Dungeon Fantasy Houserule

Fixing a Perceived Problem or Expressing My Preference
Dungeon Fantasy is powered by GURPS as it says on the cover, but it is a cut-down specific subset of the entire GURPS 4th Edition rules. GURPS in all its editions and even its older cousin, The Fantasy Trip, is known for offering referees and players a detailed tactical combat system. I have run GURPS (and The Fantasy Trip) without the usual hex map and counters/figures and I think it works fine using only the "theater of the mind" approach. However, a more detailed and tactical combat system using the hex map tactical display may be one of the features which draws certain players to GURPS.
I played a quick demo of Dungeon Fantasy combat at Gencon and now have access to the digital rules and there is one aspect involving combat that immediately strikes me as problematic (to my way of thinking). Dungeon Fantasy does not use the second-by-second countdown of full blown GURPS combat, which is fine. GURPS is a toolbox and using more or less detail is part of the individual customization the system is intended to support. Dungeon Fantasy streamlines combat to a degree and for many, running combat as written in Exploits may seem appropriate. I find myself uncomfortable with characters/monsters moving past each other with no hindrance or opportunity to attack, however.
Therefore I will be trying a houserule when running Dungeon Fantasy, (which I hope to do soon) one which introduces a zone of control mechanic. Dungeon Fantasy uses "facing" for creatures. The hexes to their front are front facing. Only movement, attacks and parries across front hexes are unpenalized. Side and rear hexes offer attacking opponents position advantage. I think the front hexes should constitute a zone of control. Creatures who enter a zone of control, or who start inside such, should be limited to a single hex of movement. This will prevent moving past or very far out of the threatened area of an active opponent. Casting while in a zone of control (ZOC) seems unreasonable as dodging and parrying would make it virtually impossible to concentrate on the spell and perform the gestures and vocalizations necessary for casting. Similarly, using a missile weapon while in a ZOC seems impractical and I will houserule that as not possible.
I frequently try various houserules (discussing them with players before the game, of course). Often I find the houserule doesn't work out the way I hoped and I abandon it for the next session. Other houserules seem to work and I have been using them for years. The only way to know for sure is to test it out during play and discuss the results with players afterwards. I may find Dungeon Fantasy works better using the rules as written, but I am bothered enough by the idea of hostile beings moving freely past one another to want to "fix" the situation. We'll see how it works out in play.

Dungeon Fantasy Arrives

Digital Version
I received the digital files of the new GURPS Dungeon Fantasy box set from Steve Jackson Games last week. Dungeon Fantasy is a product that started a few years ago with an earlier version by the same name. The original Dungeon Fantasy (DF) came out 2007 (my copy is version 1.2 - August, 2008) and was released in digital format as part of the effort to expand e23, Steve Jackson Games' online digital store. The current version is the result of a kickstarter to produce a stand alone boxed game focused on fantasy dungeon delving. As such it includes an edited version of the 4th Edition rules and previous Dungeon Fantasy products with everything coordinated to present a comprehensive self contained game suitable for beginners centered around the dungeon delve. (Last year saw publication of a self-contained, GURPS powered, game-book for Terry Pratchet's Diskworld.)
The Dungeon Fantasy box set will contain five softcover books titled, Adventurers, Dungeon, Exploits, Monsters and Spells. Maps, Cardboard Heroes and dice are included. (I also received a GM screen, but that may be part of the Kickstarter.) The Adventurers book describes how to create DF characters. There are 11 template "character professions" (think traditional classes re-imagined as GURPS point buy characters) which amount to 250 point paper heroes that can be used "as is" for dungeon delving or modified in the usual point-buy system of GURPS 4th Edition. The Dungeon book contains a short (24 page) beginner adventure titled "I Smell A Rat". Dungeon - I Smell A Rat uses the Cardboard Heroes and Maps supplied in the box to provide a tactical experience which is a hallmark of combat in GURPs (and The Fantasy Trip before GURPS).
Exploits is the system rulebook for Dungeon Fantasy and the meat of the product from my perspective. In 114 pages, Exploits manages to cover the GURPs system rules needed for Fantasy Dungeon delving...with an emphasis on "needed". Exploits cuts corners and simplifies some aspects of 4th Edition in an effort to make the game beginner friendly and dungeon specific. There aren't a lot of rules for social interactions and of course all the guns, lasers, vehicles and medium to high tech stuff is left out.  This is a game with pinpoint focus on dungeon delving. Combat in DF is of the hit - parry/dodge variety seen in all GURPS editions and my one reservation is that it can be slow. The use of a tactical display allows for maneuver, flanking, range and teamwork decisions on the part of the players. Armor reduces damage rather than making it harder to achieve a solid hit.
Monsters has the most evocative cover art (see above), although all the artwork is good and is focused on the dungeon subject (which I like). There are some interesting "Point of View" sections which explore how adventurers view monsters and how monsters may view the world/milieu. (I find philosophical discussions such as these interesting.) The Bestiary contains 75+ monsters, many are standard fantasy dungeon fare - goblin, Minotaur, skeleton, others are variations on monsters from traditional systems - eye of death, electric jelly, spore cloud, and some seem unique to Steve Jackson Games -  as Sharak, Ciuacla', and Peshkali (fire-breathing cat-men, alien snake creature which dwells in an animated skeleton, and six-armed snake demon respectively). Monsters, along with mechanical traps and environmental hazards (falling, drowning, fire) are central components of the dungeon challenge and Dungeon Fantasy gives the referee rules to cover these.
The final book is Spells which contains the Dungeon Fantasy magic system. Magic in GURPs has always been closely tied to the skill system (basically each spell is a specialized skill) using a power point system. Spells in DF are divided among clerical, druidic and wizardly magics which are powered by sanctity, nature's strength and mana respectively. I like the fact that DF ties restoration of Fatigue Points (magic points) to locations which have high power levels such as temples, groves and mana rich locales. Consistent with the overall theme of dungeon delving, spell lists concentrate on those magics best suited to use in a dungeon milieu. Dungeon Fantasy seeks to imitate the traditional dungeon delving game experience (using a GURPS rules engine) and in keeping with this goal, exploding fireballs, healing spells and invisibility are the types of magic portrayed here.
As an introduction to the GURPS 4th Edition family of product I think Dungeon Fantasy does the job nicely. The rules as explained in Exploits are compact and seem comprehensive with respect to the dungeon environment. Some differences exist between GURPS Basic Set rules and Dungeon Fantasy, but for me that is excusable. Adventurers is an improvement over the previous version 1.2 product in terms of user friendliness. Based on the appearance of the digital copies, I am anticipating a very nice physical boxed product when it arrives. Dungeon Fantasy promises to be a complete, introductory GURPS product aimed directly at my primary interest in adventure gaming, the dungeon delve. GURPS is one of the systems which generally prides itself on being super realistic, but Dungeon Fantasy seems to dial that back some in the spirit of presenting a more accessible game. Powered by GURPS, DF offers a more tactical combat experience than many systems, but one whose basics hearken back to the simple elegance of The Fantasy Trip. Dungeon Fantasy feels like old school dungeon adventuring while rolling 3d6 to attack and casting magic point spells.

Adventure Module Advice

Professional Advice from Pros
I have had this book since Origins and I am still trying to decide what I think about it. There is definitely some good advice contained within, but I am not sure I am smart enough to take it (or understand it all).
How to Write... is an oversize hardcover book collecting essays and short adventure ideas from two dozen plus authors in 160 pages of illustrated text. The school "theme book" look is eye catching and the cartoonish artwork complements the subject nicely. Each of the twenty-five authors included writes some advice and gives a short adventure idea presumably illustrating the advice.  There are some clever ideas contained in this volume and it is useful for inspiring the reader's imagination toward game creations of our own.
Rather than try and explain the advice contained in How to Write... from Goodman Games, I will instead give my own amateur advice (it's my vanity blog after all). I have mentioned before how I feel it is important to expose ourselves as referees to as many stories and ideas as we can cram into our brains during our busy schedules. I try to constantly be semi-aware of "how can I use this in my gaming?" as I read, watch, listen to, or whatever. Twisting, borrowing and re-interpreting themes from a number of sources can lead to something new and fun, or a mess. There is no substitute for thinking things through carefully, and being ready to improvise when plans go awry.
So here is my advice (to myself):
Know your system rules! It may sound like unnecessary advice, but I find it easier to focus on the adventure material I would like to share than to study and master new rules. I tend to gloss over rules that are unfamiliar and to borrow methods from my White Box ways to fill in the gaps. This isn't really fair to the rules as written (and the game designer) or to players who have taken the time to learn the rules and are expecting to play by them. If, as referee, I agree to run a game using a particular rule set, I should have command of those rules.
Know the material being used at the table. If it is a purchased play aid, read it through several times, make notes and convert it into my own words. As a player I don't like being read to and as a referee I feel awkward reading to players. Know the modules well enough to paraphrase it. Published play aids contain lots of great ideas and, with work, can be made to fit into almost any campaign. Most are that much better having been modified for personal use.
Finally, run something you really like. Enthusiasm is catching and so is boredom. If the referee is excited about the game, it is a good chance this will mean the players will get excited about it too. The reverse is very often true as well. An uninspired referee going through the motions in order to just "get it done" is not much fun for the players. Saying "no" to players who want the group's usual referee to run something which doesn't appeal to me as referee can be difficult, but probably good advice. If one of my players is particularly keen on the idea, they should probably be the one to run it. Perhaps their enthusiasm will be infectious and everyone will enjoy the game more.
Find a system you like, master the rules you intend to run, know the adventure material forwards and back (to borrow a mid-western saying), and only run what you can get excited about running. It is a pretty short advice essay (more bullet points really) and I am not a published author, but that's my advice for running an adventure that doesn't suck.

Tournament Module

Old School Convention Tradition
Gencon 50 is in the books. I attended along with four local friends from one of my two regular play groups. We were among the 60,000+ unique attendees flowing through the Indiana Convention Center last week. With the sell-out this year I expected bigger crowds, but that was not my impression. An email from Gencon which I received after the event said attendance was up 4% over 2016. That seems a modest increase to me and explains why I didn't really notice bigger crowds.
One of the joys of con attendance is trying new games. The dealer exhibition hall is a great place to do this, so we spent a few hours trying out some games that looked interesting to us. Among those that stand out is a monster board/RPG called Kingdom Death: Monster. The game has roleplaying elements, nation building elements, exploration and some super detailed miniatures you can customize for your characters. It also has a $400 price and they were sold out! Other, more affordable games we played (and purchased) include Tiny Epic Quest, Hero Realms, Dragoon, and Santorini. Tiny Epic Quest by Gamelyn is an adventure game on a mini scale with easy to learn rules which supports multiple strategies. Hero Realms by White Wizard Games is a deck building adventure game that plays like a combination of Magic the Gathering and Dominion. Dragoon by Lay Waste Games is a boardgame about dragon "goons" who oppress the population, steal gold from each other and accumulate the biggest hoard of treasure. Gameplay is innovative, fast and strategic. The metal pieces and cloth play mat are quality components which add to the fun. Santorini by Cool Stuff Inc. is a strategy game where you play petty gods building competing temples ala the Tower of Babel. It combines elements of a stacking game with board control strategies. Another fun, quick game we played is 5 Minute Dungeon, a cooperative dungeon delve card game that reminds me of PIT.
Other than viewing some new games (and making a few purchases) the convention is about playing games. A big con like Gencon offers several types of games to play including card games, boardgames, roleplaying games, and video games. The traditional fantasy roleplaying games appeal most to me.  As at Origins earlier this summer, I once again found myself drawn to the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG game offerrings. The Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG by Goodman Games is a fantasy RPG that uses modern mechanics (similar to 3rd Edition in many ways) in an old school play style that attempts to support games based on Appendix N sources. A hallmark of old school convention play is the tournament and my friends and I joined in for the DCCRPG tournament this year.
Tournament play is a bit different from the standard RPG experience. Death is expected and necessary for elimination so there can be tournament winners. Tournament modules are therefore designed to frequently kill PCs. They are often centered on dungeons so as to limit the playable environment and usually somewhat linear so that each party/team encounters roughly the same challenges. Many of the earliest published play aids were tournament modules, TSR's C-series (Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan), G-series (Giants) and the Judges Guild offerings Gencon 9 Dungeon, Of Skulls and Scrapefaggot Green and Sword of Hope.
Goodman Games set their tournament up quite nicely this year. The referee/judge we had was personable and fair. The challenges were entertaining and the dungeon definitely had the old school feel to it with several puzzles as well as critters.  Our table ended in a total party kill, but we laughed and had fun with it.  Tournament characters are pre-gens and not really anything a player is likely to be attached to. Goodman Games had a large gong set up in the room and as each PC died, the player rang the gong and the room cheered. It was fun.  Our party lost the cleric early on when the judge rolled back-to-back critical hits on him and from that point on it was just a matter of time as we bled away hit points with no means of recovery.
The G series (Against the Giants) were the first published adventure modules I owned and were therefore influential in teaching me how to design my own adventures. I was fortunate that the G series included a number of locations and I quickly came to imitate the multi-locale adventure concept in my own creations, inserting overland travel in between the "dungeon" locations. For good or bad, I also copied the deadly nature of the tournament challenge and many dead PCs would lie forever forgotten amidst the halls of my dungeon creations. I was not alone in this grim practice as many of the referees in whose milieu I adventured also learned their craft from perusing various tournament modules.
The convention tournament has largely been replaced by numerous living campaigns in which players play the same characters in a number of loosely connected sessions or modules and PCs rarely die. My friends and I play in those events at every convention and enjoy that style of play. The old school tournament is a different experience and enjoyable in its own right. I amusingly noted that what I was frequently asked by other players in the tournament was "in what room did you die?". Competitive, shared experience brought us together and gave us something to talk about, compare and occasionally boast. The fact that nearly all our characters died didn't diminish the fun at all.

Gencon at 50

Would Gary be Sad?
This week is Gencon, Gencon number 50. According to sources (including Wizards of the Coast's D&D website) the first Gencon was held fifty years ago (1967) in Gary Gygax's house in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. It was attended by about a dozen gamers. White Box (1974) had not been published, even Chainmail (1971), the miniatures rules that preceded White Box, had not been published. Participants at that event played wargames with miniature figures and on maps using cardboard counters. History was a major theme in most of the games. The concept of getting together to share fun, meet new gamers and exchange ideas caught on. 1968 saw the convention expand to the Lake Geneva Horticulture Hall and the title Gencon I (1968) was used.
In the summer of 1978, I was living in Kenosha, Wisconsin near the University of Wisconsin-Parkside campus where Gencon XI was held that year. My girlfriend noticed an add/article in the local newspaper and we headed over for the day. Wow! Was I ever blown away. I had been playing wargames for a number of years and had been working at the task of learning White Box since the previous Christmas, but never had I imagined the multitude of products available, variety of game subjects and numbers of people who shared the hobby, my hobby and their's. Everyone was happy and enthusiastic to share the games they enjoyed with others. "All were welcomed and encouraged to join in the fun." And that is the unofficial motto of my hobby philosophy.
My experience in 40 years of gaming is that this hobby is friendly, welcoming and inclusive. It seems anyone running a game tries very hard to find a spot for everyone wishing to join in. Rarely have I seen anyone turned away from a game for any reason other than the table being absolutely full. Even then, it seems every effort is made to pull up another table and extend the game to include everyone interested in joining the fun. Sharing, teaching, accommodating and occasionally tolerating are the hallmarks of the gaming hobby.
For the first time in its fifty-year history Gencon is sold out. That obviously indicates Gencon is growing and that the 50-year celebration is something many people would like to be a part of. As I prepare to make my short hour commute over to the Indianapolis convention center to join in the celebration myself, I can't help but wonder about the idea of a "sell-out". Won't this mean turning some folks away? For the first time there will be no on-site badge sales. If you didn't pre-order your admission ticket to "the greatest four days in gaming", you may be denied.
Fifty years ago Gary Gygax opened his house and invited people to join him for a day (or two) of playing the games he loved and wanted to share with others. He must have been very proud (and happy!) when years later after publishing White Box and many other games, he saw how popular the hobby is and how many people share in the fun. I have to wonder how Gary would feel about turning people away.

The Half Orc PC

Origins of a Fantasy Bad-boy
White Box provides for players to have characters who are human fighting men, magic users or clerics, or they may choose to make their character a dwarf, elf or hobbit (halfling), although each of those races carry limitations regarding choice of class and level advancement. Orcs in White Box are strictly bad guy monsters (although there is a provision allowing PCs to be virtually any monster race). There is no mention of any half races in the three LBBs.
Supplement I: Greyhawk introduces half elves as the first half anything. Greyhawk was Gary Gygax's home campaign and I assume half elves (ala Tolkien's Elrond Half-elven character) were a part of the Greyhawk milieu. The Advanced game includes half elves and half orcs in both the Monster Manual and Players Handbook (as PC races). Both the Advanced Monster Manual and Players Handbook use the term "mongrel" to describe the half orc pedigree. On the Racial Preferences Table in the PHB, half orcs are listed as hated by dwarves and gnomes, viewed with antipathy by elves and half elves and suspicion by halflings, are tolerated by humans. Good will and preference is generally denied half orcs by the other player races.
Half orcs may pursue life as a cleric (limited to 4th level), a fighter (10th level), a thief (8th level), or an assassin (unlimited) in the Advanced game.  Only as an assassin, an evil character class, are half orcs able to truly excel to unlimited heights of achievement.
The Advanced Monster Manual states that "orcs will breed with anything". The half orc PC is assumed to be human and orc mix as the Players Handbook states, "some one-tenth of orc-human mongrels are sufficiently non-orcish to pass for human." How this inter-breeding of orcs and humans occurs is not explicitly explained in the rule books, although the explanation may frequently involve violence.
The half orc disappears from the 2nd Edition of the Advanced game as a player character race and does not appear in Basic at all. Half orcs are reintroduced in 3rd Edition as a player character race and have remained ever since. Many settings treat half orcs the same as any other race regarding acceptance and likability. This seems to be the implied default for most versions of the game published post 2000.
I have seldom had any interest in playing a half orc character, and in general avoid playing chaotic characters and PCs of evil disposition. I prefer the good guys. Even as a referee, I tend to impose social stigma on half orc characters and even half elves as "strange and different" (in my homebrew campaign). My players know this going in, yet some seem to welcome the challenge. The one half orc PC I have played for some time was handed to me by the referee as "my" character. It was a 3rd Edition campaign which I was joining in progress. I consider it a good experience for me learning to play a character I would not have chosen for myself. Sometimes it is good to go outside our personal comfort levels.

Tolkien & White Box

Are They Related?
In The Dragon # 13, vol. 3, number 7, from April 1978, Rob Kuntz writes about the relationship, or lack there-of, between J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth and TSR's fantasy adventure game in an article titled Tolkien in Dungeons & Dragons (reprinted in The Best of The Dragon). Mr. Kuntz, there alongside Gary Gygax from the beginning, writes on behalf of Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), the publisher of the Original RPG and The Dragon magazine. The short article seems to be written in response to customer feedback regarding the difficulties of making White Box fit as a set of rules for play in Prof. Tolkien's Middle Earth. Mr. Kuntz responds by stating that many fantasy worlds influenced the conception of the game which was ultimately designed to be humanocentric (based around human characters) because that is the focus of most sword & sorcery literature.
Mr. Kuntz specifically states D&D was not written to recreate or in any way simulate Professor Tolkien's world or beings". He goes on to state, " that this system (White Box) works with the worlds of R.E. Howard, Fritz Leiber and L.S. de Camp and Fletcher Pratt much better than that of Tolkien". In support of this statement, Mr. Kuntz notes that despite the inclusion of elves and orcs many of the character classes and spells in the game do not function well in a Middle Earth setting. He concludes his argument by observing that the professor's tale (as told in the Lord of the Rings) was told to conclusion and that there remains nothing further for new characters to do.
There remains little doubt that Mr. Gygax was thinking about Middle Earth when he authored the  Chainmail Fantasy Supplement.  Elves, hobbits, Balrogs, Nazgul and Ents all make an appearance in the Fantasy Supplement and it seems obvious that the rules are written so as to allow for tabletop battles using Middle Earth creature miniatures as well as other fantasy sources. The original LBBs draw from this Fantasy Supplement and reference it on a number of occasions. The first five printings of White Box include references to hobbits, Balrogs and Ents, which were removed for the 6th printing, probably at the request of the Tolkien estate.
It seems obvious to us today that White Box is not a game written to specifically play in Tolkien's world of Middle Earth. This was not so clear 45 years ago. I can recall many attempts over the decades to retro-fit White Box and the implied milieu into something compatible with Prof. Tolkien's Middle Earth which was never an easy task. Getting the Tolkien feel requires so much alteration of the rules as written that the resulting home-brew is barely recognizable as White Box. I suppose this is Mr. Kuntz's point. Still, the hobby being what it is, this hasn't kept people from trying.

Playing at the World

The History and Impact of a New Game
I have started reading Jon Peterson's Playing at the World which is a lengthy history of how our hobby was born. Mr. Peterson uses a large vocabulary with some words I frankly have to look up because I have no idea what they mean. Obviously the book is an education in more ways than one. Mr. Peterson has painstakingly brought the historian's approach to the topic of what he calls simulation gaming. As he points out, what we call role-playing today grew out of wargames which sought to simulate certain aspects of military campaigns and battles. He draws heavily on fanzine's because they are often to only documents relating to the history of the hobby.  Personal recollections of participants are treated with more caution, especially many decades after the fact.
Nobody referred to role-playing as a game in 1974 when Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created and published White Box. Mr. Peterson points out that the words Role Playing do not appear in the LBBs and it was only later that people began to refer to the new hobby as role-playing. For a number of reasons, the idea caught on quickly and the game became a popular fad by the 1980s. Popular culture has incorporated many ideas pioneered by the White Box, including widespread awareness of fantasy tropes such as elves and orcs. The core elements of the tabletop game, including assuming the role of a character with hit points, who adventures and gains experience in order to improve are reflected in many video games using the internet and are enjoyed by millions worldwide.
Mr. Peterson points out that White Box introduced the world to some radically new concepts in entertainment. The game allows for an active participation in an imaginary world of fantastic creatures and magic which had only previously been available to the reader as literature. Perhaps for the first time, players can become actively involved in the stories they create through their in-game characters. Coupled with a growing public interest in the yet new works of J.R.R. Tolkien, White Box quickly gained popularity among science fiction fans and on college campuses.
The game mechanics offered players an entirely new experience. Mr. Peterson notes that freedom of player agency, the ability to attempt anything through the actions of the player's character, is an entirely new phenomenon made possible by the presence of a referee and the open dialogue nature of the game.
Improvement through experience is White Box's substitution for traditional victory conditions. This is how one "wins" at White Box. Leveling up is the term associated with character advancement and is a key motivating factor in continued play (besides having fun, of course). The campaign, or long term play involving several sessions in which the same character is played, allows for the accumulation of in game wealth and perhaps more importantly, experience, level advancement, increased character power and standing within the game milieu.
White Box games are controlled by a referee, one who largely creates the imaginary milieu and who adjudicates the rules of play making fair and impartial judgments as required. One of the jobs of the referee is to control the pace of gameplay. Events occur in an imaginary space, involving imaginary beings and under imaginary time. It is the referee who decides to have several uneventful hours, or days pass by so as to get to a dramatic moment when time may slow to passing more slowly than actual time. A six second combat round may require several actual minutes of game play. Mr. Peterson refers to this as "dramatic pacing". The in-game activities of exploration, combat and logistics are managed by the referee so as to make the most of tension, catharsis and banality in a manner similar to that of the director of a play or movie.
Mr. Peterson argues that White Box changed popular culture in a profound and lasting way by introducing a wide audience to a revolutionary play style. White Box not only started a new hobby, it changed how we approach entertainment. No longer satisfied with passive forms of entertainment, consumers have increasingly demanded opportunities to participate in and actively engage their entertainment. How convincing the link between observed changes in how we entertain ourselves as a culture and the mechanics of White Box are remains to be discovered among the pages I have yet to read.

Game Skill

Be Inspired
I like to see players exercise their imagination during a game, even a board or card game, as evidenced by the way they describe how they see the action in their mind's eye. I enjoy creative thinking on their part, adopting a clever approach to problems. This is a chief source of entertainment for me whether I am playing a character or refereeing. I like to be surprised by something I didn't think of. Of course as a player I also enjoy seeing a plan I have contributed to come together nicely and succeed. Sometimes it can be entertaining to watch our best laid plans unravel before our mind's eye and then be faced with in-game disaster. That's challenging!
In White Box you roll six ability scores and that's a game character, a playing piece, an alter ego, a role and your ticket into the game. Six ability scores, Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity and Charisma. The first three abilities can be Prime Requisite scores for Fighting Men, Magic Users and Clerics, respectively. High scores in those abilities grant an increase in earned experience. Constitution can add 1 to each hit die for Hit Points, and Dexterity can add 1 To Hit with missiles. Otherwise five of the six ability scores play no further part in the rules as written. The exception is Charisma. Scores in this ability determine the number of hirelings a character may employ and how loyal those hirelings are likely to be. Charisma is mentioned as playing a part in the reaction of monsters and NPCs. No mechanics for how this may work is given in White Box. This is where creativity comes into play.
I see the ability scores as an invitation to imagine. Imagine what they mean for your character. Imagine what you can do with them in the game. How could Dexterity be used to solve a problem? Charisma (low, average or high) begs to be role-played. What is the difference between Wisdom and Intelligence? How do we role-play that? The six ability scores give the imaginative player a lot to work with.
Many referees add additional "house rules" to adjudicate in game questions of whether a PC can succeed in a given action. The question, "What do you want your character to do?" often results in a die roll to determine success or failure. White Box is a game of referee rulings. Outside of To Hit rolls and Saving Throws exactly how questions of outcome are to be answered is mostly left to the referee. That doesn't mean players should never suggest a way to handle something at the table. As referee I eagerly entertain a player suggesting his high Dexterity might be useful in a described way.

Vol. I: Men & Magic lists the following:

RECOMMENDED EQUIPMENT:
Dungeons & Dragons (you have it!)
Dice — The following different kinds of dice:
1 pair 4-sided dice 1 pair 20-sided dice
1 pair 8-sided dice 1 pair 12-sided dice
4 to 20 pairs 6-sided dice
Chainmail miniature rules, latest edition
1 3-Ring Notebook (referee and each player)
Graph Paper (6 lines per inch is best)
Sheet Protectors (heaviest possible)
3-Ring Lined Paper
Drafting Equipment and Colored Pencils
Scratch Paper and Pencils
Imagination
1 Patient Referee
Players

Note - Imagination and 1 Patient Referee!  As Matt Finch says, "Imagine the hell out of it!" Imagination is perhaps the single most important skill in White Box. Being able to imagine the situation described by the referee and being able to come up with an idea to address the proposed challenge (again as described by the referee) is essential to both enjoying the game and successful play. Thinking creatively, often outside the box, bargaining, retreating to regroup, experimenting, and occasionally rolling up a new character so you can jump back into the game and try something different are essential skills. Never forget the game is being run by a real person who can clarify, answer questions, with whom you can negotiate, and even ask for help.
Skill as a player is often as simple as developing social skills. The ability to make joint decisions, work together and benefit from the strengths of each team member are useful skills in our hobby. Pay attention, especially to details and voice inflections as the referee role-plays the NPCs. The referee will often give important clues in the form of small details mixed in with a longer description or use their voice to suggest sincerity, deception, fear or other emotions being role-played. Paying attention to details and occasionally taking notes can be very helpful. Talk to the NPCs, they may have helpful information.  Making a few friends among the NPCs can be very helpful in campaign play. Creative use of seemingly mundane objects, either found in the dungeon or purchased prior to the delve, can often save the party from much grief. A ladder makes a nice bridge in a pinch. That lamp oil is slippery in addition to being flammable. Food is a universal language. Monsters that may prove too perilous to fight can perhaps be bargained with, or tricked. Luring the big baddie away from its lair so the party can steal its treasure gains almost as many experience points as killing it and then looting its treasure. When all else fails and you are looking at a total party kill (TPK), try bargaining, offer ransom for your PC's miserable lives. An entertained referee is a cooperative referee.