If Your Torches Burn for only One Hour your NPCs will be More Important

  In the Seaward campaign the PCs formed an adventuring company, got a charter from the King, bought an old inn as a home base and, most recently, built their own level in my superdungeon.
  None of them are above 7th level and most of this activity began when they were 3rd/4th level.
  The Company is about 10 PCs but they have about 45 henchmen, as well as about 100 hirelings, mercenaries, etc.

  When discussing my campaigns in blogs, forums (very rare), on my Discord, etc. a frequent question I get is 'how do you get your players so invested in the world? NPCs seem important, they use a lot of henchmen that develop their own personalities, and they start doing things we associate with being name-level very, very early. What's the secret?'.

  The really, really short answer is that in my campaigns torches burn for an hour and weigh 2 1/2 lbs.

To-Do Lists, Making Friends and Influencing People, and Ruling the World

  One thing that I can struggle with is making sure NPCs stay dynamic. They aren't just animatronic puppets that sit in their castles, inns, and lairs waiting for the PCs to do something.

  I mean, that is a TON easier - everything remains in a stasis-like status quo until the characters get to it = no work for Rick so that is OBVIOUSLY the best, right?

Unfortunately, this makes the game(from OD&D to Champions to any other RPG) predictable and booooooorriiiiiiiiiiing. So how do I solve it?

Chaos, Them!, Baba Yaga's Hut, Food Storage, Matchmaking, and More....

  Now that the map of the Briars is done the Company of the Dark Moon (i.e., 85% of PCs in the campaign) gave one to master bard Llewellyn the Black, sold a copy to the King, and made 3 copies. Clarence (unbeknownst to the rest)  also sent one to the Grandfather of Assassins earning himself a reprieve from doing a mission for the Black Guild.

Impassable Plants and Giant Ants
  Seeker used his broom of flying to scout out the largest spinneys (these are the impassable thickets of briars up to a mile across that dot the Briars region). He had noted the the largest spinneys have a clearing inside, always in the exact middle. He found that each one has a large stone in the center inscribed with the same strange rune as the Gate of the Old Road and the various 'key stones' of the Old Road. He realized that the Old Road is only washed out or overgrown in the sections where the glyph stones are missing.
  The party also realized that the largest spinneys all cover the lairs of giant ants - 200-400 per spinney.

Clearing Out
  In Skull Mountain the hirelings, henchmen, and PCs worked hard to secure provisions (20 man-weeks of iron rations in the Cupboard on level one and 400 lbs of beef in the Meat Locker on level three) and supplies (240 arrow, 120 bolts, 200 candles, and 12 bedrolls on level one; the long boat on level three) and then met the mule train from Esber to get everyone and everything else out. The PCs stayed behind to Wizard Lock, secure, and Glyph key doors.

Maid Service for a Maiden
  Since the Beginner of the Third Way (i.e. the master monk of the Briars) had asked them to and because she had helped them so the party next followed the Three Riders to Baba Yaga's hut, deep in the High Briars (it had moved, of course) to help Vasilisa accomplish the three tasks for her 16th birthday. The party helped her: stir a 50 gallon cauldron of stew constantly for 36 hours allowing only Vasilisa's hands to touch the stirring paddle; sort a 12 bushel sack of mixed maize and wheat into two separate bags, one with only maize, the other with only wheat; sweep, wash, dry, and wax the floor of Baba Yaga's hut (just the first room). The party caught a glimpse or three of the vast maze of rooms off the 'hut' but did no snooping.
  They pulled it all off while being very conscientious and extremely polite. Brigid also made sure Vasilisa had clean clothes, was well-scrubbed, and that her hair was perfect.
  Baba Yaga arrived early and the entire party ended up having to stay for cake to avoid being impolite. The cake was delicious and Baba Yaga admitted that Vasilisa,

  "..never shirked, never lied, never complained, was never rude, never lazy, and never impertinent. She was always kind, always polite, always prompt, and had always accomplished her tasks..."

  So Baba Yaga informed the party that if they presented Vasilisa to the King of Seaward 'before the first snow of the year' Baba Yaga would owe them a favor. They are very polite, bid Baba Yaga farewell, and took Vasilisa with them.

Matchmakers and Maps
  The party promptly traveled to the capitol to present the map to the King, taking Vasilisa with them. During the audience the King gave them their payment for the map as well as the bounties for Ol' One Fang and Ol' Knobby. Vasilisa was presented and was quickly able to prove she was the daughter of Count Zotov whose entire family was believe wiped out in the Civil War in High Morath. Vasilisa explained she, the youngest, had survived with her oldest brother and a few guards as they fled over the Exile's Trail into the Briars and had fled (as ordered by her brother, who held them off so she could flee) when a pack of trolls attacked thereafter being taken in as a "ward" of Baba Yaga the next day.
  The Crown Prince was obviously smitten with the young Countess.

More later....

DM Tips - Campaign Building: Of Cabbages, Kings, Languages, Trade Routes, Orcs, Pies, and More

In 1979 I started my own campaign world, called Seaward. It had a village (5 houses, an inn, and a trading post), a coastline, and where the pirates were. For 5 months that was it.
Thirty eight years later it is a 124 page book of rules, 5 active notebooks (1,000 pages), 14 GB of digital documents, and 4 GB of maps. Stuff out of rotation is about 20,000 more pages and 20 more GB.
But how much do you need to play a TRPG?

Adventure Design Philosophy, Random Encounters, and Notebooks

Early in the week I started an adventure for the family. We hope to finish it tomorrow before the Easter Vigil. But the adventure made me think about my design philosophy.

So let me share a bit.

How I Prep For Games

  I mean, naturally, 'other than write the adventure and make maps'.
  If we have a quick pickup game, I don't do all of this, but for any game scheduled in advance - I do!

  Once the players tell me which characters they are taking on the adventure I go through my notes on each character to see if there are any hints, hooks, etc. I need to drop. Will Ember recover another lost memory? Will Brigid's sword tell her some lost bit of lore? Will Thorin's bracelet give him more orders?

Crazy Ideas - How Far Am I Willing to Go?

  I am working on Tiny Kingdom (an adventure set in the garden of a mad arch-mage where the characters are just an inch tall) and updating The Book of Seaward (my book of house rules) and prepping a 2nd edition of Far Realms (my rues supplement for the OSR). I am also talking with the kids, playtesting Rolemaster Unified, rebooting a Champions campaign, starting a new business, and dealing with 4 family birthdays in just 15 days.
  So last night I was re-reading Hackmaster 5th because I have absolutely nothing else to do with my time and remember how much I like how they did the fighter/knight/paladin thing. Son #3 was getting some NPC classes (from my book Far Realms, an excellent stocking stuffer, if you'll forgive the hint) when we started talking about NPC improvement. One of his PCs has a hireling, a mercenary spearman, who has been to Skull Mountain 3 times and lived through it all. He and I agreed that this guy has done enough that he is no longer a 0-level merc, but a level 1 Man-at-Arms and can advance to at least level 2
  Son #1 joined in, asking about his 4th level Man-at-Arms, who is fairly tough and has been through the wringer. Son #1 asked,
  "Let's say he drank a potion of super-heroism, grabbed a +2 axe, and brought down, oh, a fire elemental. Could that be enough to transform him into a 4th level fighter? A 3rd level fighter?"
  We also spoke about the DCC 'funnel'; we've only glanced at borrowed rules and never played DCC, but the idea was interesting - can the schmoes of the NPC world become PC classes through Great Deeds?
  Then Son #2 came in with some of his work on Tiny Kingdom and his suggestions for some custom classes for the mice men and bumblebee knights and Son #4 asked if we should just break down and put a mini-retroclone section in front of Tiny Kingdom so it can stand alone; after all, with a bunch of new classes....
  But I said there are not just a lot of great retroclones already, the OD&D/AD&D books can be had, now, so if I am going to make a game, it will be different and new.

  20 minutes later we had this;

 It can be hard to see, but it is an advancement tree for the fighter classes. All start as Men-at-Arms and then you can either stay a Man-at-Arms or move on to Woodsman, Warrior, or Nobleman. Warriors can go on to be Weapons Masters; Woodsmen can be Weapon masters or Rangers; Noblemen can be Cavaliers; etc. It would be similar to the old Palladium RPG but you could move up, down, or sideways, as with hackmaster 5th. Men-at-Arms fight less well and have fewer HP, but a lot more mundane skills. Others trade skills for HP or fighting or special abilities. 

  The other 'big four' classes would have similar trees:

  Allowing players to mix, match, and customize their PCs.

  

  Again, this was back of the envelope stuff from last night - thoughts?

Leveling Up: I Do It Weird

  Thanks to my G+ feed and the great folks on it, I am going to talk about how I do things and confuse the heck out of everyone.

  The topic at hand is leveling up in AD&D 1e and the fees, mentors, etc. The DMG tells us;

"Experience points are merely an indicator of the character's progress toward greater proficiency in his or her chosen profession..."
"The gaining of sufficient experience points necessary [for] a character to be eligible to gain a level of experience but the actual award is a matter for you, the DM, to decide"

  Interesting, isn't it? Gary goes on to outline a system of rating a character and the roleplaying involved and then discusses a program where characters will be out of play for weeks and spend money, sometimes vast sums, to level up. The fun thing? Going from 2nd to 3rd level should typically cost you so much money that you technically should be 4th level already.

The Lord of All Death Knights, Airik, Count of Westergoth, Part II

  This is the tale bards tell around the fire of the first, and mightiest, of all Death Knights.

The Lord of All Death Knights, Airik, Count of Westergoth

  This is the tale bards tell around the fire of the first, and mightiest, of all Death Knights.

Work In Progress: The Summoner

  As my players know, I like having NPCs with non-standard abilities. The idea of NPCs being different than PCs was born of lo, those many Dragon Magazine "New NPC Class" articles. My many years of thinking about NPCs, PCs, levels, and such was summarized in a series of posts that ended with this one explaining why 'good guy' NPCs are largely non-standard. My evil NPC clerics are also very different, as I mention here; in brief, they have fewer spells but access to special powers, like disease touch, or regeneration, or invisibility. I had a few weird PC classes, too, and allowed some from Dragon, like the Archer.

Religion in the Streets: Worldbuilding and Realistic Religion

  I know, I know - I spend too much time talking about how people are Doing It Wrong, but please remember - I am marinaded in the Old both from studying history for D&D for 80% of my life and as a Catholic theologian.

  When people join my campaign they are often surprised by just how darn much religion there is. When I play other places I am shocked how little religion there is. I think there is something anyone doing any world building needs to really, really needs to understand and that is - the relative lack of public religion in contemporary America is, historically speaking, really freakin' weird.

  "But, Rick!, " I hear you say, "In America religion is everywhere! You are obviously wrong."
  Dream on, sucker. Let me show you some things.

  Another objection is 'But RPGs are about worlds where Gods are real and have a direct impact on the world'. Well, guess what? Most religious people are certain God is real and has a direct impact on the world. In other worlds, throughout history and much of the contemporary world people are just as certain in God and such as any NPC in your  game. We can make a better/richer/more realistic/more gripping fictional world by examining the Real World.

  In real life through history religion is a rather big deal and very, very public. Although I will be focusing on Europe I will point to other places, too.

  Let's start by talking about processions. Processions are religious events that involve religious leaders and followers doing what is essentially a parade in public. Here is an article about a good Friday procession from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Here is a video from a procession about a half century ago;

Misunderstood and Improperly Played: Reaction and Morale Rolls

  I was reading a solid post by Trollish Delver, a blog I am sorry I just found, and it inspired me (thanks, Scott!) to write a new post in the Misunderstood and Improperly Played series, although I fear a better titled might be Forgotten About and Never Used.

  Scott makes some good points in his post which I will not sum up - go read his stuff! The link is in the first sentence and it is a great, quick read and you'll like his blog!

  When I have new players being introduced to the game I often use weak undead for the second or third encounter: everyone knows they should be destroyed, so no moral qualms, and there is a reason they fight to the death. But immediately after that? As soon as they get the upper hand I have monsters try to surrender.

  I also use the reaction roll. You do, too, right? I mean, here is the quote from the DMG,

  "Any intelligent creature which can be conversed with will react in some way to the character that is speaking Reaction is determined by rolling percentile dice, adjusting the score for charisma...."

  The section on generating NPCs has a chart showing how their various personality traits affect their reaction rolls. And the section on random encounters also discusses reaction rolls (which I will cover later).
  In short, 1e assumes the DM rolls reaction checks with every encounter he did not explicitly set a reaction for. Walking through the briars and encounter a few men? Roll a reaction. In a dungeon and burst in on a group of dwarves? Roll a reaction. Bump into an ogre? Roll a reaction. Cast a Speak with Animals and talk to a cow? Roll a reaction. Gnome is asking the badger for direction? Cast Speak with Dead?
  You get the idea.

NPCs for Fun and Adventuring: The Crew of the Black Parrot

I have had these guys floating around (pun intended) in my campaigns since at least 1981 and in my Blackstone campaign they became favorite NPCs with the party giving them a 1/4th share of treaure from any adventure the crew took them to/from.
The ship was originally called the Drunk Parrot but after seeing the amazingly bad film Knights back in the '90's I changed it to the Black Parrot.

[Knights is a Z movie by Albert Pyun where Kris Kristofferson and Lance Henricksen play cyborgs, Here is the trailer

You're welcome.]

The Crew:
Captain and owner Jo'Gahn- Raised in a small fishing village he signed on with a merchanter at the age of 13 and worked his way up to captain. By saving his money and investing it he made enough to buy his own ship.He is a shrewd man, an excellent judge of character, and a great leader. He will take passengers, especially adventurers, for a fee but he won't take just anyone; if approached he will check with his network of contacts which includes merchants, priests, and town officials and will not take evil people or those with a reputation of not paying their debts
Jo'Gahn is a 3rd level Man-at-Arms (from Far Realms; if you don't have it, treat him as a 2nd level fighter than can't advance in level). H.P. 12 A.C. 8/7 short sword, +2 Cloak of Protection (added to armor class). In an emergency he will grab a buckler. Neutral Good.
  Jo'Gahn is in his mid-30's, has black hair, a beard, and is balding. He is deeply tanned and strong from a lifetime at sea. He dresses well to maintain his image as captain.
First Mate Altair- Altair has been friends with, and working for, Jo'Gahn for 15+ years. Altair doesn't have the flair for business that Jo'Gahn has, but he is just as good at leading men and sailing ships.
Altair is a 2nd level fighter who cannot advance in level. H.P. 11, A.C. 10/9 He typically fights with a club and is skilled enough with them he has a +1 to hit. In an emergency he will grab a buckler.
Altair has sandy hair, brown eyes, and tanned skin. He is a little taller than average and carried some extra weight around his middle. Neutral Good.
Second Mate Smeagol- Smeagol has been with the ship since death of the original second mate in a tangle with pirates 4 years ago. he is liked and trusted by the crew and his superiors. He is a skilled navigator and sailing master but has no interest in the business side of merchant ships. The men tend to come to him first with personal problems (but Altair first for problems with the ship!).
If sailors need to go ashore in dangerous areas (for water or food on a desert island, say) Smeagol leads the group.
  Smeagol is a 4th level Scoundrel (another Far Realms class - treat him as a second level thief with only the listed skills without it). H.P. 10 A.C. 9/6 He fights with a club. He has a +1 Ring of Protection (a gift from an adventurer who chuckled about his name).  The ring and his dexterity are listed in his A.C.
He has the following abilities-
Move Silently: 27% Hide in Shadows: 25% Pick Pockets: 30% Climb Walls: 68%. If he can backstab a foe he does an extra 4 points of damage.
Smeagol has brown hair and eyes and is in excellent shape. He is handsome and charming with a quick smile.
The Men- The crew is made up of 12 more men who work as general sailors. All are 0 level with 2-4 H.P., A.C. 10, armed with clubs.
They are very loyal to their captain and officers. Any attempt to subvert them, encourage mutiny, etc. will result in them passing a message to the nearest officer and warning the rest of the crew.
The Ship- The Black Parrot is a well-built, well-maintained two-masted cog. It has extra cabins allowing it to carry up to 8 passengers (double occupancy) and up to 5 more can bunk in hammocks with the crew.

Villages, Families, and What Would They Look Like? A short entry.

  I have been playing in and creating faux Medieval European worlds for about 4 decades. I've aped more than just Europe, of course, but that is where I lean towards for reasons discussed at great length elsewhere in this blog.
  I also strive to make a world that makes sense, at least internally. My campaign map is small for a reason; Dwarves, Elves, and Gnomes have their racial abilities for reasons related to how they fight wars; Dwarves and Elves are allies despite tensions for reasons that explain the tensions, too. 
  So one of te things that has caught my eye for a long time is - village descriptions. As mentioned in the linked post on distances, above, I do tend to over-analyze sometimes, but it helps me keep everything straight in my head. I also mentioned how the Complete Book of Dwarves and Complete Book of Elves weirded me out with their statements 'elves average 2 kids' and 'dwarves average 3 kids with a 2:1 male:female ratio'. I explained in that post why those number flat-out make no sense. No modern society could survive birth numbers like that even without any form of war.

  In Real Life we can smooth out historical ups and downs to point out that women had, on average, 4-8 (call it 6)children and about 1 in 4 of them died before the age of 5. Of the rest about 10%-15% died before 16. Throwing a little bit of 'paladins and clerics can Cure Disease, etc.' in there and the average family is going to have 4 children survive until adulthood. Now, this does not lead to a lot of population growth because Real Life was lethal and a Fantasy RPG world is really lethal.

  In the modern Western world population is distributed like this;

  So if someone were to drive to a small subdivision of 200 people there would be about 50 households and roughly 25 of the people living there would be children under the age of 16.

  But the population of a faux medieval world should look something like this

  So when you ride into the typical village of about 200 people there would be about 30 households and roughly 65 of the people living there would be children under the age of 16. 

  So when you are designing and mapping villages, remember - fewer homes, a lot more kids!

Monks in First Edition:How Do They Do That?!

note: I still have a cold, so serious editing will come later.

  I have already written about 1e monks (here) and I am very fond of them. I have played 3 monks: Ti-Gun (who once solo-killed a t-rex with his +3 hand-axe) who is 13th level, Xing-chao, who is 5th, and Tamsen, who is still 3rd. I recently rolled up another (3d6 in order) so I will play him, too, someday.
  Now, monks are rare. If you roll 3d6 in order (as Gary intended) you get monk stats about 1 in every 2,500 rolls. Of course, that means 1 in 2.500 potential player characters. If you look at the 1e DMG you'll see that only 1 in 100 potential henchmen is a monk, implying that only 1 out of every 100,000 NPCs is an adventuring monk (which I also talk about, indirectly, here). I calculate that my main 1e setting (which has a monk's holding, which I will talk about later) has about 7-8 wandering NPC monks.
 
  But how can monks do the things they do? Get a better armor class, do a lot of damage with their bare hands, do more damage, eventually a LOT more damage, with weapons, etc?
  While the story goes that the monk was originally based of the main character in the Destroyer series I am sure we can all agree it has as much to do with the Hong Kong movie explosion of the 1970's.

  BTW, if you get a chance to read the Destroyer series, take it - they are hilarious.

  So let's look at some martial arts movies and see if we can figure out just the heck they are doing.

  The most often question I have heard over the years is - why does their armor class keep getting so much better? I mean, my thief is dodging attacks, too!.
  let's look at the first method - dodging. here is a scene from the Jackie Chan classic, Drunken Master;

 The monk/martial artist is doing a lot more than 'just dodging'; he is acting in unpredictable ways to confuse his foes. With simple props and more technique he can also face weapons, as seen in this glip for the Kid with the Golden Arm (skip to about 2:15):

Another great example of 'monk improved armor class vs. weapons' is in this clip from Iron Claws:

 Or the initial part of this scene from Executioner of Shaolin

  In these cases the monk is able to evade and defeat men using weapons.
  The second part of that clip from Executioners shows the other method monks have of improving their armor class - they just shrug off weapon attacks! An even better example is in this clip from Five Deadly Venoms;

  Right at about 1:00 the monk in yellow (using Toad style) simply ignores a sword strike - the blade does him no harm. In this scene from Crippled  avengers another master of the Iron Shirt (i.e., weapon-proof skin) demonstrates both the ability to shrug off attacks and the weaknesses:

  Back to Five Deadly Venoms we see that once the master of the toad style's vital point is hit he is no longer able to shrug off damage:

  A common trope in the films is a master of a style like toad, iron shirt, etc. who has vital points/vulnerable points where he can be hurt - this is an obvious 'hook' for explaining an improved armor class.

In creased movement is both one of the most underestimated abilities of a monk and one that seems to bother people who talk to me. There is the example from movies like House of Flying Daggers:

  And the ultimate expression is easily Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon:

  But the master of 'realistic' moving very fast through heavy terrain and battles is Jackie Chan as you will see in the next few clips:

Perhaps a lot of the speed is simply overcoming/ignoring things that would stop or slow down others, plus pure speed, plus leaping. Lots of leaping:

Which also covers the 'falling from a height' ability, too!

  How about more damage from hand-to-hand attacks? Well, it could be just 'more force:

  Or it could be accuracy and hitting vital points:

And this also applies to the extra damage with virtually any weapons - a combination of accuracy:

  Power:

  And accuracy/hitting vital points:

That last clip, where a monk uses a stick (club/jo stick) to defeat a sword master, is a ton of fun.

  The extra damage from hand-to-hand could be based on multiple hits (a 'flurry of blows') delivered as a single attack:

  And this works with weapon attacks, too:

In a future post I will be covering special abilities, surprise, etc.

  Of course, the question I get from people as often as 'how do monks do what they do' is 'why, why, are there Oriental monks in my European fantasy game?!'

  Let's talk about that.

  First, there are plenty of things tossed into the TFRPG that is 1e/the OSR; halflings are from a set of fantasy novels from the 20th Century, for example, so while they have ample connection to 'European-themed fantasy fiction' they have no connection at all to Medieval Europe.
  We also have to consider that even during the Medieval Period Europeans liked to be entertained about foreign lands: one of the characters in the tales of Charlemagne's Paladins is a Muslim convert to Catholicism who brings an exotic viewpoint to the tales.

  "They aren't historical" is something I read recently.
  Huh.
  You want to know what else isn't historical?
  Druids. Yes, druids.
  Walk with me a minute:
  Everything we know about the druids we have second hand through Greek and Roman sources with a smattering of other reports here and there. All we know is that they were a social class of people that included philosophers, legal scholars, and people that had something to do with religious practice. Druids are first mentioned about 500 B.C., first described about 50 B.C. and vanish from history by, oh, 300 A.D. The only ritual described is something we get from Pliny who heard it from... somebody, we aren't sure who... and who wrote it as a footnote when describing mistletoe.
  That's it. No written records, no confirmed artifacts, images, or anything. Nada. Zilch. Everything you "know" about druids is almost certainly derived from at best Medieval entertainment like The Cattle Raid of Cooley which is a bit of fiction from 1,000 years after the druids ended. The only other real sources of modern ideas of druids are from 18th Century eccentrics and the Order of Druids, which has nothing to do with history and a great deal to do with being an offshoot of a lodge of Freemasons.
  So - we have no idea what real druids were like and they all vanished long, long before the appearance of Charlemagne and the development of chansons, Romantic literature, etc. Slapping a druid into a vaguely 11th-16th Century Europe themed game is on par with dropping a Mercury space capsule into the same thing, temporally.

  But I am not aware of anyone dropping druids from their 1e game because they don't belong there.

  What druids do very well is act as 'something exotic' in the game; a peek into an older world. Monks, to me, are much the same. The world is big (trust me, it is bigger than you think) why not have an Oriental monk visit from a distant land?

  Another plaint is "they aren't realistic". No, they aren't. Neither is a guy casting Fireball nor a raid by orcs looking for halfling slaves.

  Lastly, the great thing about the over-the-top, unrealistic martial arts stuff is that its genre, now called wuxia, is both cool and old. Stories about wandering martial artists with damn-near superhero level skills fighting evil are as old and integral to China as knights in armor, etc., are to Europe. The movies I love so much are based on many years of books and novels in the same general vein, just like westerns and books like Ivanhoe. I love being able to tap into that and add it to my game.

  Next: Monk Super Senses and Abilities

Tales From The Table: Number 23 and How NPCs Can Matter

  We all have those stories. You know, the tales from the table about success or failure, triumph or death.
  They're one of the reasons I play.

  Here is a tale that explains one of the reasons I try to remember how important NPCs are to the players.

  In Lew Pulsipher's campaign for many, many years the last bastion of safety and civilization was the stronghold of a 9th level cleric. This fortress, called simply 'J.C.'s Castle', was not just the leaping off point to explore Mount Thunder, Skystone Castle, or the Lake of Dread, it was the first line of defense for the poor peasants of the countryside against the ravening hordes of monsters lurking in the wilds.
  More than once the adventure was to hold J.C.'s Castle against those very hordes.
  The one I remember most clearly had a party of 5th-6th level with the men-at-arms/followers of J.C. defending against an army of many lurfs (think furry 4 armed kobolds with atlatls) and a few cavewights (think hairless bugbears with troll strength that can Spiderclimb stone) led by a cabal of pyromancers. The paladin, cleric, thief and fighter led teams of followers in holding the walls while the mage took to the central tower to snipe foes with spells.
  J.C. was gone on a mission.
  Lew uses numbered tiles of various colors/number colors to represent foes and hirelings, etc.
  Through the long, long fight a number of memorable events happened; the mage drained the last charge from his laser rifle killing a pyromancer 700 yards away and emptied his pearl-handled .44 magnums (kept in shoulder holsters under his cloak of protection) into a cavewight; the paladin held a doorway by himself against 30 foes for 6 rounds only to have to pivot and hold it the other way for 5 more against another 20; the thief never missed a backstab or missile weapon to-hit roll; the cleric ran out of spells, potions, items, and scrolls of Cures for the only time since 1st level.
  And a lone man-at-arms survived. Tile #23, the 3rd ranking sergeant, stayed in the thick of things the entire battle. At one point #23 was back-to-back with the fighter on top of a tower eventually cutting down 4 lurfs while the fighter killed 2 cavewights. At another time he rallied other men-at-arms and led them in a counter-charge which held a wall but cost the lives of the other 6 NPCs.
  When dawn came the evil army was broken and fled, the spell casters were out of spells, and everyone was in single-digit hit points. But #23 was alive, if with just 1 h.p.

  Cool story about a fun adventure.

  But a few real world months later a different party went to J.C.'s Castle. The thief was the one from the defense and the player was careful to say,
  "I look up #23."
  He was the new top sergeant of the fortress' staff. The thief's player said his character would certainly tell the story of that night and #23's bravery to the party.

  This kept happening; as characters from that adventure leveled up the players were careful to look for #23, tell his story, even give him things like potions or +1 chain.

  In the 28 years since the Third Defense of J.C.'s Castle I've thought about that fight often. Not just because that was my mage, but because f the impact that an NPC had on the campaign. Not a hero; not a villain; not a sage; not a henchman. An expert hireling of another NPC who was never, ever even given a name. And yet that event was so memorable that in 2001 I was relaxing with an old friend. After 5 beers and a cigar he asked me,
  "Hey, remember #23?"
  And we laughed about that event all over again.

  Every GM has the experience of the carefully-crafted NPC with a page of backstory, a list of plot hooks, and well-practiced mannerisms that the players don't care about and can't remember no matter how many times you give them notes. Why are they forgotten but not #23?

  I have a handful of theories, but the two I want to touch on are Interaction and Independence.

  #23 interacted with the PCs. Sure, sure, there was virtually no dialog (which was probably good) but just noting 'he sticks with the fighter' and 'he makes sure to cover the fighter's back' was critical. This interaction was both relevant to what the PC was doing and actively part of the action of the adventure. The player was, not surprisingly, feeling that his character was exposed and in danger; #23's interactions with the PC were about that element of the game, making the player emotionally invested in what the NPC was doing.
  That well-crafted NPC mage with all the backstory? If the party's magic-user meets with him about copying spells there isn't going to be a lot of emotional investment in the words or deeds of the NPC. You have to make them memorable some other way.

  And by independence I mean the NPC must be shown to be more than a prop.

  QUICK ASIDE: How often are the henchmen and hirelings in the game simply forgotten? Here is a great example from film.
  In Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail we see retainers like Patsy, hirelings like Sir Robin's minstrels, etc. But the others only appear, as if out of thin air!, when needed.

  In addition to being a barely credible excuse to insert Monty Python into my blog it is a great example of how a lot of NPCs are treated. They aren't there until you need them, then they appear to fulfill their purpose, soon after a monster eats them.

  When #23 led that charge he proved he wasn't just a prop; he had independence. His own thoughts and the ability to make decisions and take action. Between that and covering the fighter on his own the only real difference between #23 and a PC was who was running him. And not only is Lew immune to GMPC effects, #23 was obviously just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Again, if that NPC with a ton of backstory only reacts to/responds to the PCs then he isn't going to seem "real" (whatever that means in context).

  So, learn the lesson of #23 - have your NPCs interact in meaningful ways when possible and make them independent.

  In my own campaign there is a scout henchman fairly infamous for going off to do thing while the party is making camp - fetch wood, hunt for game, scout their back trail to see if someone is following them - all sorts of things. But he often just - leaves - and doesn't tell anyone until he gets back. He is reliable, and honest, he just is gone during camp setup. This is the whole 'independence' thing as well as, sometimes, interaction when he brings in a pheasant or captures a kobold  that had been trailing the party.

  More to come!

Religion in My AD&D 1e Campaign

  I have mentioned before that when I was a kid I read the legends of Charlemagne, the books of Vance, etc. from the age of about 7 on but only read Tolkien and the various stories of Arthur in my late teens, 6-8 years after starting my own AD&D 1e campaign. This means Bishop Turpin, Maugris, and Roland had a lot more impact on my campaign than Gandalf, Strider, or Merlin.
  One of the things that has always been a part of my campaign in - the Church.

  Out of habit, let's talk about me for a minute.
  I was raised what is now called "unchurched". My parents took me to a church once or twice, and that was for weddings of cousins. While we had a lot of books about religion in the house, we had lots of books about everything else in the house, too. I grew up in what my mother called 'the buckle of the bible belt' and was surrounded by Protestant churches but only knew one Catholic and only knew she was Catholic because of the ashes on the forehead thing, as I called it then.
  But if you are reading the Matter of France, Ivanhoe, etc., the Catholic Church is the very background of the plot. I didn't know very much about Catholicism in any way but everything from Ogier Danske to Holger Carlson (see what I did there?) told me the Church was critical.

  So when I made my 1e campaign, which I call Seaward, it had - the Church.

  As I got older I learned a great deal more about the real world Church and I developed the Church in my campaign more fully, although it was from the distance of non-religious books and fiction. When I 'rebooted' Seaward in the late '80's I introduced a pantheon of multiple good deities, the Bright Gods, and tried them out for a few months, but the players hated the idea. Later I used the Bright Gods again in 3e and, once more, my players (entirely different people) preferred the Church.

  I also encountered a lot of other GMs, too. Bill had the Valar from LotRs, who are (of course) more akin to archangels than gods and explicitly report to a monotheistic deity. Lew Pulsipher, game theorist and atheist, had God. Singular. And the Church. Singular. Oddly similar to what I had done. As a matter of fact, a whole lot of the GMs I met between '78 and '88 just had "the Church", whatever it might be called,
  And this makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons!
  First off, the real details of religion are, well, not that important since we are playing games. Thieves' Guilds, Assassins' Guilds, whatever organization Rangers belong to, Druidic circles, Monk's groups - they are all rather vague and up to the GM and, well, why paint yourself into a corner? Leave it vague until you have to make a ruling, write that down, move on, right?
  Second, old school 1e AD&D is very, very, obviously based on European history and folklore. And you cannot separate European history and folklore from Catholicism. Well, you could but it seems really odd and why would you?
  Third, the book smostly tell us there is a church based on the Church.
  Yeah, they do.
  Paladins. I mean, the word essentially means 'Catholic knight'.
  Cleric level titles.
  Art like this:

 See the cleric? He's wearing the tabard of a Militant Holy Order, like the Knights of St. John or the Templars.

  BTW, that image is the first thing I saw the first time I flipped open a PHB and I will never forget that moment.

  Holy Water. And fonts.

  Spell names.

  I mean, I can obviously go on and on, but the fact remains that the rather religious, observant Protestant Mr. Gygax had the Catholic Church firmly in mind while he was typing.

  Another aside: EGG was seemingly so Protestant that he did not celebrate Christmas as it was not in the bible. I have not confirmed this as true on my own, but if he had no problem with a faux Catholic Church trappings in his game why would you?

  

  So there is this sort of vague Hollywood version of the Catholic Church floating around as part of the foundation of AD&D and I, like many others, sorta' dropped that into our own campaigns. Yes, things changed over time. After the various Gods of the Demi-Humans, Gods of the Suloise, Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms stuff, not to mention the Deities and Demigods release, there were all sorts of pantheons floating around. Many people tacked on things, or they were dragged in during character creation, and in general by the time 3e assumed pantheons, so did most players.

  But I didn't.

  A few things happened between 1985 and today that caused me to really cement the Church in my campaign.

  Let's talk about me some more.

  First, I joined the army and became an intelligence type focused on the Middle East, so I ended up studying Islam a great deal as an academic subject.

  Then, after I got out, I majored in the Middle Eastern Studies and, because of my background, ended up studying Judaism academically to better understand the region.

  Finally, I transferred to a Catholic university and took the mandatory theology class. Within a year I had: Converted to Catholicism, and; changed my major to Catholic Theology.

  So as a Catholic theologian is might not surprise you that my campaign has the Church. But remember! It always did!

  I can hear you now,

  "OK, sheesh, thanks for the bio! Can we get on to religion in your campaign, please?"

  Sure!

  

  From the point of view of the rulesyou can use the Church to explain some otherwise - puzzling - things about D&D;

  1) Demi-humans vs. Humanoids: Some non-human creatures that resembles people are called demi-humans. All the rest are called humanoids. In my campaign demi-humans are those races that are mostly part of or allied with the Church. 

  2) Shamans vs. Clerics: Why do demi-humans get to be (NPC) clerics but humanoids are the lower-powered shamans? In the Church or out of it.

  3) The Nine Alignment System: As I have mentioned previously, having read Three Hearts and Three Lions as well as the tales of Charlemagne's Paladins the AD&D alignment system was never confusing to me. And, naturally, this is because both are about the Church, in very interesting ways.

  4) How must Paladins act?: Related to the above, when you understand where paladins come from grasping their required outlooks and action are rather simple. 

  Another aside: Lew Pulsipher and his wife "get" paladins like almost no one else I have ever met.

  From the point of view of world building at the 30,000 ft view the Church allows me to do a few more things, too;

  1) Binding the Human/Demi-human races together culturally: Why the heck are races as wildly different as elves, dwarves, and humans chummy? Because they share a religion! Sure, this doesn't prevent political strife, misunderstandings, personal animosity, etc. but when a human peasant can receive Last Rites from a dwarven priest or an elven Religious Brother (an NPC class from my campaign) can Baptize a dwarven infant this binds these races together in a very real way that reflects the Real World.

  2) Explaining a lot more about racial alignments in the Monster Manual, Part One: No, orcs are not 'inherently evil'. Then why does the MM list them as 'Lawful Evil" - they're devil worshipers! Culturally, orcs belong to a number of devil-worshiping cults (thus, the clan names/banners) which is why they tend to hate each other in the absence of an outside threat. Same with goblins, etc. Gnolls? Demon worshipers. This also explains the much more limited powers of shamans.

  3) Explaining a lot more about racial alignments in the Monster Manual, Part Two: No, dwarves are not 'inherently good', they are listed as Lawful Good because the Church is widespread and they practice a traditional form of religion. Elves are Chaotic Good, you say? Schism! Think Catholic and Orthodox - the elves had a falling out with the top levels of Church hierarchy and, while still "valid" they do not follow the authority of the Church is all things. This is also a handy way of explaining why dwarves and elves get along, are Good, yet are leery of each other; doctrinal clashes. Oh, not to the level of warfare, but there is a bit of uncomfortable difference.

  And world building at a 'closer level' lets me plug in a few more things,

  1) An ecclesial language: The Church in my campaign uses an otherwise 'dead' language as it's own, internal, tongue. I also have an arcane tongue used by mages. The ecclesial language is used in church records, birth and death registries, on old tombs, etc. Learning it also allows pretty broad communication with clerics and scholars, too.

  2) Lots of background color for the campaign: By now the players know that their characters will know that they can always seek help in a church at 3 am. Yes, really. Because of Lauds, the prayers said about 3 am every morning by clerics, paladins, and religious brothers who are not sick or otherwise constrained. The Divine Office (a series of prayers throughout the day), religious festivals, etc. in the background add a lot to the campaign feeling 'real'. See a guy in robes that has been tonsured? Well, he''s a low-level cleric or religious brother!

  3) Cool items: Aspergillums, scapulars, zuchettos, birettas, biers, catafalques, umbraculum, thuribles, navicula, etc., etc., etc. All Real World things and all ready to be found in treasure hoards or rescued from thieves.

  4) Cool Imagery: You can use stuff we recognize from the Real World to inject a solid impact onto the players.

  I have no idea how many times i've seen this sued for bad guys;

  So why not this for a different impact?

And we all know how useful Latin Chanting is!

  

  At a very 'hits them in day to day play' level I have a few mechanics introduced into the campaign based upon religion.

  1) Religious Brothers and Sisters: I covered the reasons I added NPC-only classes into my game in a long series of posts that talks about them in particular a bit here. Details are here. These are religious monks, parish priests, nuns, etc. They are not capable of competing with Clerics, but they do have unique spells. 9 times out of 10 the village priest is a Religious Brother.

  2) Restrictions on Divine Magic: Unless you 'opt out' at character creation any non-Druid is assumed to have been born a member of the Church (i.e., had the proper Ceremony spell cast on them by a Religious Brother). If someone has NOT been joined to the Church the following Cleric spells will not work on them;

Bless

Protection from Evil

Chant

Prayer

Protection from Evil, 10' radius

Atonement

Raise Dead*

Restoration*

Resurrection*

*a cleric can cast Commune and seek permission for these spells to work

 Similar spells from Shamans, Druids, etc. will not work on people that are not part of that particular religion/cult, either.

  3) Ecclesial Penalties: The party is on an adventure and meets a patrol; the patrol, thinking they are a groups of bandits that have been raiding outlying farms, orders them to throw down their weapons and come with them so the local baron can determine if they are guilty. The party, on a timetable to recover a vast treasure, refuses. The patrol attacks and the party fights back. The fighting is desperate enough that magic-user casts Monster Summoning IV and brings forth...

  Shadows.

  The undead shadows kill 3 of the guardsmen, transforming them into shadows, too. The surviving members of the patrol flee and the party goes on to the dungeon, grabs a vast fortune, and heads back to the city. 

  Just another random encounter?

  No. The surviving guardsmen tell the local baron what happened. The baron sends out strong patrols (the party dodges them) and asks questions about the strangers. After a week or so he knows the names of the party members.

  The local parishes request help as people begin to vanish from the local villages. A cleric, paladin, and their henchmen find and destroy the shadows that were left behind by the summoned monsters, as well as the new shadows they have created. They report this to the baron, who tells the local bishop.

  "So?" say the players, "We're 12th-14th level. What is a 9th level cleric going to do to us? Besides, we're in a completely different kingdom, now!"

  This is what that bishop is going to do

  Or, within the game mechanics, the bishop used divinations to confirm the identities of the party as well as their guilt, then cast the ceremony Excommunication; now the party cannot benefit from the spells listed above, nor receive the benefits of any Cure spells from the Church. Clerics, etc., that are excommunicated can memorize no spell except Atonement, if they are high enough level for it. And until the party members receive the Atonement spell the effects are permanent.

  This sort of thing tends to catch the attention of players.

  4) Cosmology: The Church speaks openly that it came from missionaries from 'another world' who spread the faith thousands of years ago and that the Pope of the game world is just 'the local leader' and that he reports back to Pope of the central Church.

  When Spelljammer came out I was delighted for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the image of Dominicans on a little ship in the Phlogiston saying the Liturgy of the Hours as they approached a crystal sphere.

  5) Saints and Relics: The local Church has local Saints, too. Like St. Thorn, missionary to the elves, or St. Aeldreda, the maiden saint of the dwarves. This is a short trip from saintly relics, holy wells, etc.

  Overall the response from players, religious or otherwise, has been very positive. An atheist I played with for years was maybe the biggest fan. We had some talks about it [before I was religious, mind you] and we realized that in movies when there is some great evil or cosmic horror, or Satan coming, or whatever the heroes go to the Catholic Church. He argued it is because the imagery and hierarchy of the Catholic Church is so big, so well-known, so old, and so stable that everyone knows enough about it to be able to not need exposition about who they are and what they are doing.

  I can't argue with that.

  Heck, that's why I used it 35+ years ago and, arguably, why Gary did, too.

  So, there it is. The tip of the iceberg of religion in my AD&D 1e campaign.

The Shuffling Madness of Locomotive Breath

All Players in the Champions of Atlanta Campaign-
  SPOILERS!!

  Ahem.
  I just tricked superhero team one (Crusader, Gale, Alien Hunter, Nova, Mandible, Skywave, Ellipses, and Dierdre) into boarding Prof. Impossible's 1970's era spaceplane and being sent, on autopilot, to the north pole of the Moon.

  But that is for another time.

  In the meantime team two (Flaming Hammer, Tombstone, Forest Warrior (actually Ghost-like Warrior of the Celestial Forest), Kaleidoscope, Thunderclap, Nighthawk, Bone, and Bob Perkins-Defender of the Universe) are investigating the strange disappearances around Oakland Cemetery. The homeless report to Bone (King of the Good Hobos) that homeless and petty criminals have fled the vicinity after several of each have gone missing, including one memorable incident where a minor drug dealer was dragged, screaming, into the sewers by something Bullets Couldn't Stop.
  The team is has hints that these things are related to the mysterious phrase uttered four months ago by the dying StarRnager Url/Matosk who said 'the Riders are coming' just before he died and his Power Rod selected a new StarRanger.
  What is going on?
  The Necromancer, an evil mystic, is conducting experiments, that's what! He is trying to fuse living flesh with both undead flesh and machinery in the hopes that the result will be something as new, a controllable minion that cannot be stopped by machine or magic! He has called in several favors and taken out a third mortgage on his soul to 'lease' the services of a powerful evil spirit who calls himself Baron Cimetiere - this dark loa inhabits the bodies of the recently dead as a sort of super-zombie: tough, fast, and terrifyingly smart. The baron is behind the recent disappearances.
  The Necromancer, though, is almost finished with his creation. he has taken Mean Ron, former King of the Hobos (a foul tyrant who lost power when Bone arrived), and transformed him into something rather odd.
  The Necromancer was never very stable; his new pacts have driven him even further around the bend. In addition to never wondering why only Mean Ron has survived any of his procedures (unknown to anyone but Mean Ron's late mother he is the illegitimate son of 1970's supervillain Iron Ron) he has grafted Ron with the machinery he had at hand - an abandoned train from the 1860's, formerly of the Southern Railroad History Museum.
  While Ron survived the transformation his mind isn't doing so well. When he realized the extent of the changes and the reality of his new existence he went even crazier. Now he spends his time wandering the sewers and drainage tunnels during the day, haunting back alleys and lonely lots at night, and humming to himself. And it is always the same song...





  If the party gets past the Baron they will face the transformed Ron who now calls himself Locomotive Breath

Monsters from the Id!!

  I very recently wrote about the impact of certain divinations on campaign worlds. My conclusion was that Detect Evil and Detect Lie were either too limited or too high-level to have a large impact on a campaign but Know Alignment had the potential to change a great deal.
  But it hasn't affected mine. I'll tell you why.

  But, since it is me, I will talk about other things first.

  I find that a great many DMs who play 1e (then or now) fail to properly use the encounter tables. The excellent game blog Hill Cantons touched on this some time ago, pointing out that in inhabited/patrolled areas 25% of all encounters were with patrols.

  Quick aside: I recall being a young man and hearing other DMs lament how the PCs were 'too tough' at 5th-6th level and would often just loot villages, burn down temples, etc. I was always surprised. Once when guest DMing a different group I rolled a patrol encounter - the party (3rd-5th level) was rude and dismissive and actually attacked! As I recall the party was dead or captured in 4 rounds - and upset, accusing me of cheating! Turns out none of them had ever read the rules on encountering patrols and all of them, including the usual DM, thought it was just a bunch of 0-level NPCs. That was an important lesson to me - plenty of people never read the entire rule set.

 
  Another section of the rules on encounters almost never used is - psionic encounters.
  Psionic encounters are mentioned in passing  on the 1e DMG page 174 (which is a page I think very few people have actually read in full) and in detail on page 182. If you haven't read them I encourage you to do so when you have a moment.
  Boiled down, the rules state that if you use psionics in your campaign every time there is a positive check for an encounter the DM must determine if
  A) A psionic power was used in the turn previous to the encounter, or
  B) If a spell that resembles psionics was used in the round before the encounter.
  If either is true there is a 25% chance the encounter will be from the Psionic Encounter chart instead of whatever terrain chart would otherwise be used.
  I have always allowed psionics in my campaigns and have enjoyed them, especially since in almost 40 years of DMing I have only ever seen 5 characters with psionics - they are just so very rare for the good guys and so much fun to use on the good guys. I have had many a DM tell me they don't allow psionics because they are unbalancing for the players to have. I disagree because I think the use of the psionic encounters chart makes psionics not just balanced but maybe for trouble than they are worth.
  The reason I say that is many psionic powers have a duration and are used/useful over time rather than in instantaneous use. A psionic using Detect Magic is probably going to leave it one for a little while. Likewise for a psionic using Body Weaponry in a fight. This means that if you use psionics the chance you will have used them within a turn of an encounter check is, well, fairly high. Let's look at this a bit.

  Assume your psionic individual lives in a village near a city in the heart of the kingdom on the plains (this is all to minimize the odds of an encounter). We will also assume she only uses her psionics during the day (also reducing her odds of an encounter) but that the powers she has [Detection of Good or Evil, ESP, and Precognition] are how she pays the bills as a fortune teller and, therefore, something she uses almost every day. With minimal encounter odds (1 in 20 for location, 1 check during the day for terrain, etc.) this means that she will have 4.5 encounters a year that could be from the psionic chart so, if she is careful, she will probably have 2 psionic encounters a year. We'll be generous and reduce this to one psionic encounter per year. What does that mean?
  Bluntly, she's dead. Oh, sure, the encounter might be with a coatl who merely pauses for a moment on the Astral Plane to say 'huh, a psionic' before he swims along, or it might be yellow mold or tritons or something sure. But it will probably be an encounter with a brain mole, intellect devourer, cerebral parasite, or worse. Sometimes much, much worse. Demon prince worse. So, over the years, the odds of her being dragged screaming into the abyss approach 100%.
  And remember, this is while minimizing the odds!. In the dungeon random encounters are checked every 3 turns! Assuming encounters are 1 in 6 any use of psionics means there is a roughly 33% chance it was within the 10 rounds before the check (and the longer the use the more this chance increases) we can assume that someone using psionics in the dungeon should expect 1 psionic encounter per 9 hours or so of routine psionics use.
  I don't know about you, but to me these numbers make it look like psionics are something saved for emergencies!

  Now, about point B)....
  The spells on the list of those which 'resemble psionic powers' includes:
  All spells that start with Tele-
  All Charms
  All Polymorphs
  All Detects
  And all Cures
  As well as a fair few others, including (but not limited to) all Invisibilities, Heat Metal, Augury, and Feather Fall.

  Wow. Let's look at this a little, OK?
  Jerczy, Ahlissa, Brother Reynaud, and Andor were alert for the invisible assassin as they crept rhough the ossuary. A skilled thief, Andor strained his trained senses to hear the slightest sound. Jerczy's sense were honed from his barbarian upbringing. Br. Reynaud focused his attention on protecting the mage, Ahlissa. Ahlissa had cast Detect Invisibility almost 90 minutes before and continued to sweep for the man sent to prevent their quest from succeeding. 
  Without warning Ahlissa utters a soft cry, clutches her head, and slumps to the ground, sitting in the middle of the cavern. Jerczy and Andor searched for a target as Br. Reynaud checked their companion. She seemed perfectly healthy but her eyes were lifeless and her limbs limp. After a few moments he looked up,
  "We must get her out. I will carry her."
  As the cleric slung her over his shoulders Jerczy hissed to Andor,
  "Do you see anything?"
  "Nothing," replied the halfling, "the only creature in this cave besides us is that wee mole."
  The party hurried back the way they came....

  That's right - those long duration divinations that allow you to look for good, life, charms, invisible creatures, etc. also make it more likely that some horrible monster is going to suck your mind dry!

  I know of at least one DM who disallows psionics in his campaign just because of the psionic encounters chart!

  Personally, I have modified this list of spells so that cures and the clerical versions of detects aren't included and have made some other spells less likely to trigger the final scene from Scanners.
  [please note - the last scene from Scanners is pretty grim and gory]
  But it does point out two important things about some 'core ideas' that went into making AD&D.
  One - the world is dangerous: as I have said before, there are hideous things from beyond the walls of reality waiting to drag you screaming from your beds.
  Two, but a bit more subtle - divinations have consequences: whether the notice of a devil in the astral plane or that your target notices the viewing point of your crystal ball, the fact is that divinations are not telescopes or spy satellites, there is a sort of interaction possible and they are not passive but active and noticeable.