"It's okay; Gary sent us."

"Viva Passion?" or "The War on the 'Edition Warriors'"

2012-01-13T17:12:00.000-08:00

When it comes to games, passion is good. Really, really good. The best.

In fact, I'd venture to say that if you're not really passionate about the game you're playing, no matter what game or what type of game it is, you'd be doing yourself, the game, and the world a favor by setting it aside the moment you realize this and heading off to find one that makes your blood boil and your heart sing.

Passion makes the gaming world go round.

At least that's how I used to feel. But if you believe some authorities, such as the venerable Steve Winter (and you should!) passion is the enemy.

Enter the gaming boogeyman de jour, the Edition Warriors! This legion of soulless, twisted monstrosities has the nerve, the sheer gall, to believe that Dungeons & Dragons is one of the great games of all time. Not only that, but that the storied D&D name itself actually means something and has some sort of precious but somehow non-monetary value (an obvious contradiction in terms!) and that products bearing the name can betray, subvert, or otherwise fail to be worthy of it. But what's worst of all, what really keeps these guys up at night, is that these Edition Warriors are also known for their aberrant belief that they should be wholly unashamed to admit this in public. The most unholy among them even feel they have a very real personal obligation to do so!

Clearly, Armageddon is at hand, for the Edition Warriors are not content with merely causing WotC's brilliant D&D 4E reinvention to fail through no fault of the company's own and despite being a peerless design copied directly from the pages of Leonardo da Vinci's fabled Lost Codex. Oh, no. They've already set their sights on WotC's next big project: "D&D Next." Yes, these heartless savages plan to nip this one in the bud, not caring one whit that the millions spent collaborating with Pepsi's ad agency on a name will then go completely to waste.

For the love of God, you degenerate monsters: Can't you just stop saying how you feel for once!? Can't you see that you're ruining everything with your stupid caring and self-expression!? Just sit down, shut up, open your wallet to WizBro and keep it open and everything will be fine. Gaming without passion isn't so bad. You'll see. After all, many of the "pros" have apparently been doing it for years and they must know better than you. I mean, they're pros!

Can't we all just ~~not give a fuck~~ get along?

Beware! I live!

2011-10-24T03:16:00.000-07:00

One thing I truly hate is when videogames call themselves "RPGs." I love a good Dragon Quest or whatever, but just because you stole a couple mechanics from D&D like hit points that doesn't make your game anymore of a "roleplaying game" than Super Mario Bros., which nobody describes as roleplaying as a jumping Dago plumber for a reason.

New term needed. Badly. Any ideas?

I need my magic, dammit!

2011-01-12T22:41:00.000-08:00

Dan from Sword and Board's recent "Spellcasters as NPC only..." post got me pondering this, although I have seen the notion of fantasy games with no PC magic advocated before.

Frankly, I couldn't do it. I need magic. No matter what, my character has to have some superhuman power that doesn't exist in the real world or I just won't bother. It can be some flavor of actual magic, pseudoscience psionics, even being a virtual reality "decker" in a cyberpunk game, but it's gotta be there.

Sometimes the character is just a dabbler; a swordsman or thief or gunslinger or whatever who doesn't rely on the supernatural all the time. But again, the magic's gotta be there if I'm gonna be.

I can think of literally no example from the past twenty years of gaming of me making an exception to this rule or even considering doing so.

Of course, I didn't want to be seen as crapping up Dan's comment section with my naysaying, so I posted this here instead.

I wonder what this says about me? And how about you?

The Thief Skill As Saving Throw

2011-01-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

(Note: A version of this piece by me originally appeared in Fight On! Magazine #6 in 2009. I'm reiterating it here now for those of you without access to that document.)

The thief has been under siege of late. Internet blogs, website message boards, and FRPG fanzines have all been buzzing with some fairly harsh criticism of this venerable class.

An admittedly simplified analysis reveals that thief critics tend to fall into two frequently overlapping camps. For some, the class is too weak. Thief skill success percentages are far too low to rely upon for most of the character’s career. The second camp holds that the thief class is simply a bad fit with the rest of the game. These latter critics claim that making activities like picking pockets and hiding in shadows dedicated thief class abilities creates awkward situations where fighting men, clerics, and magic-users are de facto prohibited (or at least strongly discouraged) from attempting to perform the same feats.

So how do we fix the thief without rewriting the class or implementing elaborate supplemental rules? Simply treat each thief skill score as a sort of saving throw that the thief is entitled to in the event that the initial attempt at a given task fails. If this second roll succeeds, the initial failed roll is ignored.

Example One: Two intrepid adventurers, a fighting man and a thief, are faced with a sheer wall. The DM rules that there is only a 1 in 6 chance to safely complete such a tricky ascent with no special equipment, possibly with a +1 modifier to the roll if the climber boasts extraordinary dexterity. The fighter rolls a four and doesn’t make it. He loses his grip and suffers falling damage. The thief rolls a five and also fails, however his follow-up Climb Walls “saving” roll is 41%, a success! He completes the climb safely.

Example Two: A thief and his magic-user companion are attempting to tiptoe past a distracted orc sentry. Neither are heavily encumbered or wearing metal armor, so the DM assigns a base 1-3 in 6 chance of success for each character. A failure by either is sure to be noticed by the orc. The magic-user succeeds with a roll of two. The thief scores a six and fails. His follow-up Move Silently roll is 88%, also a failure. Despite his advantage, the thief has blown it this time around. Roll for initiative!

This approach is quick to employ, easy to remember, and doesn’t require changing one word of the thief class description from your rulebooks. It strengthens the thief significantly by allowing for two chances to succeed at any given usage of a “class skill” and doesn't infringe on the ability of other classes to have a reasonable chance of success when attempting "thiefly" actions.

The first rule of effective "Lovecraftian" horror:

2011-01-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

If your work doesn't share a single proper noun with Lovecraft's, you're probably on the right track.

The D&D CCG debacle: Who's really at fault?

2011-01-06T03:32:00.000-08:00

On the surface, it's a straightforward combination of cynical marketing and absolute creative bankruptcy. But I'm not so sure.

I was talking with a friend of mine recently who works in the videogame industry. He told me downright harrowing tales behind some of the worst games of all times. No kidding. Several of them actually received awards for it.

These are projects that span the spectrum from "'gritty' reinvention of beloved cartoon mascot" to "is that even, technically, a game?"

And one pattern emerged: A few people (sometimes only one) with way more money than sense and a whole lot of well-meaning, talented people who know it's a bad idea, say it's a bad idea, and still finish the project because they can't afford to quit their jobs instead of putting work unto a bad idea. There's also no small amount of throwing good money after bad ("We've already sunk millions into this turkey, we can't stop now!").

So that brings me to D&D. It's no secret that they're a subsidiary of Hasbro and that Hasbro wants the D&D "brand" to be making more than it is. It's not hard to imagine WotC's designers, who are, we can assume, RPG gamers with some respect for the form and reverence for a classic like D&D, being told by some executive at Hasbro who wouldn't know Dungeons & Dragons from death & dismemberment insurance: "What about that Magic thing? That makes money. Just make it more like the Magic!" Right before he adjusts his snappy Gordon Gekko suspenders and snorts a three-foot rail of coke off a naked $5000/night escort before bellowing his best Al Pacino "Hoo-ha!"

So what's my point? I mean, for all I know, this might not be the case at all. Maybe so, but armed with these new insights into exactly how ugly game design in a corporate environment can get, I'm going to be hesitant to assign blame for this one. At least for the time being.

Certainly somebody has masterminded a forehead-slapping affront to a great game, but we may never know exactly who or why. At least not until one of us buys the right ex-employee a beer in the years to come and gets the full story.

Merry Christmas to me.

2010-12-24T00:09:00.001-08:00

Special thanks to the probably spambot new "follower" of this blog who chose the delightful penis photo to represent himself. Just the sort of holiday cheer my front page needed.

He's gone now, but happy holidays the other 99 of you non-penis posting regular readers.

More updates after New Year's.

Still alive.

2010-12-13T05:55:00.000-08:00

Barely.

Let's just say that a series of personal and health-related crises has been giving me one hell of a time. I haven't been gaming or thinking much about gaming.

This will change. Hopefully soon. In the meantime, I hope to make any of you reading this aware that I haven't quit the hobby or this blog. Updates will be forthcoming.

Dice Dice Baby

2010-10-24T00:48:00.000-07:00

So I got some new dice:

This is the Q-Workshop "Classic Elven" set. They also come in an inverted alternate opaque color scheme (white with black lettering) and a transparent one, but this one just happens to go well with a black leather dice bag I have.

I've wanted to pick up a set from Q-Workshop for some time, since I love the idea of somewhat "fantasy looking" dice, but readability was always an issue. Frankly, some of their stuff is ridiculously busy by my standards, and there's no way I'm going to sacrifice basic readability for anything.

These, in addition to costing less than half what their more gaudy sets do (due in no small part to using so much less packaging, I suspect), manage to look cool with no loss of functionality.

If you're looking for a well-made set of dice that are both affordable and eye-catching without being over the top (stone, metal, more convoluted than somebody's "tribal Celtic" tattoo), I'd highly recommend this one.

What are these strange...urges?

2010-10-02T21:43:00.000-07:00

First off, hello to all the new readers! I can't believe I'm coming up on eighty now. Unexpected, but very welcome.

Anyway, as those of you who've read the older posts around here already know, I started gaming with the chance find of a badly-scuffed but fondly-remembered copy of Moldvay's Basic D&D rulebook that I chanced upon at a thrift store in 1990 when I was twelve years old (no box, though, so I missed out on the Keep, dice, and crayon).

My first point of contact with "the hobby" (as opposed to the few friends I played with in my small mountain hometown of Big Bear, CA) was when I began reading Dragon Magazine in 1991.

So why reiterate all this now? Because just the other day I pulled issue Dragon #175 (my first!) off the shelf for a nostalgic re-reading and I found myself paying more attention to the ads than to anything else. Specifically: The ads for play-by-mail games.

I've never actually played a PBM, and I suspect that their popularity was very much on the decline even back in 1991. Case in point: Personal computers and email were apparently becoming widespread enough that these very same Dragon issues also had ads for the earliest large online RPG games, like the original Neverwinter Nights.

Still, one ad for Flying Buffalo's Heroic Fantasy in particular brought back cool memories. A group of adventurers charging what looked to be a giant cat-bear monster erupting from a pile of skulls. One of the adventurers, amusingly, was a tiny topless (!) female pixie creature wielding a pencil-sized spear. The text promised "...a play-by-mail game of magic and mayhem; where you control a party of humans, elves, dwarves, fairies, leprecons, ogres, or even a troll or giant." Younger me was intrigued, but sadly also cash-strapped.

So I decided that I was going to Google Heroic Fantasy, just for the fun of it. Maybe I'd find some message board or blog posts from old players reminiscing about the game and I could get some idea of just what I'd missed.

Turns out Heroic Fantasy (now in it's 28th year) is still around! At least if Flying Buffalo's website is to be believed. I've finally got a chance to read the rules and the concept is one that's really tough for modern me to wrap my brain around. It's sort of like a multi-player computer game, except you don't own the computer. Instead, you mail the guy who does a listing of what characters you want to run and what you want them to do and then he plays the game and mails you back to tell you how it went. That's just...bizarre.

Bizarre, but still somehow intriguing. Like a time portal to a bygone era of gaming.

Long story short, I'm considering giving it a try. One turn a month. Hand written. Stuffed in a real paper envelope, affixed with real stamps, and dropped through an honest-to-goodness mail slot.

Now that's old-school!

Interesting Tracy Hickman quote.

2010-09-21T01:44:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of former TSR/WotC fiction editor Phil Athans.

"It is true that the story was the foundation of Dragonlance and came out of the personal desire of both my wife [Laura Hickman] and myself to use role playing games as a medium of storytelling. You have to remember that at the time adventure games were largely of the ‘kill the monster, take its treasure, buy more weapons to kill bigger monsters’ variety. We wanted to introduce meaning into gaming through story."

Which got me thinking:

How sad that they probably meant well but simply couldn't understand that "meaning" in gaming can only be collaboratively constructed from the bottom (individual players and GMs) up, never simply decreed from the top down. Indeed, the fact that Hickman was apparently unaware that campaigning not of the "kill the monster, take its treasure" mold had been alive and thriving at countless gaming tables across the world for years before he made this statement evinces a startling degree of myopia that went on to handicap his subsequent designs severely.

It's really a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire nature of the medium. A tabletop RPG writer can, at best, hand the players a solid set of tools and a bit of good advice. If you try to build the whole house for them, it will only ever be your home. And they'll sense as much.

That's just the sad part. When you throw millions of dollars behind a misunderstanding this basic, that's where things get tragic. TSR finally learned this lesson when they found themselves forced to sell all their assets to Wizards of the Coast in the late 1990s.

After the sting of the tragedy fades, you move onto the bittersweet ironic amusement phase. In this case, that means the ability to do just what this post is doing now: Look back on how a simple bit of mistaken but well-meant idealism gone out-of-control toppled a once invulnerable titan of the fantasy gaming hobby after little more than one decade in earnest practice.

Which leaves one where? Sadder but wiser? I would hope so.

Hickman, continued: "In practice, however, it became a ‘chicken and egg’ sort of issue. The game was being developed ahead of the story—which actually adversely affected the story itself."

Ouch. Nevermind...

Oh, man! I haven't thought about these in ages!

2010-09-20T03:27:00.000-07:00

I only ever saw one issue of this back 1992 at a chain bookstore in the Inland Center mall in San Bernadino. I'd completely forgotten about it until tonight. The Acaeum rules.

Now I wonder how I can find myself some copies. eBay seems to be no help at all.

Imagining D&D, courtesy of Grognardia.

2010-09-17T20:09:00.000-07:00

James Maliszewski at Grognardia asks "When you think about Dungeons & Dragons, the cover of what product comes first to mind?"

For me, that's easy. It's the first D&D book I ever owned, read, and used. Although I'd argue this particular cover pretty much perfectly depicts the game under any circumstances.

Runner-up? It has to be the Player's Handbook. No contest. And if had to ask "Which one?", you're probably at the wrong blog.

Anyway, to make up for boring you all with the two most obvious choices ever, I'll close with some of my favorite Dragon Magazine covers from when I was first getting into the game. These are pretty much guaranteed to be unique choices, since most of the Dragon nostalgia is focused on its early years. I imagine a lot of old school players weren't even reading Dragon during the 90s.

For me, the best covers were more than just portraits. They had a great in media res quality that made you feel like you were looking through a window into a fantasy world where something marvelous was happening. And they practically forced you to ask questions. Who are these people (and/or creatures)? What are they doing? What do they want? What is this place I'm seeing and what would I find if I could visit it? Certainly, I've gone back and read many great Dragon issues that pre-date my early 90s start in the hobby, but these are some of the covers that I'll always remember best.

175
178
180
188
190

Defending psionics.

2010-08-31T16:20:00.000-07:00

AD&D psionics. Everybody either hates the hell of them or never used them (or, paradoxically, both). But not me. I think AD&D's is a very solid, very usable psionics system and I'm here today to tell you why.

Could it be that I was a counsel for the defense at Nuremberg in a former life?

Anyway, psionics in Dungeons & Dragons certainly pre-date their most well-known appearance in the first appendix of 1978's AD&D Player's Handbook. I, however, do not. Therefore, I'll be focusing on AD&D in this post. That being said, if somebody out there has additional relevant insight into how these systems differed in TSR publications that predate the PHB, that's fine with me. Comments sections are there for a reason, after all.

Let's jump right into it, shall we?

1. Psionics "don't work."

I hear this one a lot. The psionics rules were somehow either incomprehensibly convoluted or completely illogical and simply didn't function if you attempted to run them as written.

Wrong. AD&D psionics are actually quite simple. Everything from calculating a character's chance to be psionic, to determining a psionic character's overall strength, to allocating psionic powers is as straightforward as any other aspect of character creation.

The effects of the various powers are as clearly explained as those of magic spells. No more so, but certainly no less.

Psionic combat is a simple matter of cross-referencing two values on a chart and applying the indicated results, the same as regular physical combat.

2. Psionics are "unbalanced."

This misunderstanding is a lot more understandable. The psionic character gets all these special powers for nothing, right?

So you might believe until I point you to a little thing called the psionic encounters section of Appendix C of the Dungeon Master's Guide. It turns out that each time a psionic power is used within one turn of a wandering monster check, that wandering monster has the potential to be a psionic one.

And psionic monsters? As per the Monster Manual, they're really, really damn nasty. And prone to target psionic PCs. As written, it's only a matter of time (the chance is a full 25% upon a positive wandering monster check) before some brain-eating nasty rolls up and pulls a Scanners on your psionic wunderkind PC, and quite possibly the rest of his party, too, considering that psionic encounters are rolled on a chart that includes arch-devils and demon princes and doesn't discriminate by PC or dungeon level.

Not so unbalanced now, it is? In fact, the check that the DMG encounters appendix places on psionic PCs is such an outright gruesome death lottery that I don't think I'd opt to run a psionic PC in AD&D even if I could.

3. Psionics "don't fit in a fantasy game."

Oy.

Seriously, this one has to piss me off the most. Go back and actually read the fiction that inspired D&D. Many of you reading this already have, but it bears emphasizing how the artificial and stifling separation of fantastic fiction into rigid genres is a Crappy Thing, as are its effects on RPG gaming (as exemplified in this sad stab at a criticism).

Grimoires: "Real" magic and what it can teach us.

2010-08-11T21:28:00.001-07:00

I've been on a huge grimoire kick lately. Real grimoires, that is, like the Clavicula Salomonis (Key of Solomon) and others. Not originals, of course, but the many commonly available translated editions sold by booksellers and free online (see links throughout this post). Most of these (in)famous tomes first started circulating in the late medieval/early rennaissance period, despite their claims of ancient providence, and offer a fantastic insight into what constituted "real" wizardry in the Western world during the time periods that most fantasy RPG games are based on.

There's some wild and crazy stuff to be found here. The Grimorium Verum will tell you how to invoke the demons Mersilde, who "has the power to transport anyone in an instant, anywhere" and Frimost, who "has power over women and girls, and will help you obtain their use." Plus spells for curing rabies, turning invisible (good luck getting your hands on the human skull), obtaining gold and silver, and more.

The Goetia portion of the Lemegeton even specifies the proper time to summon and bind each demon by rank ("The chife [chief] kings may be bound from 9 to 12 of ye Clock at noone & from 3 [5] till sunset. Marquizes may be bound from 3 of ye Clock in ye after Noon till nine at night and from 9 at nt [night] till sunrising. Dukes may be bound from sunrising till Noonday in clear weather.").

Studying these works and other similar ones has given me quite a few pointers that I can see influencing future fantasy gaming sessions:

1. Magic can be ruthlessly low-down and practical. Perhaps the strongest recurring themes among the spells and rituals in these books are the garnering of sex, temporal power, and cold, hard cash.

2. Magic should really evocative. "Cure Light Wounds" is one thing, but using Key as an example, we can see offhand some most excellent chapter headings:

"Of the Blood of the Bat, Pigeon, And Other Animals."

"How Operations of Mockery, Invisibility, And Deceit Should Be Prepared."

"How To Make the Magic Carpet Proper For Interrogating the Intelligences, So As To Obtain An Answer Regarding Whatsoever Matter One May Wish To Learn."

And then there the spells themselves. Here's an incantation from the section entitled "Regarding Experiments To Be Made Regarding Hatred And Discord":

"Where are ye, SOMNIATOR, VSOR, DILAPIDATOR, TENTATOR, DIVORATOR, CONCISOR, SEDUCTOR, ye who sow discord, where are you? Ye who infuse hatred and propagate enmities,

I conjure you by him who hath created you for this ministry, to fulfill this work, in order that whenever N. shall eat of like things, or shall touch them, in whatsoever manner, never shall he go in peace."

Sure, it's almost certainly a bunch of superstitious hokum, but is it ever cool-sounding!

3. Magic can be really complicated. Some versions of D&D, particularly AD&D, already have certain spells with lengthy casting times, but these books really emphasize how much work being a wizard can be, with rituals that involve specially consecrated knives, swords, robes, parchment, water, seals, amulets, pentacles, etc. Sometimes all of the above and more for a single working! And that's even before you get past the generic stuff to things like exact astrological specifications and the need for a hare slain on the 25th of June or what have you.

4. Finally, they all have awesome magic seals that you'd be crazy to not want to rip off for your games if possible. For example:

So if you have the time, I definitely recommend you check these suckers out. Besides, if you don't, I might just have to whip out my virgin parchment, blessed stone and bat blood so I can call on Frutimiere to make you strip nude and "dance increasingly until death...with grimaces and contortions which will cause more pity than desire." And none of us want that. I hope.

This thing is godlike!

2010-08-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

This thing being the Dizzy Dragon Games Adventure Generator.

Best random dungeon generator I've ever seen. If they can also program it to use AD&D encounter and treasure tables, I'll probably marry it.

Always use protection.

2010-07-12T21:41:00.000-07:00

My miniature AD&D Monster Manual has finally arrived (from Italy, no less) and I now own all of the "big three" AD&D rulebooks in this format.

Now the question is: How can I prevent them from getting all dinged out-of-shape if I carry them around in, say, my backpack?

I need some kind of rigid, solidly-constructed protective container for the set, but what would fit the bill?

The whole stack of three books, by the way, is about two inches wide, three inches long, and a tiny bit less than one inch "deep."

Hmm.

I yam what I yam.

2010-07-09T19:01:00.000-07:00

You can call me part of the OSR, you can call me Maurice ('cause I speak of the pompatus of love), you can even call me late for dinner.

Popeye had the right idea. I play classic (A)D&D and I love it.

More controversy! Oh noooooooooo!

2010-06-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

Blah blah blah durp fart.

So I guess some random self-loathing gamer guy is pissed because his anonymous friend tried to sell his (the friend's) anonymous product to anonymous "tabletop gamers" and failed because they (the gamers) are cantankerous doodyheads too busy having the temerity to question which products are actually worth buying to bother marketing to. Same old song and dance, new outrage.

So-called discussion rapidly devolves into whether it's okay to criticize WotC and their games in public or if this makes you a bad gamer who's harming "the hobby." No kidding.

Personally, I have to give credit to Corinth for his thread-winner of a post. I agree 100%. The ranter linked to in that thread's first post and the marketing woes of his mystery pal are not my concern. What I want is good stuff born of and presented with real passion by real gamers like me.

Where's my money going now? Fight On! Knockspell, The Dungeon Alphabet, Castle of the Mad Archmage, Stonehell Dungeon, Labyrinth Lord and so on.

That reminds me, there's a new FO issue now...

So forgive me for not being down with the devastating tag-team combination of bitter failed novelists churning-out White Wolf splatbooks for pennies on the word and douchebags with MBAs. Go ahead, guys: Don't make me any more B-movies, videogames, cartoon shows, iPhone aps, or transmedia thingamawhatzits based on (i.e. named after) my favorite RPGs. Really, don't. I'll be just fine. Better than fine, actually. I'll be having a blast. I'll not only have "nice things", I'll have far more than I can ever use!

On the other hand, this does serve as a great reminder of why I've ditched forums for blogs when it comes to my online RPG discussions.

"A Better Game?"

2010-06-17T21:30:00.000-07:00

Game designer Sean Patrick Fannon admits that he "apparently touched on a somewhat controversial subject" in this week's installment of his "A Better Game" column for the DriveThruRPG.Com Newsletter.

Here's a quote that I think cuts to the heart of the matter:

The point is for a group of players to work together, via their characters, to achieve goals, overcome obstacles, and enjoy a shared story....

...So why is it so many GMs feel compelled to "make things fair" by penalizing players where experience is concerned?

Seriously, think about it. Your instinct may be that "it's not fair, since Jim's been playing from the beginning and has never missed a session, to let Kyle have the same XP" if Kyle's missed three sessions due to work.

Why isn't it fair? Is Kyle in competition with Jim? Is there really something to be gained by Jim's character having that much more advancement over Kyle's? Does it promote harmony or cooperation in the game? Is there a need to "punish" Kyle for missing the game?

And what about Julia, whose character died last session? Is she to be "punished" for that by having her character come in at half the experience of everyone else? Why? Does this make Jim feel better? I'd argue he might well feel uncomfortable, knowing Julia's already suffered for the loss of a character, and now has to struggle with one less capable than everyone else.

Then there's Matt. He's new to the group and has just joined the game with a new character. If you make him start at some level below everyone else, what does this tell him? That he's less valuable for being new? That the other players are more valued? That newbies are meant to suffer?

I like to think I'm fairly familiar with SPF and his work, as I'm the only person I know to own not just one, but both editions of his 1995 "Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible", which I consider to be a great introduction to the hobby and a fun read, too.

Still, what I'm going to be doing here is arguing (respectfully, I hope) that he's wrong, wrong, wrong, at least when it comes to classic D&D and other old-school games.

First, we'll start with Jim and Kyle. Is Jim in competition with Kyle? Yes! The philosophy of old-school gaming, so far as most can agree on it, encompasses the concepts of rewarding dedicated campaigning and player skill. The vast majority of the time, players who play both often and well will be rewarded by characters with more personal power and game world influence than those who play only intermittently and/or in a less skillful way that leads to their character's meeting untimely ends more often. This also encompasses Julia and her dead character, I think.

The players may not feel like they're in a serious competition with each other, beyond very successful players enjoying a few extra begging rights, but the notion that every individual player and his or her individual character are, to some degree "in the game for themselves" is a vital one, I think.

It's good to remember how many of D&D's formative adventures involving more accomplished characters were, in fact, solo affairs or involved small numbers of powerful PCs (with NPC henchmen being a wild card in either case). Erac's Cousin's sojourn to Barsoom is one example. Sir Robilar and Mordenkainen's journey to the City of the Gods is another. While it was certainly assumed that sizable groups of less powerful PCs banding together for mutual protection would be inevitable at the start, I don't feel it's correct to say that classic D&D didn't also involve an individualist ethic later on. "Gruppe uber alles" this game is simply not.

Is this fair to Jim? You tell me. If Jim misses three karate practices due to work and I don't, is it fair that I'm ranked a belt higher? I think it is. I think Jim would feel the same way, if he's remotely fair-minded himself.

Is this fair to Julia? Granted, there are a very few rare occasions where player skill doesn't matter in PC outcome. Maybe Julia's PC (being the heavily-armored fighter) was the natural choice to lead the group's marching order in the dungeon and she lost a surprise roll to the giant spider in the shadows and the spider made its subsequent attack roll and she lost the resulting poison save and died. This is a good example of being "killed by the dice" despite making no tactical errors. In these sorts of situations, maybe the DM does grant Julia a break with her next character as SPF suggests. That's fine with me.

More often than not, though, there's an element of player choice. Julia's party might encounter the giant spider and she decides that her fighter will step forward and engage it with his sword then the spider hits then the save fails then Julia is down one fighter.

So is the quoted scenario fair to Julia? Usually, yes, although there may be some rare exceptions.

Finally, we come to Matt. What does a new player learn from starting with a lower-level character? SPF outlines a few possibilities. Here are a few more: That a powerful character is something to be proud of because it must be earned by diligent and skillful campaigning. That playing a powerful character is just much more interesting when you've been with that character through his or her's whole journey. That getting there can be much more than half the fun.

So are you being fair to Matt? I think so, yes.

This is all not to imply that a game where the group is paramount, player skill is downplayed, and cooperative storytelling is the goal (as opposed to each individual player, sometimes working in concert with peers and sometimes not, guiding his or her PC to wealth and power through the vehicle of high adventure) can't or shouldn't exist. It is to say that that's not how the hobby started and more and more of us are discovering all the time that that's not the way it needs to be enjoyed today.

Lost gaming treasure!

2010-05-31T18:25:00.001-07:00

I was searching through an old box yesterday that I haven't looked through in at least six or seven years and I found these:

Miniature AD&D rulebooks!

I bought them at a game store in San Angelo, Texas back in 2000 when they first came out. They quickly vanished from the market and are bigtime collectables now. They're unabridged and perfectly readable. Ideal for gaming on the go without a backpack full of heavy hardcovers.

Altogether, I have:

Dungeon Master's Guide
Player's Handbook
Oriental Adventures
Legends & Lore
Manual of the Planes

I completely forgot I had them and assumed that I sold them at some point. Nope!

Now I just need a mini Monster Manual...

Why the thief?

2010-05-07T19:53:00.000-07:00

Internet blogs, website message boards, and FRPG fanzines have all been buzzing with some fairly harsh criticism of this venerable class.

The thief, it is said, is simply a bad fit with the rest of the game. Critics claim that making activities like picking pockets and hiding in shadows dedicated thief class abilities creates awkward situations where fighting men, clerics, and magic-users are de facto prohibited (or at least strongly discouraged) from attempting to perform the same feats. My first submission to Fight On!, "The Thief Skill As Saving Throw", was an effort to address just this mechanical dilemma.

That aside, the arguments of the anti-thief camp are quite compelling. It’s the proposed solutions that leave me cold. The most common prescription is either radical re-design of the entire class from the ground up or elimination of the thief class altogether.

What’s the problem with these options?

Well, you see, I like the standard thief. Lots of us do. This is because the class as written presents a unique challenge. A fighter that fails to sneak past an orc sentry can fall back on his considerable martial prowess to save his bacon. The magic-user has even more options due to his repertoire of spells, from the subtle (Charm the orc) to the simplistic (blast him with Magic Missiles). The potent cleric can draw on both brute force and arcane might!

The thief has no fallback options. He gets by with his wits and larcenous expertise or not at all. This unique approach (and challenge, as the thief is arguably the most difficult class to find success with) makes the thief a favorite of many, and it's precisely what I think a lot of the class' critics fail to appreciate. I, for one, am at a loss to explain how eliminating this singular way of confronting (A)D&D's many challenges could possibly benefit the game.

Thoughts?

The gold standard in demons and devils.

2010-05-03T19:12:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia sez:

"The Dictionnaire Infernal (English: Infernal Dictionary) is a book on demonology, organized in hellish hierarchies. It was written by Jacques Auguste Simon Collin de Plancy and first published in 1818. There were several editions of the book, but perhaps the most famous is the edition of 1863, in which sixty-nine illustrations were added to the book. These illustrations are drawings which try to depict the descriptions of the appearance of several demons."

I first came across many of these awesome illustrations in the Time Life coffee table book Wizards and Witches, part of their Enchanted World series released in the 1980s. This was the heyday of paid tv advertising, and Time Life was famous for "get the first book in our new twenty part series free"-type offers. As a kid, I would always stay up late watching tv. Johnny Carson, original Star Trek reruns, Night Flight, and cheesy-sleazy horror and kung-fu movies were all favorites. During the commercial breaks, I'd be busy ordering whatever free crap I could. Including, at one time, a copy of the Book of Mormon. Hell, free is free!

Today, I found out that the Dictionnaire Infernal illustrations and English text are available online in PDF form here (very small download, about 2.8 MB).

If you've never experienced these, now is the time. These images and words will always be what comes immediately and vividly to my mind when the subject is demons or devils and if they can't inspire some epic old-school fantasy gaming encounters, I don't know what can.

New magic-user spell: Spellcheck

2010-04-15T12:50:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I know, har har. Working title only, folks.

Anyway, this is just part of my recent musing on "counterspells" in (A)D&D.

Spellcheck (Enchantment/Charm)
Level: 3
Range: 12"
Duration: 1d3 rounds +1 round/two caster levels (round down)
Area of Effect: One spellcasting creature
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 3 segments
Saving Throw: Neg

The target of this spell must be a single spellcasting creature. "Spellcasting" in this case meaning that the target casts pre-memorized spells in the fashion of a cleric, magic-user, or other regular PC class. Innate spell-like abilities alone are not sufficient, nor is magic item use and neither of these functions are impaired in any way by Spellcheck.

If the initial saving throw versus spells fails, the target must attempt another save versus spells each time he or she attempts spellcasting during the duration of the Spellcheck. Failure indicates that the spell in question is not successfully cast and is expended without effect.

This spell's material component is an iron padlock, which can be any size (even downright miniature), so long as its design and workmanship permits it to function. This item is consumed utterly upon casting of the spell.

A one-page magic system for Fudge.

2010-04-11T12:51:00.000-07:00

Not D&D-related as such, but I ran across it on my hard drive and thought I'd share. My goal here was to create a complete fantasy magic system for Fudge that I could fit onto a one-page player handout. I succeeded, but haven't managed to get any new Fudge games off the ground since. Enjoy!

Freeform Fudge Magic

Magic is a supernormal power. It costs two gifts per level in objective character creation terms. Purchasing Magic once gives the magician a Magic skill at Poor. Each additional time the power is purchased, Magic skill increases one level, up to a maximum set by the GM (Great is recommended). This skill is used not only to determine spellcasting success, but also as the active trait in most opposed rolls involving the magician's magic (an attempt to resist a successfully-cast mind control spell with a Willpower roll, for example). Magic skill is nonexistent by default.

Whenever a magician wants to cast a spell, the GM will assign a difficulty level to the desired spell based on its proposed effect, from Poor all the way up to Legendary and beyond (the GM can also disallow a proposed spell entirely, of course, if it seems inappropriate). If the spell’s difficulty level is not greater than the magician's Magic skill, a Magic skill roll is attempted on 4dF.

If the Magic skill roll is below the difficulty level, the spell fails to work.

If the Magic skill roll matches the difficulty level exactly or exceeds it by one, the spell succeeds and the magician temporarily loses one level of a health-related trait (Constitution, Stamina, Strength, etc) specified by the GM, representing the stress of imperfectly channeling powerful and unpredictable magical energies. Lost health levels return at a rate of one per hour of uninterrupted rest and a magician that drops below Terrible falls into a coma, waking-up only when health regenerates to at least Terrible again.

If the Magic skill roll exceeds the difficulty level by two or more, the spell succeeds and no health is lost.

Any Magic skill roll of -4 always fails and inflicts one level of temporary health loss (as above) from fatigue, as well. Any Magic skill roll of +4 always succeeds and never results in fatigue. There may also be further positive and negative consequences of -4/+4 results, if the GM so desires.

Fudge points may be spent on magic-related rolls as is standard for other types of rolls in the campaign, unless the GM rules otherwise.

Most spells can be cast during a single combat round, but magic item enchantment (see below) typically takes much longer, as can spells that the GM's deems to be too powerful or esoteric to be usable at a moment's notice.

The creation of a magical item can be treated as a spell with a lengthy casting time requirement (days, weeks, months or even years) and required material components. In addition to calling for a more difficult Magic roll, more powerful items should take longer to craft and require more rare and expensive components. Components are typically consumed in the enchantment attempt, whether it is successful or not.

For specialized magic potential, such as fire magic or demon summoning, allow the magician to purchase levels of the Magic skill at half normal cost (as gifts rather than supernormal powers). Magic skill rolls requiring multiple specializations are usually based on the lowest of the applicable skills.

For non-tiring magic, substitute another trait for "fatigue" purposes that isn't tied to physical stamina (Mana, Power, etc). Such a magician would probably not have to worry about falling unconscious once this power reserve was all tapped-out, but would still be powerless until it regenerated to at least Terrible again.

Some types of magic include restrictions. Examples include the need to use magical words and gestures, the need to possess specific material components like a mage’s staff in order to cast spells, and even potential insanity. These may be assumed to be an inherent part of the Magic trait or treated as separate faults, depending on the GM’s preference. The GM may even remove the freeform aspect of spellcasting and require magicians to choose their spells from a finite list of specific effects or retain freeform magic while making it more difficult to use than such “formula” spells (-1 or more to Magic skill rolls when creating a new spell on-the-fly).

With a little tweaking, this system can also be used to portray other extraordinary powers, such as psionics.

On "production values."

2010-04-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

I stopped by the RPG section at a book store on this last Monday. Pretty much all WotC and White Wolf, as always. Something about the very look of it just seemed so wrong.

The books were so glossy, so colorful, so lavish that they were just viscerally ugly somehow. Garish and tacky, like a rhinestone-studded cowboy hat (or a painted whore, to be perfectly vulgar).

One word kept coming to mind as I scanned this tableau of flashy, expensive, soulless corporate refuse: Decadence.

Is it just me?

An odd realization on the way to defining "real D&D."

2010-04-07T08:12:00.000-07:00

So I'm thinking again, as I sometimes do, about how I define "classic D&D" or, to put it less diplomatically, "real D&D." That is, editions of the game that I consider worthy of the Name and playable without reservation.

It seems that there are three very specific rules that appear both in every single "real D&D" iteration and in none of their lesser aspirants:

a) Alignment language

b) Encumbrance measured in coin (cn) units

and

c) The designation of one player as the party caller

These three traditions all dropped off the map completely in the post-Gygaxian era and haven't been seen since.

I can't think of any other long-standing rules that vanished so cleanly from the published game at exactly that junction. How about you?

One year ago today...

2010-04-04T03:50:00.000-07:00

World's Smallest Car to Meet Gumball Obama at Ripley's NYC

Just curious if I'm the only one who compulsively reads all those "X years ago today..." posts.

The recent "controversy."

2010-03-21T20:01:00.000-07:00

Porno is probably the one thing I love more than D&D.

Calm down.

Still fighting on as best I can.

2009-12-08T18:29:00.000-08:00

Busy as hell lately with school, but I plan to start posting again soon. I have some thoughts on alignment language that have been percolating for some time now.

Until then, if you really crave more me, try issue #7 of Fight On! magazine.

Actually, try Fight On! even if you hate me. It's that good.

Greyhawk Adventures: Saga of the Old City

2009-11-21T14:50:00.000-08:00

Gaming fiction: It's pretty damn terrible, huh?

That being said, it might still be worth your while to track down a copy of Gary Gygax's 1985 "novel of swordplay, thievery, and magic" Saga of the Old City.

While it's labeled as book one of the Greyhawk Adventures series, SotOC is, in fact, predated by sci-fi/fantasy vet Andre Norton's 1978 Quag Keep.

Still, SotOC is the first full-length fiction take on the World of Greyhawk by its creator, and that makes it a potential treasure trove for any DM using that setting for his or her own campaign.

But how does SotOC rate as a novel?

The story follows Gord, a runty orphan street waif who we first chance upon as he's fighting a losing battle with a common alley rat over a hunk of bread they've both chanced upon in the trash. Now that's what I call humble beginnings!

Incidentally, Gord's first line in the book ("Shiteater!", directed at the victorious rat) is pretty good indication that SotOC is a little more daring in some ways than TSR's later, more family-friendly fiction.

Before too long, Gord has managed to escape the grinding poverty and constant bullying of the Greyhawk City's Slum Quarter by joining-up with the Beggar's Guild. It's not long, however, before a violent showdown between the Guilds of the Beggers and Thieves forces Gord to hit the road and see the wider world. Soon, he's encountering river Gypsies, rampaging sea monsters, werebeasts, lovely maidens, and more as his journey takes him from one end of the Flanaess to the other.

Eventually, it's an older, wiser, and much more experienced Gord that makes his way back to Greyhawk City at the novel's close.

So, in a way, SotOC is just a bunch of stuff that happens to some guy. Granted, the "stuff" is pretty wild and the "guy" is a dashing rogue from the World of Greyhawk, but if you come to SotOC expecting a great overarching fantasy saga plot instead of a series of exciting, but often unconnected incidents, you will be disappointed.

On the other hand, sometimes it's nice not to have to worry about saving the cosmos and enjoying a string of sword duels, treasure hunts, and whirlwind romances. Also, Gygax proves to be remarkably adept at witty dialog. He was clearly influenced in this area by Vance and Leiber, and while he's not a master of their calibur by any means, his between-character banter is a cut above that of most fantasy novelists. If plotting is his greatest weakness, this has to be his greatest strength.

In the end, SotOC stands as an enjoyable, if lightweight fantasy romp for general audiences. For Greyhawk DMs and enthusiasts specifically, it's practically required reading. There's a ton of insight here on how Gygax saw day-to-day street level life in his world, which is quite a shift from the omnipotent, bird's eye view of a gaming sourcebook.

I've never read the remainder of Gord's adventures. I've been told that they later rather drastically metamorphosize into just the type of superheroic cosmos-saving that I don't particularly enjoy. If so, that's too bad.

One little tidbit that Greyhawk DMs can take from the later books is a map that was included with City of Hawks: Map (key). It's the only Gygax-approved map of the City ever published, to my knowledge.

Let's say I want to get into Arneson's Blackmoor...

2009-11-12T20:14:00.000-08:00

I do feel kind of remiss not having any Blackmoor material on my shelves.

What resource should I start with? Is there a single good general overview of the "authentic" Blackmoor as used by Arneson, as distinct from the ones that appear in the Greyhawk and Known World/Mystara products?

On the Forgotten Realms.

2009-11-08T11:37:00.000-08:00

Since I just went on a compulsive buying spree to re-acquire what I consider the three best Forgotten Realms products ever made (the gray box, FR1, Ruins of Undermountain), I figured this was as good a time as any to tackle this one.

Many "old-school" D&D fans hate the Realms. Many love them. More than anything else, I believe that most are chronically torn between both extremes. I know I am.

This definitely isn't the case for other TSR campaign settings. I flat-out dislike the Dragonlance line. Period. It's refreshingly cut-and-dried.

Yet, for me, the early FR products and magazine articles violently resist this kind of easy assessment. They're so damn good that they flat-out refuse to be dismissed, no matter how much most of the Realms material released in the last quarter century makes you viscerally want to do just that.

Looking at these products, you come to one conclusion right off: The Forgotten Realms, so much as they are worth anything, are synonymous with Ed Greenwood. This identification is, to me, even stronger than the one linking the World of Greyhawk with its creator Gary Gygax. Gygax's work on Greyhawk will always be iconic, but I can think of many more individuals who made almost equally wonderful contributions in all those legendary modules: Rob Kuntz, of course, but also Len Lakofka, Allan Hammack, etc.

When it comes to the Realms, though, I can't honestly list a single must-have product that doesn't credit Greenwood as the lead writer/designer.

Surely, the man has his annoying quirks, even at his best. For one, he consistantly urges the DM to utilize super high-level NPCs to keep "rampaging", "out-of-control" PCs "in-line." In other words, to prevent them from making any significant changes to "his" world. This is profoundly wrongheaded, to say the very least, but easily ignored. And then there's Elminster. A lot of people say he didn't get "really bad" until the novels and whatnot, but I always hated the guy, with his smug attitude and cheesy Olde English.

But when he's good, he's good! Ruins of Undermountain, for example, is probably as close to a true published megadungeon as we'll ever see. Recent online debate on whether "published megadungeon" is an oxymoron or not aside, I think that if you cross-reference Undermountain with Philotomy Jurament's later popular piece on "The Dungeon as Mythical Underworld", the comparison is favorable indeed.

Fact is, if you take the three products I mentioned above and ignore some of Greenwood's less sound refereeing advice, you can easily have yourself a most excellent old-school campaign. I can only imagine (and envy!) the wealth of source material that a Greyhawk campaign DM would have to draw on if Gygax had ever released resources on Greyhawk City and Castle Greyhawk that were as well-done as FR1 and Ruins of Undermountain, respectively.

It's too bad about what happened later, but the strength of these early works will likely be enough to maintain this love/hate tug-of-war within me for a long time to come.

I'm not sure if I'd have it any other way.

Black Sheep: Gates of Firestorm Peak

2009-10-30T18:18:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to another installment of Black Sheep, where I (we?) recognize and celebrate the precious few shining lights to come out of the Dark Ages of D&D: The 1990s.

Today's subject: Gates of Firestorm Peak (GoFP), a 1996 AD&D module by Bruce Cordell. Since it's an adventure, anybody out there with an inkling that your referee might want to run you through this one should probably stop reading now before any spoilers show up. I'll try not to get too detailed, though.

GoFP would seem to have two huge strikes against it right from the start. Debuting in the latter half of the 90s, it runs smack into the common belief that TSR releases only got worse and worse as the decade rolled on, culminating in downright putrid dreck like the Diablo computer game tie-in products.

Second, it was advertised as being a showcase for options taken from the then-new Skills & Powers expansion rulebooks. Ack.

Still, GoFP weighed-in at a remarkable 11th place in the late Dungeon Magazine's "30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time" countdown, which otherwise featured "Golden Age" D&D adventures from the early 80s almost exclusively.

How? Here's the lowdown: GoFP is a 96-page "Underdark crawl" adventure with some interesting Lovecraftian twists for parties of 5th-8th level characters. The back cover has this to say:

"Once a generation, they say, a strange comet appears in the sky overhead and the gates of Firestorm Peak swing open. Twenty-seven years ago, your father led his band of adventurers into the mysterious mountain, never to return. Now the Dragon's Tear once more flickers in the sky, and the glass gates on the mountainside beckon. Will you pass through to discover the secrets that await beyond the portal none has ever dared and returned?"

This summary is pretty accurate, although you should feel free to ignore the fact that this sounds hella railroady thanks to the "missing father" angle. In fact, that's only one of many suggested ways of involving PCs in the adventure. Blame that one on whichever poor sap churned-out TSR's ad copy around that time.

The module opens with a brief description of Longbridge, a small town close to Firestorm Peak that allows PCs the opportunity to do some shopping and maybe fish for some tavern rumors before taking-on the dungeon itself.

Once through the Gates, the dungeon complex is divided into three main sectors:

The Outer Complex: This area is heavily populated by Duergar (evil dwarves; mounted on giant tarantulas, no less) and a handful of other intelligent underground races. Quick wits, stealth, trickery, and diplomacy are key here, since the prospect of attempting to plow straight through the heart of a well-manned Duergar outpost is daunting to say the least. Less hack-and-slash PCs might even have the opportunity to replenish their supplies at a cavern bazaar frequented by numerous underworld denizens.

The Twisted Caverns: Are just what they sound like. This is more of an underground wilderness area, so expect inhabitants to generally fit the ravenous beast archetype. Parties worn down by too much unnecessary combat in the Outer Complex will have the odds stacked heavily against them here.

The Inner Sanctum/Vast Gate: It's here that surviving PCs can unravel the mystery at the heart of Firestorm Peak: An ancient gateway to a malignant alien reality that's presently seeping-through to contaminate the PC's own in various disturbing ways. If they're smart and lucky, they may be able to seal it off. If not, they may very well never see the light of day again.

GoFP is a lengthy adventure and a difficult one. It will take several playing sessions, some smart players, and even a bit of luck to successfully complete. It's strongly non-linear, with more than one way to tackle the dungeon's challenges. Most of all, it positively oozes freaky flavor. The alien life forms infesting the depths of the dungeon are truly unsettling in their aspect and the gradual transition from a classic Underdark romp to the heart of an otherworldly Foulness is handled quite deftly.

As for the Skills & Powers dross, do what I and probably almost everybody else did and ignore it. It's remarkably easy.

As one of the few TSR adventures from its period with a reputation that's actually improved significantly over time, you can expect a used copy of GoFP to run you more than average, but it can still be found for sale around the $20.00 or less range if you spend some time shopping around.

Word to the wise: Try to make sure all the very neat color maps are included with the booklet itself before you buy.

Wolfman Bugbear's got nards!

2009-10-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

This post is just an excuse to post a link to this lovely image from the Otherworld Miniatures site.

Don't click if pewter peener may offend you.

P.S. The gratuitous Monster Squad reference is just a happy coincidence.

RPG Review: Wayfarers

2009-10-15T20:03:00.001-07:00

Wayfarers (“WF, hereafter) is a recently-released fantasy RPG from Ye Olde Gaming Companye. In addition to a complete set of game rules, the final 100 pages or so is a lengthy rules-light description of the campaign world of Twylos, making WF, after a fashion, “two books in one.”

Accordingly, I’ll be breaking this review down into three major aspects: Physical presentation, rules, and setting.

Full disclosure: In a happy first for me, co-author Jimmy Swill was kind enough to volunteer out of the blue via email to send me a free paperback copy of WF just because he liked my other online reviews. That’s pretty excellent when you consider that this very well-produced 400+ page tome normally retails for $35.00. So keep on writing those reviews, everyone: A treasure trove of glorious free gaming products awaits you! Maybe.

Anyway…

Physical Presentation

My copy of WF is an inch-thick standard dimension softcover with some attractive color cover art depicting a bloody battle between a motley crew of fantasy types (most prominently a woman in a cloak and humanoid bear swordfighting in the center foreground).

Inside art is B&W/grayscale and seems to be a combination of contributions from several dozen artists. They’re good, on average, although I have seen a couple of the pieces before (the “fighter versus orc” on page 199 was actually available as cover art for the last edition of Labyrinth Lord, for example).

Pages are non-glossy. Text is clearly presented in two columns, is well-written and seems well-edited.

Rules

WF is pretty much D&D-but-not.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, necessarily. Some of the oldest, most revered fantasy RPGs, such as Tunnels & Trolls and Runequest, seem to have started out with one or more designers who really liked D&D except for… The “except for” could be character classes, experience levels, magic based on the work of Jack Vance, or any number of other things.

So-called generic game systems soon got into the act, and countless systems, to include GURPS, Hero System, d6, Fudge and many others have published fantasy supplements available.

On the most basic level, the equation might look like this:

WF = classic (A)D&D - character classes – levels – alignment + point-buy character creation + robust skill system.

Utilizing a point-buy mechanic, you determine your attributes (Agility, Endurance, Intellect, Presence, Strength) and modify them by race (+1 Presence for elves, and so forth).

After that, you determine your HP (Health Points), your Physical and Mental Resistances (saving throws), Dodge score (take a guess), and movement rate (based on encumbrance of gear carried).

Next, you use your remaining points to purchase Disciplines like Hermetic Magic Potential, Precise Shot, and Feint. These are directly analogous to the Feats in certain other popular fantasy games.

Next you buy Proficiencies, which are classic skills like Climbing and Animal Handling.

Finally, you select your starting equipment and starting spells for spellcasters.

So no surprises at all during character creation, but it all seems to work well enough.

In play, WF uses all of the “typical” gaming dice, d4 through d20.

For skills, you roll a 1d20 for each skill “rank” you have and keep the best result, trying to beat a GM-set target number.

Each 10-second combat round is basically:

1. 1d10 per character initiative roll, modified by Agility bonuses.

2. To hit with physical attacks: Modified 1d20 roll attempting to equal or exceed the target’s modified Dodge score.

3. Spells can be interrupted and disrupted, especially since they generally take an initiative penalty proportionate to their overall power level. Once successfully cast, their effects are usually opposed by Physical or Mental Resistance, when applicable.

4. Along the way, damage is deducted from HP, with characters dropping below zero HP falling unconscious and possibly dying.

Anybody surprised yet? I know, I know. Just stay with me here.

There are four types of magic in WF. Hermetic Magic is your classic wizardly teleporting and blasting suckers with fire, lightning, and occasionally fiery lightning (just for a change of pace). Faith Magic is that sissy heal/cure/protect stuff scary religious fanatics do. Hedge Magic is phantasmal/mind-affecting magic similar to what illusionists employed in AD&D. Finally, Ritual Magic is a sort of hybrid between Hermetic and Faith Magics in terms of its effects.

Spells are divided into Circles (levels) and magic is mostly “Vancian” memorization where each caster can prepare and use a certain number of spells of each given Circle per day depending on their magic skill levels. Faith types can ask their divine patrons for any spell, but other types are limited to choosing spells from the formulae recorded in their magic tomes.

The one exception is Ritual Magic, which works on a classic spell point system. Spells of a given Circle cost a certain number of points from a master pool to cast and need not be chosen in advance.

There’s also some experience rules, two big chapters packed with magic items and monsters, a chapter of optional rules, sample characters, and even a pseudo-screenplay format “example of play.”

Apologies if I sound like I’ve been being unduly flippant in the preceding paragraphs, but it’s a real struggle for me to find anything to say, good or bad, about WF’s rules.

They’re exactly what you would expect. Exactly. Nothing less and nothing more. Perfectly serviceable.

Setting

Now we’re talking! The “World of Twylos” section is where WF truly comes alive in grand Framptonian style.

You might call it a “typical” fantasy world, but a careful reading reveals it to be a truly excellent example of such; perhaps one of the all-time best I’ve ever seen.

Twylos is, in the authors’ own words, “a synthesis of seven different campaigns” that “ran almost continuously between 1988 and 2006.”

Frankly, it shows. Twylos has “handcrafted labor of love” written all over it and is positively dripping with vivid atmosphere. This is clearly not the product of some marketing department’s X-month “development cycle.” Would you like to hear the fables of Paedra and the Ogre King or Timmorn and the Apple Tree? How about some poetry? Or you could read a scene-by-scene summary of “Gardens of Zil”, described as “a short play in three acts that was written by Rogan DuLaine, the Mad Priest of Ixus, when he was wandering Saethos, searching for Rhauxen.”?

This material is both ample and utterly charming, and it’s layered on top of a detailed world with many adventure seeds, convincing fantasy religions and societies, and scary-cool NPC antagonists like Lord Ixondr of the Hall of Faces.

Most importantly, for me, the authors seem to have resisted the temptation to use their own favorite PCs and NPCs as “movers and shakers” in Twylos. Players concerned about being upstaged by the antics of pet NPCs (a criticism that’s been leveled, rightly or wrongly, about certain other campaigns) need not worry; the world is the star here. Nor is there any impression that all the truly epic, important quests have already been completed.

There is a well-drafted map of Twylos included in the book along with a character sheet, but grayscale does not do it justice. I’d recommend one of the larger color versions on the YOGC website.

Summary

So what can I say about WF?

If you want a complete classic fantasy game that’s mostly in the D&D mold, but excludes some of its more perennially controversial mechanics like firm character classes and alignments, WF’s rules will fit your needs. I, for one, am not, but ‘different strokes’, I guess.

If you want one of the coolest, most richly and lovingly-detailed fantasy worlds ever presented for an RPG, WF has this in spades. And it’s mostly system-free to boot.

If you want both, just stop reading and go get WF now. There’s no possible way you’re going to be anything less than overjoyed.

On a scale of 1-5, I’d give WF a 4 for style and presentation, a 3 for its rules, and a 5 for its setting material (average those last two to a 4 if you like).

It’s a quality product, and I recommend it highly. I’m looking forward to more from YOGC in the months and years to come.

Black Sheep: Thunder Rift

2009-10-08T21:33:00.000-07:00

I've been brainstorming ideas lately for an irregular, open-ended post series and today one finally came to me.

I'm calling it "Black Sheep." This series will be dedicated to praising the oft-overlooked gems published during what many consider to be the darkest days of D&D: The 1990s.

There's a strong tendency in the classic D&D community to write-off the hundreds of products released by TSR during this period. And that's too bad. Because even incompetent management and an utter lack of quality control didn't manage to prevent some very sincere D&D enthusiasts from producing some very useful and inspiring products.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that many old-timers report that they just up and stopped playing (A)D&D around this time, while I myself was a kid just beginning. But I digress...

To start things off, here's Thunder Rift, a 1992 "basic D&D" release by Colin McComb.

TR superfan Håvard Faanes describes the setup like so:

"Thunder Rift is a small isolated valley, named after the characteristic thunderous roar that can sometimes be heard throughout the valley. Despite its small size, Thunder Rift is home to a wide range of peoples and creatures and has a rich history, full of wonders, glory, conflicts, violence and tragedy."

Thunder Rift is what we today might call a "mini-sandbox." It's intended as a truly modular, transportable microsetting that a new DM can use as a base for his or her adventures. It is, in its own way, analogous to Village of Hommlet or Keep on the Borderlands.

Why is this so important? Well, at the time it seemed to many that TSR was forsaking exactly this sort of useful, modular "bread-and-butter" D&D product in favor of ever more esoteric and complicated high-concept ones. This was the era, you'll remember, of Spelljammer, Planescape, Maztica, etc. But what good did these sprawling, baroque works do for the average kid just looking for a small village to set his first dungeon near, maybe one with a forest of reclusive elves and a hillside colony of gruff dwarves not too far away?

Thunder Rift deliberately kept its scope small, but it packed so many colorful NPCs, rustic villages, savage wildernesses, and adventure hooks into a mere 32 pages (and a neat poster map), that it helped my games much more than the other, more massive (and expensive) products I bought around the same time.

In fact, the Rift, later transposed into Known World/Mystara just north of Darokin, became a centerpiece of my longest-running and most memorable campaign. During my high school years, as the PCs gradually grew in power and status, they even chose to build their strongholds in the Rift, in honor of all those great low-level adventures we played and more than one of McComb's villager NPCs became beloved campaign fixtures.

A whole series of introductory modules were released for Thunder Rift, including Assault on Raven's Ruin and Quest for the Silver Sword, and it even has its very own active forum frequented by fans and original creators alike. With most TSR products from that era trading for pennies on the dollar on eBay and other online markets, I can't recommend tracking these down enough.

So come on down to the Rift, stranger, and sidle up to bar at the Sarcastic Goat Inn. Drinks are on me.

Demography.

2009-10-04T03:26:00.000-07:00

"The OSR is a tiny niche. The main bulk of its followers largely middle-aged and not getting any younger."

So says one of my valued commenters, and this brings me back to something I've been pondering (and meaning to post on) for some time.

Who is the OSR precisely? The quote heading up this entry very well sums up the common understanding: We are "largely middle-aged and not getting any younger."

I myself am 31 years old. I consider myself to be in the prime of my life; Not a young man, but significantly short of middle age.

Has there been any comprehensive systematic effort to really quantify the demographics of the OSR? If not, how could this be accomplished?

Begun, the Clone War has?

2009-09-30T19:13:00.000-07:00

So, I found out recently that the new Revised edition of Labyrinth Lord has a small handful of rule changes included. Leather armor, for example, is now AC8 instead of AC7.

I don't like this development. I don't like it at all.

Big deal, you say? Maybe so. I hope so.

But what worries me is that this might just be a sign of things to come, as simulacrum game makers more and more cave to the temptation to "improve" on their source material.

We've already seen this in Swords & Wizardry, which really bugged me with its creator's insistence on including what I can only describe as some very half-baked house rules in the main book. In fact, it bugged me so much that my copy was sold to the local Half-Price Books fairly quickly and hasn't been missed since. The worst offenders by far were consolidating all the saving throws into one and tacking-on an overly-complex 3E-style "challenge rating" system for monsters. Oh, and ascending AC. Don't even get me started on that bull.

Maybe this stuff works great in the author's own campaigns. Good for him. Maybe Daniel Proctor really gets a tangible benefit out of running his Moldvay-style game with AC8 leather armor. Again, fine, but that's not the point.

The point is a bunch of questions that have been running through my head all afternoon:

1. How serious are these authors about making games that are as faithful to the original works as humanly (and legally) possibly? Can they divorce their egos enough from the process to acknowledge that, yes, Gygax and company really did do it right the first time and the old designs don't need any of their help now, except as it relates to getting back into print? Or will the clones/simulacra increasingly become more and more "their own things" until they eventually have as little proper claim to the label as Castles & Crusades or the new Hackmaster?

2. What are we to make of changes that bring the so-called clones objectively further from their source material in later revised editions? Why did they start? Will they ever stop? If so, when?

3. If they don't stop or persist for some time, how soon until we're seeing multiple editions of the clone, each one increasingly more and more its own game?

Player: "So, what's the AC for studded leather?"

DM: "Depends. Which version of Labyrinth Lord are we playing again? 1.0? 1.5? 2.0? Even I can't keep them all straight sometimes..."

Player: "Uh, okay. Well, is Sleep second level this time or first?"

DM: *sigh*

Keep in mind, I'm not talking about minor lawsuit dodges like calling the displacer beast a phase tiger or leaving Bigby's name off his Hand spells. I'm talking about more fundamental, completely elective rules changes and additions such as the recent tweaks to LL or Mythmere's house rules in S&W.

More and more I'm thinking that I should just stick to out-of-print games for my play. At least they're a known quantity, if only because it's too late for any of them to turn around and change horses midstream.

Hmm.

New magic-user spell: Silverglade's Forcebolt

2009-09-29T20:33:00.000-07:00

As a player, I never really paid much attention to the rules in D&D for creating new, unique spells. This is the one exception.

After encountering several situations where I would have liked to have taken advantage of the high damage potential of a Fireball or Lightning Bolt, but found my character in too small an area to employ one safely, I decided to solve the problem by creating a sort of hybrid single-target spell in the Magic Missile vein. Enjoy!

Silverglade's Forcebolt (Evocation)
Level: 3
Range: 10" + 1"/level
Duration: Instantaneous
Area of Effect: One creature or object
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 3 segments
Saving Throw: 1/2

Upon casting this spell, a fist-sized ball of pale green fire darts forth from the magic-user's outstretched hand and unerringly strikes a single targeted creature or object within range, blossoming into a small (one foot diameter) concussive explosion upon impact.

Creatures struck suffer 1d6 damage per level of the magic-user, with a saving throw allowed for half damage. Because of the great difficulty involved in avoiding a direct hit from this spell in favor of a more glancing blow, this saving throw incurs a -2 penalty. The extent of damage to inanimate objects is best assessed by the referee on a case-by-case basis (optional rules for item saving throws may be helpful here).

Despite its appearance, this spell is a form of visible telekinetic force, not a true flame. Thus, resistance to normal or magical fire provides no special protection against it.

Is OSRIC AD&D?

2009-09-24T20:56:00.000-07:00

Lots of handwringing over this lately on various forums and blogs, it seems.

I'd say no.

BOO HISS

Wait!

Is AD&D still AD&D without the beholder? The bard? The monk? Psionics? The same demihuman level limits? The same experience tables? The same combat tables? The classic contradictory rules (according to the DMG, magic armor is both weightless and half the weight of normal armor...)?

Not quite, no, but so what? The real problem here is the perceived need for OSRIC to somehow be exactly equivalent to AD&D to be a legitimate game and the implication that the two not being properly synonymous is a failing on OSRIC's part. When overly-aggressive simulacrum game detractors and overly-defensive simulacrum game boosters meet, the result isn't pretty.

OSRIC is fine for what it is: A quality, perpetually in-print free game in the AD&D mold that can be used as a vehicle to publish and sell works broadly compatible with AD&D without authors, artists, and publishers worrying about running afoul of the law.

You can focus on what it is (see previous paragraph) or what it's not (AD&D). The choice is yours. I would prefer to emphasize its considerable merits, but that's just me.

I'm published!

2009-08-31T20:22:00.000-07:00

In the new issue #6 of Fight On! magazine, that is.

This is a first for me, but I hope not a last!

My dood.

2009-08-27T21:44:00.000-07:00

Here's the current AD&D 1E stats for my longest-running character, which I probably created around fifteen or sixteen years ago now back in high school. He started-out as a "BECMI" Elf as per the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, so it's not an exact translation, but it's very close. The campaign was Known World/Mystara and the first adventure he ever played in was Arena of Thyatis, wherein he killed his first monster (a carrion crawler and no, not singlehandedly) and got his first magic item (a short short +1 that he's since passed on to another PC's henchman). His home is a manor house with small attached stone tower just outside the town of Melinir in Thunder Rift, which we transplanted into Mystara just north of Darokin. His name is stolen directly from the Cyclopedia, since I've always been bad at coming up with names. One of these days, I'll have to post a picture of the simply amazing miniature of him my wife painted for me. It's a true work of art.

Name: Silverglade Woodshadow
Player: Will Mistretta
Race: Elf
Class: Fighter/Magic-User
Level: 5/8
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Sex: Male
Age: 181
Height: 5’4”
Weight: 120 lbs
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Green

Ability Scores:

Strength: 12
Intelligence: 16
Wisdom: 8
Dexterity: 19
Constitution: 11
Charisma: 12

Combat Details:

Armor Class: 1 (5 without dexterity bonus)
Hit Points: 32
Movement Rate: 9”
Encumbrance Carried: 753 cn

Saving Throws:

Paralyzation, Poison or Death Magic: 11
Petrification or Polymorph: 11
Rod, Staff or Wand: 9
Breath Weapon: 13
Spell: 10

Experience:

Fighter: 81,001
Magic User: 90,001/135,001 (+10% bonus)

Weapon Proficiencies:

Bow, long
Bow, short
Dagger
Sword, long
Sword, short

Languages Known:

Alignment
Common
Elvish
Gnome
Halfling
Dwarven
Goblin
Hobgoblin
Orcish
Gnoll

Special Abilities:

90% sleep/charm resistance
+1 to hit with some bows/swords
Secret door detection (1 on 1d6 passive, 1-2 on 1d6 active search)
60’ infravision
Conditional surprise bonus

Spells/Level:

1/2/3/4
4/3/3/2

Spells Known:

1st Level:

Charm Person
Comprehend Languages
Detect Magic
Feather Fall
Magic Missile
Read Magic
Sleep

2nd Level:

Continual Light
Invisibility
Knock
Mirror Image
Strength
Wizard Lock

3rd Level:

Dispel Magic
Fireball
Fly
Lightning Bolt
Phantasmal Force
Water Breathing

4th Level:

Charm Monster
Dimension Door
Polymorph Other
Polymorph Self
Remove Curse

Magic Items Carried/Worn:

Silver longsword +3 (+4 to hit, dmg: 1d8+3/1d12+3, spd: 5)
Silver dagger +1 (+1 to hit melee/+4 to hit ranged, dmg: 1d4+1/1d3+1, spd: 2, fire rate: 2, range: 1/2/3)
Composite shortbow +1 (+5 to hit, dmg: 1d6+1/1d6+1, fire rate: 2, range: 5/10/18)
Leather armor +3
Amulet of telepathy (as helm of telepathy)
Potion of extra-healing

Regular Equipment Carried/Worn:

20 silver arrows
Quiver (one score capacity)
Leather backpack
Belt
Soft boots
One week’s iron rations
Waterskin
Large belt pouch
Small belt pouch
Large sack
Spell book and spell components

Money Carried:

50 gp
Gold ring (10 gp value, worn)

Magic Items Elsewhere:

Crystal ball (in vault at home)

Money Elsewhere:

5000 gp (in vault at home)
2500 sp (in vault at home)

"Desert island" RPGs...

2009-07-30T16:08:00.000-07:00

I've seen this meme a lot lately, and frankly I'm not impressed.

Limiting the selection to a "top ten" seems hardly strict enough. Seems like the easy way out.

Instead, I want you to give me a "top three."

Mine:

1. Labyrinth Lord. The best version of the best version of D&D.

2. Fudge 10th Anniversary Edition. The most flexible and intuitive RPG ever designed, in my experience. I'd use this for everything and anything that D&D didn't do better.

3. Delta Green (Call of Cthulhu). Even without any version of the CoC rules to back it up, this the single most exceptional example of an RPG support product to appear in the last two decades. Indispensable.

You know what I'd love to get my hands on?

2009-07-18T22:17:00.001-07:00

Some of TSR's old Mail Order Hobby Shop catalogs from when I was a kid.

Being obsessed with D&D pre-Internet and not having too much money to buy product or a local hobby store, those suckers were sure tantalizing. I probably paged through some of them until they just about disintegrated.

eBay, perhaps?

Because it's not being reported nearly enough: Aaron Allston needs help.

2009-07-17T02:23:00.000-07:00

With the emotional fallout over a certain well-known designer that fails to understand pre-WotC D&D so much it physically hurts and James Mishler's negative predictions about the future of RPGs as a moneymaking industry, there's one story that I feel has been sadly neglected.

It seems that RPG and sci-fi writer Aaron Allston, who counts the legendary Champions supplement Strike Force and the D&D Rules Cyclopedia among his more famed gaming works, has suffered some heart trouble resulting in an emergency bypass operation. Like many others who've found themselves unexpectedly navigating the treacherous waters of the U.S. health care system, the bills have piled-up and Mr. Allston is in need of some help.

Please see this site for information on donations and an upcoming charity auction being held to benefit Mr. Allston.

Thanks to The Sandbox of Doom for the heads-up on this one. And to any other bloggers and forum junkies out there, please help spread the word.

Get well, Mr. Allston.

Everything I need to know I learned from He-Man and Nintendo.

2009-05-21T12:13:00.000-07:00

It's been all the rage lately for old-school D&D-related b****ers (God, I hate that so-called word) to post about their personal gaming inspirations in the form of their very own take on Appendix N. This refers, of course, to the famous short section near the end of the Dungeon Master's Guide where Gary Gygax listed the fantastic literature that inspired him during the creation of D&D. Here you'll find cited titans like Howard, Lovecraft, Vance, Lieber, and Tolkien, as well as lesser-known offerings from the likes of Abraham Merritt and John Bellairs.

Well, my Appendix N doesn't have any of that. Missing is not just "pulp" or "swords & sorcery" fiction, but any kind of fantasy literature, at least up until the last couple years. Heck, I didn't even play the classic modules.

I'll explain.

I got my start with D&D when I chanced upon a copy of Tom Moldvay's red cover Basic rulebook in a thrift store sometime circa 1990. Other than an occasional turn at some older acquaintances' 1E games, my play for the remainder of that formative decade was mostly with the Moldvay edition's successors, the Frank Mentzer D&D sets as compiled in the D&D Rules Cyclopedia.

In retrospect, I can trace my influences back to two primary sources which collectively form my Appendix N:

1. Saturday morning cartoons.

2. Videogames.

Let's tackle these suckers:

Saturday morning cartoons.

My generation was the first to be hooked on a whole new kind of children's cartoon: The glorified action figure commercial. He-Man, Thundercats, Silverhawks, you know the drill. They were, of course, vapid exercises in cynical marketing, but at least the characters and settings were cool-looking and, well, "actioney" in a way that cartoons previously weren't. These shows taught me quite a few things:

* There is no, I repeat no meaningful distinction between fantasy and sci-fi. If you want cat people from another planet to battle an undead sorcerer with the aid of an enchanted sword and whatever the hell this is, well, what's weird about that? I just took this for granted. It's no wonder that my high school years saw the PCs fighting off alien invaders in outer space and traveling through time to the campaign world's technologically advanced far future.

* It's more important to be evocative when "world-building" than logical. If the Masters of the Universe writers wanted He-Man to wrestle a monster in a forest of giant purple mushrooms (or whatever), the planet of Eternia suddenly had one. If the Dungeon Master told the kids in the D&D cartoon that they needed to find a magic book in a gigantic enchanted lost city on a mountaintop, than the "Realm of Dungeons & Dragons" suddenly had one. It didn't matter how weird or unlikely it might be, if it was wonderous and an awesome place to set an adventure, it had a place in these very gonzo fantasy worlds. Needless to say, the whole "But what about the ecology?" fantasy worldbuilding fad of the 90s never failed to rub me the wrong way.

* Adventures are best undertaken by a good-sized group of diverse professionals, each with their own unique but complementary skillsets. Mainly this was the case in the cartoons because a whole stable of heroic action stars means more toy sales than a lone protagonist, but the unintended side-effect for me was to make the idea of the "adventuring party" the default in my mind well before I encountered Lord of the Rings or any RPG.

Videogames.

Here I mean console ones, because my family was too poor growing up to give me much of a footing in the world of PC gaming. Especially important were games from the era when the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was dominant, roughly 1985-1993.

* The Legend of Zelda taught me that a game could focus on the exploration of a wide-open fantasy world. Before this, my experience was limited to games that took place either on a series of single screen "boards" like Pac-Man and most classic arcade games or on a fixed one-way scrolling path (think Super Mario Bros). Here, I was free to roam everywhere burning down trees, using explosives on cliffs and walls, pushing rocks, and checking under statues for secret passages leading to wealth and magical treasures.

* While Legend of Zelda was still fairly action-focused, other games were more focused on statistics and introduced the concept of turn-based combat. It's thanks to Dragon Warrior (aka Dragon Quest) and the original Final Fantasy that I came to understand how a game character could be represented by such things as hit points, strength scores, and classes and how concepts like initiative worked. These games also introduced me to the concept of character improvement. Suddenly characters could learn from their adventures, becoming stronger, faster, more accomplished magicians, etc.

* The Holy Trinity of Town/Wilderness/Dungeon was very clearly established in these games, just as it traditionally has been in D&D. Logistics wasn't always ignored in early console adventure games, either. Ultima Exodus made you pack food for your party on expeditions outside of town and every Dragon Warrior player dreaded the possibility of their torch burning out, leaving them to wander blindly through a pitch black cave until the monsters finished them off.

Ultimately, I think the relatively childish and simplistic presentation of these cartoons and games girded me against taking the whole enterprising of gaming too seriously, which is why I've never felt the need to leave the realm of swashbucking fantasy adventure for complicated amateur novelist "story arcs" or "serious" and "mature" explorations of being a totally angsty vampire. Or any of that highfalutin' crap, really.

So there you have it. That's how a Generation X kid with no background in fantasy lit came to love eclectic sandbox-style gaming in the classic (OD&D - AD&D) mold.

Although in recent years I have come to love much of the pulp S&S fiction that inspired Gygax, I still have to admit that deep down, I still draw much of my inspiration from the disposable entertainment of my formative years.

I suppose it's true what they say: There are many paths, but they all lead to the same mountaintop.

Welcome!

2009-05-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

Never let it be said that there was a bandwagon I wouldn't jump on.