Gold Pieces Are Now Falling From Heaven

The Introit of the Tridentine Mass for the Fourth Sunday of Advent begins with this extraordinary verse from Isaiah 45, 8:

Rorate caeli, sesuper, et nubes pluant justum: aperiatur terra, et germinet Salvatorem.

Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the earth be opened and bud forth a Saviour.

Dom Dominic Johner in his Chants of the Vatican Gradual provides this commentary, including the curious and evocative description of the post title:

What would this earth be without the Messias? A desert, an uncharted and arid waste scorched by the sun, having not one little flower or blade of grass. If new life is to spring forth, the ground must be cultivated, the clouds must send down their rain, the fructifying rain which is so valuable that the Portuguese say of the summer showers: "Gold pieces are now falling from heaven." Oh, that it might come, this rain, to penetrate into the hearts of men and awaken new life! Would that the clouds might have mercy! For the Israelites the concept of cloud was full of deep meaning: in the column of cloud God led His people through the desert; veiled by clouds He manifested Himself on Sinai; in a cloud the glory of the Most High descended upon the Temple which Solomon had built. Clouds are the symbol and the containers of life-giving rain, as well as of the grace of redemption which comes down to us from the heights of heaven, and of all the benefits and glories of the new kingdom of the Messias. When these clouds open, new life will bud forth (germinet) about Nazareth, a life of unusual beauty, rich in blossoms and fruits. We implore the descent of the Just One from heaven. But His justice will not make His countenance the less benevolent, nor His eyes the less loving. He comes not to reproach, not to drive sin-laden man away in confusion; He comes as the Saviour, calling to Himself all who are weary or burdened.

(Referenced by the Traditionalist Catholic Blog Rorate Caeli on the occasion of its ninth anniversary.)

OSR Art Friday: The Lace & Steel Illustrations of Donna Barr

From the original box cover

I bought the first edition of Lace & Steel--the game of faux-17th century swashbuckling and fancy court balls--in 1989, after seeing it on the shelf and flipping though it for thirty seconds. I never played it, but it has always enchanted me. Recently I realized that one of the reasons for that was its art. Unusual for its type, all of the illustrations are by one artist, Donna Barr. In addition, and also, somewhat unusually for the category, the pages are drenched in illustrations of all kinds. There are approximately 200 pages, distributed over four booklets. There are many full-page and even two-page drawings but also a huge number of smaller ones averaging out to at least three a page. Large-scale battles, duels, ladies and gentlemen at leisure or at fancy balls, monsters--warnets (intelligent giant hornets), pixies, harpies and "half-horses" (centaurs), to name a few--landscapes and maps, individual weapons, armor pieces or clothing, as well as musketeers with hangovers making faces into mirrors in the morning, are all covered.

In a roundabout way, Lace & Steel was one of the inspirations for Seven Voyages of Zylarthen. I wanted to make a 17th century "Lace & Steel" version of OD&D. That became a 16th century pseudo-Catholic version, which finally became a more conventional swords & sorcery-fairy tale version. But a few things from Lace & Steel survived almost intact--for example, the idea of using physical tokens to represent money in the game:

The author has found that a new dimension is added to game play when a player character’s funds are simulated by solid objects. One or two cent pieces can simulate copper groats, and heavy washers make good silver and gold pieces. Washers or disks can be had from any hardware store. Go for big washers (20 to 25mm is good) with small central holes, such as muffler washers. Brass washers are used for gold marks, and steel washers for silver schillings. 

“Real” money is excellent fun to use, and players soon develop odd habits such as fondling their money or stacking it into neat little piles. Parting with money can be a traumatic experience for miserly players, since they are handing over a physical object rather than just crossing a number off a piece of paper. Players will also tend to keep a less ready tag on their wealth, which adds a bit of spice to play.

A man bathing in coins

But to get back to the art. Is it OSR? Well, the game itself--authored by the still active Paul Kidd--certainly features some supposed new school elements, such as skills. But it is twenty-five years old, released at a time when 1e AD&D was still (barely) the standard. And to me, the evocative line-drawings of Donna Barr are the polar-opposites of the video-gamish color splatterings of most contemporary RPG art. But in any case, OSR Art Friday was never intended to be ideologically rigid (whatever that might mean in this context). And part of the fun is to choose a diverse variety of examples. Donna Barr's drawings are cool. They work. In the end, that's what matters.

Who is Donna Barr? One way to get to know her is to read her long-running and frequently updated blog. As many of you know, she's an incredibly prolific and still very active writer and illustrator, known primarily for comic books or "graphic novels" (though, she prefers the label "drawn-fiction"). Her output is distinctive. Her major works or series are The Desert Peach--about Erwin Rommel's fictional brother Pfirsich, an exuberantly homosexual Nazi general who leads a North African unit of homosexuals and assorted misfits--Stinz--about centaurs or "half-horses" interacting with normal men in a stylized German valley setting--and Bosom Enemies about two normal men who find themselves enslaved and transformed into half-horses. Obviously there's a sexual subtext to much of her material (also involving animals or, rather people that are half-animals), but without (on the main) being graphic or pornographic. Let us say, she at least occupies a niche. (Occupies? Scratch that. She dominates it and then uses it as a bridgehead.)

Musketeer with hangover making faces into his mirror in the morning

Wait, Nazis? Flamboyant, leather-clad, homosexual Nazis (that are to some extent made fun of, albeit affectionately), sexual themes involving animals or people half-way transformed into animals and then quasi-sexually dominated by other people?

BAN IT! BAN IT! BAN IT! BAN IT!

(Oh, sorry. I was temporarily seized by the spirit of the age.)

Emphasizing the sexual part doesn't do the whole justice. Her series are witty and funny and at times moving and, yes, profound. See for yourself if you can.

In the late 1980's she also did some drawings for Traveller and GURPS. But her work for Lace & Steel was her most thorough RPG effort. That the game is now long out of print does not diminish its value or influence. For example, I would be surprised if James Raggi did not riff off of it for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Used copies of the first edition are now hard to find and expensive. A second edition came out in 1998 but featured an inferior cover and a somewhat different one-volume layout. Inexplicably it discarded many of the best and largest drawings.

Donna Barr is a great asset to the wider hobby. OSR Art Friday is proud to feature her.

Review: Gamergate the Card Game

In the interests of unbiased blogger journalism, I thought I would do a review of this game, authored by the prolific James Desborough of Postmortem Studios. As many of you know, it was the only game ever banned by OneBookShelf (RPGNow and DriveThroughRPG) and perhaps the only game (according to them) that perhaps ever would or will be banned by that same print-on-demand publisher ("banned", by the way, is their term). I wanted to see what the fuss was all about.

Full disclosure points:

1. I'm against winning political arguments by bullying people, lying about people and smearing people (ooh, strong and controversial stand there, Spalding). I'm also against the politicization of gaming--even if it's a form of gaming I don't like and don't engage in. This inclines me to be pro-Gamergate.
2. I don't like video games and think they're pernicious. I haven't played one seriously in fifteen years. I don't want my kids to play them, etc. Since Gamergate seems to be about the proper direction of video games, I'm not sure what side this puts me on.
3. Partly for the above reason, I feel that I don't really know that much about the actual Gamergate controversy. Feel free to use that against me. What I do know seems to indicate that the facts are somewhat Byzantine. Then again, I'm inclined, due to the first point, to favor one side.

Okay, so on to the game. In PDF it comes to 17 pages. Most of these are images of cards you're supposed to assemble. Less than a page is rules. I skipped the rules, figuring they weren't that important. Plus, it's 11:40, my kids are still running around and I'm tired.

There are two sets of cards--one set for the "Gamergate" player and one set for the "Social Justice Warrior" player. Each card has a Title, an Actions row featuring one to four actions, three potential Ethics Breaches--Corruption, Outrage and Bulls__t, and some flavor text. For example, here is a sample Gamergate card:

1. Title: #NotYourShield
2. Actions: Modifier: Group, LOL, Pwned.
3. Potential Ethics Breaches: Corruption: 1, Boosts all your Outrage and Bulls__t Attacker scores on this Ethics Breach by +1, Outrage:1, Bulls__t: 1.
4. Flavor text: We're all fakes and sockpuppets.

I have no idea what any of this means.

So, here's a roundup of a random sample of cards, featuring the title and the flavor text only, with commentary by yours truly. Again, since I didn't read the rules, I don't understand them, and thus will not include Actions or Potential Ethics Breaches.

First, the Gamergate cards:

1. Send E-mails!: Praise the Lord and pass the keyboard. Who is sending the emails? Who are they going to? Is it a good thing? Is the author being slightly self-deprecating about his own side?
2. Send E-mails!: Still not censorship. Okay, I'm glad.
3. The Internet is for Porn: Fap, fap, fap, fap. What does "fap" mean?
4. Atheist Allies: Two words to strike horror into every heart. Atheism Plus. So, I guess there's a subset of Gamergate people who are atheists?
5. GrimmyPoohs: Narcissistic enough to go in his own game. I think this is a self-deprecating reference by the author about himself. How hateful and misogynistic of him. That's so offensive.
6. Inconvenient Facts: But, but, butt! "Butt"? Is that a sophomoric joke? I'll laugh in the car.
7. Based Mum: A feminist if you're not. Not a feminist if you are. I think this is a reference to semi-pro-Gamergate journalist Christina Hoff Sommers. I remember her from when I used to subscribe to Reason. I like her.
8. Intranet Republican: Wields the magical wig of snarkiness. Is this pro-Republican or not? I have no idea.
9. Emperor of Politics: Total Shill. I think this is a reference to a pro-Gamergate guy who also seems to be anti-Israel. Subtract one from my bias towards Gamergate. Is "Total Shill" what his opponents call him or what the author thinks of him? No idea.

And so on.

And now the Social Justice Cards:

1. Right Wing: Because your stance on abortion is totes relevant to vidya. Absolutely no idea what this means.
2. Anime Avatar: Nobody can take you seriously with an anime avatar. I guess so. (That's SO offensive!)
3. Dox: It's OK when we do it. I think I understand the point here, and I agree with it.
4. Mass Censorship: You shut up, and you shut up, and you shut up, and you and you and you! Again, I think I understand the point. I'm against it.
5. Bumbirinas: Transexual otter kin with Bod head mates will not put up with this! Again, no idea, but it sounds like it's an insult directed against a subset of transsexuals on the anti-Gamergate side.  The author obviously should be drawn and quartered for this. Slowly. How dare he?
6. P__sbaby: I prefer 'Urinary Infant'. That's disgusting.
7. S__tlord: I prefer 'Turd Emperor'. Even more disgusting. I have no idea what it means.
8. Ethical Policy: Not an option Apparently. Okay, I get it. Desborough believes that anti-Gamergate people have no Ethical Policies. (Did I get that right?) That's SO offensive. Pardon me if I boycott anyone that doesn't instantly agree.
9. But we won an Award! OK, so we fixed the result, but...shiny! Hey, I like Firefly too. I'm hip.

And so on.

To summarize: Gamergate the card game appears to be a super-inside joke that satirizes both sides, though with an obvious bias towards one.

According to Steve Wieck at OneBookShelf, it's the most awful, horrific and offensive thing they have ever hosted (worse than a game about torturing people to death, among other things). They banned it only after huddling together for a few days and thinking deep thoughts about social responsibility balanced against freedom of speech, etc., etc., etc. For Wieck, the game is equivalent to laughing about (according to his terms) racist police shooting down innocent African American teenagers.

That's:

1. Disgusting
2. Dishonest
3. Ridiculous
4. Unreasonable
5. Insane
6. Cowardly
7. A threat to freedom of speech, freedom of thought and pretty much anything else you can put after "freedom of".
8. Evil

I spent $3.50 on the game through this site. Anyone who is against bullying and lies should consider doing the same. Obviously I will never "play" the game. That's not the point.

This is the place where I might write "Fight On!". But I'm too depressed. They want to bring their smutty, dirty politics and Brown Shirt bullying tactics into tabletop gaming. You and I don't want that. But what do we do? If we don't resist, they win. If we do resist, we dirty ourselves by getting "political", just like them. Or so it seems.

I don't know the answer. 

The Pros and Cons of Lulu

The original Lulu in To Sir, With Love (great movie, by the way)

Actually, the real original Lulu for me was my grandmother on my mother's side, Lucienne Foubert Chamberlin. Born in France in 1897, we called her "Lulu". Not sure if she was named that as a younger woman or whether that was her "grandmother" name. But she was French and slightly crazy. I think my grandfather, an all-American Iowa-born guy was enchanted by her. I wish I had known them together.

But of course I'm referring to Lulu, the print-on-demand publishing house.

For reasons I don't completely remember I first decided to put my new game, Seven Voyages of Zylarthen on Lulu as opposed to RPGNow. It was on Christmas day 2013. It's still there. The first mock-up I got looked amazing. Truth be told, I ordered ten sets to give to friends for the holiday. This was the "private" Zylarthen with many copyright violations. Actually, it was called "Seven Voyages of Xylarthen" (Gygax's original example character) and contained Balrogs, Beholders and all the rest. Actually, the "revised" public version that I released a few days later was, I think, superior. I like the "Z" better than the "X", and my "science-fiction" versions of the non-SRD monsters I think are actually superior (in a certain sense) to the originals. (Okay, that was a moment of serious non-humility.)

But, whether with an "X" or a "Z" the copies looked amazing. The creamy covers were exactly the shade I wanted. The saddle-stitched bindings were precisely right in terms of how they lay flat and were easily flipped through. Though the initial cost was high--$8.50 per volume (with only an average of $1.50 profit for me)--they were, in my view, perfect. I couldn't have imagined how any publisher or printing house (print-on-demand or otherwise) could have done a better job.

However, a few months later I ordered another mock-up set. It looked awful. In the interim, Lulu had changed printing factories and the saddle-stitch looked amateurish and ugly. In hindsight, this was fortuitous for me, as it prompted a switch to perfect binding, which, not only looked pretty good, but allowed me to offer it at a substantially lower price and make more profit per unit. But it taught me a useful lesson about Lulu: you never knew when they would make some change such that the physical product would come out differently. Thus mock-up or sample versions were of limited utility.

With that introduction, here are the pros and cons as I see them. Comments from other Lulu authors or customers would be welcome.

The Pros:

1. Lulu is easy. They don't vet anything. All they need is a PDF (or two, counting the cover). If you're just a teeny-bit proficient at computers and uploading stuff, etc., you're set. Also, they're pretty expansive about formats and the minimum and maximum number of pages, and so on. If you want to, say, correct a typo or make a minor (or even a major) change in text, you simply delete the current PDF and upload the new one. This takes five or ten minutes. By contrast, I found RPGNow to be much more difficult to deal with on the front end. My initial attempt to upload stuff hung up for some reason, and I couldn't understand why. Also, they wouldn't allow me to do saddle-stitch with the size and page numbers that I desired. An RPGNow staff member contacted me to try to help me (though she made it clear that my requirements wouldn't fit in to their possible templates). She was perfectly helpful and polite. But the point is that on Lulu you didn't have to deal with anyone. You can just do it.
2. At it's best, Lulu's physical product is great.
3. Lulu doesn't seem to take too big a cut. I make a fair amount on my $5.95 booklets, for example (no, I won't tell you exactly how much).
4. Lulu has periodic sales that make things much more attractive to your customers while not lowering your profits by 1 penny. This is a win-win situation for author and customer. I'm not sure what Lulu makes on these offers, but it's their call.
5. Lulu doesn't censor their stuff and then lie about it, unlike RPGNow. (Oh, sorry. That was a political statement. Ignore if that annoys.)

The Cons:

1. As implied above, you never know what the physical product is going to look like for your customers. It seems like Lulu is always changing printing factories, etc., or the printing operations are mercurial. The first perfect-bound booklets I ordered were biased towards the top. I considered compensating with the margins on my PDF but then figured that that might skew things in the opposite direction the next time. Sure enough, none of my customers complained about that. I ordered some additional copies for myself during the recent 35% sale. The margin bias was corrected, and the covers had more color. However the interior text looked more faint--almost as if they were trying to save ink. It was good enough, and I think worth the $5.95 price, but not ideal.
2. Lulu doesn't allow you to bundle. Within a few weeks I will have a combined four-volume PDF of Seven Voyages of Zylarthen available, which I will sell for a price. But Lulu won't allow me to offer that along with, say, the physical booklets.
3. The "preview" function makes your cover and pages look blurry and amateurish. Or maybe it has something to do with the format that I took advantage of. But still.
4. RPGNow has a much larger audience, at least for game products. That may not be Lulu's fault, per se, but it still is a factor.
5. The shipping costs seem too expensive (to me). Lulu seems to make some extra money there. And it varies. I swear that during the 35% off sale, the shipping costs seemed higher.

Look, overall, print-on-demand is positively utopian. I think Lulu is wonderful. I'm just trying to be accurate here.

Again, I'd love to hear any similar/opposed opinions.

Save Versus All Wands Makes the Top Ten!

Save Versus All Wands is honored to have been chosen as one of the Top Ten Gaming Blogs of 2014 by Jeffro Johnson of Jeffro's Space Gaming Blog and Castalia House. Jeffro revealed his choices on Friday (one by one and with much drum rolling and fanfare) on Google+ (later reposted on his blog). He also posted it on the new Recommend, where he is now an Expert reviewer.

Here is the list:

1. Gaming Ballistic by Douglas Cole
2. Dungeon Fantastic by Peter V. Dell’Orto
3. Save Versus All Wands
4. Delta’s D&D Hotspot by Delta 
5. The Tao of D&D by Alexis Smolensk
6. Semper Initiativus Unum by Wayne Rossi
7. Hack & Slash by Courtney Campbell
8. Don't Split the Party by Rick Stump
9. RPG Snob by Jason Packer
10. Pulsipher Game Design by Lewis Pulsipher

Jeffro commented on the methodology behind the rankings:

The shortlist came from whoever was writing stuff that I would link to on my blog. Every link was essentially a vote by me for who I enjoyed reading. However... the actual rankings came from what my own readers were clicking on. While some might quibble over the exact order, I think that these really are all together the best gaming blogs around. I certainly have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of them.

This is a super group of blogs and bloggers, and without false humility I feel a bit unworthy to be included on it. But I will proudly take credit for at least having the good taste to already be an enthusiastic reader of most of them. Being made aware of the others was a treat.

Jeffro's Space Gaming Blog: Microgames, Monster Games, and Role Playing Games contains a gold mine of material, stretching back an amazing ten years. There are hundreds of posts on Car Wars (the original focus of the blog), Traveller, other science fiction games such as Ogre and Star Fleet Battles, military wargames (a large and diverse assortment) as well as, of course, old school D&D. Jeffro sometimes posts material inspired by or about gaming with his children. These are quite funny but also wise, as well as being an inspiration for this relatively new father.

In addition, Jeffro is one of the in-house reviewers for the fantasy publisher Castalia House, where he is in the midst of a series of lengthy and detailed reviews of works by the "Appendix N" authors.

I should note that it was Jeffro who first brought up the Femen angle, quipping that mentioning Save Versus All Wands might spark a Femen protest. In return, I thought it might be fun to take advantage of my links in the radical feminist and performance artist communities and "create" one for him.

If he wants to do an interview with Pussy Riot, I might be able to set that up...

But being included on his list made my month.  

Cheers again and here's to another ten years, my friend.

Femen Demonstration

Six members of the activist group Femen pose in front of WOTC
headquarters before rolling up characters and buying equipment.

There was no OSR Art Friday post yesterday, due to this author's desire to express a day of blog silence in solidarity with three Femen members still detained by Washington authorities.

RENTON, WA, December 5 (AP) – Members of the topless feminist group Femen staged a demonstration today against the “anti-sexual prudery” of the new 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons and against “New School” gaming mechanics in general, stripping down to what one activist called “our sacred chainmail bikinis” in front of the gates of Wizards of the Coast headquarters in suburban Seattle. Three members were arrested.

More than twenty demonstrators stood silently for ten minutes with slogans etched in black marker across their chests, such as “Take your Clothes Off My Body!” "Imagine the Hell Out of It!" and “Fight On!” They then unfolded a card table and proceeded to “role play” a game of what one demonstrator called “Holmes Basic”, led by an activist wearing nothing above her waist except a three-paneled cardboard screen emblazoned with the words “Dungeon Mistress”.

A spokesperson for Wizards of the Coast commented, “I have no idea why they are mad at us. For the text of 5e we consulted all the experts on game design and gender equality. We believe our product reflects the latest consensus of people whose opinion we care about. Where did we go wrong?” When informed of this statement, one of the demonstrators held up what she called a “twenty sider” and shouted, “Save or die, Fascist!”

“What’s all the fuss about,” said Sally Layton, a software engineer from Microsoft, who happened to be on her way to work. “5e is the new thing by the dominant company in the industry. That means it must be good. So, why are these women, like, getting naked or whatever?”

“I find it appalling and highly offensive,” said Matt Vickers, another software designer, who was recording the event with a high-resolution video camera.

Irina Gygaxocova, a representative of Femen from the Ukraine, said the demonstration was intended to highlight how the corporate patriarchy intended to keep women out of tabletop gaming by making the new editions as stupid and boring as possible. “1974 was a liberation for us. Soon there was so much to choose, including Warriors of Mars, original Boot Hill and Gamma World. It was a love orgy of freedom that lasted for more than a decade. But beginning with 3e, and even more with 4e and now 5e, they tried to re-enslave us with their rules for everything, $50 core books and sexually repressive art. (Bleep) them! We can now get whatever OSR games and modules we want from Lulu and RPGNow for less than 1% of the cost of a leather skirt.”

Femen calls its form of protest “Hextremism”.

Natalia Arnesoneskva, a Femen member currently serving five years of hard labor in Moldova for possession of a paperbound copy of Labyrinth Lord was more circumspect. Reached for a comment during her weekly five-minutes exercise period, she said, “I support my sisters, but I now feel that edition wars are counter-productive. As long as the game group is having fun, that’s all that matters. I intend to make that point during my next parole hearing.”

Police detained three demonstrators after they refused to remove a banner they had pinned to the company gates. The banner contained the letters “OSR”--thought to be the abbreviation of a political slogan used by Danish feminists. In a press release on their website, Femen stated that lawyers were working to get the three released as soon as possible. “No laws were broken. They’ll be out quicker than the time it takes to fight a melee engagement in 4e.”

Uncharacteristically, the RPG Pundit had no comment.

0 Level Characters in Zylarthen

There aren't any.

That is, Zylarthen avoids distinguishing, say, 1st level player character Fighting-Men from any other able-bodied fighting types such as non-player character soldiers, mercenaries, etc., at least in any general sense. Among other things, all use the same attack and saving throw tables, though for simplicity, soldiers and mercenaries might sometimes use the "Up to 1" hit dice row of the Monsters Attacking table if keeping track of their weapons becomes more trouble than it's worth.

Now, note that I use the phrase in any general sense. There are a few specific ways in practice that player-characters will differ from other types.

1. Members of the Fighting-Men class (whether player characters or non-player characters) get 1+1 die of hit points as opposed to simply 1 die of hit points for all other able-bodied types.
2. All starting player characters get as many hit point roll mulligans as they need so as to guarantee their hit point roll will be at least 4.
3. All player-character or non-player character members of a class have the chance to gain levels by accumulating experience points.
4. Only player characters or important non-player characters ("important" probably ruling out mercenaries etc.) get to roll on the Zero Hit Point table, thus having a chance to cheat death, if only temporarily. 

That said, it is implicit in Zylarthen that the difference between, say, a classed Fighting-Man and a soldier is merely one of, so to speak, initiative or chosen circumstance. It's certainly not genetic or metaphysical or anything like that. So, for example, when player characters have mercenaries arrive in response to their advertisements--anything from Barbarians (1 silver a day) to Cataphracts (20 silvers a day)--the rules make it clear that they could either be hired in their "ordinary" role, or if the player characters desire, any of them could be invited to be "close associates"--Fighting-Men with the potential to gain levels--as long as they are promised at least half-shares in any treasure.

So, in essence, the only thing that separates you (as a starting character) from that "typical" or "average" guy with a sword over there is that you're brave enough (or stupid enough) to tramp into that dungeon a day's ride away. Or rather, you are that soldier, but you have a desire to make something of yourself by tramping into that dungeon. This may or may not be a good thing.

One might say that Zylarthen shares with Dungeon Crawl Classics the idea of the funnel. Except that in Zylarthen, the funnel isn't something that happens before first level; it is first level. That's a bit of an exaggeration but still...

Why did I design the game this way?

Well, first, since Zylarthen was intended  to follow OD&D in spirit, I wanted to eliminate as many AD&D accretions as possible. And AD&D made much of the distinction between 0 level and leveled types, among other things introducing the term henchmen for non-player characters you could hire--who had a character class and the potential to gain experience and thus level up--as contrasted with hirelings--who were just "normal" mercenaries. In truth, the idea of a Normal Man with attack numbers inferior to starting player characters was first introduced by Holmes, but I'm not sure whether the idea originated with Holmes or whether he wasn't just giving an early launch to an idea that was being tossed around by the AD&D planners. It's also possible, I suppose, that Gygax or Arneson had intended the 0 level distinction for OD&D but hadn't stated it explicitly, or that it was present in some form in Chainmail. Nevertheless it's not in the OD&D text itself.

Second, adding another row or column (for 0 level types or normal men or whatever) to the attack tables just seems fussy. What's the purpose of it exactly? Why are, say Bandits any better at fighting than the average mercenary you might hire? Or, to put it a different way, why go to the trouble of adding an entirely new class or category of people, just to make it clear that bandits (or player characters) are 5% better? Again, what goal does that serve in game terms?

But finally and most importantly, introducing the concept of 0 level characters was in my view one of the first steps into inducing the players to think of their characters as pumped up superheroes--complete with elaborate back stories and titles, etc.--before they had even raised a sword against a Kobold. The Gygaxian conception outlined in The Dungeon Master's Guide (1979) was almost Nietzschean. Only 1 in 100 humans in the average village, town or city were leveled or even had the potential to level. Needless to say, I find the whole trend to be annoying for about five different reasons.

Here's one of them: I wanted Zylarthen to be in part a game about heroism. And yes, I even felt that it had the potential to teach children about this virtue, at least in some small and non-obnoxious manner, without of course getting in the way of the game's primary purpose--using one's imagination to have fun. Not to sound too curmudgeonly, but the point about heroes and heroines is that they need to earn the title. They're not born but made. Or rather, they make themselves through their own actions. Though, having teachers or role-models can obviously help. The anti-0 level thing is only a small part of promoting this idea, I know, but it is a part.

Those who choose to act as heroes or heroines may succeed completely--killing the monster or saving the land or the prince or whatever, perhaps even getting rich as a reward for their efforts. Or they may succeed only partly. Or they may die in the process.

But it is the act that confers the title.