Commentary On Gods, Patrons, And Ass@#^es In The Gong Farmers Almanac For Your DCC & Old School Campaigns Part II

Annie: The first passage will allow the demon to manifest itself in the flesh.
Ash: Why the hell would we want to do that?
Evil Dead II

The Free LoFP Referee's Guide

Taking a walk around the dicey subject of  gods, demons, devils, and patrons in DCC, and after last night's game something occurs to me. Demons are complete jerks and are the scumbags of the lowest dimensions;here's the problem with gods and demons. Each and everyone of em is unique. Devils really brought part of the problem to the surface when it came the beings of the afterlife. Devils,demons, gods, and patrons should be unique. And doubly so in OD&D and AD&D before things got so damn quantified with those damned  Dragon  magazine articles in issue seventy five and seventy six respectively.  I'm speaking of sacrilege by saying that but after Ed Greenwood's article on the Hells caused me more problems then anything else because suddenly each and every damn reader of Dragon knew exactly what the Hells were, looked like, smelled like, heck even the streets of Dis might have been and they might as well have been mapped out. Sigh but what does this have to do with Dungeon Crawl Classics and the OSR in general? Nothing and everything.
Because the arch devils are up for grabs as patrons for clerics and agents in DCC. The Gong Farmer's Almanac put all kinds of  DYI wonderfulness in the hands of dungeon masters ( can I honestly say that I hate the term judge DCC because ever since I was a kid and received my first AD&D 1st edition Dungeon master's Guide that's what I've been).

I know I'm talking sacrilege here but bare with me, there are three reasons for this and I love this series of articles and yet there are certain reasons why they can be a problem because there are guidelines that need to taken with them at least for my own campaigns :

• Each and every devil is unique and should be handed as such, these are monsters that have been around since the literal creation of the multiverse and they're capable of great horror, violence, power,etc. this includes the lowest devil to the highest arch-devil 
• These articles while they present general and fantastic overviews of the Hells are done so in broad strokes leaving enough room for the DM to move in or out what furniture that they want. Because of the battles and intrigues in the Hells all is static and yet always in a state of flux. Think of the Hells as the largest police zone jungle war controlled by maniacs who work on the short end of evil. 
• And these guys can be used as patrons, I'll say this again the arch devils can easily be used as clerics patrons. But then as a DM you should slice and dice the cleric's throat at the appropriate moment. These things are after all evil through and through while being rotten to the core of their entire being.
  This brings up the weird good and evil half life of certain gods and goddess from mythology and legends. This is just the type of weird middle ground that makes dealing with divinity and religion in sword and sorcery so dangerous. This middle ground is something that people of the old world knew and that pop culture coming from the early fiction and fantasy of yesteryear knew.
  Demons on the other hand are really the scum of the multidimensional sink,try and imagine that there isn't a single corner of the infinity dimensions and alternatives that doesn't have some form of demon life form lurking someplace in its foul corners. And if you don't think that this is old school you don't know the Abyss.
  
  In point of fact this goes all the way back to the Abyss's first appearance in Dragon magazine according to Wiki: The plane known as the 666 layers of the Abyss was mentioned for the first time by name in the article "Planes: The Concepts of Spatial, Temporal and Physical Relationships in D&D", in The Dragon #8, released July 1977. In the article Gary Gygax describes the plane as one of the "Typical lower planes".^[1] The plane was mentioned again in an appendix of the known planes of existence in the original (1st edition) AD&D Players Handbook, published in June 1978, where it was described as "The 666 layers of the Abyss of absolute chaotic evil".
    Not the infinite layers but the six hundred and sixty six layers of which each and everyone is known mapped qualified and so forth. According to wiki it was further mapped out in 2006 : The Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss sourcebook suggests that the Abyss may be alive, and that it spawns demons out of its urge to spread chaos and destruction. In a critical review of Planes of Chaos for White Wolf Inphobia magazine, Keith H. Eisenbeis described the danger of adventuring in planes such as the Abyss, especially for low- and mid-level characters: "Sure, it's possible to design a situation in which first-level characters can accomplish something important and survive in the Abyss, but the immensity and power of the planes is undermined. In addition, on planes such as the Abyss, negotiating with evil creatures is frequently necessary, possibly making these planes useful to only neutral and evil characters." Sigh, this flies directly into the face of  OD&D, Lamentations of The Flame Princess and DCC. This flies directly into the face of PC's being heroes and proving themselves by the fires of heroism and blood. Of course if they do make it they'll be pretty damn mutated and screwed up.  Chaos is the ever mutating and adapting adversary; any as well as all encounters should be unpredictable dangerous and ultimately life changing.
  Remember No Salvation for Witches - The center of that Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure has infinite combinations of monsters and demons. Why? Because ultimately it goes back to gods,patrons, devils, and demons having both good aspects and bad aspects. But really these things are so completely alien that we experiencing them is chaos incarnate in our reality. According to one of the adventure's appendixes - the Tract of Teratology, a key component to the adventure, is supposed to be able to generate roughly 3.6 TRILLION different monsters according to the campaign page. Let me let that sink in, a rather benign divinity has interaction with the local space time and the results are horrific to say the least. But is law any better? Not in the least.
  
  
    So essentially at least in my mind to go back outside of the D&D paradigm for a moment and back to the root source for Chaos and Law in Poul Anderson's Three Hearts & Three Lions. 
  
• According to wiki -
  Law provides order, structure, and justice to the world. Without it, nothing material could exist. Law appears friendly to life, but a realm controlled by Law alone becomes just as stagnant as one overrun by Chaos.In "To Rescue Tanelorn", the Realm of Law is a barren wasteland; without wrongs to right and injustice to correct, Law becomes  meaningless.  Which is exactly what the concept of law, order, and 'good' taken to their extremes are.  In Three Hears and Three Lions we get a glimpse of just this concept within the plot of the book.
  
  
  
  Holger Carlsen is an American-trained Danish engineer who joins the Danish Resistance to the Nazis. At the shore near Elsinore he is among the group of resistance fighters trying to cover the escape to Sweden of an important scientist (evidently, the nuclear physicist Niels Bohr). With a German force closing in, Carlsen is shot - and suddenly finds himself carried to a parallel universe, a world where Northern European legend concerning Charlemagne ("The Matter of France") is real. This world is divided between the forces of Chaos inhabiting "Middle World" (which includes Faerie) and forces of Law based in the human world, which is in turn divided between the Holy Roman Empire and the Saracens. He finds the equipment and horse of a medieval knight waiting for him. The shield is emblazoned with three hearts and three lions. He finds the clothes and armor fit him perfectly, and he knows how to use the weapons and ride the horse as well as speak fluently the local language, a very archaic form of French.
  Seeking to return to his own world, Holger is joined by Alianora, a swan maiden, and Hugi, a dwarf. They are induced to follow the seemingly attractive elvish Duke Alfric of Faerie, who in fact plots to imprison Holger in Elf Hill where time runs differenty. Holger learns that Morgan Le Fay, his lover in a forgotten past life, is his ultimate adversary. They escape and, after encountering a dragon, a giant, and a werewolf, reach the town of Tarnberg, where they are joined by a mysterious Saracen called Carahue, who has been searching for Holger. Based on the advice of the wizard, Martinus Trismegistus, they set out to recover the sword, Cortana. The sword is in a ruined church, guarded by a nixie, cannibal hillmen, and - the most dangerous of all - a troll. Once the sword is recovered, Holger discovers he is the legendary Ogier the Dane, a champion of Law. He vanquishes the forces of Chaos and is transported back to his own world, right back to the battle in Elsinore. And his reward for service as another aspect of the eternal champion? In 2014 Harry Turtledove wrote, as his contribution to Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds, edited by Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois,^[1] a short story entitled "The Man who Came Late". The story takes place thirty years after the events of Three Hearts and Three Lions. Holger Carlsen finally succeeds in returning to the world of the Carolingian cycle and meeting up with his love Alianora. However, she did not know if he would ever return and so married and had children, thus Holger became the "The Man who Came Late". "
  
  
  "Holger later appears as a minor character in Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, where he is seen in a mysterious "Inn Between the Worlds" - having managed at last to leave the modern 20th Century and wander the various alternate timelines, but still far from locating the one he wants.
  In addition, he appears (with many other classic SF characters) in the tournament at the end of Heinlein's The Number of the Beast.
  In 2014 Harry Turtledove wrote, as his contribution to Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds, edited by Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois,^[1] a short story entitled "The Man who Came Late". The story takes place thirty years after the events of Three Hearts and Three Lions. Holger Carlsen finally succeeds in returning to the world of the Carolingian cycle and meeting up with his love Alianora. However, she did not know if he would ever return and so married and had children, thus Holger became the "The Man who Came Late". "
  There are three powers always vying at each others throats in the multiverse. Law, Chaos, and Neutrality are an eternal cycle that will never end with or without mankind. All across the multiverse this cycle continues and the debris of these conflicts? Well folks those are the demons that get are the mutated souls that get caught in the cross fire of these brush fire wars across the multiverse. This is a concept that goes all the way back to the golden days of pre golden age science fiction and fantasy.  One thing mortals who meet with the Lords of Law or Chaos  are wise to remember that what benefits the gods does not always suit the aims of mortals.
  
  
  This view point is exploited out in the aims, ideals and situations of the powers of Hell in Dark Albion the Rose War rather harshly. Demons and devils are nasty dangerous and wear their Chaotic alliances  rather on their collective sleeves. Pacts with these dark powers end in damnation, mutation, and Hell. Your PC's are supposed be heroes in this OSR setting but the powers of law here represented by the gods and divinities are repressive and dangerous because of the pseudo historic setting. This makes the mystery cults, witch cults, and pagan religions attractive and this where the powers of neutrality might be angling for souls. Once again the divinities are scum in this three sided war angling, vying, and treating humanity as so much fodder for betting,investment, and worse. This goes with the dark and gritty setting of the game. This is no better or worse then other OSR products even though in some respects Dark Albion drinks from the same troth of all of the mentioned sources.
  
  
  And this brings me to the Gong Farmer's Almanac 2015 
• Volume 1: Men and Magic provides additional classes, races, and spells.Given the number of addition PC classes that use patrons and gods as the primary motivator with a decidedly 80's flare one would think that these guys and gals are the power movers, heroes,etc. Umm no these folks are the schmucks who have survived the meat grinder of power and horror that is the DCC rpg. There's a certain amount of 80's VHS rental schlock inspiration. These are the agents, priests,  freebooters, and idiots who serve those patrons everything Highlander Immor ermm Sword bears, to Assassins (Ninja) are here.
• Volume 2: Monsters, Treasure and Patrons this is the mythological & legendary slant of the DCC rpg framework its not surprising that this book doesn't hold more there is more then enough material here for at least three or four campaigns with branches large enough to fill the gap.
• Volume 3: Adventures contains five new adventures from level 0 to 4 Much of the 0,1,2,3rd level material is robust enough to have PC's as movers and shakers within an 80's or 90's style sword and sorcery campaign.
• Volume 4: Rules and Campaign Miscellany Part 1 provides new options for play, some of these options could dovetail into a number of areas such as post apocalyptic, fantasy or dark fantasy areas all of which are the better to mix with DCC.
• Volume 5: Rules and Campaign Miscellany Part 2 gives some tables and an index of all the content across each volume. 
• The three alignments of DCC resemble the allegiance system from Fantastic Heroes and Witchery resembles the alignments of Dungeon Crawl Classics and plugs directly into the pact of the back parts of chaos, law, and neutrality. Websters defines this as such : loyalty or commitment of a subordinate to a superior or of an individual to a group or cause.
  A DM reading this might think that all is horror and damnation in some of these retroclones, that sentiment is not without some merit but there is also the fact that we once again come to the difference between gods and patrons. Your god is your lord and master, who gives you power to serve him. The patron is an ally who can ask for a favor, but it will have it's cost. This is a relationship that goes right back once again to the Moorcock connection or are we?
  
  
  Actually this is the same sort of a relationship with far more reaching connotations within the Ship of Ishtar by A. Merritt. Another Appendix N offering this novella harkens back all the way to 1924.
  Here the two divinities hold not only the fate of their agents and priests but of the hero as well. And their a mean as a set as you'll ever get.
  
  
  According to wiki :
  The archaeologist hero, Kenton, receives a mysterious ancient Babylonian artifact, which he discovers contains an incredibly detailed model of a ship. A dizzy spell casts Kenton onto the deck of the ship, which becomes a full-sized vessel sailing an eternal sea. At one end is Sharane the assistant priestess of Ishtar and her female minions, and at the other is Klaneth the assistant priest of Nergal and his male minions, representatives of two opposed deities. None of them can cross an invisible barrier at the midline of the ship, but Kenton can. His arrival destabilizes a situation that had been frozen for 6,000 years, and fantastic adventures ensue.
  
  All of this stems back to the very heart of what Deities, Gods, and Heroes addresses at its very core, not to kill the gods and take there place but place your PC striding on the shoulders of heroes and warriors where damnation is only a hair's breath away. Once again we find very different takes drawing from the same source with vastly different results.
  
  
  

Commentary On Gods, Patrons, And The Gong Farmers Almanac For Your DCC & Old School Campaigns

So this is going to be a backhanded look into DCC's take on Gods, Patrons, And The Gong Farmers Almanac. We're going to start out Lamentations of The Flame Princess as a contrast to how DCC handles divinities in the setting. Not because one or the other is better but because their takes on divinities are completely and utterly different or are they? Well, in point of fact they are very different.

When it comes to gods in old school rpgs, their shifty bastards at best and worst like something from an extensional wet dream at worst out of the pages of Heavy Metal magazine in the early 80's. Ever since Deities and Demi gods and a ton of water has passed under the bridge with the old school with regards to divinity in old school games. Gods are a fulcrum part of campaigns and yet their one of the least utilized pieces of campaign setting material.
For games such as the retroclone games on the market such as Lamentations of the Flame Princess they've become something entirely different. Within adventures like 'Better Then Any Man' we get a very clear picture of the fact that the things that we call divinity are very alien life forms to our little local space time continuum. Even the most benign goddesses and gods can reek marry havoc with the locals. Religion is a nice face that we put on the face of fantasy laden society drawing deeply from the twin wells of fiction and mythology from equal measure with a heavy dollop of sword and sorcery pulpy goodness throw in the Lovecraftian tendril fest that we call adventures. A really good example of just this sort of thing is No Salvation For Witches, the cause of all of the malevolence in that adventure is a divinity gone far off the rails because we the alien meat puppets are simply fleshy tissue paper.  

Then we go into the completely opposite direction with the DCC rpg, which draws very heavily from the Eternal Champion Michael Moorcock well for its take on gods, demi gods and divinities for clerics, wizards, etc. No at all, reading through the text I can see their take on their patrons goes all the way back to Robert Howard's the tales of  James Allison which take place both in modern times and in the far past, in that time after the Hyborian kingdoms of Conan. In these tales the divinities, Lovecraftian creatures, and legends of the past trickle down to us in a whirl wind of past life experience being relived by the protagonist. Robert Howard drew his own inspiration form  Jack London and his novel, The Star Rover (1915). The Star Rover's hero  in almost Hellraiserish transcend moment escapes his mortal body. According to Wiki:
A framing story is told in the first person by Darrell Standing, a university professor serving life imprisonment in San Quentin State Prison for murder. Prison officials try to break his spirit by means of a torture device called "the jacket," a canvas jacket which can be tightly laced so as to compress the whole body, inducing angina. Standing discovers how to withstand the torture by entering a kind of trance state, in which he walks among the stars and experiences portions of past lives.

"I trod interstellar space, exalted by the knowledge that I was bound on vast adventure, where, at the end, I would find all the cosmic formulae and have made clear to me the ultimate secret of the universe. In my hand I carried a long glass wand. It was borne in upon me that with the tip of this wand I must touch each star in passing. And I knew, in all absoluteness, that did I but miss one star I should be precipitated into some unplummeted abyss of unthinkable and eternal punishment and guilt."

Divinities in mythographic shamanism especially in the tradition of the Eternal Champion are fickle, dangerous, and completely like your drunk uncle. You just don't know what your going to find when you deal with them. A tradition that goes all the way back to the Greeks, and even into the Mesopotamian gods. DCC takes full advantage of this fact in the way in which it handles these powers. The average Greek and Roman citizen often did not want to attract the attention of the gods because of the consequences of heroes, quests, dooms, and all kinds of havoc. I draw here not from history but from mythology, Hollywood, and pop culture in equal for this conclusion. Which brings me to the Gong Farmer's Almanac. This brings me to The Gongfarmer’s Almanac 2015, a collection of five community-sourced zines of content that expands the core game of Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG [AL] with additional features.Here we're brought right back into the fold because this resource not only drinks from the same popculture well, it guzzles it so deeply as to be almost but not quite obscene in its encompass of some of the traditions.  Its not trying to hide its pop culture roots with its divinities. Each and every single class here along with at least five features over laps these mythographic shamanismic ideals especially because each of the five books in the collection focuses on a particular expansion area.The gods are going to have their fingers into your PC's lives, there is no question about it. In point of fact this one of the ways in which this work keeps the overlap into the root of its game going.

1. Volume 1: Men and Magic provides additional classes, races, and spells many of which center around the pop culture references of the patrons. These are done with the pop culture finger prints filed off but its clearly there. Everything from the Ninja craze of the 80's to immortals in the service of his or her god along with Luchadores are right out in front and center. Luchadores goes all the way back to Aztec Mummy series of  movies so this scores points with me there.
2. Volume 2: Monsters, Treasure and Patrons  this is the book that really set this article off, many of the monsters, treasures,etc are tied directly into the business of the patrons. This isn't a book for those who have don't want to play in the back drops of the gods or in their backyards. There's lots and lots of good stuff here. A ton of it in point of fact.
3. Volume 3: Adventures contains five new adventures from level 0 to 4.Not exactly these adventures have the PC's getting their hands into the business end of the gods.There is the potential for all kinds of mayhem here.
4. Volume 4: Rules and Campaign Miscellany Part 1 provides new options for play. Stuff that should have been added into the game right out of the gate. There's some interesting parts of the DCC system right over here.
5. Volume 5: Rules and Campaign Miscellany Part 2 gives some tables and an index of all the content across each volume. Some of this material feels like it came straight out of a giant twelve year old's imagination in this mythical 70's & 80's that DCC keeps talking about.
   My bottom line on this free set of books is to go and download it. Right now if your into the DCC rpg at all. This is possibly one of the best things to come out of Gencon in my humble opinion.

This brings me to Fantastic Heroes and Witchery which has one of the best takes on the whole agent of Law or Chaos mode of the eternal champion style of D20 play. Here the PC must make a choice right out of the gate because allegiance is a complete existence choice and class for that matter. There isn't an alignment system in the game at all. We get an alliance system that while completely optional, colours every aspect of a person's life. The powers of Law are good and Chaos become evil. All things of Law are good and all things of evil are of Chaos each of these things is simply vectored in an angle towards a particular aspect of one or the other. This was a trait that the third edition AD&D game had introduced through third party products back in 2005 or so. The author of FH&W has refined the concepts and made it in my opinion better and easier to handle in spades for this game.
There is a lot more too it though then this brief overview be sure to check it and its impact on the FH&W game system in the free test drive version of FH&W here.  

Dark Avalon  by Rpg Pundit and Dominique Crouzet  is another game setting that treats the gods and the powers of darkness in another fashion that I find fascinating. Here the gods and church while remote are facets in every day life and even the most ordinary citizens of  Avalon fear and loath the powers of darkness. The gods are elaborate,dangerous, and capacious at best and survivals of earlier mystery religions based off of the post Roman/England pseudo historical period of the setting but heroes, gods, and adventurers clash in very dangerous fashion a direct contrast to all of the other games mentioned above. I do love Dark Albion's take on its own internal religion though its not connected with Fantastic Heroes and Witchery at all. There is some common ground with the dark forces in both games.
How the agents and priests of the gods is really worth noting, here the agents of the gods are warriors completely and almost forces of nature unto themselves with the blessings of the gods. But not necessarily the state forces with this game can often put the PC's and the state itself at odds over the will of the gods making this a stand out issue that can come up in these high quality settings in this article.

One thing to note with all of the OSR style games mentioned in this article is that all of this material in some fashion or form derivatives itself from its source in the form product
TSR 2006 Gods, Demigods, and Heroes which is where all of this started from. Kuntz and Ward do a good job going over the mythological, pulpy, and weird in equal measure.


These rules would much later be completely refined into the Immoral Rules by Kuntz and Ward's good friend Frank Mentzer. Even before this AD&D1st edition  had refined and digesting this book into the classic and infamous Deities and Demigods

What I find fascinating is the fact all of the above products are all derived from the same sources, all of these products have wonderful pedigrees yet they go through incredibly different OSR motions to arrive in very places for the gods to play in the lives of  PC