Spirits & Spookiness: Etymologies & Definitions of "Shaman"

The first challenge I experienced in writing this history was defining what I’m actually talking about. 

In fantasy, “shaman” is a vague and often generic term that may be used to describe a wide range of characters. They might be a traditional healer, an old wise person, a spooky skull-wearing witch, a wielder of elemental magic clad in furs and summoning wolf spirits, or any number of other things. As a child I uncritically ate every single one of these aesthetic stereotypes up, and even today I struggle to completely disentangle my own writing from automatic and unthinking recycling of those tropes.

By my reckoning, the only thing fictional shamans have in common is that they are often coded as foreign or exotic to whatever the “normal” of their fantasy world is. Compare it with how terms like “witch doctor” and “medicine man” are thrown around in other media.

So if the fiction is so garbled, what can real life history tell us about the meaning of the word “shaman”?

Well, it turns out it’s not quite as concrete an answer as we might hope for.

Much like in pop-culture, there are many overlapping or contradictory definitions of shaman and shamanism in academia, developed over centuries of study. I think this is due in part to the fact that a lot of what we believe we know about shamanism(s) stems from a European, sometimes colonialist understanding of the indigenous cultures of the world, particularly Siberia where many of the traditions we associate with shamanism and even the word shaman itself originate.

Buryat böö offering a libation of milk.
Wikimedia Commons

Etymology

As far as we know, shaman is a word of Tungusic origin that reached Europe by way of becoming a Russian loanword in the Early Modern Period. The Russian Empire encountered the Tungusic peoples while they were conquering and colonizing large sections of North Asia, much the same way Western Europeans were colonizing the Americas at the time.

The Tungusic language family includes Manchu, Evenki, Jurchen, and other related languages found in Siberia and Manchuria.¹

Shaman derives from the Evenki word şamān (or samān or hamān, depending on the dialect in question) which itself might come from the root word şa- which means "to know". There are some linguistic irregularities in this theory that make it only plausible rather than concrete fact, and other proposed roots include sebe- ("spirit/idol"), nïmƞa- ("to tell tales"), and yaya- ("to sing shamanic songs"). All of them are words of indigenous Evenki origin, however.²

There are other theories that shaman derives from outside sources, like the Sanskrit word śramaṇa (an ascetic Buddhist monk) or even Arabic shaiṭān (a demon or devil). I find these theories doubtful, partly because of the huge area of land and the number of different peoples living within it that employ different cognates of the word shaman, many of whom didn't have extensive exposure to Buddhism or Abrahamic religions up until after they entered the written historical record, at which point shamans were already an established group. We have archaeological evidence of shamanic practices going back millennia, and the idea that all their descendants suddenly came to be uniformly referred to by a term that was imported from another religion feels far-fetched to me.³

You may have noticed by now that I use the plural “shamans”. You might be used to the singular and plural forms both being just “shaman”, and that’s fine. Both are acceptable in English. If you wanted to be a stickler about it, the etymologically-consistent plural for shaman uses the uncommon marker -sal to make shamasal.⁴ I was tempted to use that form, but I’m not that pretentious, so I will continue to use "shamans" in this series for the sake of familiarity. Terms like shamen are hyper-corrections caused by the visual similarity between shaman and English words like fireman. We will see it pop up occasionally in D&D, and I will try not to grind my teeth at it- my dentist already yelled at me once.

I would have been equally disparaging of terms like shawoman, shamanka (-ka being a feminine Russian suffix), and shamaness had I written this history a few years ago. But I’ve learned things recently that helped me re-contextualize those terms and stop thinking of them as entirely without merit.

Consider how most Siberian cultures with a masculine shamanist tradition also seem to have a parallel but distinct feminine tradition with a separate set of roles and a separate name. Note also that most feminine Siberian shamanic titles derive from the name of the old Turkic and Mongolic mother goddess Etügen, whose name also has connotations to the earth or womb depending on language and context. Examples of the gendered shamanism divide include Evenk; šaman (masculine) vs udugan (feminine), Mongol/Buryat; böö (masculine) vs idugan/udagan (feminine), Tatar; qam/kham (masculine) vs üdege (feminine), etc.

Several anthropologists over the centuries have argued that this implies a widely shared origin of feminine Siberian shamanism unlike their disparate and more local masculine counterparts, although that is beyond the scope of my work here.⁵

All of this is to say that I prefer gender-neutral terminology wherever and whenever possible, but there’s certainly a case in my mind for the phenomenon of female shamans to have their own discrete word, as it were.

Definitions

Now that we have established where the word shaman probably comes from, we have to address how it’s actually used.

As I alluded to before, there is no single definition for “shaman” in 21st century academia. Scholars do at least seem to acknowledge that English use of the term is a construct meant to group together what people see as similar practices and belief systems; but what those similarities are is up for debate. There are at least three or four conceptions of shaman, depending on how nuanced you want to get.⁶ They vary in scope, each with broad overlap as well as specific differences. The pre-Christian religion and modern paganism historian Ronald Hutton divided them this way in his 2001 book Shamans, and I will be following his lead here because I think it's a useful starting point:

• At its most narrow, shaman refers to no one except the traditional practitioners of the indigenous Siberian religions that the word shaman comes from. These practitioners interact with the spirits and other supernatural beings in order to effect worldly change on behalf of their communities, often by way of altered states of consciousness.
• More broadly, shaman can be inclusive of any sort of priest or other magico-religious specialist who is believed to contact the spirit world, usually at the behest of others such as their tribe or community, regardless of geographical origin in the world.
• Some scholars who use the above definition try to find a particular mechanism or technique that sets shamans apart from similar specialists like mediums and aforementioned witch doctors, but nobody can agree on what that defining feature is. Even the ecstatic trance and drumming that are commonly seen as central to shamanic practice are not so ubiquitous.
• The widest definition of shaman includes anyone who is believed to contact the spirit world in an altered state of consciousness for any reason. This definition encompasses aspects of other world religions such as Shintoism and several Native American or Sub-Saharan African faiths, as well as all manner of modern syncretic neopagan movements.⁷

That last one is the definition of shaman that attracts the most criticism. Rolled up in its usage are accusations of cultural appropriation, gross oversimplification, and misuse, and I tend to agree with that criticism- it’s extremely broad. Hutton himself ran afoul of that in his own presentation of medieval Scandinavian Seiðr and Sámi traditional religious practices. Full disclosure, I've used this kind of cultural equation gloss many times in my own writing for the sake of convenience, and it's a tricky habit to kick.

Whether or not something pings as shamanic also affects the rest of a religion or tradition surrounding it. Shamanic practitioners are often the most "visible" facets of a belief system to outsiders, and that can sometimes lead to the assumption that they are also the most important aspect of it. In the process, complex and diverse religious traditions that include at least one arguably shamanic practice or substrate sometimes get glossed as "shamanism" in their entirety.⁸

Of course you don’t have to listen to anything I say here as if it's gospel; I’m not your auntie, and I'm not trying to make you shift your terminology; although it's always good to be mindful. Outside of certain avenues of discourse where definitions are extremely important, I lean toward a descriptive as opposed to prescriptive approach to everyday language; we use words how we use them, and make new ones when we feel the need. Heck, I’m the guy who says “remound” instead of “reminded” all the time.

I lay these definitions out not to pick which one is “correct” (my stated opinions aside), but to give you an idea of the range of shamans that we’ll come across in our survey. This list is by no means exhaustive- it doesn't even scratch the surface of the even more weird and/or wonderful interpretations of shamanism that exist only within D&D, let alone the full breadth of genre fiction.

Speaking of which, I should probably get on to the actual D&D already. 

Onward to the 1970s!

Or click here to return to the Shamans in D&D archive.

¹ Please note that "Tungus" originated as a pejorative exonym used by the Evenks’ neighbors, who were mostly Turkic-speaking peoples. Tungus most likely derives from the Old Turkic word tongaz which means “pig” or “wild boar”. A competing etymological theory posits that Tungus actually derives from the Donghu people or “Eastern Barbarians” referenced in Han Chinese histories, but that isn’t very flattering either. Hence I only use the term Tungusic languages here for lack of a more neutral equivalent. Get on it, linguists!

² Janhunen, Juha. “Siberian Shamanistic Terminology.” Mémoires De La Société Finno-Ougrienne 194, 1986. P. 98-99.

³ Personal bias time, it also just feels weird to try and attribute such an important element of several indigenous cultures to the actions of their more urbanized and politically dominant neighbors at the time. In the absence of hard supporting evidence, it just feels like kind of an unfair claim to make.

⁴ Howard Isaac Aronson, Dee Ann Holisky, and Kevin Tuite. “Dialect Continua in Tungusic: Plural Morphology”. Current Trends in Caucasian, East European, and Inner Asian Linguistics. 2003. P. 103

⁵ If those topics interest you, I recommend you check out the body of research that began with the Polish anthropologist Maria Czaplicka way back in the day. Her original theory was that feminine shamanism actually predates masculine traditions, though I don't know if that idea has proven to have merit or if it has gone the way of the Great Goddess hypothesis and other ideas of uniform prehistoric matriarchy. You can find some of her stuff over on the ISTA. Please note that being over a century old, the academic language used by Czaplicka and the sources she cites is sometimes racist, sexist, homophobic, and/or transphobic. "Berdache" and all that sort of stuff.

⁶ Hutton, Donald. Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination. 2001. P. VII-VIII.

⁷ Arguably, it even includes that uncle of yours who used to go to Woodstock and keeps trying to loan you his collection of Alan Watts CDs because they really “opened him up”.

⁸ This is why you might see traditional Turkic and Mongolian religions referred to as shamanism, despite the fact that most people interact with shamans rarely and only for specific reasons, and more often seek community leaders or other specialists for daily practices. Heck, at various points throughout history such as the height of the Mongol Empire or the 20th century Burkhanism movement among the Altai, there was even strident anti-shamanist sentiment among political elites and common people that drastically reshaped religious practice.

Spirits & Spookiness: OD&D (1974-1977)

Original Dungeons & Dragons (1974)

Cover of the famous White Box reprint.

There’s no better place to start off than the Original Dungeons & Dragons: the 1974, 3-volume publication of D&D, popularly known as the “White Box” set, so-named for the iconic packaging it was sold in during its 1976 reprint. It was technically not its own standalone game, but rather a fantasy roleplaying supplement/rules expansion for Gygax’s previous tabletop wargame, Chainmail. Indeed, the booklet assumes the reader is familiar with wargaming already and periodically refers back to rules found in the Chainmail book without elaboration.

OD&D began the curious tradition of assigning each level of each character class a corresponding title that the character would presumably be known by within the fictional world of the game. Some of these are quite sensible for the fiction OD&D had in mind, while others feel more and more peculiar the older the game gets. For example a 1st-level Cleric is called an Acolyte, while an 8th-level Fighting-Man is given the pulp fiction’y moniker of Superhero, and a 10th-level Magic-User is a Necromancer regardless of what types of magic they actually use.¹

To talk about shamans, we first have to talk about those clerics.

The original cleric was heavily inspired by medieval depictions of Christian warrior-priests like Odo of Bayeux anor Archbishop Tilpin, who as their legends say occasionally waded into battle for king and country and whatnot. Many of these portrayals are fictitious, including the idea that they wielded blunt instruments in order to circumvent their priestly vows against “shedding blood” through one of the most absurd loopholes I’ve ever heard of. If you know what blunt force trauma can do to bone and soft tissues, you know it ain’t bloodless.

Despite this close association with Crusades-era Catholicism, clerics also filled in for other sorts of priests or holy figures. In the early days this was mostly limited to the vaguely Greco-Roman, very henotheistic depiction of polytheism depicted in in D&D. But as printed D&D material expanded and covered a wider range of real-world mythology as well as fantasy tropes, the clerical umbrella would also widen. Keep that in mind going forward.

The full list of Cleric titles is Acolyte (1), Adept (2), Village Priest (3), Vicar (4), Curate (5), Bishop (6), Lama (7), and Patriarch (8). Patriarch is also the title for any cleric of 9th or 10th level. Most of these are real positions taken from various denominations of Christianity, with the rather visible exception of Lama, (which is a title that originates in Tibetan Buddhism and merely indicates a “teacher”).

At least, those are the titles for heroic Clerics on the side of Law, one of the three moral alignments in D&D that were inspired by the cosmologies of Poul Anderson and to a lesser extent Michael Moorcock.

The way the DNA from those two cosmologies mixed to inspire part of D&D’s deserves an entire essay of its own, but here I will simplify it greatly: Law is shorthand for order, civilization, community, honor, the Greater Good, and all of that, whereas Chaos is synonymous with hyper-individuality, selfishness, cruelty, destruction, insanity, and diabolic evil. Neutrality between them is mild indifference or naturalism at best, and an obnoxious brand of both-sidesy centrism at worst.

Back in OD&D there were no Neutral Clerics, at least not above 6th level. They must pick a side in the cosmic battle between Law and Chaos, and stick with it. Clerics of Law are just plain Clerics, whereas Clerics of Chaos are referred to as Anti-Clerics.

Anti-Clerics exemplify the early D&D understanding that Chaos = Evil & Destruction. They are overwhelmingly depicted as villains who consort with monsters and the undead. They worship malicious gods or demons. They use the same list of spells as regular Clerics, only perverted and reversed.

Reversible spells are spells that can have their effects inverted; a reversed Cure Light Wounds spell deals 1d6+1 damage rather than healing it, a Protection from Evil spell becomes Protection from Good, etc. Therefore, an Anti-Cleric is one whose nature is not to heal or aid others. They can only harm, curse, spread darkness and disease, and otherwise do villainous things.

Because of this, the Anti-Cleric level titles are as follows: Evil Acolyte, Evil Adept, Shaman, Evil Priest, Evil Curate, Evil Bishop, Evil Lama, Evil High Priest.²

Every single title in that list includes the descriptor “Evil” except for Shaman, which implies that shamans are automatically evil and chaotic within the fiction of OD&D, to the point of not needing such a qualifier. The shaman of D&D started off as nothing more than an evil shadow of a 3rd-level cleric, synonymous with the spooky robed cultists lurking in the shadows, waiting for low-level adventurers to come along and foil their vague but undoubtedly nefarious plans.

Think of the creepy schmucks from the 1970 novella The Eye of Argon as a literary example of this kind of shaman-as-cultist. Or don’t. Maybe just don’t. The awful writing in that story is funny at first, but it wears on you kind of quick. There’s also a lot more male slut-shaming in that story than your average sword & sorcery romp.

What jumps out at me about this is that the first-ever appearance of shamans in D&D was kind of a crap deal, all told. They were exclusively villains unless you were consciously running a mixed or all-evil party, with nothing meaningful to differentiate them from other priests except class level.

On the other hand, it’s kind of hilarious that some form of shaman was technically playable long before many other iconic D&D classes were first printed. This was before paladins, rangers, and bards. Heck, even the thief class didn’t exist yet!

I don’t mean to suggest that this naming convention was done with malicious intent. In all likelihood, Gary and/or Arneson were just struggling to come up with enough synonyms for all the lists they made for themselves, and they really didn’t give much thought to how shaman (or any other title) was being used in this context, except in terms of what sounded like a proper escalation in power and prestige from the last.

But intentional or not, this little list helped set the tone for how shamans would appear in D&D for years to come. They put the 'spooky' in spirits & spookiness from day one.

Other OD&D Shamans

Other than that cameo in the first booklet, shamans didn’t appear much in OD&D or its first-party supplements:

Pictish Shamans from R.E. Howard’s Conan universe are given a monster stat block in Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes where they are described again as evil priests, and given the spellcasting power of Lamas.³

A few early issues of the Dragon and Dungeon magazines that were directly written by Gary & Co reference shamans, though not in much depth, and about half of those shamans are actually android faux-mystic charlatans from Metamorphosis Alpha.⁴

I’m actually surprised that this was the closest thing to the “shaman-as-charlatan” trope that I found in my research. This flavor of shaman stereotype is portrayed in media as nothing more than a self-interested huckster using their mysticism to browbeat their superstitious tribespeople, who are invariably depicted as too gullible and primitive to recognize the smoke-and-mirrors act.

Part of that is a holdover from colonialism, but I get the feeling part of it is also informed by the experiences of naïve modern Westerners who got conned by the global industry of plastic shamans that cropped up in the wake of said colonialism.

Oh, and while we’re off topic, let’s talk about druids real quick.

Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry (1976)

Another important foundation for this project is the Druid class, which first debuted two years after OD&D in Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry. Technically they first appeared in the original Greyhawk booklet as a sort of hybrid cleric/magic-user NPC with limited shapeshifting, but Wizardry is where they became playable.

The Druid began as a Neutral sub-class of the Cleric, which as mentioned earlier did not exist in the base game. They are priests of Nature, more concerned with plants and animals than their fellow humans (as all druids were human back in the day). They tend to stay aloof from mortal matters, protect forests and other areas of great natural importance, and strike against despoilers with a vengeance.⁵

Theirs is an identity that has gone virtually unchanged over the last 40+ years through so many iterations of the game, among so many other classes that have gone through major thematic changes, such as the shaman(s) we will be discussing. I can’t tell if the strong and stable identity of the druid class is in spite of or because of the hyperspecific-yet-obscure nature of druids in real life.

Historically, druids were the elite members of a priestly class found in many Iron Age Celtic societies. We don’t know a ton about their functions or rites because what little written evidence of them that we have comes from Roman elites, who had it in their interest to smear the druids, because they were kind of trying to conquer the Celtic peoples at the time. Gaius Julius Caesar personally got in on the dunking-on-druids game, and his account of the druids is the most famous as a result. He played up the human sacrifice that may or may not have occurred in Continental Celtic cultures, and made them seem as nefarious and mysterious as was convenient for him.⁶

Modern archaeology has given us a somewhat more nuanced view of the druids, but there’s still so much we don’t know. And that knowledge vacuum allowed early fiction writers to ascribe whatever the hell they wanted to druids, up to and including the forest magic and animal transformations so iconic to druid character classes today.

The reason I bring druids up is because the trope of a nature-priest has, at times, a lot of overlap with the fantasy idea of a shaman. Because of this, later iterations of the shaman that we’ll see will often have some amount of DNA from the druid- a sort of thematic cross-pollination that I find intriguing.

I think it also explains why shamans have never had the same kind of presence and identity as other classes in D&D: with the distinct flavors of cleric and druid cemented very early on, shamans often occupy an edge of the Venn Diagram between them. I think that goes a long way toward explaining why shamans only ever appear in splatbooks or sequels to core materials, when they appear in an edition at all.

Original D&D and its supplements stayed in print until ‘79, but by then it had been overtaken by newer versions of D&D that were released as it became a popular and recognizable brand across America. 

Next up, we will look at how D&D branched as a property, and the long-term consequences that had.

Or you can click here to return to the Shamans in D&D archive.

¹ Arneson, Dave & Gary Gygax. Dungeons & Dragons Volume I: Men & Magic. 1974. P. 16.

² Men & Magic, P. 34.

³ Kuntz, Robert, James Ward. Dungeons & Dragons Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes. 1976. P. 47-48.

⁴ For those who don’t know, Metamorphosis Alpha was a science fiction RPG about space colonists and mutants on a generational spaceship in the far future. It was also published by TSR, and its 1st edition heavily utilized OD&D rules like ability scores and its combat system. Excerpts from the campaign played by Gygax and his son sometimes appeared in early issues, back when the magazines catered to pulp and sci-fi as much as to fantasy.

⁵ Blume, Brian, Gary Gygax. Dungeons & Dragons Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry. 1976. P. 1-2.

⁶ Gaius Julius Caesar. Commentarii de Bello Gallico. 58-49 BCE. Trans. McDevitte, W. A., W. S. Bohn. 1859. Book VI.

Spirits & Spookiness: A History of Shamans in D&D

An explanation, justification, and archive for my ongoing survey of the depictions of shamans and shamanism throughout the history of Dungeons & Dragons. Scroll down to the bottom to skip the cruft and get to the posts.

The Un-Pivot to Video

A few years ago I got the idea to try and start a YouTube channel, partially in emulation of the video essayists I put on a pedestal so much, and partly so I could hop on that sweet, sweet 15¢ a month ad revenue gravy train. So I bought a microphone, downloaded some software, and started writing a script.

Obviously it never worked out because I don't have any production or editing skills or on-mic charisma, and I can't speak for more than 2 minutes without the fire station or car wash across the street exploding into background static. But the script for what was to be my inaugural video was more than half-written, and I haven't deleted it from Google Docs yet.

That video was going to be about shamans. Specifically, the portrayal of shamans and shamanism throughout the history of official (and semi-official) Dungeons & Dragons publications.

I've been obsessed with shamans ever since they first appeared to me in early 2000s pop-fantasy games and visual media. Usually they were mangled beyond all recognition of their origins, but I still found them interesting for what they were. Over time that interest led me to research the reality behind them and come to a fuller appreciation of the character archetype and real-world religious practices both- which gives me some faint hope that comically historically-inaccurate movies are not the societal doom I've always feared they are.

From the surprisingly early appearance of the concept right at the game's inception all the way through the '80s, '90s, and early 21st century, shamans appear haphazardly and without a consistent class identity like clerics or wizards enjoy. Yet they keep popping up throughout D&D's history as generations of writers revisit the concept to tweak, fiddle, or completely transform it again and again.

I find that story really compelling, and not just because it lies at an intersection between my fixations on history, fantasy games, and real world mythology. There's something tantalizing about shamanism and animism through the eyes of a lot of Western fantasy media that undeniably has an Orientalist aspect, but it can't be entirely explained away with just that. There's a complex relationship at play here that's worth exploring. And I figured I'd try, in a medium that is more conducive to going back and correcting mistakes than video, where everything is written in digital stone barring a highly disruptive reupload.

So I'm taking the old script and editing and carving it up into chunks that you can read at your leisure, rather than strapping in and listening to my nasally caffeine voice for I-don't-know-how-many combined hours.

This project freely weaves in and out of the history of D&D as a whole as well, so you might pick up a couple of fun facts along the way, like behind-the-scenes legal battles or Gary Gygax's coke habit.

Fun stuff!

Disclaimer

A quick disclaimer before we get into it: I am not a trained anthropologist. I went to school for historical studies, and while I might have familiarity with the ethnographic histories of cultures where shamanism can be found, that does not mean anything I say here is a replacement for an up-to-date professional anthropological take on any of the complex topics I bring up.

Note also that a strictly academic perspective cannot fill in for the perspectives of the indigenous peoples who are so often muffled when they are written about from the outside by scholars and fiction writers alike. Those too are perspectives which I lack as a shut-in of mostly Euro-American upbringing (with just a dash of Puerto Rican for seasoning, if I’m being generous).

I bring these points up not to shield myself from criticism, but to welcome it- I'm bound to make mistakes or misrepresent things. My sources are often general, and sometimes decades old (but at least most of them are of the 21st century). I'm a novice writing about two intersecting interests, and I want to be as accurate and open to discussion as possible.

Another structural bit to bring up ahead of time is that I will be mostly limiting myself to official, first-party D&D publications, whoever that party happens to be at that moment in history. I will briefly touch on magazines like Dragon and Dungeon when relevant, but if I allowed the scope to expand much past that point, this project would start to bloat with a lot of redundancies. Not to mention it would never be finished.

Let's Go!

Now that I’ve thoroughly disqualified myself, I feel comfortable getting into it.

We have a long road ahead, and lots of academia to discuss before we get to the actual fantasy bits, because this is my show and I want to be thorough. I'm publishing two posts to start off, but after that you can probably expect a new chapter every few weeks or once-per-month until we hit modern times, and I run out of material. You will see the word “shaman” written so many times that it will cease to be a word with meaning and become just letters and sounds.

So join me for a ramble as I look through past and present presentations of the shaman and shamanism throughout the many eras of Dungeons & Dragons, the World’s Oldest RPG.

Or whatever stupid prestige euphemism Wizards of the Coast is trying to get us to call it to guard their precious copyright these days. Honestly, it's like there’s a bigger taboo against writing the letters “D&D” than there is against speaking of the Devil, or Candleja-

Spirits & Spookiness: A History of Shamans in D&D

Nomad Shaman by Jason Engle,
Dragonlance: Age of Mortals

Entries in chronological order:

• Preface: Etymologies & Definitions of "Shaman"
• OD&D (1974-1979)

Bridgetown on Bundle of Holding

For the handful of readers who don't use any form of social media, I wanted to let you know that my book Bridgetown (as well as a bunch of other great books) are part of the latest Bundle of Holding for TROIKA! 

There are 10 days left at the time of posting. Can't believe I took this long to make a post here about it!

Bundle of Holding is a lot like your other electronic product bundling websites; grab a bunch of related games or books or other pieces of media all at once for a crazy-good discount. This comes with the added bonus of everything sold by BH being DRM-free, and a chunk of the proceeds going to charity.

Less than $10US gets you a $90 value including the full core Troika book line, Swann Castle, Goblin Mail, and of course Bridgetown. If you spend $19.98, you get another 6 books added to the bundle including big names like The Big Squirm and Slate & Chalcedony. So if you've been waiting to jump into Troika or want to gift-bomb a friend of yours who might be interested in it, now's a great time to start or expand a collection.

My cowriter TheLawfulNeutral and I are also splitting the profits Bridgetown makes 50/50 because our publisher David over at Technical Grimoire is pretty cool, so buy the bundle if you want to support us in making... whatever the heck you call the stuff we make!

The Collector

I think I've mentioned here or elsewhere that I listen to a lot of dungeon synth. It occupies the chunk of musical bandwidth I have leftover when I'm done listening to all the Mongolian throat singing, lo-fi jazz, parody covers, royalty-free rock tracks or themes to anime I've never watched that I hear in the backgrounds of video essays, and whatever TikTok videos my SO sends me.

Dungeon synth has its origins in the harsh and sometimes hateful black metal and dark ambient music scenes of the '90s. But the genre has since grown, matured, and experimented far beyond that to encompass a huge range of subgenres with porous and overlapping margins, as the case eventually is with all types of music. Whether you need to unwind to the sounds of nature, curl up with some tea to some cozy wintery noises, find a soundtrack for your tabletop game tonight, take an inadvisable amount of substances and mentally transcend to outer space, or just be a neurodivergent little boy with a fixation on Tolkien for a while, dungeon synth has a flavor for you.

Recently, I've been listening to a creator called Witch Bolt, who seems to have exploded into existence and popularity all of a sudden after releasing like 7 albums within the span of a few months earlier this year. In fact, in the time I've spent writing this post I had to go back and add that they just released another album.

Witch Bolt is decidedly in the ambient/nature synth subgenre, but each album has a unique flavor that I've thus far enjoyed. I'd say I like them almost as much as DIM, who might be my favorite artist in the scene. Shoutout to Tales Under The Oak and all their froggy excellence, too.

Witch Bolt's most recent second-most-recent album is The Collector, which combines moody soundscapes with some very delicate instrumental touches I keep coming back to.

It's also got a pretty solid album cover.

But I'm not just here to talk about the music. The Collector has a short description attached which, alongside the track titles, turns it into a concept album with a plot of sorts. It reads as follows:

"Witch Bolt's seventh release, The Collector, is the story of a nomadic figure navigating the boundaries that separate the planes of existence. The Collector gathers overlooked fragments of nature and humanity, bestowing upon them a renewed honor and purpose.

Through their mystical craftsmanship, they reveal the inherent dignity concealed within the humble.

The Collector scatters these creations, weapons, armor, treasures, imbued with enchantments across the land and in the paths of those deemed worthy. The Collector is a beacon of hope and renewal."

I was smitten by this concept right away. From playing the part of lonely, wandering god to a being associated with the lucky discovery of magic items, the Collector feels tailor-made to appear in someone's tabletop campaign. Which got me wondering how there aren't more gods like that in existing games where roving adventurers rolling on loot tables in weird and out-of-the-way places is a fundamental pillar of the play experience. Certainly there are hundreds of deities of luck, or craftsmanship, or wanderers, but you almost never get all three of those portfolios in one.

So, I decided to fiddle around and rectify that by doing a little god writeup of my own.

I'm doing this using a fun and flexible format I stole from As the Gods Demand, a system-agnostic and level-less divine magic supplement where anyone can become a cleric. It's by the excellent art-friend and bagel gremlin Charles Ferguson-Avery, and you should definitely check it out if you like more eldritch and inhuman takes on tabletop deities.

But considerably less spooky and severe than them is our friend of the day, the Collector.

The Collector, Beacon of Hope & Renewal

There once lived a quiet, gentle, and very shy thing. Their zest for life was only matched by their unease around other living things. They wished to see the world, but not to be seen. So they wandered in secret, keeping to backroads and the silent gulfs between realms.

But even out there, amidst the beauty of the forgotten and the gracefully crumbling, they still happened upon other souls. They came in search of quiet solitude, a balm for their woes amid a life of hardship and pain. But in seeking out eternal stillness, they stirred that little thing's heart to action. A yearning to help filled them until it threatened to burst, and so they poured it out into the rubble and ruin of that forgotten place.

To their surprise, that tender care imbued the things they touched with strength, dignity, and renewed purpose. Or perhaps, they merely helped bring those innate qualities back up to the surface, through the layers of time and neglect. The wandering thing went about gathering these blessings together, before scattering them in their wake, just ahead of those lost and lonesome souls.

A quiet joy like never before filled them, and they at last knew their own purpose. Even now, the Collector wanders the spheres in search of forgotten things in need of a home, and forgotten beings in need of hope.

The Borrowers

The Collector has no organized clergy, and those who behave as priests would never call themselves such. Instead, they have admirers. People who long ago caught the Collector's eye, and who took notice of them in turn. They see the worth and beauty in what the nomad does, and seek to aid their cause however they can.

So they wander the land as pilgrims and sightseers in search of overlooked places, things, and people. They carry with them the Collector's gifts, knowing that they keep them in their possession only as a passing thing, until the item's true purpose is revealed by time and circumstance. Then, they secret their treasures into the paths of the worthy-in-need. In short they are not keepers, but mere Borrowers.

Initiation: Gifts Left Behind

To become a Borrower, you must first catch the Collector's attention, and then come to the realization that they exist at all. This is easier said than done, considering how discreet and willing to let others take credit for their acts the Collector is. But once that is all said and done, the act of cementing one's friendship with the Collector is quite straightforward: sacrifice something precious.

This item can't merely be powerful, magical, or materially valuable. It must hold great personal significance to you- both you the character, and you the player. It must represent something about your life, experiences, and/or worldview. Family heirlooms, mementos, childhood toys, or tried-and-true pieces of equipment with their own inferred personalities and nicknames are common selections.

You must hide this object in an out-of-the-way but not completely inaccessible location, such as tucked into a hollow in a tree stump off a dirt road, or buried in the earth of a shallow cave mouth. In time the Collector will find your offering and consider it carefully, before imbuing it with new qualities and leaving it in the hands of a future someone who dearly needs it.

You will never know what your sacrifice does for that stranger, and they will never know it was you who aided them. Nor will they ever know the history of this item or the way it was cherished. Instead they will give it a whole new life, and in doing so kindle that beacon of hope and renewal, to be cast into the future in turn.

Such is faith.

Daily Invocation: A Quiet Prayer

• Do not hoard resources or possessions from those in need.
• Maintain humility in the face of gifts and good fortune.
• Do not reveal the Collector's existence to outsiders.
• Live life humbly and surreptitiously.

Initial Miracle: Journey Home

Borrowers are wanderers who have no one place they call home; rather, home is wherever they are most needed.

You may divine the location of the nearest forgotten little thing. The miracle can specifically look for an abandoned location like a ruin, old den, or shrine, a long-lost object, or a lonesome creature, or it can look for any/all of the above. You know the direction and distance to your target "as the crow flies", but not the exact path needed to reach it, such as through a maze.

Rites

I Pass

Sometimes, we are what the Collector places in the paths of others.

You must stop wandering long enough to help someone through a particularly dark time in their life. Merely rescuing them from a dangerous situation is not enough; you must come to know them and their struggles, befriend them, and help them to rise above their hardships. Then you must let go, and allow the friendship to conclude so that you each may return to your respective lives. When you bid farewell to one another with finality and carry with you all the bittersweet memories and experiences into the future, the rite is complete.

Miracle: In Praise of Gentleness

You may sooth the target's woes, removing all natural or supernatural fear, doubt, anger, or other negative emotions from them and replacing them with a contemplative calm that grants the target Advantage on their next Saving Throw related to the mind, emotions, mental state, etc.

You may instead target two or more groups who are about to come to blows with this miracle, in which case they are dissuaded from physical violence for a number of hours equal to your Hit Dice.

Wandering Artisan

In emulation of our foulweather benefactor, we furnish the worthy in need with the fruit of our sweat, labor, and love.

You must craft an object of surpassing quality for one of your skill level; if you are a novice at a given craft it must be competent, if you're a master it must be exceedingly high quality, if creating magic items is well within your ability it must be truly extraordinary, etc. This step may take months or more by itself, and call for you to find and obtain rare materials.

Once it is completed, the item must be anonymously donated to a worthy cause or person whom you believe will use it for good. You must be present to witness them doing so, but may not betray the item's origins while in their company. The rite is complete when the bearer of your gift accomplishes (or at least tries their best at) a feat that aligns with the Collector's goals.

Miracle: Treasures Left

You may spend some of the goodwill you've earned with the Collector to receive a short "advance" of sorts on their gifts. Choose Providence or Luck:

Providence allows you to stumble upon just the sort of mundane or low-magic item you'd need in a given encounter for a specific purpose, such as a healing potion to save a downed companion or a replacement weapon for one that's snapped. The item lasts until it is consumed or the encounter ends, at which point it vanishes when you take your eyes off it.

Luck allows you to reroll once on a random loot table and take whichever option you prefer. Note that the referee doesn't have to disclose everything about the two choices (curses, specific magical effects, etc).

Extremist/Heretical Rite: Humble Harvest

These are the Collector's gifts. They are given, but never earned. If someone abuses them, is it not our duty to intercede?

You must dispense with the Collector's gentle discretion for a time, and take the fight to those who would take advantage of their kindness. This person must be a tyrant of some sort who has enriched or empowered themselves using magical items that ultimately came from the Collector. Merely defeating them is not enough; you must see their every means of effecting evil systematically dismantled and neutralized.

You must personally disenchant or destroy the misused item(s) in their presence while explaining to them precisely how powerless and wrong they are. Once the former tyrant is thoroughly broken and made an example of, the rite is complete. Whether or not they can be convinced to make amends is outside the scope of this rite.

Miracle: Desolation

You may permanently snuff out all enchantments and effects on a single item held by the target, rendering it a completely nonmagical object. If the item is a powerful artifact (or other object of huge plot significance that would cause your referee a real headache to destroy just like that), its powers are instead suppressed for a number of weeks equal to your Hit Dice.

Favor: Honored Things

• Encourage others to give and share resources freely.
• Disperse ill-gotten hoards, with force if necessary.
• Undermine those who deny others peace and dignity.
• Pass another object of great value on to the Collector.

Avenger of Ymir (GLOG Class)

Ymir. Brimir. Aurgelmir. Midgard's Seed. The Gelid Mother. The Burning Father. Child of Ginnungagap. Keeper of Auðumbla. The Slaughtered One. Æslings' Bloodied Clay. These and many other names they are known by, but none can begin to describe the totality of that primordial being. They were there from the beginning, and pieces of them will remain long after we've died, until the merciful fires of Age-End come at last to sweep away all the rot and corruption the gods have heaped upon us.

Ymir was born from the primordial void, and in turn they gave birth to the first peoples. They are the ancestor of all jǫtnar, it is well-known. But lesser-known, hidden, perhaps even profane to the ears of those listening, is that they are also the ancestor of all gods. For whose daughter could the first god Búri have married, had Ymir not first birthed her from their right armpit?

And so it was that when the rapacious young upstarts Odin, Vili, and Vé decided to strike Ymir down, it was not only the first murder; it was also the first familicide, that terrible evil that the gods punish us for so severely- and no wonder they do, the hypocrites. For when they slew their great-grandparent, they set in motion all the world's evils, the midst of which we still live in to this day.

They butchered Ymir's corpse, mangled them beyond recognition and fashioned their pieces like sick trophies into the plaything that we all know and hate today. The whole of the earth is thanks to Ymir's flesh turned to stone; the encircling seas their blood, which once roiled and sprayed so high that it threatened to destroy even the haughty gods themselves. Such was the terror of that first sin.

Though they drowned the world in blood and nearly extinguished all memory of Ymir, it persisted. One jǫtunn called Bergelmir and his kin survived, bobbing on the blood-sea in a grain trough until they crashed upon the newly-risen land. He is the spiritual founder of our order; the first to keep the memory alive, the first to spite the gods and their plaything.

The world is painful, grim, and violent. But unlike the petulant Æslings in their gilded halls, we will tell you that things could have been different. That things can be different. Better. A world without walls or feuds, gods or tyrants. A world where life is not predicated upon butchery, nor prosperity upon suffering.

But that change will only come with fire and blood, and a lot of dead gods.

Come and join us, if you've the fury for it. Come and honor Ymir's sacrifice with one hand while avenging it with the other.

What say you, o vengeful?

Illustrations of Ymir's life and death by Lorenz Frølich.

Avenger of Ymir

Starting Equipment: spear, leather armor, runecarving set (for cursing the gods).
Starting Skills: Jǫtunn-Ken and War-Lore. Also, roll on the adjacent table.

A: Earth from Flesh, Sea from Blood
B: Stone from Bone, Forest from Hair
C: Sky from Skull, Cloud from Brains
D: Unto the Butchers

You gain +1 Attack and Intimidate vs the gods and their servants for each Avenger of Ymir template you possess.

A: Earth from Flesh

From Ymir's flesh the earth was made. It sustains and nourishes all life, whether it has the blessings of Jǫrð or not. Through Ymir's death, you live. You gain -1 to rolls on the Death & Dismemberment Table per template. You may also gain advantage (or +4) to a Constitution roll once per day.

A: Sea from Blood

From Ymir's blood the seas were mixed. They almost drowned the cosmos, but they will not drown you. You gain the ability to swim and hold your breath for 1 hour per template per day. You may also gain advantage (or +4) to a Dexterity roll once per day.

B: Stone from Bone

From Ymir's bones all stone was wrought. They are the bedrock of all things without which we'd all be floating in Ginnungagap, and you emulate their strength. Reduce all incoming damage by 1 point per template. You may also gain advantage (or +4) to a Strength roll once per day.

B: Forest from Hair

From Ymir's hair the forests grew, clothing the world in green and deep shadows. You know that savagery and beauty lurk in the verdant depths, for you are both. You may vanish from sight in natural surroundings while standing still, and move unobstructed by undergrowth. You may also gain advantage (or +4) to a Charisma roll once per day.

C: Sky from Skull

From Ymir's skull the sky was forged. It cages the heavens, yet within it you have found freedom. You may fly at twice your Movement speed for 1 minute per template per day. You may also gain advantage (or +4) to an Intelligence roll once per day.

C: Cloud from Brains

From Ymir's brain the clouds flew. They obscure all sight but yours, hide secrets from all but you. You can see clearly through all clouds, fog, magical darkness, etc. You may also gain advantage (or +4) to a Wisdom roll once per day.

D: Unto the Butchers

From Ymir's death all evils sprung. Avenge this great injury in the only way those butchers will understand.

You may fashion the corpse of a fervent servant of the gods into a single, perfectly functional item or object no larger than their body.

You may fashion the corpse of a powerful priest or sacred animal/monster into something the same way as above, except that the resulting item is magical.

You may fashion the corpse of a god into an artifact of world-shattering significance, or perhaps turn it into a demiplane.

1d6	Avenger of Ymir Skills
1	You did errands and reagent runs for an old, arthritic troll-wife long ago. She passed some of her lore on to you. Gain a random potion and the "Medicine" skill.
2	They tried to hang you in the name of Old One-Eye for your blaspheming once. Once. Those who lived, regretted it. Gain a length of rope, scars, and the “Acrobatics” skill.
3	You lived among the jǫtnar for a time, and learned how it is useful that most fools believe them all to be huge, ravenous frost giants. Gain a token of friendship, and the "Disguise" skill.
4	You met a human as unafraid of spiting the Æsir as you, and during your commiseration they taught you the finer points of living goðlauss. Gain a defaced idol and the "Philosophy" skill.
5	You went on pilgrimage to the boneyard of a titanic jǫtunn said to be so old they once met Ymir. Gain a fossilized memento (medium weapon, bludgeoning or piercing), and increased comfort with the abyssal gulfs of time.
6	You once rescued a condemned seiðmaðr from drowning on a skerry. Gain a random cantrip from a random wizard school and a litany of creative expletives.

Land of Mist IS what MystarAIN'T

Now that I've grabbed your attention and/or murderous intent with that awful title, I'd like to share something better with you: Land of Mist for Old-School Essentials by Joseph Quinn and BirdEnuf Games, which I picked up on sale recently.

I at some point this year I took a greater interest in OSE. If BFRPG is any indicator, I like more 'traditional' OSR games when they freely blend Basic and Advanced rules, and have a healthy 3rd-party scene that spits out mechanics and ideas niftier or at least better-baked than anything I would come up with on the fly, and OSE does both.

Land of Mist is the first setting written specifically for OSE that I've read, so it's unfair to say it's my favorite (it'd also technically be my least favorite). But I do like it. And that's for a very simple, weirdly specific reason: It's Mystara, without 90% of the Mystara.

For those who need a refresher or never knew to begin with, Mystara was the flagship setting for BECMI. It's set in a world that looks suspiciously similar to Earth a few hundred million years ago, and it's full to bursting with that 1980s flavor of kitchen sink fiction bordering on what we might today call gonzo fantasy. There're feudal kingdoms, magitech elves, a hollow world full of living fossils, a god who used to be a bespectacled nuclear physicist, etc. It's sometimes good, often dumb, and always goofy.

This zero-context art sums it up about as well as anything else can.

Land of Mist is a tremendously slimmed down world in that same whimsical vein. Some reviews say it's too sparse, but I'd say it's more honed to a needle's point. It emphasizes the "lost world" aspect of Mystara that I find more interesting than the surface world, which outside of the occasional gonzo regions is often a whole lot of fantasy counterpart cultures from various points in human history, and theme park versions at that.

The titular Land of Mist is a continent surrounded on all sides by a wall of sentient mist hundreds of feet high that nothing can circumvent. Passing through the mist erases all your memories of the outside (or inside) world until you cross back through the way you came, so the island is completely isolated from the rest of the world. Even information like written words or pictorial depictions get scrambled on their way through. It's a bit like an immaterial, non-malevolent version of the net cast by the Dark Powers from Ravenloft, although the actual motivations of the mist are up to the referee to decide.

Populating the continent (which is just called the Land) are all manner of odd folks, alongside the presumed existence of humans and standard demi-humans. There are aquatic elves, nonevil drow who venerate the moon while still remaining mostly subterranean, beastfolk who are descendants of the progenitors of all humanoid species like orcs and goblins, gremlins who have an always-on AoE aura of chaos and shenanigans, and somewhat uniquely for an OSR game, human variants that still gain access to most of the classes and options as regular humans: the Lilliputian bittles and their Neanderthal-adjacent brute rivals.

Folks familiar with Hollow World, the Mystara sub-setting dealing with the, well, hollow world, might recognize the beastfolk as a take on the beastmen. They are the exact same type of extremely mutable ur-humanoids, except here they weren't fashioned from the souls of evil people by a god, they aren't Inuit-coded, and they aren't locked in magical cultural stasis underground by a different god the way TSR's were.

Speaking of gods, LoM uses the same system of mortals ascended to become Immortals as in Mystara. There's even a guide halfway through the book for creating your very own cult and ascending to join the pantheon, assuming you can survive the Save vs Death and get the other Immortals of your alignment to vouch for you. And you don't even need to slog to 36th level to take a crack at it.

Classes available to humans (or certain other species using Advanced rules) are also dead ringers of old Mystara content. These include the Mystic (a monk by any other name) from the Rules Cyclopedia, the Forester (arcane woodsman warrior who's buddied up with the elves) from Dawn of the Emperors boxed set, and the Rake (a non-thief thief with some swashbuckling flare) from the same. There's a pacifistic Desert Druid too, but I don't know what that's a reference to, if any. There's also a whole subsystem for Hedge Witches that gives very limited casting (max 3rd-level spells) to any character who takes an additive XP cost to level up, similar to the shamans and wokani née wiccans from BECMI; both names even make a return as specific traditions of hedge magic.

There's a host of other optional rules besides hedge witches, including playing a human afflicted with lycanthropy, playable "enlightened" monsters who gain levels, mist dragon riding, oft-maligned underwater adventuring, craftable spell runes similar to specialized scrolls/potions, and spiritual totem animals that anyone (including NPCs and commoners) can spend HP to summon for a brief time, similar in spirit to but more overtly magical than the animal totems of the Atruaghin Clans.

The language for summoning a totem animal is a little ambiguous to my eyeballs, but I asked about it on Drivethrurpg and Joseph Quinn clarified that you spend HP on a 1:1 ratio to give a summoned spirit animal that much, up to the max they could have from their normal hit dice. You also then share any hit point loss that the animal takes while summoned. This makes it a poor mechanic for creating say, a beefy animal companion like a bear to fight alongside unless you're comfortable with putting yourself very close to death. But it also works quite well for summoning a temporary distraction or a pseudo-familiar, especially handy for small or stealthy animals you'd only need to spend 1 or 2 HP on.

Outside of these rules, a few new spells, and some artifacts, the book is quite light. This is because it foregoes the massive chapters of lore and gazetteering that Mystara was famous for. The island is broken up into a few regions and the populace into a few broad cultural groups, each with just a paragraph of fluff attached. The rest is up for the referee and their table to fill in as they see fit.

I get why that's a big negative for many people, I do. It makes the world feel emptier or less thematically concrete than something with more world-building right out the box like we're used to. But it's also somewhat freeing to not have to pick through hundreds of pages of history and demographic data about Glantri, Karameikos, or Thyatis to find the bits useful for your particular game.

LoM is more of a sandbox, but not in a truly trackless, empty way. I'd compare it to one of those fancy backyard sandboxes the neighbor kid whose dad was a contractor played in; one that has shapes or topography or fake dinosaur fossils embedded in the bottom, that offer guides and contours for you to then play around or on top of. And it's still 123 pages of content with illustrations and a collection of short stories for an easy $12 or less ($9 in my case), so even without deeper world-building I didn't feel cheated.

Speaking of the illustrations, the book has a pretty regular mix of old public domain sketches and commissioned art by Emily Eastman, Finny, and Tara Quinn, the other half of the Quinn duo. I like each of them for the different feels they evoke with their art; Emily and Finny have a style that reminds me of the better 3rd-party d20 books of the early 2000s before the Gold Rush hit, while Tara's creations  are real stand-out showstoppers that I can only describe as grotesquely cute. Or maybe cutely grotesque?

Gamblers? More like in shamblers.
... Alright, I apologize for that one.

All in all, I like LoM. It's a fun setting that does what it sets out to do and then leaves you space in which to easily drop your Tower Silveraxe or what other pulp adventures have you.

To answer the question I implied with that lazy pun back up at the top: Land of Mist is svelte.