Sports Strategy Tabletop Gaming

Retrospective
Long before I discovered Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson's White Box, I discovered that I really liked games. Games of all kinds. Tabletop games, yard games and sports had become the central theme in my life even before I could read well enough to discover the worlds of adventure available through novels, short stories, comics and ultimately role-playing games. By junior high school, games were sharing time with reading as my chief hobby interests and I had added organized sports to the mix.
My family played cards and boardgames and like many, I have found memories of those times.
As the decades have gone by, I find my hobby interests tend to cycle. For several weeks I will read voraciously, staying up late and eagerly moving on to the next book as soon as I finish one. During these periods I often have three books going simultaneously. Then I will take a break and do very little reading for weeks, devoting my free time to working on and playing one game or another. As the years have advanced, I have played less and less at physical sport, but still enjoy the strategy side of sports as a hobby through tabletop games. As I write this I am entering into a sports strategy game interest cycle and thought I would share some thoughts on my favorites.
Strat-o-Matic Baseball is one of the first sport strategy games I recall playing and has remained a favorite for decades. It is a game based on player statistics converted into game terms, making some managerial decisions and rolling some dice. Each player has an individual card, so players can use the teams as they historically were or mix and match players via a draft or "all-star" game. The Strat-o-Matic company has been around since 1961 and produces sport strategy games for all the major sports. Their baseball and football games have been my favorite of their offerings.
APBA (American Professional Baseball Association) dates back to 1951 with its baseball strategy game. APBA also makes an excellent football game which is among my favorites. Like Strat-o-Matic, APBA uses individual player statistic cards to represent each player's performance during a single season of real-life play.  I recently acquired the 1965 season AFL (American Football League) and NFL (National Football League) cards for their football strategy game.
The Games are set up for two players, each taking the role of team manager/head coach. Decisions involve setting the team roster, starting players, defensive stance and offensive plays to be run and rolling the dice, consulting the charts and moving the appropriate game pieces on the playing field. The APBA and Strat-o-Matic games are designed as simulations and strive to give realistic game results. There are rules for solo play and I have enjoyed playing solo as well as against a face-to-face opponent.
The sports strategy games I mention are all available for the personal computer as well as in their original tabletop format. There is something special to me about thumbing through the player cards, rolling dice and consulting the charts. Physically moving the pieces on the board gives me more joy than watching the animation of play on the screen. There is nothing that replaces the fun of interacting with a friend before, during and after play, talking about the player cards, working the charts together and discussing the game afterwards. It is the essence of the hobby and the gift of gaming.

Thieves' World, Genesys Mash-Up

Build It and Find Out
Genesys is not a complete game as written. It is a book of tools, suggestions and examples (in the same vein as White Box) which can be used by a creative referee to build a personalized game. With or without input from the players, a referee will need to make several key decisions about how their Genesys will work mechanically. Integrating the rules and setting seems the preferred way to do this, so it helps if one either has a setting in mind and builds their Genesys to support that vision, or perhaps builds the setting and rules together at the same time. The Genesys core book indicates Fantasy Flight Games will be publishing specific setting books which will presumably do this work of modification as needed for each official Genesys published setting.
There is significant freedom that goes with a referee constructing their own “Genesys” game, but developing the game requires creativity (and effort and time). The Narrative Dice System (NDS) Genesys uses tends to “flavor” any game created around that core mechanic as cinematic, heroic and larger than life. It also promotes a narrative style of play with players and referee sharing responsibility for generating the story elements. As long as the referee is comfortable with the flavor of the core system and sharing narrative control, Genesys can serve as the basis for virtually any game milieu imagined.
The Genesys I have played has been based on the Aventuria setting of The Dark Eye RPG by Ulisses Spiele. A lot of the adaptation of the system to the published setting, and filling in of blank areas in the Genesys rules as written is happening at the table as we play. This puts a lot of emphasis on improvisation and on-the-fly rulings which are then discussed afterwards. I recall playing White Box using this approach many decades ago.
An alternative approach, and one I am pursuing with regard to a Thieves’ World build for Genesys is to have a lot of the modifications and additional material I think will be needed thought out and written down beforehand. The upfront labor in taking this approach can be comparable to “world building” itself. I guess as a referee, one either enjoys this type of task or one doesn’t.
Among my thoughts on Genesys, one of the first things I notice is the fragmentary nature of the examples given regarding magic as a sub-system using the NDS. Genesys offers three types of magic user skill which they label “arcane”, “divine” and “primal”. The magic schools or skills determine what kinds of spell effects the PC can draw upon for casting. Casting a spell is a descriptive action wherein the player describes the desired effect and the referee assigns the dice pool, which seems consistent with a narrative system.
For Thieves’ World I will want to create new Genesys schools, one for Lythande’s “star magic”, one specifically for the Purple Mage's water magic, and one for the S’Danzo fortune tellers, etc. The spell examples given in the Genesys book are enough to demonstrate how magic might work using the NDS, but requires additional work for Thieves’ World (or Aventuria, Greyhawk, etc.). Thoughts for S’Danzo magic (peculiar to females of the S’Danzo people) include new spells such as “Eye of Fortune” – monetary gain will be shared with the caster, “Evil Eye” – a curse which adds difficulty to tasks, “Blessed Eye” – a blessing which aids in accomplishing a task, “Forward Looking Eye” and “Backward Looking Eye” – which can see forward and backward into time, “Enchanting Eye” – which acts as a love potion, “Charming Eye” – instantly persuaded, “Spirit’s Eye” – see and commune with ghosts, and “Eye of Holding” – paralyzing effect.
The Purple Mage uses an altogether different type of magic. In sword & sorcery stories such as The Purple Mage by Phillip Jose Farmer (Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn) the magic is often described as temple magic, both black and white, and connected to worship of certain ancient deities. Such is the case with the Purple Mage who lives on an island fortress/dungeon near Sanctuary and practices water magic derived from a water goddess. Among the spells described in use by this mage are illusions and animal control spells and he draws upon water for the source of his magic power. Genesys has neither illusions nor animal control magic examples, so I will need to create those "spells" or rituals for use in the Thieves' World setting.
Genesys combat has potential for the cinematic using the NDS success with threats, failure with advantages, triumph and despair results, but can also be time consuming as player and referee work to sort out what the dice pool results mean in narrative terms. Initiative as written seems counter intuitive to sword & sorcery pacing and involves deciding among the players who acts in which order. This involves too much meta-gaming for me and I will be replacing the initiative system with a simple "high success roll goes first" mechanic. The rules as written favor ranged attack over melee and I will be reversing that in an effort to promote sword-play over standing off and firing missiles as a preferred tactic.
Genesys includes a number of generic backgrounds, careers, skills and talents as examples of what can be done with the system, but intuitively matching a setting with unique versions of the backgrounds, motivations, careers, skills and talents seems the way to go. Gear and adversaries are only briefly touched on in the Genesys core rulebook and obviously need to be tailored to the setting as well. Thieves’ World is a human world setting much like our own earth with a medieval technology level. Gear will resemble what was historically available during that period and adversaries will mostly be human. It is also a fantastic setting with supernatural “monsters” that will need to be designed, but the creatures will have the advantage of being new and monstrously unknown except for the few specifically taken directly from the source literature, which include giant crabs, purple spiders, and the “Flying Knives”. What else might exist on Thieves’ World? Why not design your version of the setting and find out!

Thieves' World

A City Called Sanctuary
Thieves' World is a game aid published by Chaosium in 1981 and based on Robert L. Asprin's shared world anthologies by the same name. At the time of publication only the original Thieves' World and the second volume, titled Tales From the Vulgar Unicorn, had been published. The anthologies included shared character stories written by a number of popular science fiction/fantasy authors of the day including Poul Anderson and Marion Zimmer Bradley. The short story format lends itself well to a pulp "sword & sorcery" type of story and that's how I recall Thieves' World - as a sword & sorcery setting that shares a lot with pulp era settings like Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar. Chaosium's Thieves' World adventure pack is a colaborative work like the anthologies written with contributions from a number of game designers and includes character stats for the principle non-player characters found in the source stories using nine different roleplaying systems.
Thieves' World is based on the City of Sanctuary, a frontier outpost of the major empire of the known world. Founded by runaway slaves and then having undergone a boom and bust cycle before finally being conquered and occupied by a rival expansionist state, the city is recently added to the empire and the political climate in Sanctuary is one which is yet to settle down. There is a new governor and a new temple is being built to the new Imperial gods. The old local gods and their temples remain, however, and religious tension is reflected by the behavior of worshipers and deities alike (the gods are active in Sanctuary).
Sanctuary is set in a world of men - humans. The Tolkien-esque races are unknown in this setting, but there is plenty of diversity to be found among the competing human cultures. Thieves' World is ripe with urban adventure potential, but there is little support for dungeon delving or even wilderness exploration. You do get a fairly nice large-scale area map showing several cities and seas, but there isn't a lot of details outside the city of Sanctuary itself. One clarification I think needs to be stated for anyone who considers purchasing this product - the box illustration is a bit misleading. I love the atmosphere depicted on the box cover. It is however a bit in-congruent with the actual setting which is much more desert/tropical in nature. The architecture of Sanctuary is mostly flat roof adobe and not the half-timber Elizabethan look I get from the box cover. The interior art depicts characters dressed in short classical Greek style tunics (Rankan Imperials) and middle eastern/India style turbans (native population), both of which are more consistent with the suggested warm climate than the northern European look on the cover.
Thieves' World has occupied a good deal of my reading and planning time this past week or two. The copy pictured above I acquired at Gencon the year it was released and used with various rule systems for a number of years. Eventually I was drawn to newer shiny things and my TW has languished in a state of gaming limbo for a couple decades (or more?). At just a time when I am searching about for a setting to run using the Genesys rules I am reminded of Thieves' World by friends. The Thieves' World setting material is mostly written without reference to a particular system and includes character stats for a number of diverse early rule systems which can help generate ideas for the generic Genesys. I am inclined to think Thieves' World can be run in the cinematic heroic style of a Genesys game, a style which shares some elements of the pulp era stories, but I think I'll have more on that idea later.

Genesys, Now What?

Where Do I Begin?
Wondering what to do with the Genesys generic game using Fantasy Flight's Narrative Dice System (also used in FFG's Star Wars RPG). The Narrative Dice System (NDS) is a dice pool mechanic using proprietary Genesys dice with special symbols in place of numbers. There are good dice which have successes and advantages on them and bad dice with failures and complications on them. Failures cancel out successes and complications cancel advantages, etc. The tendency of the dice is to produce failures with advantage and successes with complication results. How the referee (and players) narrate the dice result is where the system earns its name. Obviously skill at improvisation is required.
Friends I regularly play with enjoy the NDS and I am wondering how to apply it to a camapign/setting I can run.  Genesys is a tool-box book requiring either a separate published setting volume (none are currently available, but there are several probably on FFG's horizon) or some creative work on the part of the referee. When I call Genesys a tool-box, I am comparing what you get to a hammer, nails, saw, measuring device - not what comes in a box from IKEA. IKEA includes everything you need to build your project. Genesys includes the tools to help you build your project, but very little of the raw material. You have to add to Genesys. It isn't complete as is. If this is reminding you of White Box, it should. Like White Box, the referee will need to fill in the gaps.
Genesys comes with outlines for six possible settings - fantasy, steampunk, weird war, modern day, science fiction and space opera. None are usable out-of-the-book. To have a workable game setting, the referee needs to either borrow one, from literary or game sources, or create something from imagination.
A few literary settings immediately jump to mind when I think of adaptation. The Genesys NDS does heroic story-telling fairly well as long as the group is motivated by the setting and includes some players who are good at improvisation. The system supports magic use, but the rules as written need considerable work. The magic section is really just a few suggestions regarding how you might do magic in Genesys and actual game deployment of magic will require the referee to build their own system. Magic, using the NDS, will require creativity on the part of the players and the referee who assigns the number of difficulty dice and interprets the final dice outcome. Magic in the book is divided into arcane, divine and primal, but this can be adjusted and added to. The list of actual spell effects is rather small and many of the staples of magic are left out entirely (to be added by the referee, I presume). There is no real guidance on how spells are learned, how many spells a PC may know, or how to use the advantages and complications which can be rolled with the spell use dice pool. Magic systems are often different across settings and a distinguishing feature which brings much character to the setting itself. It therefore deserves careful consideration.
Player characters in Genesys and the NDS games are fairly robust even at roll-up and character death isn't much of a threat. The PC can pass out from strain or wounds, but death usually requires multiple critical hits and you generally pass out before that can happen. Therefore the NDS seems to produce games of cinematic daring do and death defying heroics often attempted against long odds. Failure often results in capture, but rarely PC death and there is generally an opportunity to redeem the situation. Tension can run high as complications build and characters start to reach the limits of their ability to withstand strain and hurt, but real fear seems difficult to achieve.
So what to do with Genesys? I have given some thought to Tolkien's Middle Earth, just because it is always close to the first thing I think about. I don't believe Genesys is the fit I would like for Middle Earth however, mostly because I tend to think of Middle Earth as a more dark, gritty, adventure horror kind of setting. Genesys characters seem a bit overpowered for my Middle Earth.
My own long-standing White Box setting of Dreadmoor is even darker, so I set that idea aside, along with Howard's Hyperborea from which I have drawn heavily for Dreadmoor inspiration. The Lankhmar stories of Fritz Leiber are among my favorites and although they are not well known among the target group of players, I suspect Genesys could do a good job with Lankhmar. A friend from another gaming group recently picked up a copy of Thieves' World Adventure Pack (more on TW in a future post) published by Chaosium and I think that that shared setting might fit with Genesys. The sword and planet settings might also work well.

Tilting At Windmills

Realism in rule mechanics or realism in setting? 
Mechanical realism brings to mind things like how the rules handle armor - does armor reduce damage, is damage tracked as a specific wound rather than lost hit points, does it take training or does experience from gold automatically get a character to the next level? Realism in the setting comes from a number of different aspects of the game not necessarily connected to combat and casting. It is reflected in a PC's social standing and a hierarchy of power rather than on the mechanics of class and level. Influence gained and respect earned, relationships established, alliances, obligations, dependencies, consequences and economics all playing a meaningful role in the advancement of the character seems a realistic thing and may involve extensive mechanics, but may also be handled by referee fiat.
It is my belief that the original designers of the White Box paid some attention to the topic of realism, balancing it against a desire for a fast, fun game reflecting incorporating elements from both history and the fantastic. The result is a game (White Box and later Editions) clearly influenced by medieval European history as well as various fantasy worlds created by various science fiction authors who inspired the original game designers. The Advanced Game includes even more complexity in the form of weapon data such as weapon verses armor type adjustments and the inclusion of spell components, all in an effort to heighten the "realistic" feel of the game.

The published world of Harn, named for an island where the first products in this line were set, is one of the more realistic RPG settings I am aware of. In terms of believability or "feel", Harn and the Harnmaster rules (any edition) include so much detail and period trappings that at times it feels like reading history rather than fantasy. The art which illustrates everything Harn suggests the middle ages in gritty historic terms rather than high fantasy. Harn is a place where the circumstances of the PC's birth matters. It is a place where diseases are a threat and wounds can fester and kill days after the fight. Harn supplements include articles on Birds, Horses, Fish and other domesticated animals and plants and wildlife, as well as castles, towns and villages drawn with an archaeologist's precision. Harn is an active product line with new releases adding to the wealth of detail concerning this realistic setting.

Chivalry & Sorcery is an older system - one of the first generation of reaction games which followed the initial release of White Box - and one which strives to address the subject of realism. Born out of a desire of its designers for more realism, especially with regard to how their make-believe characters lived when not off adventuring down the dungeon, in the hay-day of the realism movement among gamers such increased realism came to C&S in the form of integration of the PC into a quasi-historic medieval milieu or "imaginary in-game society". An effort to reduce abstractions results in C&S having more detailed combat for man-to-man rules, a system for fighting larger battles and magic(k) based on  theory from several historic and literary traditions. C&S encourages a style of play the authors term the grand campaign. In a grand campaign the passage of time is tracked and each player character has a "life" outside of adventuring. Players typically have more than one active character and may choose among their "stable" for a PC to play during a particular session. Perhaps the first choice PC for an adventure is laid-up healing or busy training or researching a spell and is therefore unavailable forcing the player to play another of their PCs.
The Grand Campaign allows for greater immersion into the milieu with associated political and economic ramifications of long term play with characters who accumulate influence, power and wealth. It also allows for a style of play which mixes adventures to locations of mystery with sessions  that emphasize role-playing the interaction of player characters and NPCs, uncovering plots and brokering deals. White Box suggested that some of this type of play may occur, but emphasized the more action elements of dungeon delving, wilderness travel and jousting one's way across the land...the stuff of high adventure! Whether tilting at windmills or playing at the game of thrones, realism can play as big, or small, a part of your milieu as is desired. This flexibility is one of the strengths of our hobby.

Dragonfire

Always Room at the Table
One of the games I am looking forward to playing this coming year is Dragonfire by Catalyst Game Labs, an adaptation of 5th Edition to a deck-building tabletop cooperative boardgame format...without a board. Similar in concept to Paizo's Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, Dragonfire supports two or more players who each choose an "adventurer" to play. Players assemble a personalized deck of card abilities with specialties in Martial, Deception, Devotion and Arcane. The group then collectively attempts to complete an adventure through cooperative play. If the group finishes the quest/adventure, everyone wins. This is hack-n-slash adventuring with no need for a referee, but no real opportunity for "role-play" either. Defeat the encounter, grab the treasure, and if you collectively survive the adventure, gain experience and level up.
David Megarry took the original concept of the dungeon crawl and converted it into the boardgame Dungeon! almost simultaneously alongside Dave Arneson developing his first campaign, Blackmoor. Mr. Megarry's game was probably the first to take the new gaming concept in a slightly different direction, but his would not be the last. Many games using many formats including electronics have grabbed the basic idea of fantasy adventure and re-imagined it. Dungeon! was first published by TSR in 1975 and remains in print in a new updated edition by Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast.
As an official licensed 5th Edition product, Dragonfire draws directly upon its source for artwork, themes, copyrighted terms and names. This, like in the Pathfinder game, makes it feel like there is a close connection to the parent product. I like Dragonfire better, however for a couple reasons. Dragonfire handles the assist element of play better in that it feels more like a party of characters who can assist each other by cooperatively attacking monsters, distracting the monster or weakening it with a spell. Locations are fewer in Dragonfire, but mean more to the group members who can only really aid others in the same location. The cards seem more relevant to the action on the table as well. All the card driven RPG games I have played rely heavily on abstraction and the burden is on the players to take liberties with the printed "color" on the cards and imagine how it might make sense interpreting the play of the cards as a loose suggestion.
There are a number of games that I am looking forward to playing in the coming year. Board games include Gloomhaven (Cephalofair Games) and Sword & Sorcery (Ares Games), new fantasy adventure games with a strong role-playing element. In addition to continuing to enjoy many of my old favorite RPGs, some new titles I wish to add among "games played" category include the new Dungeon Fantasy: GURPS and Conan: Adventures in a World Undreamed Of, both are on my short list of role-playing games to play this year. I have been reading Adventures Dark and Deep, Joseph Block's re-imagining of the Advanced Game with an eye to how Gary might have written a second edition had he not left TSR and would like to give it a try as referee. A member of our regular group has caught the bug for the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and I am looking forward to playing even more of it in the coming year. A new edition of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea arrived at my door just before the holidays and I look forward to playing some of that. Zweihander and 7th Sea also look like role-playing games I will enjoy. And to wrap-up my "resolutions for the new year" I will mention that I look forward to the publication of RuneQuest Glorantha promised later this year by Chaosium.
The revolution in gaming that Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson and friends ushered in with publication of the Original Game continues to spawn fun game products today, many quite removed in play-style from the pen & paper game introduced in the Little Brown Books. I am moved by the Dedication in Dragonfire's rulebook and repeat it here: "To Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson for starting it all. Almost forty-five years later, and there is still so much room for new games and joy around the table in the magic they concocted."

Genesys - The Beginning

Imagining and Exploring
The holidays and a head cold have slowed my posting of late, but I am hoping the new year will bring me many thoughts that are blog-worthy. I did get to play in one game of the new generic RPG Genesys with friends over the holidays. Genesys is a Fantasy Flight Games product using a variant of their Star Wars RPG system they call the Narrative Dice System. The Narrative Dice System makes use of proprietary dice which are sold by Fantasy Flight specifically for Genesys. The dice have different symbols than those sold for the Star Wars Narrative Dice System, but I believe the Star Wars dice have the same shapes and numbers of symbols. Both Star Wars and Genesys are dice pool game systems with successes, failures, advantages and disadvantages, triumphs and fumbles - the terms vary slightly between the specific games as do the actual symbols. Attributes and skills add positive dice and difficulties add negative dice.
Genesys is a true generic rulebook in that what it presents is a tool kit for referees to construct their own specific game from - or you can wait for Fantasy Flight to do a setting book for you as they promise with their Runebound setting (and others of less interest to me). What a couple of the fellas in our regular group did was take the Genesys book and make some houserules based on the setting material for Aventuria - the default setting for The Dark Eye RPG. A couple of us are big fans of Aventuria as a setting, but I have yet to master The Dark Eye rules - although I have run it (muddled through) a couple times. Aventuria is a mature setting that has been the default for The Dark Eye game which is Germany's oldest fantasy RPG (1984). Aventuria is loosely based on medieval Europe incorporating much from folk lore, fairy tales and classic fantasy. Using the Genesys game for Aventuria requires a degree of adaptation. Genesys only provides for human characters, which is basically a good fit for Aventuria where players are encouraged to play humans - the dominate race. Being a fantasy setting there are other races and a slew of monsters which must be created whole-cloth for the Genesys game. The rules give some guidance regarding fantasy classes and races, but is not specific to Aventuria, or any other known world.
Magic in Aventuria is rather complex with white, gray and black magic, witches and the divine casters including the priest and shaman, all at potential odds with each other. Magic knowledge in Aventuria is controlled and access is jealously guarded. The average citizen of the many nations of Aventuria is likely to view magic with suspicion and fear. Practitioners of the arcane are required to disclose their peculiar art by wearing robes of white and are greatly restricted in the spells they may research and deploy. Gray wizards are considered semi-outlaws and dabblers in black magic are just criminals.
Genesys treats magic as a skill, or set of skills, with difficulty levels depending on how powerful the effect may be. Using "Mage Fire" as an example, a net success while rolling a single difficulty die may be used to produce a simple effect such as a small flame in one's hand. To project the flame forward (such as in the classic Burning Hands spell) would add a level of difficulty (a second difficulty die). A third level of difficulty would be added to increase the range of the projected flames. This is all "house ruled" in Genesys.
Genesys and other tool-kit RPG systems always remind me of the early days of the hobby when this do-it-yourself approach was what almost everyone did. Part of the joy of sitting down at a referee's table in those days was the discovery of how that particular referee ran the game. Not only did I expect to be exposed to a unique milieu of their own creation (there were no published worlds), I wondered how magic would be handled, saving throws, combat, damage, hit points...the list is almost endless and virtually everyone experimented with rules. Everything was open to interpretation and creativity encouraged. The game is a lot of work for the referee when approached in this manner, but the fun (for me) is unequaled.