Are children intuitive railroaders?

A couple of years ago, I was reading an article which discussed the tendency of children to ascribe purpose to everything and pondered if this effectively hardwired them to a theistic view of the universe. Whilst that is in itself a very interesting article and worth a look, it’s not what I want to discuss today, although I have purloined and slightly altered the title.

The recent account of the Christmas dungeon run by Junior Grognard will have shown just how railroady it was, although this is not to take anything away from his achievement in writing it and running it. All I’m saying is that there was a specific goal, a pre-determined path and no substantial deviation had been planned for.

This surprised me at the time, since he and his friends have been playing a very sandbox, player-agency driven campaign for a number of years and I had thought that this playing style might have rubbed off on him to a certain extent. The reasons why it hadn’t intrigued me.

It may be that since birth, children are exposed to story, either in the written format or in the televised version. The stories they encounter in this fashion are very linear; A leads to B, leads to C, concludes at D. There’s no concept of the possibility of alternative outcomes; the text is inviolable, created by an unseen source, presented as a given. When children begin to write or otherwise create their own stories, they often adhere to the beginning-middle-end format, not necessarily examining motivations but letting actions fuel their narratives. Indeed, to change anything about the narrative alters the end and this is not something that children find easy to contemplate unless alternative resolutions are addressed by a specific exercise. 

Since the emergent story is often hard to discern from the pre-planned, pre-existing version whilst running dungeons, particularly if the DM is skilled in making random events mesh seamlessly into a coherent and unfolding experience, the existence of other ways of creating stories may not even be apparent to child players. That the party was ultimately victorious against the giants in the fire chasms seems to them a logical outcome, their destiny fulfilled. Something that was always meant to be. Returning to the nexus points where specific decisions turned an entire adventure onto another (and unexpected) track can show how player agency affects outcomes but it seems not to sink into the child mind.

Another possibility is that sandbox is by its very nature formless, unpredictable and places a large amount of responsibility onto the players for their own fates. I don’t know about your family but in my experience, a childhood is not often the place where there is a lack of predictability, a feeling that anything could happen (good or bad) and a whole shed load of personal responsibility dumped on a child (well, not until they get into their teenage years.)  Junior Grognard gets up at a particular time, goes to school at a particular time, eats what I buy and cook, goes to bed at a particular time, takes holidays we choose, has specific areas where he enjoys freedom and others where he knows not to venture (often involving hot, fragile or sharp things). That might seem controlling but he’s only nine and he’s the only one we’ve got. Asking him to suddenly take on the responsibility for the choices, actions and fate of a character, even a fictional one is a big leap. It’s possibly why players become more adventurous in their teenage years as they begin to realise that what they do affects what happens to them and they are allowed to do more. A campaign where there are few choices, things are set up so that they know where they are going and the outcome is predetermined does give a fair degree of security.

There’s also the possibility that the child’s mind as it grows is just not equipped to handle the kinds of uncertainty and choice that sandbox presents. It’s documented that the frontal lobes don’t fully integrate into the brain as a whole until the early twenties. These are the parts of the brain that deal with outcomes, judgements and controls a person’s impulses and emotions. Being able to make informed choices from a range of options and to estimate the consequences of those choices is much harder without fully formed and integrated frontal lobes.  However, whilst the frontal lobes are the parts of the brain that take longest to develop, the nucleus accumbens is a part of the brain that plays an important role in reward and pleasure. Children are biologically prone to seeking out experiences and activities that give the most reward for the least amount of effort; one reason why child RPG players are very easy to hook with shiny magic items and piles of treasure, leading to XP!

So, given the preceding, is it worth running sandbox games with kids?  Should we just switch to adventure paths where the amount of player input is minimalised?  I’d say no; my players, as I’ve said have been adventuring in a world where, unbeknownst to them, events are being driven by the choices and actions that they take. That they don’t entirely realise the mechanics behind the world in which they are playing is immaterial; the philosophy of choice, player agency and lack of constrictive DMing is seeping into their still-forming minds and come the day when they can handle the concepts that underlie sandbox in its purest form, they will be ready for it, rather than addicted to the quick fix and the easy option.

That’s my take on the issue; I’d be interested to know if other DMs who play with kids in their groups have encountered the same things or if other evidence is going to blow my hypothesis out of the water.

The Pros and Cons of Pre-Rolling

Well, Team Adventure is about to set out on a long wilderness jaunt in pursuit of the renowned, much-desired and possibly entirely fictional Holy Sword. I know where it is and to get there, they’re going to have to cross a lot of hexes.

They’ve done this before, of course; long-term followers of this blog will recall their journey to the wood elves and their descent into the resprayed Lichway. One thing that marked the journey there and back again (see what I did there?) was a large number of random wilderness encounters that I diced up as they entered each hex. Even I didn’t know what was coming, how many of them there would be and the outcome of the encounter.

Now, however, I’m faced with a bit of a decision. Should I pre-roll the encounters so that the wait for me to consult the charts, roll the dice, do the calculations, determine the numbers and – inevitably – work out how much treasure said monsters are carrying, if at all is short-circuited?  They’d still meet the monsters, but I’d know in advance what was coming and be able to keep the game flowing.

Or should I stick with the old method, wherein I’ve as much idea as the party what’s lurking round the next tree or bluff?

There are arguments for and against each method.

Pre-rolling, as I’ve already said, speeds things up no end. The party can start counting the loot (assuming they win) almost as soon as the last monster has fled or hit the ground. I can also, if the monsters are intelligent, plan ambush or battle strategies, rather than just hurl them against the party in a head-on charge. I can prepare lairs if the party want to try and track the monsters back to their hidey hole. I can even work out a linking plot to make the encounter that little bit more interesting than ‘monster of the day’.

Of course, there is a problem with pre-rolling; I’m only human and these are kids I’m gaming with. Hell, I’d be as bad if it were adults. Although the DM is supposed to be a neutral facilitator of environment interaction, a party that’s been badly mauled by trolls is going to be in serious trouble if the dice decree a dragon flies over their heads. If I’ve pre-rolled the encounter but the party don’t know I have, I’m at liberty to fudge the results. To a sandbox extremist like myself, that’s something I don’t like to do deliberately but it may be that I find myself doing it unconsciously.

The only defence from accusations, either from oneself or the players, that one is somehow fudging (and it is worth recalling that fudging for one person can sometimes mean fudging against another) is to adhere rigidly to the will of the dice. I refer the reader back to one of the most insightful comments I’ve ever heard about sandbox, from the Great Sage Beedo “The dice are there to protect the DM from himself”.  Some of the most interesting and exciting situations in the Team Adventure campaign so far have arisen out of random encounters, which – when combined with the decisions that players have made based on those encounters – have generated entire plot strands. Had I intervened, even slightly, in the randomness of the roll or the decisions that the players made afterwards, things would have been different – no less enjoyable, perhaps but with a sneaking suspicion that the fate of the players was not entirely in their own hands.

Of course, even offering the players as wide a choice of options as possible still implies a certain amount of interference from the DM because he’s the one who chose and allocated those options in the first place.

It all comes down in the end to how much I, as a DM can trust myself to respect the oracular power of the dice, yet at the same time have access to the knowledge the dice might choose to impart ahead of time. Just as life is the story we tell ourselves to make sense of the random events that happen to us, the true meaning of the events that random dice rolls set in motion becomes apparent long after the dice have stopped rolling across the table. 

My D&D Dream Table

Here’s the premise – you’ve got access to a time machine and you can go anywhere to recruit the Dream Table for your game (and it can be any game, not just D&D). Any real person, alive or dead is yours for the taking – the only condition is that they can’t already be associated with gaming; it’d just be too easy to say Gygax, Arneson and Holmes and I want something a little less predictable. So, who would you pick? What class would they play, how would they play it and what would they bring to the table in terms of sociability - and snacks?

Here’s my selection

Stephen Fry – Magic User

A seemingly bottomless pit of erudition and lore, he’d be able to cast lightning bolts even as he informed us about the temperature of the air around the bolt and the chances of being able to survive being struck by one. A consummate wordsmith, he has also been known to use the occasional fruity phrase so he’d be able to accompany his awesome magical attacks with choice bon mots and repartee. Whilst tweeting about it, probably.

Christopher Hitchens – Cleric

I see the Hitch playing a boozy, irreverent priest, who is by his very nature at odds with the hierarchy of his church, being more concerned with justice and good deeds than doctrine and power. Skirting the periphery of excommunication, he would also be vying with the magic user for the most eloquent performance at the table. And I’d welcome his contribution towards the refreshments as well!

Ian Botham – Fighter

Beefy by name, beefy by nature. If you want somebody who’s going to dig in their heels and fight to the last drop of blood to save a lost cause, this is the man to have at the table. He’ll be the last one in any retreat and as he’s a particularly awesome all-rounder, there won’t be a weapon or a tactical approach with which he’ll be unfamiliar.

Ray Mears – Ranger

Honestly, no handbook could anticipate what this guy could do with one wilderness and a sharp knife. Put him into a forest, come back the next day and he’ll have built a fortress. He seems like a genuinely nice guy, so I think he’d make the effort to get on with the others too. If he couldn’t get to the supermarket for snacks, I’d just send him into the woods behind my house and he’d be back half an hour later with enough for everybody.

Sorry, did I miss something (30 years ago)?

Just a quick question on the tail of all those posts on other blogs this week concerning the compatibility of Christianity and D&D.

I've noticed that more or less every one refers to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and the impact that this had on gamers. However, when I think back to my teenage years, I can't recall a single instance of this in my gaming life.

I know it's almost certainly that I'm a UK gamer rather than a US gamer, so the question for today is aimed at fellow Brits and is this:

Was there a Satanic Panic in the UK and I just missed it (being a sheltered little grognard in those days) or did we Brits manage to escape the lunacy?

Everything's better with pigs

Not sure why but every time I do a post and put in a picture of a boar, it seems to go straight to the top of my Popular Posts list and stay there for ages.

Let's see if this one does as well...

(maybe it'll be more popular than Hot Elf Chicks)

Would it be so terrible if I never rolled to hit again?

During my ongoing CoC pbem, I’ve been having a few thoughts about the raison d’etre of the adventures I'm running and those I'm planning.

For many, many weeks, the brave investigators have probed the mysteries, followed the clues, talked to the NPCs and been led a merry dance by the twists and turns of the plot. There’s only been one gunfight, and that lasted all of two rounds. And they seem to be loving it.

I’m also working on a module that is very light on combat. There’s a lot of location-based investigation, magic, weird goings-on and of course talking to lots and lots of people. And its follow-up will be similarly combat-light.

Even Death Frost Doom (to take one of the flagships of the OSR's output) is more about atmosphere and ambiance than sword-swinging and axe-hacking (although there is the potential for that). From the reviews, it seems to me that a careful party that is not too greedy and not too foolish can actually get in, get loot and get out again. With no combat.

When I was playing first time around in the good old days, it was taken for granted that we were there to kill things and take their stuff. D&D or Traveller, the tactics were the same, it was just the weapons that differed. Guys wanted bigger guns to make bigger bangs and blow bigger holes in bigger opponents.

However, recent anecdotal evidence points me towards a view that there is a sizeable proportion of players out there (it seems to be female gamers, but I'm sure that there are males who would agree) who would get just as much enjoyment out of a game where there is as little combat as possible, and the main thrust is on interaction, investigation and problem-solving using brain rather than brawn.

The raison d’etre of D&D and indeed Old School dungeons is exploration but it’s implicit in the rules and the way that the characters are established (hit points, armour class, weapons, damage, enemies whose first resort seems to be fighting, stats for monsters which list AC, HD, Att) that combat is going to be taking up a lot of that exploration-centred activity. Cure Light Wounds implies that wounds are going to be suffered, after all.

So I find myself thinking – am I shifting focus to a genre of role-playing that eschews violence? Is it a mark of getting old and finding continual hack-and-slay boring or am I undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift?

Being a writer, I'm aware that the main feature of any story is conflict - the same applies to adventures. In days gone by, perhaps we took that word a little too literally. I know that I did - although towards the end of my first stint of gaming, back in the late 1980s, we were starting to move towards a style of play whereby we felt that if we had to draw our swords, we had failed to achieve our ends successfully. Admittedly, that was a city-based campaign where the opportunities for role-playing non-combat situations were somewhat heavier on the ground than they might have been if we were exploring the wilderness.

In my gaming sessions with Junior Grognard, the mix for the Training Dungeon was combat and puzzles, physical obstacles and features that challenged his thinking abilities as much as his dice-rolling. Yet if I'm selling D&D to kids, it's going to be pitched at the "Are you a Warrior or a Wizard? Find out with Dungeons and Dragons" tagline level - hack 'em or zap 'em, it's still combat. Where's the alternative? For seven-year-olds, the level of patience and social sophistication needed to run an adventure on non-combat lines is still lacking - they want to hit things with things.

I suppose it all depends - there is no "right" balance - the tastes of the DM and his players, the type of campaign and terrain in which the action takes place all play a part in determining how often the cry goes up

"Roll to hit!"

What's your view? Do you like a good bit of bloodshed or is it better to talk than fight? Would adventures that are less combat-oriented help to attract women into the game? And should adventures be slanted towards situations that can only be solved by combat or should the non-violent options be given equal chance?

I need to talk about Howard

As you will probably know, I’m currently running a Call of Cthulhu pbem set in 1920. I’ve known Lovecraft’s work for years now but because of my involvement in this campaign, I’ve been steadily re-reading his stories over the past couple of months and have noticed that there’s a problem.

I’ve got no trouble recreating the look and feel of the 1920s – sources of research information and pictures are readily available on the internet and many a happy hour I’ve spent finding out the minutiae which will lend an air of historical verisimilitude to the world with which the players are interacting. I even have no problem with my characters, both PC and NPC smoking cigarettes.

No, what I’ve got a problem with is the degree to which the game itself and those who play it can ever hope to accurately recreate the world in which Lovecraft set his stories. Not the historical but the psychological and social world that he created.

That world is not the world that really existed at the time; of course, I’m not referring to the fact that there is no R’lyeh, no Cthulhu, no Great Race, no Mountains of Madness. I’m referring to the very concepts that powered Lovecraft’s vision.

This post is not the place to debate whether Lovecraft was racist – that’s another debate for someone else’s blog. What I’m interested in is whether it is possible for 21st century players and Keepers to get inside the mindset of someone who wrote perhaps eighty to ninety years ago and take on board and accept as normal the memes and tropes that he embodied in his work and which are taken as fact by those who inhabit the world that exists within that work.

Under siege
Lovecraft’s characters inhabit a world in which the white, intellectual Anglo-Saxon Protestant is under siege. The siege mentality pervades the narrative; the protagonists of the stories hold the line in an attempt (often vain) to stem the tide of an encroaching and threatening darkness. Those who stand against this tide are heroic if ultimately aware of the fact that doom is ineluctable. Those who work with the forces of darkness are the seething mass of miscegenated savages, their alien ways and unspeakable ceremonies truly terrifying to those who know what is out there. Lovecraft uses words such as brute, savage, creature, animal and of course mongrel to describe them and the stories take their cue from this particular vision.

He was a loathsome, gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms which I could not help calling fore legs, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings under an eerie moon. (Herbert West – Re-animator)

certain nameless and unclassified Asian dregs wisely turned back by Ellis Island.
(The Horror at Red Hook)

an Arab with a hatefully negroid mouth,
(The Horror at Red Hook)

the prisoners all proved to be men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type. Most were seamen, and a sprinkling of negroes and mulattoes, largely West Indians or Brava Portuguese from the Cape Verde Islands, gave a colouring of voodooism to the heterogeneous cult. But before many questions were asked, it became manifest that something far deeper and older than negro fetichism was involved. Degraded and ignorant as they were, the creatures held with surprising consistency to the central idea of their loathsome faith.
(The Call of Cthulhu)

When we came to know the squatters better, we found them curiously likeable in many ways. Simple animals they were, gently descending the evolutionary scale because of their unfortunate ancestry and stultifying isolation. (The Lurking Fear)


Let’s look at this section of the Wikipedia entry on Lovecraft:

Though little known to his fan base, Lovecraft was familiar with the work of the German conservative-revolutionary theorist Oswald Spengler. Spengler's pessimistic thesis of the decadence of the modern West formed a crucial element in Lovecraft's overall anti-modern, conservative worldview. Lovecraft was also acquainted with the writings of another German intellectual who dealt with civilised decadence in philosophical terms: Friederich Nietzsche.
Lovecraft frequently dealt with the idea of civilisation struggling against more barbaric, primitive elements. In some stories this struggle is at an individual level; many of his protagonists are cultured, highly-educated men who are gradually corrupted by some obscure and feared influence.

The stories, set in the years just after the First World War, a war that was graphically portrayed as a battle of Good versus Evil, draw on this moral dichotomy and the taking of sides, albeit reluctantly to fight against that which seems too horrible to be allowed to live may well mirror the American attitude in 1917 – dragged into a war that they would rather not have joined. Those who returned from Europe were marked by a vision of hell as close to reality as could be possible. The influenza epidemic at the end of the war can only have confirmed to many that the alien, the outsider was coming, bringing with them this disease that would scythe through young and old alike.

As well as the emotional impact of the war on those who fought in it, there was also the geopolitical fallout that ensued. Communism, bogeyman of the political establishment had broken out of its manifesto cage and infected the minds of millions of Russians and, as far as the politicians were concerned, threatened to do so to the minds of British, American, European and other workers worldwide. The Palmer raids in 1919 and 1920 were a response to terrorism perpetrated by anarchists, linked in the minds of Americans with the menace of Bolshevism.

That the world of 1920 was not that of 1914 was painfully obvious to many – the old certainties had been overthrown and whilst it was not dead, the old social order had been badly wounded by the ruthless way in which obedience to authority, once the bulwark of the establishment, had been revealed to be one of the prime movers in sending millions to their deaths in Europe and beyond. There was no longer a sense that one’s social inferiors would accept their position in life merely because that was the way that it had always been. Another threat to the very people already terrified by the spectre of influenza and the Red scare.

Eighty or ninety years on, the Red scare has come and gone, social mobility has swept the old order away and science has, to a greater or lesser extent, brought epidemics under control with vaccines. Are these neuroses of Lovecraft’s world still the terrors that once they were?

The bleakness
In the 1920s, society was still vastly Christian, with a very particular, almost solipsistic view of man’s place in the cosmos and the universe as a whole. Indeed, the understanding of the cosmos, Einstein notwithstanding was very much more limited than we have today. As such, the notion of man as cosmologically insignificant in a vast, uncaring, indifferent universe would have filled people of Lovecraft’s era with a horror that seems baffling by today’s standards. The notion of almost immeasurable distances of time and space holds more fascination than horror for us in the 21st century and I view this aspect of Lovecraft’s works with a quaint interest rather than a shudder of terror.

That having been said, the bleakness does horrify some people. Here’s James Maliszewksi on it in 2008.

“Perhaps because of this, I find the bleakness of Lovecraft's imaginary creation truly horrific. Were the universe as he describes it reality, I have little doubt that I'd be driven to depths of despair the likes of which I've never experienced (and never hope to). I find Lovecraft's stark, uncaring universe a source of profound terror for me.

I suppose that horror, like comedy is subjective.

Allied with the bleakness is the futility of many of the protagonists’ efforts to combat the dark forces menacing them from the Beyond. Many of the stories end with a solitary narrator penning his final thoughts as the monsters close in or knowing that despite his best efforts, they are still out there and there is nothing that can be done.

Unknown horrors
Since the 1920s and 1930s, we’ve reduced the unknown areas on the map to practically zero. What we can’t get to, our satellites can see. The only mystery left is the ocean depths and even there, we are fairly sure about what isn’t, even if we don’t know what is. There’s no R’lyeh, no mysterious islands that might be there, it’s so remote. In effect, the word remote has become devalued. We can no longer look to the blank spaces on the map or the depths of the ocean for the lurking horror that may wake to destroy the planet. Instead, our eyes turn outwards to the stars, scanning the sky for those colossal (dare I say Cyclopean) lumps of rock which could arrive tomorrow to obliterate entire cities, continents or worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the thousands of asteroids out there has the name Cthulhu on it. As a parallel for indifferent, uncaring nemesis, a Doomsday Asteroid is right up there with the Great Old Ones.

Conclusion
I believe, although it is a subjective point of view, that the fears that gripped, informed and shaped the psyche of the post-war society that would have consumed Lovecraft’s work and been chilled thereby have long since faded from the public consciousness. To attempt to immerse oneself in that society, to replicate its mores and its nightmares is as much an experiment in imaginative acting as it would be to try and think oneself into the mindset of a mediaeval knight or man-at-arms for Dungeons and Dragons.

Yet if we remove, or fail to include the themes and aspects of the world of Lovecraft’s fiction that trouble us, that are deemed non-PC or towards which we feel a fundamental discomfort, are we in fact neutering the very powerhouse of the game itself? Are we playing a watered-down version of the game? Is it no longer connected to the fiction that gave it birth? And is this such a bad thing?

So what’s your take on the mindset of the Lovecraftian oeuvre and can we (or should we want to) get into it if we want a wholly realistic Call of Cthulhu game? What modern-day horrors, terrors and fears can we use to replace those of the 1920s and make our investigators that little bit more realistic?

Or do you disagree with me and believe that Lovecraft’s original horrors still have the power to truly terrify?

Let me know what you think - feel free to give my ideas a good kicking; I'm happy to have everyone's opinion on this and to have my own opinions challenged and changed.

Vampires...why does it have to be Vampires?

Unless your postcode is MOON 1, you'll have noticed that we seem to be in the middle of a prolonged period of vampire infestation. If it isn't drippy Edward, it's Justin Cronin and his infectious bloodsuckers, a theme mirrored by Del Toro and Hogan in The Strain. Then there's Blood and Ice by Robert Massello, The Vampire Diaries, Blood Ties, True Blood, Blade, the obligatory Buffy and Angel re-runs...

Afficionados of UK TV will remember Ultraviolet (the TV series not the film) which had a Vatican-backed government hit squad taking out bloodsuckers while they plotted to blot out the sun and farm us like livestock, but that was 12 years ago and at the time, innovative and fresh. Shame it only had one series.

I started to watch Cronos (del Toro again) the other night and found it quite interesting until the old guy escapes cremation and finds himself smouldering in the sun and getting a taste for blood. I turned off - Vampires! Again!

In RPGs, it's a common theme as well, with Ravenloft and VtM (or VtR, depending on your choice) leading the pack. The vampire is regarded as the mightiest of the undead in the MM and often serves as the Big Bad when it comes to evil opposition.

So is it heresy for me to say that I'm all vampired out? I can't get enthusiastic about drippy, sensitives, plague-ridden predators or castle-bound counts. In short, I think I'm going to axe them from my MM.



The vampire itself is an interesting phenomenon. I've often speculated that their mythology has a lot to do with anti-Semitism - the blood libel, the day that begins at sunset, the rejection of the cross. The psycho-sexual undertones of Gothic vampire horror; yeah, they're a great subject but I don't think they'll work for my game.

We all have pretty fixed ideas about the fanged ones. Some say they can't go out during the day. Others say they can drink animal blood instead of feasting on humans. Some say they convert only the willing, others that they prefer the unwilling. Whatever trope of vampirism we might adopt for our games, it's bound to clash with someone else's.

So, what to do? I need something really original, something that's not doing the rounds, something that's going to surprise. The vampire, methinks, won't work for me.

So what's your take on the fanged ones? Edward or Angel? Strahd Von Zarovich or Nosferatu? Good for the game or time to go?

If you owned WotC...

Here's a little poser - imagine that Hasbro has decided to off-load certain parts of its empire and you - yes, you, my friend - have somehow inherited enough money to buy Wizards of the Coast.

What would you do?

Would you axe 4e?

Reprint the LBBs?

Appoint Jim Raggi as Product Development Director?

We often like to stick pins into WotC wax dolls but what would we do if we had control of the company? If we were the ones calling the shots? If money were no object...

I'm interested...

Where can I get...

...a D&D t-shirt that doesn't have an in-joke that only gamers will understand? I want one that just says D&D or something very similar. And doesn't make me look like a dork (I can do that just fine by myself). All part of my Reach out and Recruit strategy, raising our profile, etc.

Any ideas?

Many thanks.

Would this work?

Many years ago, I remember having read something in an old White Dwarf that I thought was a pretty neat way of avoiding permanent death. For years, I tried to remember the mechanics of it, without success until I obtained a disc full of old White Dwarf issues. And there it was, in WD60, in an article called Ars Arcana (not a bad series in its own right, by the way).

Trap the Soul

“This has great possibilities in connection with the Magic Jar spell. You just keep your real body in your home with a simulacrum (the only totally loyal servants) that holds a Trap The Soul gem with your name on it. You can then go adventuring in your Magic Jar body, using your own jar as the trigger item for the Trap the Soul spell. What this means is that if you (your body) die, and are forced into the jar, you have Trapped the Soul yourself, no matter how far away it is. When this happens, the gem glows, the simulacrum will see this and crush the gem, and you will safely enter your real body again. With this set-up, you need never fear death again (unless killed inside an anti-magic shell”

I thought to myself, would this work? And if not, why not? And if so, well...game on!

Anyone got any thoughts on the matter?