This is a magical carving about the size of a man’s palm. Made of black stone, it is carved into the form of an open portal with a raven perching on the top. The power of Morr, the guardian of the dead, is channelled through the carving, and a Hero who holds up the carving in front of an undead creature becomes Fearsome to that undead creature if the undead creature passes an Intelligence test – if not, the creature is too stupid to recognise the symbol, and is not afraid of the Hero!

Sword of Sanctity

This sword automatically destroys any Daemon or undead creature which it strikes. If the hit roll is successful, the creature is destroyed; there is no need to roll for Wounds.

Scroll of Sanctuary

This scroll may be read by a Wizard in the same way as any other magical scroll. When the Wizard reads the scroll, a glowing ring of golden light appears on the floor, tracing out the Wizard’s death zone. No undead creature or Daemon may cross this line or attack across it in any way. Living creatures may cross the ring and attack across it freely, with both weapons and spells. The ring fades at the start of the next exploration turn. When the incantation is read, the scroll crumbles to dust.

Arrows/Bolt of Life

When one of these magical missiles hit an undead creature, it is automatically destroyed. Against all other targets, it counts as a normal arrow or bolt. The arrow or bolt is destroyed when it hits an undead creature. To discover whether you have found an arrow or a crossbow bolt (and how many!), roll a D12: 1-3 = 1 bolt, 4-12 = 2 arrows.

Amulet of Strength

When this magical amulet is found, roll a D12. The result is the number of “charges” the amulet has. When a Hero wearing the amulet is struck by a Wraith, or suffers any other magical effect which would reduce his Strength, cross off one “charge” from the amulet instead of reducing the Hero’s score. When the amulet runs out of charges, it crumbles to dust, and any further attacks affect the Hero normally.

Amulet of Courage

Wearing this amulet adds 2 points to a Hero’s Bravery score. Note that it cannot increase a Hero’s Bravery score above 11 – if a Hero with a Bravery score of 10 puts it on, it only adds 1 point, and if a Hero with Bravery 11 or higher puts it on, it does nothing at all!

Amulet of Life Protection

When this magical amulet is found, roll a D12. The result is the number of “charges” the amulet has. When a Hero wearing the amulet is struck by a Spectre, cross off one “charge” from the amulet instead of reducing the Hero’s characteristics. When the amulet runs out of charges, it crumbles to dust, and any further attacks affect the Hero normally.

Amulet of Proof Against Poison

When this magical amulet is found, roll a D12. The result is the number of “charges” the amulet has. When a Hero wearing the amulet is struck by a poisoned attack (including the claws of a Ghoul, the bite of a snake, or whatever), cross off one “charge” from the amulet. The poison does not affect the Hero, and the attack causes damage as normal. Thus, the Ghoul loses its normal +1 to Wound rolls, the dagger of a Skaven Gutter Runner counts as a dagger instead of a sword, and so on. In most cases you should have no trouble discounting poison damage from an attack, but if in doubt, the Hero suffers half the damage that the poisoned attack would normally cause. When the amulet runs out of charges, it crumbles to dust, and any further attacks affect the Hero normally.

Sword of Life

This weapon is a Banesword, enchanted to cause more grievous wounds when fighting undead. Roll to hit and wound as normal; the sword causes double the normal number of Wounds to an undead target.

Amulet of Life Warding

An Amulet of Warding protects its wearer against the attacks of undead monsters. A Hero wearing an Amulet of Warding will suffer one less wound from each attack by an undead creature. In addition, an undead creature can never get a free attack while fighting the Hero.

Wand of Light

The Wand of Light can only be used by a Wizard. It fires a bolt of pure life-essence up to 12 squares in the Wizard’s line of sight. Place a fireball template at the target point – every undead creature which is wholly or partly under the template is hit by a number of damage dice equal to its own Toughness score – the tougher it is, the more the life-essence harms it! The bolt has no effect on creatures other than undead.