Thoughts on Kevin Crawford's "Sixteen Sorrows: A Handbook of Dire Calamities"

“Sixteen Sorrows” is a supplement designed by Kevin Crawford for his game about “divine heroes in a broken world,” Godbound.  I don’t play Godbound, I haven’t played Godbound, and I haven’t even read Godbound.  I came to “Sixteen Sorrows” from a podcast I’ve been listening to when someone referred to the text as something they go to when they are looking to throw together a rough outline of an encounter to bring into play in a fantasy RPG.  From what I had heard, Crawford has a talent for useful tables, so I picked the book up on that recommendation.
 
Wow.  This book is impressive at every level.  It is direct, thoughtful, inspiring, and imminently useful.  It is designed for Godbound, but the situations it creates are portable into any game and any genre (though the tables are geared specifically for a world of sorcerers, bandits, petty lords, and struggling peasants).  Because the characters of Godbound have godlike powers, the situations that this supplement sets up are vast in scope, dealing with famines, plagues, ethnic wars, natural disasters, and invading armies.  But for games without such mighty protagonists, the same situations can either serve as the problematic backdrop that generates smaller challenges, or they can themselves be scaled down to an appropriate size, so that the “mad demagogue” becomes a mayor instead of a king.
 
The book wastes no words.  There is a short introduction and then each sorrow is given two pages: a page of explanation, and a page of tables.  The explanation pages contain thorough explanations of the problems and things that you need to consider in building the situation.  They are insightful, well-written, and useful in helping you apply the concepts to what you’re creating.  I found Crawford’s clarity of vision itself inspiring.  He has a talent for breaking down a complicated social situation into its basic elements and then communicating how to fiddle with those elements to build up a compelling and intriguing situation.  Even if this book didn’t have a single table to roll on, these explanations and analyses would be well worth the price of the book.
 
The tables have a reasonable number of entries, and each one can lead to a different story.  The real piece de resistance, though, is the “Adventure Seed” table.  Each sorrow has an adventure seed table that offers up 5 possible situations that call for you to pull from the various tables provided.  Here’s an example from “Evil Sorcerer”: “An Antagonist takes the guise of a Friend, secretly working to convince the PCs to destroy a rival Antagonist, yet setting them up to be betrayed afterwards through the power of a Thing they possess.  A Complication hints at the truth of the matter, however, if the PCs decide to investigate the source of the Complication or its fine details.”  So from there, you grab two antagonists from the Antagonist table (or roll for them), a friend from the Friend table, a thing from the Thing table, and a complication from the Complication table, and let your imagination work out the rest.  Here’s what I grabbed: “A gifted local wizard embittered against the people takes the guise of a community priest who inveighs against the wizardry, secretly working to convince the PCs to destroy a rival half-crazed wizard who pacted with the Uncreated, yet setting them up to be betrayed afterwards through the power of a grimoire of theurgic invocations or deep magic they possess.  But the fact that the half-crazed wizard’s help is crucial to local authorities hints at the truth of the matter, however if the PCs decide to investigate the source of that needed help or its finer details.”  That gives you everything you need to start putting the situation and relationships together.
 
This is a reference that has a lot to give, and I expect it will be occupying my brain-space for a long time to come.

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