Death and Resurrection in Gaming

I threw down my enemy, an he fell from the high place and broke the mountain-side where he smote in his ruin. Then darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell. 

Naked I was sent back - for a brief time, until my task is done.

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - Gandalf describing his death and resurrection.

 Now that very day two of them were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.

- New American Bible, Revised Translation, Luke 24:13-16

If I were smart and planned my blog a week in advance this idea would have come to me way earlier. When I was reading Swords & Wizardry yesterday, in between prepping for reading at Easter mass this morning, I came across this:

Raise Dead
Spell Level: Cleric, 5th Level
Range: Close/Touch (Referee’s discretion)
Duration: Immediate
Raise Dead allows the Cleric to raise a corpse from the dead, provided it has not been dead too long. The normal time limit is 5 days, but for every caster level higher than 8th, the time limit extends another 5 days. Characters with low Constitution might not survive the ordeal, and even for those with strong Constitution a period of at least a week is required before they can function normally. This spell functions only on “human-like” races, that is, ones that can be used for player characters.

Fiction, mythology, and religion are full of examples of people rising from the dead. Obviously it is Easter in western Christian churches, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus (whether this is fiction, mythology, or religion is up to the individual reader). Orpheus of the ancient Greek religion ventured into Hades in an attempt to bring his wife Eurydice back from death. Buffy Summers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer died (twice), the second time for an extended period of time. And of course Gandalf the Grey of Lord of the Rings died in battle with the Balrog of Moria, only to return as Gandalf the White.


Done right, a resurrection story can be a fascinating thing. Done poorly it can be cheap. Sometimes comic books don't even bother to explain why a previously dead hero or villain has returned. But the examples above I believe all make for an inspiring tale.

Gandalf and Jesus both returned somehow transformed and were difficult to recognize. Neither stayed for very long after their return.

Orpheus received permission to retrieve his wife from the underworld under the condition he not look back. Of course he did. And his wife returned to Hades.

Buffy Summers returned to life confused, finding herself in a horrible place compared to the heaven she had been in. She did not want to return.

I think all of these give more interesting consequences than the week of recovery time from the Raise Dead spell (and no recovery at all is required once you bump it up to 7th level). The Dungeon Crawl Classics game advises making attaining the resurrection of a companion a major quest, possibly involving a deal with Death himself (something I seem to recall they inserted into an adventure). And it is difficult to imagine the hierarchy of any faith being pleased with a cleric who brings a heretical mage or hedonistic rogue back to life.

There is only one god and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: “Not today." 

- George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

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Gaming Plans for 2013

We're pretty well along in January but I thought I'd dedicate a brief amount of space to gaming plans for 2013 and looking back at 2012.

2012 was a rather rough time for my gaming group - indeed the concept of a gaming group was a fragile thing. People moving away, losing touch with people, etc. Mid-year I had tried to get a Dungeon Crawl Classics game going. Those of us who played really enjoyed it but we couldn't get a large enough quorum to be able to survive a player or two being unavailable. When I was in college I'd really looked forward to the amount of free time I'd have after graduating. Prior to having kids that was largely true, though that was also the time in my life I was working some crazy hours at some small startup companies in pursuit of millions. I learned a lot and gained confidence in my own abilities as an engineer, but sadly I did not become a gazillionaire - or even a millionaire. Now with two kids, free time is quite the luxury.

Towards the end of 2012 I did manage to recruit some new players for a Call of Cthulhu game. We'd taken December off with crazy schedules and were going to relaunch this week, but yet again the real world interfered with the passing away of an old friend's mother. Coincident with my eldest daughter getting a corneal abrasion - apparently scratches on the surface of one's eyes are intensely painful.

In the immediate future I definitely want to resume our Cthulhu game. We're running a campaign in London of 1890 - if this doesn't work out or in the event of a total party kill (far more likely in Cthulhu than many other games) I've got my eye on an espionage-flavored Cthulhu game, set during World War II and the start of the Cold War. This is what I get for reading John Le Carré novels, Tim Powers' Declare, and books about the OSS (the WWII predecessor to the CIA).

That said, our game is currently set in the 1890s and as someone who loves historical fiction (and history books) I've had great fun diving into the fiction of the era. Those Sherlock Holmes stories are rather enjoyable and period science fiction and horror stories are full of interesting ideas. Plus, Chaosium's Horror on the Orient Express is due to come out this August in time for GenCon. Assuming they can meet that schedule (*cough* *cough* Pulp Cthulhu) they've indicated this new version will include support for Gaslight-era campaigns.

What I really am hoping to be able to do is get gaming regularly again after some bump times over the last year. Right now the plan is for Call of Cthulhu to be the game of choice. As I've commented on my blog before, it is just one of those systems that works for me. I can look at lots of other game systems that I know are more elegant, more realistic, etc. But then we sit down to play and everything just runs super-smoothly. Though truth be told I've run Cthulhu sessions with barely a die rolled.

Another advantage to Call of Cthulhu is it allows for a very broad genre. I've mentioned the possibility of a WWII/early Cold War espionage game. This is something which others have done rather successfully, both using the Call of Cthulhu RPG (such as Pagan Publishing's Delta Green) and as an inspiration (like Contested Ground Studios' Cold City). And there are possibilities further afield - the fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian, campaigns set in ancient Rome, etc. I think the reason for this broadness is because the Cthulhu Mythos are not so much a tight saga with no room for ideas, but more an idea - an idea of humanity in an uncaring cosmos. To quote Mr. Lovecraft:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

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Cold War RPG Musings

"O fish, are you constant to the old covenant?"

"Return, and we return. Keep faith, and so will we."

- From Tim Powers' Declare, quoting A Thousand and One Nights

Over the Christmas holidays I spent some time reading the first three of John Le Carré's novels: Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality, and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. In the first two the protagonist is George Smiley, a spy about as far from James Bond as one can imagine. He's not a combat master, he's someone who thinks and knows an awful lot.

I've heard this style of writing referred to as "stale beer" espionage novels. It is a world of blackmail, betrayal, and morally questionable actions. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold involves a series of betrayals and deceptions such that it is impossible to find a "hero".

 While such fiction is typically "mundane", it need not be so. For example, Tim Powers' Declare is a WW2/Cold War spy novel with a strong occult element.

D&D and other RPGs were born in the Cold War period. That said, there aren't many RPGs that are dedicated to a Cold War simulation. TSR's Top Secret was one such game - though it is worth noting that it was written when the Cold War was most definitely still going on - just like an espionage game written (and taking place) today would have to deal with the US War on Terror an espionage game back then would of course deal with the Cold War.

As a Generation X-er, I'm probably among the last gamers who grew up during the Cold War. By the time I graduated high school Glasnost was in full swing and in my first semester at college I watched the Berlin Wall open up. I don't think people much younger than me can appreciate what an event that was. My wife's mother was born in Germany and as a child my wife visited Berlin and had the experience of passing through various checkpoints from West Germany to East Germany and into West Berlin. Her descriptions are, to say the least, frightening.

Though it is now history, the Cold War is an interesting period for RPGs and one that is largely untapped. One notable exception is Contested Ground Studios' Cold City, taking place in Berlin of 1950, with teams being made up of representatives of the various occupying nations as they deal with the legacy of the "twisted technologies" of the Third Reich. While this is a dangerous enough threat by itself, you also must deal with the fact that you can't fully trust members of your own team.

As I think about it, trust would be one of the big components of a Cold War game. You really don't know who you can trust. You can usually trust your regular associates. But every once in a while there is a betrayal. Someone is turned by the enemy. Someone has a change of loyalty. Or just breaks down. Or is duped. Sometimes you can't trust your employer or patron. You are a chess piece. And sacrificing chess pieces is par for the course. And sometimes your immediate superiors get turned. Nothing like reporting to a Kim Philby. (A large part of Powers' Declare involved Philby's defection.)

Le Carré and Powers provide a nice axis showing how one can stay in the "gritty" side of spy fiction with varying degrees of the supernatural, from Le Carré 's fully mundane world to dealing with djinn in Declare. Pagan Publishing's Delta Green Call of Cthulhu supplement provides a post-Cold War occult conspiracy but it also provided tons of history for the Delta Green organization, providing some interesting ideas for games set at various stages of the Cold War. Not only do you need to defeat the Mi-Go, but you must also stop the Soviets from gaining access to their technology.


The Cold War also provides a nice level of technology. Computers do exist but they are the machines that fill up rooms, not fit in your pocket. No internet as we know it. A paper copy of a document becomes a valuable thing. No cell phone to call for backup. No answering machines until the end of the Cold War.

It does also present some interesting challenges. I remember being scared of the Soviet boogeyman. I remember being shown those scary maps showing the spread of communism. There was a real fear of the Soviet Union and us all getting nuked to kingdom come. That may be hard to relate to. "You were really scared of them?" Similarly, any game set in a past period may get caught up on details like technological and societal details. However, there is a ton of source material out there, both in fiction and non-fiction. It can make for some rather enjoyable research.

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