The Fool, a new Thief subclass

Fools or Jesters have a fairly long history. The first court jester to be appointed in England dates back to the 13th century, but buffoons, clowns, and similar entertainers seem to go back quite a bit further, and we read of leaders taking in people with various disabilities for their amusement in antiquity. While Thieves and Assassins are perfectly serviceable as character classes for campaign set in the Middle Ages, I have been kicking around other subclass ideas for an eventual follow-up to the Poor Pilgrim’s Alamanack, not least because one criticism I’ve gotten about it was that it so cleric-centric.

The major thieves’ “guilds” I’ve seen in my reading so far (Argotiers and Coquillards, as well as some assorted outlaw gangs) seem to be well-represented by the Thief class more or less as it is. Similarly, the Hashashins are an obvious precedent for the Assassin class. Professional killers appear in a lot of places. Looking for other thief-like archetypes in history, a recurring theme was the scoundrels and rogues who traveled a lot on various pretenses, which ultimately made folks suspicious of all travelers and strangers — by the 14th century licenses were required for pilgrims in England because so many criminals used pilgrimage as a pretense. This is all well and good, but I wanted to add something else that was fun, and started riffing on the idea of traveling entertainers. Oddly buffoons or jesters were not limited to the royal court but also roamed from town to town as entertainers. It’s a bit of a stretch but I liked the idea, the more I thought about it. So here’s a draft.

A jester circa 1500. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Fools (or jesters) are a subclass of Thief. The Fool class represents an exceptionally capable specimen of the profession, just as a Fighter is an exceptional fighting man, the Cleric is an exceptional clergyman, and so on. Some Fools or jesters were employed by the nobility as entertainment, while others performed for the commoners at fairs and markets. Traveling fools could work both at courts and markets. Fools employed as permanent members of a noble’s household enjoyed relatively comfortable lifestyles, but could be called upon to serve in war, entertaining the troops and antagonizing and provoking foes. Player character Fools would likely be the itinerant sort with no patron, or part of the retinue of a noble on pilgrimage or crusade.

Minimum scores: CHA 9, DEX 9

HD: d6

Fighting ability: as a Thief

Saves: as a Thief

Weapons and armor allowed: as a Thief 

Experience: as a Thief

The Fool class has most of the usual Thief skills, operating as a Thief two levels lower (like an Assassin). However they do not have the ability to Open Locks, Find/Remove Traps, or Read Languages. They also do not have the Thief’s Backstab ability, and do not gain the ability to use spell scrolls.

Fools have the following special abilities, gained at first level unless otherwise noted: 

Acrobatics: Fools gain a bonus of +2 AC versus missile attacks, and a +2 to save versus directed (but not area effect) spells. 

Juggling: Fools attack as Fighters of the same level with thrown weapons, and may attempt to catch weapons thrown at them (such as spears, axes, daggers, and so on; not arrows, bolts, or sling stones). They can also Save vs Petrification to catch a thrown item. Rocks thrown by giants and similarly huge thrown weapons will simply be deflected, landing 10’ away in a randomly determined direction. 

Jesting: This represents a Fool’s clowning and joking. Note that because a Fool uses broad gestures and expressions, having a language in common is NOT necessary to use these Jesting abilities, unless otherwise noted.

Fools can add ½ their level (up to a maximum of +5) to reaction rolls when performing for NPCs or monsters (who have not yet attacked). 

At 5th level, they may attempt to distract an intelligent foe that can understand their language or see them. Have the creature save vs. Spell; if they fail, they lose an attack that round. This is a non magical effect.

At 8th level, the Fool can shift the pertinent Reaction table column to the left or right, as desired, when making a Social or Encounter reaction roll, providing the encountered NPCs or creatures are intelligent.

Note that I’m thinking of reaction modifiers as using 2d10 (like 2nd edition AD&D and using the chart with separate outcomes for friendly, indifferent, threatening, and hostile attitudes. I would invert the table though so that high is good and bonuses are added rather than subtracted.

Busking: A Fool can use story-telling, joke-telling, and sleight of hand tricks to busk like a Palmer — use the Palmer’s storytelling rules in B&B Trinity. [Essentially, this is a way to gain food & lodging while traveling in exchange for entertainment.]

Jester’s privilege: Fools have a widely recognized right not to be punished for what they say in civilized lands, even if they insult nobility or say something treasonous or blasphemous. The fool’s marotte (scepter) and crown (cap and bells) are symbols of this power, and must be carried to invoke the privilege. Wearing the Fool’s crown makes Moving Silently impossible.

The Fool can establish a school at 10th level, and will attract 2-12 students. The Fool who establishes such a school may face the enmity of a rival school, but these conflicts are much less lethal than the similar rivalries between Thieves Guilds, and take the form of rude graffiti or broadsides, mocking ballads, and occasional brawls.

 

The relics of Notre Dame

As you will have heard, the fire at Notre Dame cathedral did not destroy two of its most famous relics: a, I mean the, Crown of Thorns sported by JC at his last public appearance, and the tunic of St Louis, supposedly worn by the king turned saint when he brought the crown back to France. It was given as a bribe to Louis IX in exchange for his support of king Baldwin, who had pawned the crown as security against a loan for 13,000 gold pieces from the Venetians.

The crown itself has no thorns, as these were distributed to other sites as important relics. But happily by the power of sympathetic magic, I mean Divine Grace, many more thorns were transformed into  relics (third class) by being touched to thcrown.

It’s kind of cool that human chains of the faithful rescued and other valuables from the fire this week. But technically they needn’t have bothered: any medieval theologian could have told them that real relics can’t be burned. But if you read Burgs & Bailiffs Trinity  you knew that.

Happy feast day, Saint Nicholas, wherever you are (or, This is clearly not a repost to remind people buy The Poor Pilgrim’s Almanack, but now that you mention it, it makes a great gift!)

Readers of my book will know that St. Nicholas has a grave in Myrna, Turkey, a tomb in Kilkenny, Ireland, and shrines in Bari and Venice, Italy — each of the Italian shrines containing fully one half of his skeleton. He also has a sacred cave near Bethlehem and an island named after him which is known for its ever-sharp tools. I assume there are suitable festivities going on in all those places right now, December 6th, his feast day. Among his miracles are saving ships from storms and raising three boys who had been mummified* from the dead.

*or pickled, in some versions of the story.

#shamelesscommerce

 

Big time!

I am a real author now. I can tell because my book has been pirated on a notorious scamming site called “Geeker.” (Sorry, no link!) I gather they just get people to “register” to download books and other media, and ask for a credit card which they will drain of funds. Nice.

Rather unamusingly, their contact form for requesting take downs has a phony CAPTCHA so you can’t actually ask them to take it down.

Wherein I blog about a play I haven’t seen

So my kid is in the drama program at her school and an assignment this week is to see a play or musical this weekend and write a report on it. It would have been awesome if the teacher had suggested some age appropriate plays that are running in the area. Doing our own research, I was a little shocked at how many local theaters are hosting graduation ceremonies rather than having shows, and wondered a little about the teacher’s thought processes, but in the end I found a couple of prospects meeting my requirements that they:

• not be experimental theater with a lot of adult content
• not be adaptations of Disney musicals
• not be during other holiday events we were already committed to
• be less than $25 a ticket

One is “Incorruptible“, a play about the hijinks at a medieval shrine where the monks make a killing selling fake relics, but run into some difficulty when they need to show a visiting bishop the supposedly incorrupt body of a long-dead saint. That’s kind of up my alley and down my street as it were, since I spent a lot of time researching relics and shrines and miracles for my book Burgs & Bailiffs Trinity. The problem is, “Incorruptible” is playing pretty far away, and maybe I’m pushing that because I would be interested in it moreso than my kid would be.  So we’ll be seeing a more local and slightly more expensive production of “Baskerville,” a comic adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story. But maybe I’ll find a way to make “Incorruptible” next week. If so, I’ll post a review.

GaryCon

I won’t be at Gary Con, which is starting tomorrow. But I understand that my book Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity will be there. If you’re there, you’re probably not reading blog posts, but if you are, stop by Black Blade Publishing‘s table where I’m told it will be available in print. And say hi for me.

The Poor Pilgrim’s Almanack now on Drivethru RPG!

I don’t mind admitting I’m kind of psyched that my book is now available on DriveThru RPG. The Lost Pages store is the place to get the hard copy, shipped from Scotland (I also hear some copies may be showing up at the better conventions too). But obviously Drive Thru RPG is an important distributor, and I’m glad people might be able to stumble upon my book even if they’ve never heard of it.

What is the Poor Pilgrim’s Almanack? (And here I begin just quoting the blurb:)

An historical supplement on pilgrimages, relics and religion in the European Middle Ages.

The Poor Pilgrim’s Almanack is filled with painstakingly researched essays on religious life (and death) in the middle ages. It lets you use relics and pilgrimage as the basis of an alternative conception of clerical magic. Also included are details on travel, burial customs, catacombs, and the business of relic theft. A travelogue of shrines and other pilgrimage sites, detailed rules for relics and reliquaries, and a listing of historical miracles (corresponding to familiar clerical spells) make this 128 page sourcebook a treasure trove of inspiration. Dozens of adventure seeds and tables for generating encounters on the road, graves and grave goods, and randomized catacomb generation and stocking round out the contents. A new class, the Palmer, provides a novel take on religious adventurers. 

But wait! Don’t take my word for it. Here’s something someone said:

An excellent and necessary supplement if you’re wanting your campaign’s religious culture to feel more European Medieval and less the polytheistic/pantheon style used in mainstream D&D

– James Raggi, Lamentations of the Flame Princess

Research mathoms I

Burgs & Bailiffs Trinity comes in at 128 pages. I wrote a fair amount more that did not make it in to the final version, because of space limitations (essays too long to be sidebars or boxed text and too short to be appendices), because they didn’t quite fit in the flow of the work or ramble a bit off topic, and in one case because a table was far too complex to fix in the page layout. Maybe some day an expanded edition will be possible (and I’d probably add some revised bits from Burgs & Bailiffs 1 and 2). But in the meantime I’ll post some research mathoms here on the blog: tidbits too good to leave on the cutting room floor. (The last one I thought made it in, so my apologies if anyone was thrown by the December 6 post. Having looked at the final draft I can confirm that it DOES detail fun stuff like the saint whose miracles include striking down his own family and making a pope crap out his intestines, the “code” used by funeral bells, and more. But here are some mathoms:

Jinn shrines

There are a number of sites in the Moslem world where the jinn are appealed to for intercessions. Illnesses, especially mental illnesses, are often attributed to evil jinn, and supplicants visit sacred places where the jinn congregate. In Baduan, India, for example, the shrines of several sufi mystics are visited for this purpose because the king of the jinn is said to hold court in a nearby banyan tree. Those suffering from mental illness are brought by their relatives, who make offerings to the jinn and hope to elicit their mercy. As unorthodox as this sounds, the jinn are thought to have mostly converted to Islam in Muhammad’s time, so there is nothing heretical about appeal to them.

(See Sadakat Kadri’s Heaven On Earth: A Journey Through Shari’a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia to the Streets of the Modern Muslim World. Farrar, Strauss, & Giraux, 2013. The introduction describes the author’s visit to such a shrine in Baduan and the place of jinn in shari’a law. Mostly excerpted here)

Animal catacombs

The Egyptians rather famously mummified various animals and placed them in human tombs. However perhaps less well-known are the animal catacombs under certain temples. One temple at Saqqara has a so-called “Sacred Animal Necropolis” with separate catacombs for falcons, cows, ibis, dogs, and baboons. The baboon catacomb has three levels with hundreds of mummies of olive baboons and Barbary macaques. These primates were raised at, and kept in, the temple for their entire lives. Similarly the falcons and cows were kept at cult sites for ritual purposes. The cults eventually abandoned the site some time under Roman occupation. The “Dog catacombs” — sacred to Anubis — include burials of foxes, jackals, cats, and mongooses.

Canine catacombs at Saqqara (from http://www.livescience.com/51228-photos-egyptian-dog-catacombs.html)

Who stole Santa Claus? 

In the Middle Ages, Saint Nicholas of Bari (now known more popularly in the English-speaking world as Santa Claus or Father Christmas) was revered by sailors in particular because he once calmed a storm at sea while on a voyage to the Holy Land. The 4th century holy man and bishop lived and was buried in Myra, Lycia (which later would become part of Turkey). His tomb became a popular pilgrimage site. In 1087, after the Turkish conquest of Anatolia, Italian sailors and merchants from Bari rescued one half of his skeleton (despite the resistance of Orthodox monks at his shrine), ostensibly because of fears that the Turks would interfere with pilgrims or desecrate the shrine. During the first crusade, a party of Venetians rescued the other half of his skeleton and set up another, competing shrine in Venice. But the relics at Bari continue to excrete myron as they did at Myra, while those in Venice do not. The faithful would attribute this to St. Nicholas’ desire to be in Bari, while skeptics and Venetians might point out that the myron is actually water, exuding from the marble of the tomb which is, in all fairness, below sea level.

Some of St. Nicholas’ bones in Antayla, Turkey (from Wikimedia Commons)

Happy feast day, Saint Nicholas, wherever you are

Readers of my book will know that St. Nicholas has a grave in Myrna, Turkey, a tomb in Kilkenny, Ireland, and shrines in Bari and Venice, Italy — each of the Italian shrines containing half of his skeleton. He also has a sacred cave near Bethlehem and an island named after him with ever-sharp tools. I assume there are suitable festivities going on in all those places right now, December 6th, his feast day. Among his miracles are saving ships from sotrms nad raising three boys who had been mummified or pickled (depending on the story) from the dead.

 

 

#shamelesscommerce

The poor pilgrim’s almanack

To no fanfare, my first game book — Burgs & Bailiffs Trinity : The poor pilgrim’s almanack, or The handbook of pilgrimage and relic theft —  has become available via The Lost Pages! So you can get it now in print+PDF or PDF only for you skinflints.

Paolo Greco, proprietor of the Lost Pages, did a bang-up job laying out the text, which was sort of complicated because the original manuscript had dozens of footnotes and sidebars, as well as some really big tables. Not everything could make it into the final product, so once I see the final product myself I’ll post some of that material here. I’m thinking of some of it as “research mathoms” — stuff I found or created that’s too good to throw away entirely but which didn’t fit in well enough to keep, either in terms of flow or formatting, like the giant table of carrying and pulling capacities for animals ranging from rats to elephants (if you need to know how much a goat can carry, how heavy different types of camels are, or how much traction a moose can pull with, it was in there!). So watch this space for research mathoms…

I eventually envisioned this as a sort of source book like the ones Steve Jackson has been producing for GURPS — chapters of informative text that is as well-researched as I could manage with gameable material (rules). I tried to keep it as system-neutral as possible, but really it’s meant for the, ahem, World’s Most Popular Fantasy Roleplaying Game, in the B/X or first Advanced edition. Thus the sidebars, dozens of brief “adventure seeds” like the GURPS sourcebooks, and so on. I’m not an historian by training but I do read a lot, and did my research at one of the largest public research libraries in the US, where I was also working.

I’m not sure what else to say about this, and as I’m on my lunch break now I don’t have time to get long-winded anyway, but for what it’s worth here’s an excerpt from my foreword, which really explains the project:

Although I’ve always been a big fan of Dungeons & Dragons, another game has long haunted me: Fantasy Wargaming, by Bruce Galloway (and others). That infamous rule book has haunted me because of its unfulfilled promise — the idea of an historical, logical setting for adventures like those in D&D. In part FW failed to fulfill its promise because it was a haphazardly presented system of rules, and frankly the rules seemed unnecessarily complicated. But the real failure was that the game focused strictly on recreating medieval legends and sagas, which while interesting, were too esoteric for someone used to simple generic fantasy to get a handle on. My forays into running FW were pretty disastrous — I subjected my players to retreads of Viking sagas and Beowulf, which were OK for what they were but did not deliver the exploration and adventure we expected from a fantasy game. What I didn’t know then was that all the elements of dungeoneering could be realized in an historical setting. There really were adventurers who entered subterranean mazes, seeking treasure and braving dangers (real and imagined). They could be rogues, warriors, holy men, or magicians, just like in D&D. They might be seeking gold and gems, but they might just as well be seeking items with supernatural powers: the relics of saints. To find these underground complexes — catacombs — the adventurers would undertake long, perilous journeys: pilgrimages.

While this supplement could be used simply to rationalize dungeoneering in historical or pseudo-historical campaigns, the medieval superstitions and practices detailed here should also inspire new and interesting adventures, over land, at sea, and in town and city. Pilgrimages to shrines and other holy sites, whether for secular or sacred purposes, invite all manner of encounters and obstacles that will create exciting adventures. Lastly, the veneration of shrines and relics suggests a new conception of divine magic and clerics: the pilgrim miracle-worker. Paolo and I are excited by the idea of clerical magic which is grounded in historical beliefs, completely different from the usual wizardry and spell-casting that games use for secular magic-users, and which provides a justification for adventuring holy men and women. We hope that you will find ideas you can adopt in your own games, whether you follow the historical precedents herein or reskin them for your fantasy world.