Tolkien’s Middle Earth and D&D

A Coming-of-Age Story
Once upon a time there was a professor in England who wrote tales of a fantasy world which he called Middle-earth. In many ways this fantasy realm resembles our own world, although much is also different. Technology in the good professor’s Middle-earth resembles our dark ages or medieval times long ago in the sense that folks went to war using horses, armor and swords. There are men and women in his stories that seem much like ourselves, but there were also creatures of legend and imagination in Middle-earth. An in the historic middle ages, there is magic in Middle-earth!
Professor Tolkien was a well educated college professor and for inspiration he drew upon many sources. The fairy tales and traditional stories about the knights of King Arthur, which he had first read as a youth, and from his experience of war as a soldier during the Great War of 1914-18, and also from his academic study of historical sources such as the epic of Beowulf, he borrowed ideas to include in his Middle-earth. To the roots of these inspirations, the good professor added a great deal of his own personal creativity and his active imagination, and he gave to our world a very engaging tale, or two, of an epic struggle between the forces of good and that of evil. A tale that from the time of its first publication right up to the present day has captivated an eager audience.
Coinciding with the rising popularity of Professor Tolkien's fantastic fictional Middle-earth has been the publication and growth of a little tabletop fantasy game which has changed first the wargaming hobby and ultimately entered popular culture bringing a widespread awareness to many of those same fantasy themes found in Middle Earth. The world’s first role-playing game did not claim to be based on Middle-earth and it contains many elements drawn from sources of inspiration other than the good professor, some quite contrary to the subject matter found in the creation of the notable college professor. There was however enough overlapping themes between the two phenomena to make both products appealing to a number of people who came to enjoy both game and fiction. In fact, the popularity of the tales of Middle-earth and of games based on the original fantasy role-playing ideas have continued to grow right up to our present time. we are told that the hobby of fantasy role-playing has never been more popular. Fantasy tropes have become widely known and appear in computer, video and console games, in movies and other media and of course in many novels written in the wake of the Middle-earth volumes. Today elves, wizards and hobbits can be seen throughout much of our popular culture. It's been a grand journey.

From Simple Beginnings

How Complex should the Game be?

The original three little brown books which gave start to the hobby of tabletop roleplaying are each relatively short volumes. Even taking the three volumes together with Chainmail, a supplemental tabletop miniatures rule booklet I feel is essential to have in order to make full use of the original fantasy game booklets, taken all together there are not a lot of pages. 

The original rules describe themselves as "guidelines" and the referee is expected to make many rulings (hence the assignment of the title "referee" to that role). In order for the game to work at the table, the referee has responsibilities for preparation of a map and giving some forethought regarding any missing rules (such as covering how initiative works). The text of the original volumes are all very brief, sometimes so brief that their meaning is open to interpretation (and many references are made to rules found in Chainmail). Again, the role of the referee is assumed in order to make fair rulings on whatever is lacking, either beforehand or during actual play.

This is how tabletop miniatures wargaming was approached in the 1970s and ODD is not unusual in this respect. (It can still work today, it's just that our expectations have changed somewhat.)

As has been noted elsewhere, Gary Gygax and TSR followed ODD with their publication of an Advanced system in which they sought to fill in certain gaps in rules and to add additional details, all in an effort to standardize play with an eye to tournament play. Also published during the late '70s is a boxed basic set aimed at introducing new gamers to the hobby. Meanwhile, the ODD system continued to be offered in a collectors box edition presumably because some players (myself included) continued to enjoy the original version of the game even after newer versions emerged. This has proved to be the case for many and ODD retains a loyal following up to the present day.  

In recent years there has been a resurgent interest in minimalist RPG rules. Several games have appeared which offer an enterprising referee the basic framework from which to formulate a unique tabletop fantasy game experience. Many of these products contain very clever variations on the traditional concepts found in more typical FRPs. Maze Rats, the Black Hack, and Tiny D6 all immediately come to my mind as I think about such minimalist products and particularly of the ones I have found to be most innovative and useful. Whether your taste runs to complex systems with many official options, and perhaps lots of crunchy rules, or to a minimalist game system that leaves lots of room to expand upon the rules as written introducing concepts of your own devising, today's RPG market likely offers what you are looking for. And if that is not the case, modification can perhaps lead you to (self) publish your own version of the perfect RPG system.

Why System Matters

A Suggested Paradigm for Understanding The Game:

At the far extremes of the roleplaying game's PC power continuum there resides at one end the idea that the player characters are society's dispossessed who are trying to carve out a place for themselves in a hostile world; and at the other end of the continuum are the PCs who are played as gifted heroes seeking to save the world from the forces of evil. As with most continuums, the nature of any specific roleplaying game will usually fall someplace in between the extreme ends, offering players a little of this, and a bit of that. Making the game fit the players' expectations regarding the power level and role PCs will play is a significant part of taking on the responsibility of setting up the game.

A published game system often supports one of these extremes, but not the other - at least to the extent that it comes ready to run out of the box. One way to look at the current division in tabletop roleplaying schools of thought is to examine the preferences for where the game falls on this continuum. Games dedicated to roleplaying comic book supers can be viewed as an obvious example of the "gifted heroes saving the world" style. The "supers" genre typifies a game style that is near the powerful from the start end of the continuum. At the opposite end may be games that pit "normal" human PC types against supernatural monsters or alien beings of god-like power. Thwarting their evil designs while retaining a sliver of the PC's sanity may be the only successful outcome in this style of play. 

The popular fantasy RPG genre includes titles which are clearly aimed toward one extreme or the other, either super-heroics or a fight for survival, but the majority seem to fall some place in the middle on this continuum. Individual players may push a system in their preferred direction, heroic or just barely above normal, and usually can do so without resorting to a major modification of the system rules. So-called generic systems have greater flexibility built into their game design, including power scale, but even they tend to favor play at one end or the other of the power continuum. One easy way to shift the focus in a game without much attention to mechanics is to address the role the PCs play in the game's society. Are they the local heroes or are they outcasts, mercenaries and traveling opportunists?  

With its roots in wargaming and Outdoor Survival, the original fantasy role-playing game rules started player characters at a power level ranked just above normal humans. Veterans are what the level one fighting men are called. They roll melee dice as a normal man plus one pip - just a slight improvement over the combat capabilities of a normal soldier. Combat effectiveness and the ability to survive encounters with deadly enemies increased\s as the player character advanced in level. By the fourth level, the original edition fighting man has earned the title Hero and has increased in melee power to fighting as effectively as four normal soldiers - rolling four melee dice and possibly scoring a hit or "kill" on each die. In return, a monster must score four hits in one turn against the Hero in order to effectively "kill" that fourth level "Hero" character.

Comparing the modern game to computer and console roleplaying games, the starting character is already heroic in ability and PC "death" is not a permanent condition as your "killed" character will typically respawn alive and well after a short pause in gameplay. Progress in the game is barely interrupted and all that is usually lost if the last encounter. All presumably because the market research has indicted that players having to re-start the game after losing your character is "not fun". 

This attitude toward character death, together with the starting power level of the player characters constitute two of the often cited reasons explaining why a player may prefer one style of tabletop roleplaying game over another. To be fair, there are many factors that influence why we choose any particular game system over its competitors, and the availability of ready players for that system is often chief among the reasons, but the power paradigm and preferences for where a system falls along the continuum has some face validity in understanding our preferences in my experience. 

O.S.R.

Olde Swords Reign
The OGL fiasco has given rise to a number of promising projects and new life to several existing products. A recent discovery brought to my attention through a recent effort on the part of its designer, Damien Fegan, is Olde Swords Reign (OSR). Olde Swords Reign is a tabletop roleplaying game based on 5th Edition as it states in the first paragraph. As the name implies, O.S.R. has much of the feeling of playing the original edition games. It's a bit deadlier, a lot simpler and includes a number of clever fixes for the most annoying bits that I personally find in the 5th Edition upon which it is based.

Human, dwarf, elf and halfling, four classes, an incentive for rolling PC stats "down the line", and plenty of "optional" additions like "feats" and "hindrances" if you so desire, all make this an appealing alternative for those who like something more familiar, more simple, or just not published by a corporate giant. The tabletop role-playing hobby has a wealth of choices when it comes to rule systems and often what we play comes down to what we can find players for. Based on 5th Edition mechanics, O.S.R. should find a ready audience among those who have familiarity with the World's Most Popular Role-Playing Game and are displeased with the current state of affairs.

Third party content producers have written a lot of material for 5th Edition, some really good, some not so good. The player running an O.S.R. game can utilize anything written for 5th Edition with confidence. The two games are compatible, but each offers a different "flavor". It ultimately comes down to preference. 

Mr. Fagen is offering the digital version of his game as a free download. The printed book is readily available at the cost of print on demand. The Player's Guide pictured is aimed at providing players just what they need, while to Complete Rules includes additional material for the referee. Personally I prefer a little "mystery" in my game and having players discover certain things (such as monster vulnerabilities) during play seems preferable to them just reading all the details beforehand. "Mileage may vary", as the saying goes, and nothing prevents a player from reading the Complete Rules if that is their preferred way to play.

A Timeless Classic Game

Replay Value and More!

Some games continue to provide fun and challenge many years after we have learned the basics and even developed winning strategies. Chess is a game that rewards close study and creative strategies and can be a source of enjoyment across a lifetime.

Panzerblitz is a challenging game that continues to delight its fans decades after its publication. There are similarities between a game like chess and Panzerblitz, of course, but there are a number of significant differences as well. A feature both games share is they contain a variety of playing pieces, each with distinct characteristics. The playing surface or gameboard marked in spaces that govern movement of the playing pieces is another shared feature. But whereas chess is played using a consistent set of pieces and is played on a standard board with a goal of capturing the opponent's king, Panzerblitz can vary in the number and type of pieces, board layout and victory conditions. In this way, Panzerblitz has the potential to be many games rather than just one. It can also be viewed as a designer's toolkit inviting a nearly endless opportunity for players to design situations of their own creation.

The innovative features which Panzerblitz brought to the wargaming public include the game's basis on the scenario (PB calls them Situations). An idea borrowed from tabletop battle games using miniature figures, the scenario allows the designer (often called a referee) to vary the composition of opposing forces, the terrain and the victory conditions. Each scenario is in essence its own game. Strategies useful in one scenario may not be as useful in another as the situation demands a different approach to the use of forces and terrain.

Interest in the Panzerblitz game quickly led to there being a multitude of published scenarios for the game. Many of the early ones are collected in the Wargamer's Guide To Panzerblitz. The Wargamer's Guide also includes articles on the nature of the pieces and analysis of the Situations included in the boxed game. It's a nice example of the fan produced content that was common in the hobby before the internet.

Panzerblitz is a game I that have returned to many times and has again recently occupied a place of prominence on my gaming table. As a creative outlet it has few rivals. Online communities continue to make new scenarios, maps and playing pieces available for Panzerblitz and the game, together with its close cousin, Panzerleader, continues to enjoy a positive reputation among gamers.