The week’s been sort of diffuse for me, and trying to push work into Muster made me miss the usual deadline for the newsletter. I guess I’ll take the super-lazy option of discussing a fairly original actual play event as my feature topic.
Great Dalmuti in D&D
Sipi, who’s managing our face-to-face D&D campaign during my hiatus, joked a few months back about how the princedom of Dhalmond is obviously ruled by the Great Dhalmuti. Said princedom is in Sunndi, the fantasy country the campaign is set in; it’s the place where Sipi’s campaign arc is happening.
Dhalmond is a land plunged into an extended period of anarchy after the Sunndian independence war some years back, so Sipi’s jocular remark fired up my imagination: indeed, this is obviously a Great Dalmuti situation. Great Dalmuti is a classic social card game commercialized in the mid-’90s by WotC at the initiative of one game designer Richard Garfield; people are often familiar, I’ve found. I end up playing it myself every few years in various more casual cirucmstances.
The implied medieval kingdom in the otherwise quite abstract trick-playing, hand-shedding game is clearly in some kind of entrenched constitutional crisis, often putting the entire ruling cabinet down every year (hand of play). Ruling cliques shift and change many times in a generation. Sounds like an exciting D&D environment!
Marrying D&D with Great Dalmuti, we came up with the following protocol for using the card game to document and define the internal political struggle of the princedom of Dhalmond over the past several years:
The Great Dhalmuti died 5 years ago: The prince of Dhalmond left behind a land without a legitimate heir, but with several coherent political factions, represented by the players of the card game. The game represents their struggles, political initiatives and rise and fall of their fortunes in the recent past. By playing five hands, one for each year, we would have a quick and unique history for the city and princedom of Dhalmond.
Each player has a faction and a faction leader: This doesn’t affect the card game in any way, it’s just for the D&D transcript. At the start of the game every player selects one faction to play (which of course defines much of the character of the city of Dhalmond), and during the game we’ll learn how that faction has been doing in the recent past. The faction leaders are of course important people as per the D&D campaign rules (which for us doesn’t necessarily mean high in level; we have a separate Name Rank system for depicting political weight), but their personal fates can also be determined by the card game: after every hand, the new Dalmuti (ruling prince) gets to behead anybody they feel like. Doesn’t remove the players from the game, but does change the fictional leader of their political faction, which could well mean a shift in the faction’s policies.
The anarchy period might end: If a single player manages to keep the throne for three years, winning three hands in a row, they are assumed to have stabilized their rule, ending the game. Because each hand takes a year and the game started five years in the past of the campaign calendar (current year 576), we could end up playing up to five hands; if no stability is achieved by then, Dhalmond is in fact still without a recognized ruler in the present time.
So anyway, last Tuesday we convened with the usual play group and some visiting card sharks to play a bit of Dalmuti and to, by doing so, learn about the recent troubles that the poor Dhalmondians have been suffering through.
Breaking News Alert: Great Dalmuti D&D Edition?
Googling for newsletter covert art, I came across an article titled “D&D: A Crossover with The Great Dalmuti is in the cards”. Did somebody else actually figure out to do this super-obscure thing first?
Well, no; it’s just a news article about a new edition of Dalmuti, now with D&D surface color. Still fairly interesting that somebody would make that jump. I thought that it’s amusingly non-intuitive myself, and only works in the old school “game of thrones” context, but apparently WotC thinks that actually Great Dalmuti and D&D belong together on the same box cover.
Also, Great Dalmuti doesn’t seem to have much in the way of fan art, if Google image search is anything to go by. I guess it’s a sufficiently abstract game to not really inspire visual artists.
Coup in Sunndi #42, the Dalmuti edition
I think it’s actually been seven weeks since I last got a real report of what’s been going on in the campaign! Lazy people, more interested in rolling dice than writing about rolling dice. I understand that they’ve been doing something, but who knows what, since the report on week #95; I’ll just give the next session number to my report here and see if I’ll ever get to know about what they’ve been doing in the meantime. All I know is that the party is still wrapping up Tomb of the Iron God, and Mauri’s bard character managed to finally get to 2nd level, so clearly they’re doing something in there.
Was nice sitting down with the crew after a long break. I’m expecting to return to the campaign on regular basis in January, so it was good to see that they’d kept the fires going. (Not a given when we’ve been meeting at a restaurant ravaged by the covid times.) We didn’t really get into the nitty-gritty of the current campaign situation in this session, what with the Dalmuti fever, but we sure did get to play some Great Dalmuti. Let’s see how that went; I’ll need to write up my notes for future campaign use anyway, might as well do that in English here.
Setup: Political Factions of Dhalmond
We discussed the cultural and political nature of Dhalmond a bit, and then concluded that these would be the player roles in the political simulation that is Great Dalmuti.
The Royal Harem: When our beloved prince, the Great Dhalmuti, passed away heroically on the war front, the natural assumption would surely be that one of his under-aged children would rise to be the new prince; this is how things have always been done, even if we would need a caretaker government in the meantime. In 571, at the prince’s passing, the Harem is sovereignly commanded by the young but dynamic Queen Galamatha, the royal favourite, known as his “Darkest of Olives”.
Temple of the Seven Stars: We know from prior lore that Dhalmond has two important religious centers. One is the Temple of the Iron God (spoilers: they’re going to become more of a dungeon adventure location soon), the other is the Temple of the Seven Stars. The latter is a fairly straightforward Pelor-the-Sun worshipping brahminic institution, except for it originally having been set up as a military institution, so it’s actually a kungfu yoga temple. I have an adventure hook floating for the place involving Teenage Mutant Ninja Gnolls, but for the purposes of the Dalmuti game it’s a rich and spiritually influential monastery out in the boonies, away from the palace. Their interests in Dhalmond proper are being looked after by Cardinal Jetli, a humble monk who makes a mean Cool-Aid Man impression.
The House Rangala: The first family of chivalry in Dhalmond if it weren’t for the prince himself. Which of course means that the clan’s afoot to seize the crown now! The Rangalans are generally conservative, big into the Sunndi caste system culture, basically upper soldier caste knight family ready to rise to rulership. The faction is headed by Sir’aho Rangala, cousin to the dear deceased Past Dhalmuti, so totally a legitimate pick for a strong male ruler in these trying times.
The Ironpouring Guild: An interesting idea, basically sort of like half a wealthy crafts guild, half a Freemason-like fraternal mystery order. They’re basically a spin-off or branch office of the Iron God’s temple, which itself resides a couple day’s journey from the city. The Iron God’s mysteries at his temple revolve mostly around burial rites and exorcising restless ghosts and other such death-domain stuff, but the God himself apparently has dual domains in the secrets of smithery as well. The Dhalmondian traditions in metal crafts came from the Great Kingdom of Aerdy during their rule of the province, alongside the Iron God worship, so the Ironpouring Guild probably settled into Dhalmond back then. Biggest craft guild in town, no doubt. Their current grandmaster is Rodo Dwarven, a big beard man-stump who’s rumoured to be half-dwarf, half man, all smith.
The Caravansary: Foreign merchants in Dhalmond have traditionally hung their hats in this big combined caravansary trading post outside the city walls. At some point it ended up being owned by a consortium of foreign traders who are quickly getting completely fucked over by this anarchy thing Dhalmond’s flirting with now. So the big brain idea among these merchant magnates from Starland and Pitchfield and further parts (really, capital has no homeland) is to see how things go and maybe end up making the newly weakened Dhalmond into an economic colony of sorts. Or at least end the anarchy, the death of external trade is basically quickly zeroing out the businesses of the Caravansary. The leader of this “business plot” is currently Marky Scaly, not at all a soulless illuminati snake person.
The elves of Menowood: This just might be my favourite. The thing to know about modern Sunndi is that the duchy only ever managed to free itself from the Aerdy empire by combining forces with the elusive fae powers of the wood and hill. The newly declared kingdom is actually ruled by an elf king (king Hazelnut is the name I have in my head, but surely that can’t be correct?), which isn’t exactly uncontroversial in the rural, conservative, brahminic Sunndi. Still, elves wield a lot of cultural influence and respect among the independence-minded, liberal, progressive monarchistic people… so of course when the wandering elf Sliska Hobb happens to stumble into Dhalmond during the confusion, the locals just might decide on a compromise candidate for their new Dhalmuti. He’s not an official envoy, he’s not even favoured in the Hazelnut court, but what the fuck do these humans know about that.
You can probably see how just the process of creating the factions and some faces for them is helpful for future D&D adventuring in the princedom. Insofar as these movers and shakers of the local politics survive the card game, it’ll be nice to have them around to use as NPCs in the adventure game; I’m already liking the lot. Which of them would seize the crown? Depends on the luck of the draw, plus some common sense in playing a trick-taking game. We’ll see!
Year 571
The Great Dhalmuti, our ruling prince, has reportedly died in the war, which is rather awkward for a princedom that has apparently not thought about succession in this frankly embarrassingly predictable scenario. The card game is initiated without taxes or trade, as we’ve yet to establish the relative power positions of the factions in Dhalmond.
House Rangala drives first (randomized), which is taken to be because Sir’aho Rangala, the prince’s cousin, was with him in the war, and rode home with the couriers, ready to seize power in Dhalmond.
However, the first drive is claimed by The Royal Harem, whose eunuch officials apparently confound and slow down the military junta being put into place by the imperious general Rangala. Rangala seizes initiative back on the second drive, setting up a back and forth dynamic between Queen Galamatha and Sir’aho; rumours start flying in town over the following months, as it’s very clear that the Palace as an institution still rules the town, but whether it’s the queen or the general in charge, who knows. Soldiers are used to put down any competing ideas for the future, for now.
After the first four drives the Queen actually tapped out, becoming our new monarch! Ruling as Queen Regent Galamatha, she would hold the seat warm until the new Dhalmuti could be crowned. The rumours about Sir’aho Rangala didn’t exactly cease when he emptied his hand next and thus rose to the position of the royal councilor; kinda hard to not see the shadow eminence there, a strong man using a puppet queen.
The other factions were all left to pitifully struggle in the mud after the two now-recognized “royal factions” elegantly left the table. As the summer ended, we engaged in petty political plays, fawning upon the powerful rulers who held the loyalty of the soldiery. The 7 Stars kungfu monk Jetli made quite the name for himself in town during these months of uncertainty, defending the common man in small drives that didn’t do much to get rid of his cards, despite him winning most exchanges. (My working theory is that I just don’t know how to play the game; how can I win the most drives and still not do that well…)
It’s also notable that the Ironpourer’s Guild, largely working in the shadows, managed to drop their hand in just a couple of big drives. Seems like they were on top of the game instantly once they finally got the chance to drive a trick. Methinks this implies that some big-stakes skullduggery occurred in those early months of the anarchy period, perhaps something to do with the effortless-seeming rise to power of Queen Galamatha. Could be an adventure to be had for the present-day adventurers in finding out what exactly the Temple of the Iron God and their local freesmith fraternity were getting up to here, hint hint.
The results at the end of the year:
| Position | Faction | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Ruler | Queen Galamatha (The Harem) | Power-sharing deal with Rangala. |
| Advisor | General Sir’aho (House Rangala) | Ditto. |
| Making Money | Grandmaster Rodo Dwarven (Ironpourer’s Guild) | The real shadow eminence? |
| Getting By | Folk Hero Jetli (7 Stars Temple) | Adventurer stuff, little political entanglement. |
| Slow Decline | Marky Scaly (The Caravansary) | Paralyzed by the rising tide of anarchy in the countryside, confused leadership. |
| Exploited Ruthlessly | Sliska Hob (The Elf) | Feted by the important families, oblivious to being used as a status trophy by the humans. |
Year 572
The Queen’s temporarily in charge despite not having presented an actual heir — maybe the general’s planning to wed her and thus unify the army and the civil bureaucracy with iron legitimacy?
Queen Galamatha surprises Dhalmond by seizing political initiative in a matter involving the organizational continuity of the palace guard, the effective police force of Dhalmond; the soldiers who came with the general stand down as the societal turmoil is considered to have calmed down. This, despite the wider princedom outside the city walls being on a slow downswing into banditry and general ineffectiveness in tax collection.
The Queen’s whirlwind tour of power politics through the city continues unabated, though. She forces the general to switch tricks again, but mainly to her advantage; seems like whomever Galamatha graces with her attentions rises in prominence, and those she ignores fall. She taps out first again, remaining the Dhalmuti.
What’s more: gracing the humble yet popular monk Jetli with her attentions, the queen asks the monk to preside in her coronation: it is now revealed that not only is the Queen the regent, she is in fact the fated new Dhalmuti! A female ruler is unprecedented, but Galamatha’s masterful diplomacy has set the stage for her taking a divine appointment. The humble monk has little option but to precide on a coronation that may or may not have involved real genuine religious fervor. The fact that I don’t know what god is supposed to have chosen her, exactly, makes me think that this is political bullshit, but maybe we’ll figure it out later. Does Greyhawk even have a goddess of queendom?
Another reason to believe that Galamatha isn’t quite the illustrious Athena-like figure of enlightened female authority she wants us to think: General Sir’aho retreats to his family holdings in the countryside while the court gets flooded with the black-robed “freesmiths” of the Ironpourers. They take up key positions in court openly now.
The political arrangement in Dhalmond is clarifying here, which is exactly what I wanted from this exercise: House Rangala are the conservatives, the patriarchy, the militarists. Queen Galamatha is the surprising black horse female protagonist queen, with enough realpolitik to her to sucker the General to support her first, only to then abandon him. Will she do the same with the kinda suspicious Ironpourers once she no longer needs them? And what does she stand for?
Apparently not free trade and foreign influence in government! With the trade routes savaged by former soldier bandits, the Caravansary seeks royal relief, only to be thoroughly snubbed. The respond with an assassination attempt, or so it is said on the streets… It may well be that the Caravansary is done as a power in Dhalmond!
The Queen invites the “Elven Emissary” into court and offers them some hospitality, which is interpreted as her siding with the elf-loving, progressive faction in Sunndian politics. Against Rhangala, which might just portent a full-blown civil war for all that the General did retreat from town in superficially good graces of the Palace.
As for humble monk Jetli, my alter ego… the Queen dropped us immediately after getting her coronation. I didn’t win a single drive this year. I’m fairly sure she’s actually a devil-worshipper, I could totally see Gary Gygax inventing a devil queen of female monarchy who’d be willing to help her setup her “divine appointment”.
| Position | Faction | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Ruler | Queen Galamatha (The Harem) | Charms the entire castle town! Graced by the gods! Crowned Dhalmuti! |
| Advisor | Grandmaster Rodo Dwarven (Ironpourer’s Guild) | Apparently she’s now favouring the freesmiths in her civil administration? |
| Honorable Dismissal | General Sir’aho (House Rangala) | Back on his estates, totally not hosting big rural manor-owner political get-togethers. |
| Going to Court | Sliska Hobb (The Elf) | Seemingly entirely clueless, but sure nice to strut around as a political gimmick by actual operators. |
| Forgotten and Irrelevant | Folk Hero Jetli (7 Stars Temple) | Apparently unable to actually form a political platform. |
| Executed! | Marky Scaly (The Caravansary) | The queen had Marky executed! The Caravansary compound itself is actually nationalized, leaving many magnates suddenly much poorer. |
Year 573
Do or die time! If Queen Galamatha actually gets away with her “divine rule”, the game might end in actually stable government!
The Caravansary reorganized after Marky Scaly’s execution. Their new leader is the totally not suspicious “Henri The Horsethief”. The man looks like a pirate, and is rumoredly part of the “I can’t believe it’s not fantasy gypsies!” transient population of the Vistani. But apparently the merchant consortium trusts him; I hear Henri is a decisive leader who, most importantly, has deep connections with the bandit gangs that plague Dhalmond’s rural parts. I guess it makes sense for the Caravansary Consortium to elevate a man like that, if he can guarantee what remains of foreign trade?
The Queen of course opened the first drive, but surprisingly yielded immediately… to Sliska Hob, the elven guest? Sure, why not, except perhaps that it’s rumoured that the most honorable Fair Guest is half-hobgoblin, and… the queen’s lover? This sure is a misogynic town.
So anyway, the queen’s new favourite causes a mess in court and scandal on the streets, flushing out the Caravansary and, more importantly, General Sir’Aho, who take turns playing drives while the queen calmly watches over the turmoil from high above. My theory: the elf got inner chamber privileges mainly to provoke her enemies to move. The Queen is clever like that.
I seem to have won a drive here by accident, but nothing much came of that either. I think I just wasted the spring basically fist-fighting Caravansary and Rangala goons on the streets. It’s what religious authorities do best.
The Ironpourers ultimately put down the riots by sending their own journeymen in; the Rangalan house troops mysteriously shied away from the civilian-grade freesmiths, which made the smiths sure seem fairly cool. This is timeline-wise roughly around the time when the actual Temple of the Iron God is falling into ruin (spoilers!), so it just might be that whatever the Ironpourers big plan is, they’re committing some fairly serious heresies against their own god to get there.
The Queen picks up from her guild officers, the guild picks up from her… but then betrays her and underplays on the return drive, undercutting the Queen’s political platform! Fairly understandable, really, considering the table chatter: apparently Queen Galamatha desired to open up court officer positions to her handmaidens and other assorted women. Great way to alienate your own civil service, so this could well be the end of her reign!
But, the Queen seizes the drive with royal prerogative (playing the Great Dalmuti card, of course) and puts the ironmongers to their place in a public display, in the middle of the town. She actually starts appointing her new female vanguard right there, out in the open, with the entire population of Dhalmond looking on. The freesmith young holding their hammers and tongs, knuckles white, as their elders are stripped of court rank.
And she gets away with it, too. I think some widows of khastriya fallen in the war were involved, just looking at the card plays; maybe she managed to find some loyal troops from somewhere when the city’s fate hung in the balance like this? Whatever it was, the Queen pulled it off again and tapped out first.
Great Dalmuti is indeed biased towards the existing power structures, but I was still a bit surprised by how we just played three hands and well, seems like Galamatha stabilized her rule and has now been ruling the palace city of Dhalmond for the last five years, two of them without major internal power struggles. Much more stable in the end than I expected! The countryside is still in shambles of course, it’s a well established fact of the matter. On the other hand, Sipi has clearly been imagining the princedom’s capital as being more intact than I have, so clearly the cards are on his side on this. Also he played Queen Galamatha here, so if he can make the cards dance his way then I guess I’m helpless.
The Queen’s radically feminist program (very appropriate as a theme for our times, she emerges as a true Strong Female Protagonist from this mess) causes political shockwaves that we play out to find out how the power relations in town end up for the future. The Queen ends up having to put down both the Ironpourers and General Sir’aho by execution before things truly settle… and she executes the elf, Sliska Hob, as well? Maybe he was her lover, now excess to requirements? Get your head out of the gutter, man!
The fairly liberal round of executions, followed by putting new men in charge, means that the actual faction relations don’t end up reworked that much over the year. It’s just clear now who plays the tune for the dance. The Harem basically controls the palace and the government, with the population actually believing in the Queen’s divine mandate. The separate and unrelated difficulties that the two greater temples of Dhalmond have had basically leave her to prance, claiming divine favor. Super-liberal in a way that the players can empathize with, but that doesn’t play well together with any of the actual political trends of medieval Sunndi, so let me predict: she has more hands of Great Dhalmuti in her future once the Sunndi civil war (prepared in other campaign arcs) kicks off.
Here’s the status at the end of the game, aside from the bunch of unofficial rounds we played afterwards:
| Position | Faction | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Great Dhalmuti | Divine Prince Galamatha | Ruling a potentially very shaky gynocracy, but it stands for now! |
| Royal Cat’s Paw | Ironpourer’s Guild (tamed) | The guild lost their magical powers and much authority when the Temple fell, leaving them to rebuild as a mundane(?) smithery centralized in the Queen’s oversight. Still disgustingly rich after their anarchy period crimes, but the palace seems to let this rest. |
| Humiliated but Strong | House Rangala | With the General dead or outlawed, the clan is in turmoil, and not in favour at the palace. The Queen is likely to continue throttling them slowly in various ways, and without a strong leader their future seems gloomy. |
| Returning Home | Folk Hero Jetli (7 Stars Temple) | Disappointed in secular politics, Jetli returns to his Temple after the anarchy period seems to settle down. The Temple itself will face its own catastrophe-cum-adventure-opportunity in a few years, but for now the 7 Stars remain a spiritual authority to counterbalance the Queen’s wild fancies. |
| Banditry is my thing anyway | Henri the Horsethief (The Caravansary) | As the Queen’s star rises, the Caravansary gets slowly co-opted. Henri calls it quits and retreats to the wilds, to join one of the bandit gangs that are clearly the real future of Dhalmond. |
| Executed! | Slisska Hob (The Elf) | So my theory is that the Queen tried to make a fairy alliance work, the elf tried to do some elf-rape thing to her in private (elves are Chaotic!), she dropped him, his tries for petty revenge kicked off this year’s turmoil, and then she rightfully executed the rogue elf. Hopefully the Elf-King doesn’t hear of this and care; elves are held in high regard in wider Sunndi. |
And here’s the cast of still living characters, for use in developing adventures in Dhalmond:
Queen Galamatha — apparently Name Rank +3, but otherwise unclassed? More of a political hero, if you will.
Folk Hero Jetli — level 3 Monk after spending three years in fisticuffs in Dhalmond.
Henri the Horsethief — level 2 Thief after his hijinks in Dhalmond.
The above transcript of course suggests a variety of adventures. Like I’m pretty sure the Ironpourers have blocked off their old satan-worshipping underground lodges or whatever now that they’re officially under royal watch. If an adventurer went a-looting there, not much they could do about it afterwards. And that’s just one idea. All in all, I think this worked out fairly well.
State of the Productive Facilities
I’m supposed to be putting Muster together, and I guess it’s happening, but the going’s been a bit slow this week. Part of it is some harsh criticism that took a bit to get over, part is wonderful winter wonderland melancholy, but mostly it’s just that I have like 200 pages of text that I need to edit down into a coherent manuscript, and it’s taking a while.
The Christmas melancholy is real, though. For some reason ever since the fridge filled up with traditional Christmas fare (left-overs from the restaurant), I haven’t been eating or sleeping very well. I guess it’s because Finnish Christmas food is quite awful. Hopefully I’ll start feeling better after Christmas passes.
“I’m fairly sure she’s actually a devil-worshipper, I could totally see Gary Gygax inventing a devil queen of female monarchy who’d be willing to help her setup her “divine appointment”.”
Maybe someone like Eshebala? https://ghwiki.greyparticle.com/index.php/Eshebala