Year End Thoughts...
As the end of the year approaches, I sit and contemplate my 1st year experience with this, my first blog. I gotta say, writing these posts, giving vent to my thoughts and emotions regarding my hobby has been a highlight of the year past. This is fun, I get excited about writing posts and feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when a thought comes together and gets posted. So I think I'll keep at it a bit longer.
I have written about several games this past year, and that was my original intent, the "Beyond" part of the title. White Box D&D retains a special place for me and hence the title. I have spoken to other gamers and many, like myself, are heavily influenced by the first game that introduces them to the hobby. There is certainly a bit of nostalgia at play, but the white box is much more to me. I really value using imagination and adding a personal element to each game. While many fantasy roleplaying games support this, the white box demands it. The chaos in those three little brown books requires the player/referee to impose some degree of order, adding to elements which are incomplete or creating from whole cloth those that are totally missing.
The White Box, by design or blunder, gives a good fun game...most of the time. It is more referee dependent than many games and suffers when run by a poor referee, but what game isn't better with a competent, or better yet, inspired referee! Using the rules pretty-much as written, the so-called Vancian magic system makes magic manageable without being too overpowered. Combat results have a random element that keeps things lively, but it's tempered with predictability. After a couple rounds one can generally see where the combat outcome is heading giving the players a chance to scoot out, or maybe expend a limited resource high-level spell to change the momentum. And combat is fast paced, something I have come to prefer over super crunchy "realistic" systems. The AC and hit point systems allow the character to get tougher as they level up and acquire treasures, thus giving them the ability to take on even greater challenges.
As with any system, environment/milieu or game setting can greatly effect the overall fun level. It is at this milieu or setting level that the referee really creates the game in many ways. The rules are how you play, but the setting is what you play. Some settings are better at creating an environment for adventure than others and it's not always the most well developed settings that do this. More to the point, I would say a setting, or milieu, needs to be well realized. The setting or milieu is much like the stage where players will act and the story will unfold. The referee needs to have given thought to how the setting handles a number of game requirements. On this matter I have a few thoughts I phrase as questions for the referee.
Regarding background history, does it help players create interesting PCs? Does the history affect the present in any meaningful way? How common is common knowledge? These are the kinds of queries a referee might use to help realize their setting. Who have been the actors on the world stage of the past? Were they PC types? Gods? Are there any adventure hooks that dangle from your world history?
Another referee query might be do you want the campaign to be epic in nature or personal? Are the adventure hooks consistent with that goal? What about patrons? Have you given any thought to who the PCs might work for? Are the NPCs mostly commoners or kings and queens? Is there a preset villain or do the PCs make their enemies along the way? How do you want to reward your PCs? What will be their motivation, wealth, fame, honor and glory, power? The rewards can shape PC motivation and how the players measure their success.
Magic and magic items are another area where the referee can greatly shape the environment of the game. What role does magic play in the setting? Does it act like technology, is it rare and feared? Is it tightly controlled? Does magic corrupt those who use it? How do PCs acquire magic items? Are there common items or are all magic items unique with their own history? Are magic items available for sale or manufacture?
Some game systems come out of the box tightly linked to a specific setting, others not so much. White box has a bit of a default setting in the choice the designers make of classes, monsters, experience and alignment system, but it is also easily modified without breaking anything. For me this is a strong point in favor of the rules. I very much enjoy tinkering with my RPG as a creative outlet. As the year wraps up, I find myself back at the beginning, singing the praises of the White Box. It really has been a life altering experience for me.
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
High Fantasy
With those words author Jeffrey C. Dillow begins his Introduction to High Fantasy (HF). Published in 1978, HF is one of the first generation reaction games, a reaction to white box in that the author likes the idea of using one's imagination in fantasy roleplaying, but thinks the rules can be improved, in part by being more realistic. Mr. Dillow follows the lead of many of the fantasy game designers of the period by referencing the literature of R.E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien as direct influences. Mr. Dillow states the rules allow players to experience adventure similar to that found in the works of their favorite authors through the actions of their player characters. I must admit being able to act out such adventures through a character in such a game appealed to me from the beginning (and obviously still does).
HF is a percentile system and has the logical transparency one usually associates with such systems. People generally understand that there is a percentage chance of certain things happening and that skill and circumstances can alter that percentage. As long as a game presents logical percentages, it can seem very realistic just by this transparency. HF offers the player a choice of four basic character classes, warrior, wizard, animal master and alchemist. There are also subclasses which allow the PC to specialize in certain skill sets. Each PC has an offensive total affected by scores in strength and coordination and a defensive total affected by the score in coordination. Quickness determines who goes first and is affected by weapon speed. Combat is a matter of subtracting the target's defensive total from the attacker's offensive total and rolling percentile dice. Consulting a table gives the outcome and any damage taken by the target reduces armor value and defensive and offensive totals.
A beginning spell caster may know 1 or more magic spells which are held in a special book. The spell book in HF is unique (to my knowledge) in roleplaying. It is a sentient thing which the wizard must attune/imprint to in order to use. The book assists the wizard in casting spells, is immune to most forms of damage, but can die. If killed, the book's cover fades and loses it's peculiar character (face or whatever), the pages fall out and the wizard is wise to soon seek a replacement. Many spells can be memorized allowing the caster to quickly throw the spell without the aid of the spell book, others are not able to be memorized and must be cast directly from the book. Spells cost mana points (lowering the wizard's daily supply of such points) which shapes the aether (from the environment) which powers the spell. This is an interesting theory of magic which allows for the traditional limited spell points/mana and environmental effects such as aether rich/poor areas. Many spells have multiple planes or power levels and can be cast with increasing effect at the higher planes. The rules for familiars include some unusual creatures, such as a ball of light or a human, and familiars can themselves cast spells.
HF includes many of the usual fantasy monsters with a few blatant name alterations in the case of IPs such as the Ehnt and the Balro. HF is a humanocentric game in general, but there is an option in the back of the book to allow Tolkien-style Hobbits, Dwarves and Elves to be played as PCs if desired/allowed. A short essay on developing a game world is included near the end for Judges, as the HF referee is referred to. In it is advice on designing the dungeon or temple for a first adventure, gradually adding to the world as the PCs continue to explore. Advice is given on economics, treasure and monster challenges with a goal of keeping the campaign balanced and playable. As they acquire wealth there are suggestions for the PCs spending it based on class, such as building a laboratory for an alchemist, a library and workshop for a wizard, etc.
The HF story is an adventure itself. According to gamer legend, the original 48 page booklet was self published by Mr. Dillow from the game he and friends played while in college. HF sold well enough to come to the attention of a major publisher (Reston) who produced an expanded 196 page edition and several additional adventure volumes which are well regarded in the hobby. This publisher was able to put a hardcover HF on the shelves of retail bookstores as well as hobby shops and for a while (early 80's) the hobbyist could visit most bookstore chains and find a selection of hardcover roleplaying books including AD&D, RuneQuest, DragonQuest and High Fantasy. In many ways it was a Golden Age for the hobby. Then this all changed and HF (along with several other hardcover RPGs) and Mr. Dillow himself disappeared from the hobby. He has recently returned, however, with the publication of a new HF novel titled When Magics Meet.
High Fantasy is a game I first acquired in the early 1980's. I have read it often and find I like many of the ideas presented therein. I have only played it solo and can recommend the solo adventures as being some of the best I have encountered. They are well written, meaty and have good replayability. The artwork in the early, self published (Fantasy Productions, Inc.) edition is in my opinion superior to the later (Reston Publishing Company, Inc.) edition. The larger size of the early edition also makes the combat table easier to read. With Mr. Dillow's return to the hobby and the current interest in old school games, might I hope for a new edition/reprint of High Fantasy? Maybe then I could find a group interested in a friendly game of High Fantasy!
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Beasts, Men & Gods
Beasts, Men & Gods (BMG)was first published in 1980 and recently received a rebirth as the revised second edition. In the About this "Revised Second Edition" BMG, author Bill Underwood tells us that he wrote BMG while a college student 1977-1980. In his Introduction Mr. Underwood explains his desire to improve reality or "plausibility", as he refers to it, in his fantasy game. Mr. Underwood specifically mentions hit points and magic as two areas where realism seems lacking in other games. These are two areas where BMG differs from white box and I think Mr. Underwood offers interesting alternatives.
BMG assigns about 7 hit points to each character. This may vary slightly, but not by more than a digit or so. The character also gets at least 1 stamina point, which increases as they level-up. Damage is taken from stamina until that is gone and then deducted from hit points. Hit points represent flesh and blood, stamina is luck, sixth sense, dodging, etc. A critical hit bypasses stamina and damage is taken directly on hit points. Stamina is easily recovered with a few minutes rest and/or a drink of water. Hit points, representing real wounds is slower to heal.
Magic in BMG makes use of Mana points and also costs stamina to cast. There are 10 areas or schools of magic and three types of priestly magic. Casting magic above one's mastery level can result in mishap. BMG makes use of character classes and levels and dwarves and elves are each a class. Saving throws are used, although the list includes bleeding, shock, stress and unconsciousness as well as the more traditional poison and magic saves. Combat is percentile based and includes both melee and spiritual combat mechanics. The bestiary section includes the usual monsters.
Mr. Underwood stresses, like many authors of his day, that the rules as written are suggestions and he invites the player/referee to alter the rules to meet their expectations. He suggests the reader draw from other sources, especially fantasy and sword & sorcery literature for rule and setting inspiration. I would add that drawing from various rules and other systems is also good practice.
Although BMG is an older game in the spirit of those first generation published houserules or "improvements on white box" it is a recent discovery for me and I am glad it is available again. I like the idea of separating the hit point pool into something like stamina and body points. The combat and magic systems are certainly more complex than white box and with more study I may agree with Mr. Underwood that they improve on "plausibility". However at this point in my gaming career, I am rather content with a game being just a game as long as it's fun.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Roleplay & Adventure
Game Style
The white box has it's roots in wargaming and says so, Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns... So we can look at white box and the hobby it has inspired as a wargame...Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures and many of us continue to play it exactly that way. Some rule systems are more tied to the use of miniatures than others and some systems encourage "theater of the mind" play where all the action takes place in the imagination of the players. Regardless of whether miniature figures are used or not, players quickly start to identify with their game tokens, called player characters or PCs, and start adding elements of personality, either their own or that of a make-believe character like out of a book or play, etc. We now call this roleplaying.
Some rule systems and some play groups put more emphasis on roleplay than others. For some campaigns the roleplay is central and the PC is assigned, either by choice or random chance, various personality traits and personal history and the player roleplays the created PC as if he/she had an actual life complete with beliefs, values, goals, quirks, relationships...pretty much everything that makes up a person and a life. In such a campaign, what the PC does in between adventures is just as important as anything that happens in a dungeon (or anywhere else). The referee and players in such a game often use distinct voices for the PCs and NPCs and try to think like the character would think. Playing the game "in character" can be a major goal and much of the satisfaction of such games is in following a character's life story as it develops.
One of the appeals of the white box and systems that follow is flexibility. The game can be played in many different ways/styles, with emphasis sometimes placed on one aspect or another. For some campaigns the PC remains a game piece, a token or means for the player to participate in the action. Such games place adventure above roleplay and sometimes refer to the game as adventure gaming rather than roleplaying. The adventure game may be played more as a series of stand-alone game sessions where no one is really concerned with what the imaginary PCs do in between game sessions. They have no "life" outside the dungeon. The white box emphasis on dungeon and wilderness encounters supports this manner of play and many campaigns have really been little more than a series of self-contained adventures making use of a common cast of PCs who level-up between adventures.
The adventure game style of play emphasizes aspects of the rule system with more focus on exploration of a prepared environment, dungeon, wilderness or urban setting, etc. Rules mastery and the use of tactics are valued player skills and characters are often designed with their tactical role in the party make-up in mind. Overcoming challenges and making discoveries provide the players with satisfaction as well as advancing their PC.
Rules realism is approached differently depending on whether the emphasis is on roleplay or adventure. The desire for verisimilitude seems to frequently lead players into a search for realism in the game. For the roleplayer this often takes the form of more detailed character generation rules and stricter rules on how the character is played and how character advancement is handled. For the adventurer realism is often reflected in detailed combat and magic rules that allow for the use of tactics and teamwork.
My early experience with white box began much like the adventure game extreme with each player controlling a number of PCs, several usually "dying" during the game session. As the years roll by the groups I game with have become more interested in the PCs as "people" and have started to do more and more roleplaying. The adventure part remains very important in that we like challenges and exploration and appreciate good game play. Attendance at conventions has allowed me to play a number of systems with various referees and players and both roleplay and adventure style games seem popular and easily found. Among the groups that I regularly game with our sessions are a mixture of the two, adventure games with roleplaying. Some players emphasize one style over the other, but the referee and game mechanics generally support both.
The white box has it's roots in wargaming and says so, Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns... So we can look at white box and the hobby it has inspired as a wargame...Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures and many of us continue to play it exactly that way. Some rule systems are more tied to the use of miniatures than others and some systems encourage "theater of the mind" play where all the action takes place in the imagination of the players. Regardless of whether miniature figures are used or not, players quickly start to identify with their game tokens, called player characters or PCs, and start adding elements of personality, either their own or that of a make-believe character like out of a book or play, etc. We now call this roleplaying.
Some rule systems and some play groups put more emphasis on roleplay than others. For some campaigns the roleplay is central and the PC is assigned, either by choice or random chance, various personality traits and personal history and the player roleplays the created PC as if he/she had an actual life complete with beliefs, values, goals, quirks, relationships...pretty much everything that makes up a person and a life. In such a campaign, what the PC does in between adventures is just as important as anything that happens in a dungeon (or anywhere else). The referee and players in such a game often use distinct voices for the PCs and NPCs and try to think like the character would think. Playing the game "in character" can be a major goal and much of the satisfaction of such games is in following a character's life story as it develops.
One of the appeals of the white box and systems that follow is flexibility. The game can be played in many different ways/styles, with emphasis sometimes placed on one aspect or another. For some campaigns the PC remains a game piece, a token or means for the player to participate in the action. Such games place adventure above roleplay and sometimes refer to the game as adventure gaming rather than roleplaying. The adventure game may be played more as a series of stand-alone game sessions where no one is really concerned with what the imaginary PCs do in between game sessions. They have no "life" outside the dungeon. The white box emphasis on dungeon and wilderness encounters supports this manner of play and many campaigns have really been little more than a series of self-contained adventures making use of a common cast of PCs who level-up between adventures.
The adventure game style of play emphasizes aspects of the rule system with more focus on exploration of a prepared environment, dungeon, wilderness or urban setting, etc. Rules mastery and the use of tactics are valued player skills and characters are often designed with their tactical role in the party make-up in mind. Overcoming challenges and making discoveries provide the players with satisfaction as well as advancing their PC.
Rules realism is approached differently depending on whether the emphasis is on roleplay or adventure. The desire for verisimilitude seems to frequently lead players into a search for realism in the game. For the roleplayer this often takes the form of more detailed character generation rules and stricter rules on how the character is played and how character advancement is handled. For the adventurer realism is often reflected in detailed combat and magic rules that allow for the use of tactics and teamwork.
My early experience with white box began much like the adventure game extreme with each player controlling a number of PCs, several usually "dying" during the game session. As the years roll by the groups I game with have become more interested in the PCs as "people" and have started to do more and more roleplaying. The adventure part remains very important in that we like challenges and exploration and appreciate good game play. Attendance at conventions has allowed me to play a number of systems with various referees and players and both roleplay and adventure style games seem popular and easily found. Among the groups that I regularly game with our sessions are a mixture of the two, adventure games with roleplaying. Some players emphasize one style over the other, but the referee and game mechanics generally support both.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
The Mines of Keridav
Over the weekend a friend gave me some old roleplaying publications including The Mines of Keridav by Kerry Lloyd. The Mines has a copyright of 1979 and is published by Phoenix Games, the same company that published Dana Lombardy's Streets of Stalingrad monster wargame. (Streets of Stalingrad is one of the classic map and counter wargames and a personal favorite, but I was unaware Phoenix Games published RPG play-aids too.) The play-aid says it can be used with any system and lists Arduin Grimoire, Chivalry & Sorcery, Dungeons & Dragons, Runequest and Tunnels & Trolls as possible rules. The list covers what might be considered the "Big" games circa 1979.
The play-aid is 24 pages including 5 color maps on heavy stock and several b&w small area maps. In addition to the mines themselves, an entire valley is mapped and described. There is enough here for a small sandbox type campaign, a number of villages, bandits and other threats to hunt down and deal with, taverns full of rumors, gambling and excitement and several notable NPCs with whom to interact and develop side plots with. There's even a princess to save and a keep to win control of. The Mines was written to be combined with another play-aid by Mr. Lloyd titled the Demon Pits of Caeldo (hinted at in The Mines). The Demon Pits was supposed to follow the publication of The Mines of Keridav under the Phoenix Games label, but Phoenix Games went out of business before that happened. Fortunately Mr. Lloyd was able to publish Demon Pits of Caeldo under Gamelords, a company he co-founded in 1980 to publish Thieves Guild products. Together The Mines and Demon Pits might just make a pretty nice campaign.
Friday, December 4, 2015
A Place of Mystery and Treasure
Read Only Game
In Chivalry and Sorcery, authors Ed Simbalist and Wilf Backhaus write about a place of mystery or treasure as opposed to the dungeon found in other games (meaning white box, etc.). The difference is one of design philosophy as well as scale. The place of mystery or treasure can be anything, as can a dungeon, really. A tower, ruin, or other above ground structure, a mine, cavern, tomb or other underground complex, or a forest, island, or other place can serve as the location for adventure. The suspected presence of treasure may be the motivation to visit such place or there may be other "hooks" such as rescuing the princess from the tower.
What Mr. Simbalist and Mr. Backhaus seem to be arguing against in C&S is the megadungeon referenced in white box as simply "the dungeon" and which forms the centerpiece of many old school campaigns. The megadungeon concept is based on the campaign consisting of numerous trips into the multilevel dungeon to defeat monsters and traps and acquire treasure. The dungeon is designed by the referee with levels on which are found increasingly difficult challenges and correspondingly increased rewards in the form of treasure. The rationale for such dungeon is often a crazy old arch-mage who built it and stocked it with critters, traps and treasure, for some generally unknown reason. Such dungeons have been labeled "fun-parks" when each room basically presents a new challenge, often with a corresponding reward and the adventuring party moves from room-to-room much like a "fun park" patron moves from booth to booth overcoming the challenge at each and earning the reward. Often little thought is given to the relationship of any occupants of one room to another.
In C&S the authors state that the location of monsters, traps, and treasures should be logical and justified. Here we see the concept of realism applied to the design of the dungeon or other place of mystery. Thought should be given to how the dungeon operates as an environment for those resident monsters as well as the occasional adventuring PC. C&S advocates the campaign including several adventure sites rather than a single large dungeon. The places of mystery or treasure are each smaller than a megadungeon and may be completely explored in only a session of so of play. They are presumably part of some adventure storyline which gives the PCs reason to visit them and ties them into the greater milieu or Grand Campaign.
The creators of C&S state their goal of creating a game where the dungeon and wilderness adventure are only part of the game experience. Adventure can also be found in social interaction, feudal tournaments, formal warfare, politics and economics and C&S encourages players to explore these areas as well as in the places of mystery and treasure. I have never gamed C&S as a system, but many of the ideas found in this 1977 publication influence the way I play all other roleplaying and adventure games.
In Chivalry and Sorcery, authors Ed Simbalist and Wilf Backhaus write about a place of mystery or treasure as opposed to the dungeon found in other games (meaning white box, etc.). The difference is one of design philosophy as well as scale. The place of mystery or treasure can be anything, as can a dungeon, really. A tower, ruin, or other above ground structure, a mine, cavern, tomb or other underground complex, or a forest, island, or other place can serve as the location for adventure. The suspected presence of treasure may be the motivation to visit such place or there may be other "hooks" such as rescuing the princess from the tower.
What Mr. Simbalist and Mr. Backhaus seem to be arguing against in C&S is the megadungeon referenced in white box as simply "the dungeon" and which forms the centerpiece of many old school campaigns. The megadungeon concept is based on the campaign consisting of numerous trips into the multilevel dungeon to defeat monsters and traps and acquire treasure. The dungeon is designed by the referee with levels on which are found increasingly difficult challenges and correspondingly increased rewards in the form of treasure. The rationale for such dungeon is often a crazy old arch-mage who built it and stocked it with critters, traps and treasure, for some generally unknown reason. Such dungeons have been labeled "fun-parks" when each room basically presents a new challenge, often with a corresponding reward and the adventuring party moves from room-to-room much like a "fun park" patron moves from booth to booth overcoming the challenge at each and earning the reward. Often little thought is given to the relationship of any occupants of one room to another.
In C&S the authors state that the location of monsters, traps, and treasures should be logical and justified. Here we see the concept of realism applied to the design of the dungeon or other place of mystery. Thought should be given to how the dungeon operates as an environment for those resident monsters as well as the occasional adventuring PC. C&S advocates the campaign including several adventure sites rather than a single large dungeon. The places of mystery or treasure are each smaller than a megadungeon and may be completely explored in only a session of so of play. They are presumably part of some adventure storyline which gives the PCs reason to visit them and ties them into the greater milieu or Grand Campaign.
The creators of C&S state their goal of creating a game where the dungeon and wilderness adventure are only part of the game experience. Adventure can also be found in social interaction, feudal tournaments, formal warfare, politics and economics and C&S encourages players to explore these areas as well as in the places of mystery and treasure. I have never gamed C&S as a system, but many of the ideas found in this 1977 publication influence the way I play all other roleplaying and adventure games.
Thursday, December 3, 2015
The Realism Bug-a-Boo
It's a Game!
White box has it's roots deeply set in wargaming, which preceded it by a century or so and had gained a degree of popularity a decade or so before white box with the publication of Avalon Hill strategy games and various rules for wargames using miniature figures. Wargaming combined game mechanics with a desire to simulate the troops, terrain and conditions of various historic military battles using available data. Simulation, of course, implies a connection to reality. Game designers balance a need for fun and playability with a desire to model the most realistic simulation of actual events possible in order to place the players in a sort of "time machine" where they can experience what it was like to be there, in command, on some historic battlefield.
According to gamer legend, Mr. Gygax and Mr. Arneson, the authors of white box, were avid wargamers and one can still find wargame miniatures rules and boardgames written or co-authored by them. At some point they came upon the idea to combine their interest in fantastic literature, sword & sorcery tales, and their love of wargaming. The Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns and white box was the result. White box rules contain many abstractions that allow the game to handle various happenings in the "real world" using available data and taking into account a random factor producing an outcome that has important implications for future in game situations and events including success or failure. Abstractions are common in gaming and to some degree unavoidable as we can hardly go around hacking at each other with steel swords, lopping off arms.
The white box introduced lots of people, both wargamers and non-wargamers to a new type of hobby game. I don't know if wargamers and non-wargamers differ regarding their desire for realism in their games, but being a wargamer I recall going through a period where I sought rules with a more transparent connection to what I perceived as the reality of medieval fantasy. In one respect it seems rather silly to talk about realism in connection with gaming in a fantasy/make-believe setting, let alone realistic magic, but such discussions are as old as the hobby.
Mr. Gygax occasionally spoke about the bug-a-boo of realism in fantasy gaming and pointed out the rather non-realistic nature of such an elusive goal as realism in gaming. By contrast, he would also include such mechanics as weapon verses armor class modifiers in Greyhawk and the advanced game player's handbook in an obvious attempt to add realistic detail and complexity. Many game designers and house-ruling referees make similar attempts to bring more realism to their game. At some point they often (re)discover the need for balance between fun and realistic detail.
Abstract game mechanics can provide very realistic outcomes if properly designed. Perceived realism is therefore often a matter of the transparency of details that the gamer can see are effecting the outcome such that "this" and "that" are taken into account. There is no doubt that some members of the hobby will continue to prefer more overt realism and therefore detail and complexity in their game than others will. (Some may even prefer less.) For a game like white box that is easily modified and added to, this becomes just a matter of house-ruling or taking the game beyond the rules as written. For those desiring published rules written with more realism in mind, there are plenty to choose from.
White box has it's roots deeply set in wargaming, which preceded it by a century or so and had gained a degree of popularity a decade or so before white box with the publication of Avalon Hill strategy games and various rules for wargames using miniature figures. Wargaming combined game mechanics with a desire to simulate the troops, terrain and conditions of various historic military battles using available data. Simulation, of course, implies a connection to reality. Game designers balance a need for fun and playability with a desire to model the most realistic simulation of actual events possible in order to place the players in a sort of "time machine" where they can experience what it was like to be there, in command, on some historic battlefield.
According to gamer legend, Mr. Gygax and Mr. Arneson, the authors of white box, were avid wargamers and one can still find wargame miniatures rules and boardgames written or co-authored by them. At some point they came upon the idea to combine their interest in fantastic literature, sword & sorcery tales, and their love of wargaming. The Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns and white box was the result. White box rules contain many abstractions that allow the game to handle various happenings in the "real world" using available data and taking into account a random factor producing an outcome that has important implications for future in game situations and events including success or failure. Abstractions are common in gaming and to some degree unavoidable as we can hardly go around hacking at each other with steel swords, lopping off arms.
The white box introduced lots of people, both wargamers and non-wargamers to a new type of hobby game. I don't know if wargamers and non-wargamers differ regarding their desire for realism in their games, but being a wargamer I recall going through a period where I sought rules with a more transparent connection to what I perceived as the reality of medieval fantasy. In one respect it seems rather silly to talk about realism in connection with gaming in a fantasy/make-believe setting, let alone realistic magic, but such discussions are as old as the hobby.
Mr. Gygax occasionally spoke about the bug-a-boo of realism in fantasy gaming and pointed out the rather non-realistic nature of such an elusive goal as realism in gaming. By contrast, he would also include such mechanics as weapon verses armor class modifiers in Greyhawk and the advanced game player's handbook in an obvious attempt to add realistic detail and complexity. Many game designers and house-ruling referees make similar attempts to bring more realism to their game. At some point they often (re)discover the need for balance between fun and realistic detail.
Abstract game mechanics can provide very realistic outcomes if properly designed. Perceived realism is therefore often a matter of the transparency of details that the gamer can see are effecting the outcome such that "this" and "that" are taken into account. There is no doubt that some members of the hobby will continue to prefer more overt realism and therefore detail and complexity in their game than others will. (Some may even prefer less.) For a game like white box that is easily modified and added to, this becomes just a matter of house-ruling or taking the game beyond the rules as written. For those desiring published rules written with more realism in mind, there are plenty to choose from.
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Chivalry & Sorcery
I read way more RPGs and game play aid material than I can ever use. Call it a sub-hobby, or whatever. Sometimes I borrow ideas from my reading and it will show up in a game I am running. Sometimes the material just serves as inspiration, inspiration to do better, inspiration to be more creative, inspiration to continue to be excited about this great hobby. Chivalry & Sorcery (C&S) is one of those early (1977) first generation games that attempt to improve on the white box. I have never played C&S, but I have read through it's 6-point type content many times and continue to be inspired by it.
According to gamer legend, Ed Simbalist and Wilf Backhaus were playing white box and wanting more, more medieval feel, more realism, more on what their PCs were doing when not swinging swords and casting spells. So they created answers in the form of their own game. The authors went to GenCon with a variant of the white box in hand hoping to interest TSR in publishing it, maybe as a supplement like Greyhawk, maybe as a stand-alone game like Empire of the Petal Throne. TSR had done both. As the story goes, Mr. Simbalist and Mr. Backhaus changed their minds about offering their game, titled Chevalier, to TSR and instead signed on with Fantasy Games Unlimited. The resulting rewrite became C&S.
C&S seems to take the medieval part of the white box subtitle seriously. The LBBs nominally use the European middle ages as a reference point with regard to castles, royalty, weapons and armor. White box is more heavily influenced by myth and sword & sorcery literature, but the game does derive from Chainmail, a set of miniature rules for medieval era wargaming. C&S is clearly a reaction to white box and its authors make several references to "other games" which do things in a manner inconsistent with either history or logic, such as the "dungeon crawl". The historic feudal period is described in C&S terms of knighthood and social obligation and social class can determine many aspects of the PC. There is an emphasis on the players familiarizing themselves with the medieval "mindset" and attempting to play their characters using such "mindset". Presumably this means with deference for one's social betters and keeping to one's station in life, acting in a chivalrous manner and paying close attention to honor and piety. Default religion in C&S is the medieval catholic church.
The authors state early on that their own campaign is loosely set in France in the year 1170. C&S is not strictly a game about role-playing history, however. The view presented of feudal Europe leaves out the oppression and other unpleasant aspects of the period altogether and portrays a somewhat romanticized and sanitized view of the period. Also, elves, dwarves and hobbits straight out of Tolkien are available as PCs with no real explanation of how to logically insert such anachronisms/fantasies into the historic milieu. With it's magick system and list of creatures, C&S is firmly in the fantasy RPG category of games, but one that seeks to take a much more realistic view of the medieval feudal components.
C&S advertises itself as the most complete game available and I think I understand what they mean by this claim. C&S is often described as three games in one. The grand campaign, as they call it, is somewhat innovative in that the PCs play out their "ordinary" lives interacting with the environment, making alliances and acquiring favors, honor and wealth. They engage in romance, establish families and ties to NPCs. It is this level of play that I assume the author's direct their comments about staying in a medieval "mindset". There is a set of miniatures rules to play out army conflicts on the tabletop using miniature figures grouped into units. And third, there is the adventure or roleplaying game where PCs may engage in treasure hunts, wilderness and dungeon adventures in a manner similar to typical white box play.
C&S offers the hobbyist a somewhat more rounded, complete play experience, provided the players are willing to put forth the extra effort demanded by such a game. C&S requires a bit of homework on the part of the players in order to familiarize themselves with the differences that existed within medieval society and thinking. It requires additional roleplaying effort to "stay in character" when playing the "medieval" PC. In an effort to be more realistic, the mechanics of combat and magick are more complex than in games such as white box. The grand campaign probably requires more playing time than traditional campaigns because one presumably plays out many aspects of the PCs "lives" that are generally glossed over.
In C&S authors Ed Simbalist and Wilf Backhaus have striven to take the roleplaying experience beyond the white box on several levels, completeness, realism and complexity of combat, immersion in the feudal society of a romanticized middle ages and in the process have written a game that I find enjoyable to read containing many cleaver game innovations and much good advice for referees of any fantasy RPG.
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
What's Next?
High Level Characters
So, the dragon is slain and there is enough wealth to build the castle of your dreams. This should secure your place as a lord of the realm and that princess you just rescued, maybe there could be some future there? You are feeling at the top of your game, having been able to take on a regiment single-handed since before you made Superhero. What's next for the Fighting Man who has done it all?
If you were an experienced wargamer back in the 70's you knew what came next. Your 9+ level Lord secured some land, built a castle, collected some men and became a player in the miniatures wargame campaign. Map campaigns were nothing new for miniature wargamers by the time the White Box was released. You draw out a map, divide it up according to how many players you have in the campaign, assign forces and start fighting your tabletop battles to see who ends up controlling the map. The rules are a combination of what battle rules the group uses and some campaign specific rules agreed upon by the participants to govern things like income, raising and equipping troops, etc.
Your PC lord might come out of semi-retirement to adventure from time to time, but his/her future usually had more to do with power politics, gaining battlefield glory and annexing territory at the expense of one's neighbor. High level magic-users and clerics also entered the power-politics realm and could recruit forces and build strongholds.
I always have found the low to mid level game to be most rewarding, personally, and therefore seldom bothered with the few high level characters I had. They tended to sit in semi-retirement in my notebook waiting for the day when a trip down a killer dungeon like Tomb of Horrors would kill them off. I am aware many other campaigns, such as Mr. Gygax's Greyhawk incorporated the higher level PCs into the ranks of world movers and shakers. As a player now with PCs in the teens, I am once again looking for exit strategies. Their story seems to have been told, their personalities, such as they may be, have been explored and it seems time for them to ride off into the sunset. Handing them over to the referee to become an NPC is one option. Building a castle, raising some troops and coveting the neighbor's land is yet another option.
So, the dragon is slain and there is enough wealth to build the castle of your dreams. This should secure your place as a lord of the realm and that princess you just rescued, maybe there could be some future there? You are feeling at the top of your game, having been able to take on a regiment single-handed since before you made Superhero. What's next for the Fighting Man who has done it all?
If you were an experienced wargamer back in the 70's you knew what came next. Your 9+ level Lord secured some land, built a castle, collected some men and became a player in the miniatures wargame campaign. Map campaigns were nothing new for miniature wargamers by the time the White Box was released. You draw out a map, divide it up according to how many players you have in the campaign, assign forces and start fighting your tabletop battles to see who ends up controlling the map. The rules are a combination of what battle rules the group uses and some campaign specific rules agreed upon by the participants to govern things like income, raising and equipping troops, etc.
Your PC lord might come out of semi-retirement to adventure from time to time, but his/her future usually had more to do with power politics, gaining battlefield glory and annexing territory at the expense of one's neighbor. High level magic-users and clerics also entered the power-politics realm and could recruit forces and build strongholds.
I always have found the low to mid level game to be most rewarding, personally, and therefore seldom bothered with the few high level characters I had. They tended to sit in semi-retirement in my notebook waiting for the day when a trip down a killer dungeon like Tomb of Horrors would kill them off. I am aware many other campaigns, such as Mr. Gygax's Greyhawk incorporated the higher level PCs into the ranks of world movers and shakers. As a player now with PCs in the teens, I am once again looking for exit strategies. Their story seems to have been told, their personalities, such as they may be, have been explored and it seems time for them to ride off into the sunset. Handing them over to the referee to become an NPC is one option. Building a castle, raising some troops and coveting the neighbor's land is yet another option.
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
As Time Passes...
As you duck under the portcullis and enter the city, a small figure in a crude straw mask pauses while crossing the street ahead. Waving its arms and laughing, it then runs out-of-sight. In the distance are colorful banners and pennants strung between buildings and sticking out of windows. The sound of music and laughter is detectable above the clatter of shod hooves and the general buzz of urban life. The rider next to you remarks it is solar fest time and the city will be alive with revelry. You wonder if that will mean the shops close early, for you have some important purchases to make and hope to get business done and be on your way. "Do you have a place to stay the night, stranger? The inns will likely be full what with the festival and all." inquires the rider.
In the LBBs, Mr. Gygax and Mr. Arneson stress the importance of keeping a good record of time for the campaign. This is especially important when there are several PCs who may be entering and exiting the dungeon, changing things below ground and above. The milieu is most believable when the PCs can effect real changes in their environment, changes that can be noted by others as well as themselves. However, due to various in-game considerations some PCs may be ahead of others in terms of time. If the setting is to seem realistic, some temporal consistency may need to be imposed.
Holidays and festivals are another way to make the setting seem realistic. Most detailed published settings such as Harn and Glorantha, have detailed calendars, complete with holidays and other dates of note. Seasons that change, usually marked by a festival, observance of an historic event or other religious or cultural observance can be tied to the adventure and even if nothing more than "flavor" at a minimum it adds to the color and "experience" of the game.
An awareness that in-game time is passing may indicate the players are treating their PCs as "real people" with lives beyond the adventure and not just as in-game pawns. The game has become more than just a casual pass-time when they ask, "What does my PC do when not adventuring? Where does he/she live?" Such is often an indication the players are becoming invested in the campaign.
I have mentioned before my fondness for the urban adventure and have usually found a way to insert some form of urban environment into most campaigns I run. I usually try to get the PCs "back to town" before we end a session as it is a good place to heal-up and resupply.
The product shown above, Cities: A Gamemaster's Guide to Encounters and other Rules for Fantasy Games by Stephen Abrams and Jon Everson (Midkemia Press) has some nice random tables for developing city encounters on-the-fly and random tables for determining what PCs may have been involved in during downtime in the city. Cities is a generic product not specifically tied to white box or any other rules. It has been around for some time and has been through several editions. The copy shown above is from 1979.
Some published RPGs such as King Arthur Pendragon and The One Ring make significant use of the calendar year as part of their game structure tying certain game procedures to the seasonal progression. As referee, I find marking the passage of time helps me and hopefully my players as well to organize events and put them in perspective within the game. And it's often rather entertaining to roll-up on random tables what a PC has been up to since we last saw him at the table.
During your week in town you meet and impress a government worker, who might be of assistance if you are ever in official trouble. Your modest room and board at the inn cost you 20 coins. You spent 2 coins on repairing and maintaining your clothing and feeling the need for companionship, spent 12 coins on that. Sensing a lucky streak, you wager at the gambling tables and end up losing 200 coin. Thinking you might need to improve your "skill" at gambling you seek training from an "expert" which cost you 50 coin. Your instructor informs you that you are now only 5 weeks away from acquiring "skill at gambling". You deduct 284 coins from your account and wonder whether to spend 5 more weeks in town training with "the gambler" or to start looking for work? (Results of random rolls on tables found in Cities.)
Friday, November 20, 2015
Frostgrave
Frostgrave seems to want to do something very similar to the original game, to give us "rules for gaming with figures in a fantasy medieval setting". When my buddy first showed me Frostgrave a few months ago I thought how similar this is to the way early white box games were run, at least from the standpoint of using miniatures on a tabletop, measuring moves in inches and all. The rules of Frostgrave treat each miniature figure as one person and the idea for the game seems similar to the way miniatures were used while gaming the lead-up to and assaulting of Castle Blackmoor and it's dungeons as described during the First Fantasy Campaign.
Frostgrave is a new game (copyright 2015) authored by Joseph McCullough. Mr. McCullough sets his game in a frozen ruin of a formerly great city occupied by some nasties and hidden treasures. Each player controls a wizard, which is the PC of-sorts. The wizard can be from one of ten schools of magic each with it's own magical strengths and weaknesses. The wizard can gain experience and improve in ability. Accompanying the wizard is the apprentice and a supporting cast of various hirelings. Frostgrave is scenario based and ten scenarios are included in the book (with presumably more to come in future supplements). Since the action is wizard verses wizard, the scenarios have some replay potential.
The concept of Frostgrave is that the wizard will enter the frozen city in search of various treasures and mysteries, encountering other competing wizard's and their hostile entourages as well as dangerous denizens and traps native to the city itself in an attempt to acquire wealth and power. If this sounds familiar it's because Frostgrave has all the trappings of a traditional dungeon crawl set in a ruined city. Really, such a game could be played out using almost any roleplaying rules and I also wonder if Frostgrave couldn't easily be adapted to almost any other setting and work just as well. Replace the frozen city of ruins with the tower of the mad archmage or the lost mines of the dwarven king or just about any setting ripe with fantastic adventure potential.
I have yet to play the game, but the rule mechanics look straight-forward and easy enough for the veteran gamer. The player verses player aspect may appeal more to traditional miniatures gamers, but also offers a novel twist for fantasy roleplayers used to a cooperative game. Frostgrave is supported by it's own line of miniatures and there is considerable prep time involved in collecting and painting figures and terrain for the game. I wonder if this won't be a deterrent for gamers who don't already possess suitable substitutes or ample time and resources to assemble the required collection.
Frostgrave is a fantasy miniatures game with strong roleplay potential. The fact that it is inherently tied to the use of miniatures on the tabletop sets it apart visually, but somewhat limits it's versatility by the necessity to have physical models and appropriate terrain. Much like the white box an ambitious gamer with enough time and creativity can do just about anything with such a game.
HarnMaster
HarnMaster didn't come along until 1986, the year I got married and became more of an adult, which means I had less time for the hobby (although I am sure it seemed otherwise to my wife). The heady days of living in dorms and with gaming friends, playing almost every evening and weekend was now reduced to occasional weekday evenings and most Saturdays (still a lot of gaming, I know). It was about this time that I discovered the world of Harn, N. Robin Crossby's published game setting. In Harn, Mr. Crossby has designed the most detailed and "realistic" published setting I have seen. Game designers seek verisimilitude as a way to make the fictional seem plausible and for my money, nobody has done that better than Mr. Crossby.
HarnMaster (1st ed. by Columbia Games shown above) is the rules Mr. Crossby created to complement his world of Harn. (Harn is actually a large island that gives it's name to the setting.) HarnMaster is one of the second generation of roleplaying games in my estimation because it introduces new mechanics and yet relies on a lot of randomness, especially in character creation. Some might refer to these games as "old school". HarnMaster does not have character classes and is a skill-based system allowing the player freedom to customize their PC although still limited by the random fall of the dice. (HarnMaster is not a point-buy system.) Combat is gritty and deadly like many of the second gen. rules. Armor stops damage and wearing heavy armor makes you easier to hit. Weapons do blunt, edge or point damage and different armors have different values regarding these types of damage. There are no hit points and each wound is treated separately. Healing is slow and involves the risk of infection. At it's heart, HarnMaster is a pretty simple skill system and not that hard to learn, despite all the crunchiness of combat.
Magic, or Shek-Pvar, as it is termed in the game, is low-key and subtle in effect compared to white box. There are no flashy combat spells as such. Magic is divided into six convocations based on elements. HarnMaster encourages players to create their own unique spells using guidelines provided. Religious practitioners can perform magic-like miracles if their piety is great enough. Some creatures have magical abilities and the Harn undead are particularly creepy. The Harn orc, called gargun, are unique and are one of my favorite monster types from any system.
The setting, milieu or game world, as we often refer to it, can greatly affect the overall fun level of the game. Some settings or worlds are better at creating an environment for adventure than others and it's not always the most well developed settings that do this. More to the point, I would say a setting, or milieu needs to be well realized. Detail for the sake of detail doesn't always equal fun. Detail that helps suspend disbelief, that brings one into the setting as an active witness and participant making it all more believable is the trick. Harn does this better than any setting material I have experience with. So what's the downside to HarnMaster/Harn? It takes a great deal of time studying Harn to really get a feeling of mastery over the world material. It's all there and it all makes sense and there is a lot to it. HarnMaster/Harn is closely tied to the medieval mindset and to make sense of it requires the referee and players to immerse themselves in such a mindset in order to roleplay the PCs and NPCs of the world with consistency. The downside then is this, simply put, it takes work and commitment. The reward is an immersive roleplaying experience probably second to none. If HarnMaster had come along a few years earlier for me when it was possible for me to throw myself 24-7 into a roleplaying game things might have gone differently. As it turns out, HarnMaster has remained a game in the margins for me. One I have the greatest foundness for and one I jump at the opportunity to play whenever I can find willing players. Yet it seems to remain just out of reach, something beyond!
Arms Law
Iron Crown Enterprises (I.C.E.) was one of those early publishers of what I think of as First Generation roleplaying products. Arms Law appeared circa 1980 and is not a complete roleplaying game. Arms Law is a combat system that can be plugged into the existing game system something like published houserules.
The white box combat systems, both the one based on using Chainmail and the alternative rather suggest that combat is one of those areas that is OK to "do it your own way". One of the referees I regularly gamed with in the early days liked to use MetaGaming's Melee rules for white box play. Along about 1980-81, I ran into a referee at college that was using the Arms Law system in his white box/AD&D game. I quickly secured the copy pictured above for my own use.
Arms Law is the product of a group of University of Virginia gamers who started their own company, I.C.E., to publish their gaming creations. Arms Law would be supplemented by Spell Law, Claw Law, Character Law and Campaign Law, which together would form their Rolemaster system, one of the most highly detailed and arguably "realistic" fantasy game systems ever published. I.C.E. also has published Middle Earth Role-Playing (MERP) under license (now expired). MERP uses rather simplified game systems similar to those of Rolemaster. The MERP sourcebooks are generally quite good, although they don't stick strictly to Tolkien. I still use them (not with MERP rules, however) on the infrequent occasions that I referee using Middle Earth as the setting. The maps are visually stunning and some of the best game aids I own.
Arms Law gave the referee a set of charts for individual weapons. The mechanic is percentile based and results in graphic wound descriptions as well as chopping away at hit points. There are critical hit and fumble tables that can result in quite debilitating and colorful outcomes. The addition of Claw Law allowed for the same treatment of monsters that use tooth and claw rather than sword and spear.
I can recall the first time I sat at the game table when the referee was using the Arms Law combat system. I of course wanted the biggest two-handed sword available and was quite thrilled with the graphic description as read off the chart of the damage it inflicted when I landed a solid blow. As a referee, I don't recall actually using Arms Law unless it was part of a Rolemaster game as it tended to be a bit slower than standard white box combat. I did start verbalizing the effects of certain damaging blows in a manner similar to those graphic descriptions, however. So Arms Law became an influence on my white box game as I would describe, "you deliver a long, bleeding slash along your opponent's arm" rather than say "he takes two hits".
Thursday, November 19, 2015
DragonQuest
Fantasy Simulation
Once the White Box started introducing gamers to the new idea of roleplaying, it seemed to jump-start a lot of imaginative ideas about this new roleplaying concept. The concept was simple, but revolutionary that a player would control one individual "character" who had abilities beyond the norm and who interacted inside the game with a fantastic environment of creatures and beings from myth, legend and literature. Gamers being what they are attempted to improve on various aspects of the white box and soon some of those "houserules" and "improvements" found their way into amateur publication. The hobby was pretty amateurish all around and that was pretty similar to the way things had been done in "wargaming" for some time. Those white box "variants" and "houserules", some with unique titles that made no reference to the white box, accounted for most of the first generation of roleplaying games and took the hobby outside the dungeon and even away from the fantasy setting into the old west, space and other environments.
Once the roleplaying idea became somewhat divorced from the original mechanics and designers started to create truly unique game systems to facilitate the gaming experience of roleplaying, the hobby entered what seems to me to be its second generation of published roleplaying titles. These games were inspired by, but did not necessarily build upon, the original rules. The second generation games took the hobby into more diverse directions than just change of setting. They often changed the emphasis within play, highlighting one or another aspect of play such as character development, combat, skill systems, etc. and would in many ways re-invent the game.
Many of us who started with the white box and had explored some of the houserules and variants remained open to trying out one or more of these second generation RPGs, not necessarily because of any dissatisfaction with our current game, but often from curiosity. After all, were we not the same gamer-folk who had given this revolutionary new type of game a try in the beginning! The new RPG offerings came from a variety of sources, new start-up businesses and older established names, including the publishers of mainstream wargames (did those two words ever go together?).
Abstraction is a necessary part of any game design, especially one involving topics of violence and magic. Getting the abstraction to "feel right" is part of the skill in game design. People differ, however, with regard to their capacity for abstraction. The old wargamers' quandary of "realism" verses abstraction had quickly entered the RPG discussion and game mechanics were sought that seemed to be more "realistic" by many. A number of the second generation games sought to provide the hobby with such realism and this became part of their marketing.
SPI (Simulation Publications Incorporated) was one of the biggest established publishers of wargames at the time and their DragonQuest (DQ) fantasy RPG was released in 1980 a midst this search for realism in gaming. DQ does away with the character class system allowing greater flexibility in PC development. Skills are introduced to allow any character to be anything through skill selection and customization. The magic system features ten magical colleges, each with a unique approach to magic and separate spell lists, all drawing heavily on magic systems found in literature. DQ draws heavily on SPI's expertise in traditional wargames for its combat system which uses a hexagonal display and fairly detailed percentile mechanics to "simulate" the interplay of experience, tactics and weapons for ranged combat, melee and close combat. The experience and character advancement rules allow the player to acquire new skills and abilities as well as advance existing ones so the nature of the PC may change over time.
DQ is one of the games I purchased about the time it was published probably out of curiosity (it surely wasn't the art!). I had been a consumer of SPI wargames for many years and knew their reputation well. DQ is one of SPI's last games as they were bought out by TSR not long after its publication. The game did last long enough to go through three editions, the 2nd ed. box is pictured above. Despite being out-of-print for three decades, DQ continues to command some respect among gamers. I recently have become interested in it again due to the high praise it is given by some gamers I whose opinions I value. Unfortunately, I only recall having played a few sessions of DQ back-in-the-day and have vague memories to draw upon. A couple of recent read-throughs and I find myself wanting to try DQ again with a group play. It's a different market for games today and I wonder how well a title this old will play given the tastes, expectations and mind-set of today's hobbyist, myself included. It probably needs a few "houserules", but house-ruling is part of the fun of being a referee.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
White Box Glorantha
Orlanthi Adventurer
Many moons ago my gamer buddies and I grew restless to see what lay beyond the roleplaying horizon. Being products of the midwest ourselves, we had made the pilgrimage to GenCon and were aware that in other parts of the land gamers had other games. Out west, in an area around a bay, gamers had discovered a land called Glorantha and its roleplaying game Runequest. We decided to try this west-coast Runequest and found it to our liking. Although we never completely abandoned our midwestern roots and continued to play at white box and newer editions of the Lake Geneva game as well. For a time we were content. But being the white box devotee among our group I eventually attempted to take Glorantha and make it work with my beloved white box. This is the tale of how I did it.
There is a bit of gamer history in the Runequest rulebook that talks about early attempts to make an existing roleplaying game work for Glorantha and how campaigns using those rules had been run using Glorantha as the setting before the Runequest rules were developed. Perhaps that gave me the idea to attempt a reverse engineering of sorts. The first problem I faced was interpreting Glorantha through the lens of its game Runequest. Obviously Runequest would heavily influence anything I attempted with Glorantha, because it was my window into Glorantha. I made certain assumptions about Glorantha based on Runequest, so what I have here is somewhat of a mash-up.
Glorantha/Runequest doesn't fit well with the three class system of White Box. I created the class Orlanthi Adventurer based on the predominant Gloranthan culture I wanted to explore. So having decided all PCs would be Orlanthi Adventurers I set about designing the class. I use the standard white box attributes except Wisdom becomes Spirit and it is used to power spells and interact on a spirit level with other beings. Orlanthi Adventurers are trained in the use of arms so they are Fighting Men with regard to hit-points, weapons and armor usage.
Glorantha is a magic rich world where peasant farmers and royalty generally know a few minor spells to help them in their daily lives. Warriors are also users of magic, so our Orlanthi Adventurer starts roleplay knowing a few spells, the inspiration for which comes from the Runequest spell list. An Adventurer may learn one spell at each level of experience (taught by a priest or priestess) and may have memorized a number of spells not to exceed the Intelligence Attribute score. Many spells have a fixed Spirit cost to cast, others can have variable strengths depending on PC level.
Variable spells, such as Bladesharp and Heal can be cast at level for the cost of 1 Spirit point per level (up to a maximum). In other words a 1st level Orlanthi Adventurer who knows Bladesharp may cast it on his/her weapon at 1st level for 1 point of Spirit giving the weapon +1 to hit for six rounds. Heal cast at 1st level would cure 1 point of damage at the cost of 1 point of Spirit. Bladesharp has a maximum of +3 and Heal a maximum of 6.
Chaos plays a big part in myth-based Glorantha, so alignment is similar to that in standard white box. Some spells are aligned as in standard play. Religion is what drives most human activity on Glorantha, and our Orlanthi Adventurer reflects this. Orlanth is the storm god of the Heortling people and is the principle deity in the pantheon worshiped by the tribes from which PCs come from. Followers of Orlanth would share common beliefs about the world and a common culture, including magic and fighting skills.
Glorantha is a bronze age world so most tools, armor and weapons are made of bronze rather than iron or steel. The fashions of the culture more resemble the ancient Celtic and Greek than medieval Europe. That's all just looks and doesn't need to have any real impact on rules. Glorantha has it's own unique races and monsters and fortunately white box makes monster creation fairly easy. The Runes that give Runequest its name really play a minor part in the game mechanics and are easily incorporated into the religion and culture side of the game.
Religion, myth and culture are what really drives Glorantha as a unique setting and is all really independent of the rules system used. Adapting the rules of choice, in this case white box, to the Glorantha setting is really about understanding the setting and being familiar enough with the rules to feel comfortable adapting them. The Orlanthi Adventurer seems to fit my understanding of one type of potential player character in Glorantha. I would devise a different class for a Praxian Nomad or Lunar Legionnaire.
In making the class design decisions I struggled with how much of what I have come to associate with Glorantha was Runquest and how much is world setting. For many years Runequest and Glorantha were synonymous for me. The publication of non-Runequest Gloranthan materials and non-Glorantha Runequest has helped me separate the two, at least to some extent. I now feel like I have a handle on my version of Glorantha and the Orlanthi Adventurer seems consistent with that vision. YMMV I offer this custom character class as an example of how the white box class system can be adapted to a unique world such as Glorantha.
Many moons ago my gamer buddies and I grew restless to see what lay beyond the roleplaying horizon. Being products of the midwest ourselves, we had made the pilgrimage to GenCon and were aware that in other parts of the land gamers had other games. Out west, in an area around a bay, gamers had discovered a land called Glorantha and its roleplaying game Runequest. We decided to try this west-coast Runequest and found it to our liking. Although we never completely abandoned our midwestern roots and continued to play at white box and newer editions of the Lake Geneva game as well. For a time we were content. But being the white box devotee among our group I eventually attempted to take Glorantha and make it work with my beloved white box. This is the tale of how I did it.
There is a bit of gamer history in the Runequest rulebook that talks about early attempts to make an existing roleplaying game work for Glorantha and how campaigns using those rules had been run using Glorantha as the setting before the Runequest rules were developed. Perhaps that gave me the idea to attempt a reverse engineering of sorts. The first problem I faced was interpreting Glorantha through the lens of its game Runequest. Obviously Runequest would heavily influence anything I attempted with Glorantha, because it was my window into Glorantha. I made certain assumptions about Glorantha based on Runequest, so what I have here is somewhat of a mash-up.
Glorantha/Runequest doesn't fit well with the three class system of White Box. I created the class Orlanthi Adventurer based on the predominant Gloranthan culture I wanted to explore. So having decided all PCs would be Orlanthi Adventurers I set about designing the class. I use the standard white box attributes except Wisdom becomes Spirit and it is used to power spells and interact on a spirit level with other beings. Orlanthi Adventurers are trained in the use of arms so they are Fighting Men with regard to hit-points, weapons and armor usage.
Glorantha is a magic rich world where peasant farmers and royalty generally know a few minor spells to help them in their daily lives. Warriors are also users of magic, so our Orlanthi Adventurer starts roleplay knowing a few spells, the inspiration for which comes from the Runequest spell list. An Adventurer may learn one spell at each level of experience (taught by a priest or priestess) and may have memorized a number of spells not to exceed the Intelligence Attribute score. Many spells have a fixed Spirit cost to cast, others can have variable strengths depending on PC level.
Variable spells, such as Bladesharp and Heal can be cast at level for the cost of 1 Spirit point per level (up to a maximum). In other words a 1st level Orlanthi Adventurer who knows Bladesharp may cast it on his/her weapon at 1st level for 1 point of Spirit giving the weapon +1 to hit for six rounds. Heal cast at 1st level would cure 1 point of damage at the cost of 1 point of Spirit. Bladesharp has a maximum of +3 and Heal a maximum of 6.
Chaos plays a big part in myth-based Glorantha, so alignment is similar to that in standard white box. Some spells are aligned as in standard play. Religion is what drives most human activity on Glorantha, and our Orlanthi Adventurer reflects this. Orlanth is the storm god of the Heortling people and is the principle deity in the pantheon worshiped by the tribes from which PCs come from. Followers of Orlanth would share common beliefs about the world and a common culture, including magic and fighting skills.
Glorantha is a bronze age world so most tools, armor and weapons are made of bronze rather than iron or steel. The fashions of the culture more resemble the ancient Celtic and Greek than medieval Europe. That's all just looks and doesn't need to have any real impact on rules. Glorantha has it's own unique races and monsters and fortunately white box makes monster creation fairly easy. The Runes that give Runequest its name really play a minor part in the game mechanics and are easily incorporated into the religion and culture side of the game.
Religion, myth and culture are what really drives Glorantha as a unique setting and is all really independent of the rules system used. Adapting the rules of choice, in this case white box, to the Glorantha setting is really about understanding the setting and being familiar enough with the rules to feel comfortable adapting them. The Orlanthi Adventurer seems to fit my understanding of one type of potential player character in Glorantha. I would devise a different class for a Praxian Nomad or Lunar Legionnaire.
In making the class design decisions I struggled with how much of what I have come to associate with Glorantha was Runquest and how much is world setting. For many years Runequest and Glorantha were synonymous for me. The publication of non-Runequest Gloranthan materials and non-Glorantha Runequest has helped me separate the two, at least to some extent. I now feel like I have a handle on my version of Glorantha and the Orlanthi Adventurer seems consistent with that vision. YMMV I offer this custom character class as an example of how the white box class system can be adapted to a unique world such as Glorantha.
The Humble d6
Rolling d6s for damage and hit-points
By design or blunder the white box delivers a fun game. The alternative combat system using a d20 to hit and a d6 for damage combined with hit points that generally increase with each level gained seems genius design to me and is a big part of why the white box is my favorite edition. Basing both the hit die and weapon damage on a d6 allows for a degree of predictability as well as randomness. I think both are necessary for maximum fun.
Gamers like to roll dice. The chance of rolling well is part of the thrill of our hobby. Risk, however, must accompany any game mechanic involving chance and there is the ever present risk of rolling a "poor" result every time we grasp the die. The unusual shaped d20 is a random number generator with twenty possible outcomes. Basically it works like percentages with a 5% increment between each possible result. The alternative combat mechanic (which would become standard in later editions) calls for the PC or monster to roll a certain number or higher on the d20. The target number is found on a chart and is determined by the class and level of the PC or hit dice of the monster and the Armor Class (AC) of the target.
If a hit is achieved (and celebration ensues) damage is then determined by rolling a d6 and deducting that many hit points from the target's total. PCs and monsters start with 1-6 hit points (plus or minus) so a single successful hit has the potential to take-out a low level PC or monster. Seems "realistic". It isn't hard for me to imagine that a single wound from a sword, mace, spear or whatever could drop me and therefore seems believable as a game mechanic.
Now we come to the genius part. Higher level PCs and monsters have higher numbers of hit dice and therefore higher hit point totals. They may also become better able to hit an opponent as the target number on the d20 To-Hit roll goes down as PC levels and monster hit dice increase. The chance to successfully hit one's target increases 5% with each number on the d20. Thus a target number of 16 or higher (25% chance of success) represents a 5% better chance of hitting than a target number of 17 or higher (20% chance of success). This seems a stroke of genius to me because players can judge about how many hits they can take and roughly what the chances of success they have against a monster or many monsters, but it takes some thinking and it involves some degree of chance. With 1-6 points of damage per successful hit, the player who knows his/her PC has 10 remaining hit points can survive one hit, but might go down if they take two hits. Some games have made this even more predictable by assigning each weapon a damage value that never changes. If the player also knows they have a 25% chance of being damaged each time the baddies make an attack, they can make some reasonable choices regarding tactics (fight or flight?) and use of resources (whether to cast that high-level spell) to influence the outcome in their favor.
As editions add more variables to the numbers, variable hit-point and weapon damage dice (d4, d6, d8, etc), more adds to damage, feats and combinations thereof, etc. it has become harder for this player/referee to judge how many more hits a PC can take or exactly who's winning or losing the fight. Unpredictability/randomness can be fun, but when it comes to PC life and death, as a player and as a referee, I have found a simple satisfaction in being better able to grasp the numbers in my head and make decisions based on likelihood of surviving another x-number of rounds. And I like the idea that any weapon can possibly take out any 1st level with one lucky hit.
By design or blunder the white box delivers a fun game. The alternative combat system using a d20 to hit and a d6 for damage combined with hit points that generally increase with each level gained seems genius design to me and is a big part of why the white box is my favorite edition. Basing both the hit die and weapon damage on a d6 allows for a degree of predictability as well as randomness. I think both are necessary for maximum fun.
Gamers like to roll dice. The chance of rolling well is part of the thrill of our hobby. Risk, however, must accompany any game mechanic involving chance and there is the ever present risk of rolling a "poor" result every time we grasp the die. The unusual shaped d20 is a random number generator with twenty possible outcomes. Basically it works like percentages with a 5% increment between each possible result. The alternative combat mechanic (which would become standard in later editions) calls for the PC or monster to roll a certain number or higher on the d20. The target number is found on a chart and is determined by the class and level of the PC or hit dice of the monster and the Armor Class (AC) of the target.
If a hit is achieved (and celebration ensues) damage is then determined by rolling a d6 and deducting that many hit points from the target's total. PCs and monsters start with 1-6 hit points (plus or minus) so a single successful hit has the potential to take-out a low level PC or monster. Seems "realistic". It isn't hard for me to imagine that a single wound from a sword, mace, spear or whatever could drop me and therefore seems believable as a game mechanic.
Now we come to the genius part. Higher level PCs and monsters have higher numbers of hit dice and therefore higher hit point totals. They may also become better able to hit an opponent as the target number on the d20 To-Hit roll goes down as PC levels and monster hit dice increase. The chance to successfully hit one's target increases 5% with each number on the d20. Thus a target number of 16 or higher (25% chance of success) represents a 5% better chance of hitting than a target number of 17 or higher (20% chance of success). This seems a stroke of genius to me because players can judge about how many hits they can take and roughly what the chances of success they have against a monster or many monsters, but it takes some thinking and it involves some degree of chance. With 1-6 points of damage per successful hit, the player who knows his/her PC has 10 remaining hit points can survive one hit, but might go down if they take two hits. Some games have made this even more predictable by assigning each weapon a damage value that never changes. If the player also knows they have a 25% chance of being damaged each time the baddies make an attack, they can make some reasonable choices regarding tactics (fight or flight?) and use of resources (whether to cast that high-level spell) to influence the outcome in their favor.
As editions add more variables to the numbers, variable hit-point and weapon damage dice (d4, d6, d8, etc), more adds to damage, feats and combinations thereof, etc. it has become harder for this player/referee to judge how many more hits a PC can take or exactly who's winning or losing the fight. Unpredictability/randomness can be fun, but when it comes to PC life and death, as a player and as a referee, I have found a simple satisfaction in being better able to grasp the numbers in my head and make decisions based on likelihood of surviving another x-number of rounds. And I like the idea that any weapon can possibly take out any 1st level with one lucky hit.
Monday, November 16, 2015
Before White Box
Let's talk legendary, back in the days before the White Box, even before the white box with wood grain sides, before the three little brown books were more than a gleam in Mr. Gygax eye. As gamer legend goes, there was a time when all the hobby world had was Chainmail and its Fantasy Supplement and some imaginaries who were developing a new way to "wargame". A group of those folks, maybe the first group, gamed around the Minnesota Twin Cities. Mr. Arneson was one of those first, but he didn't game alone. Apparently there were others around the Twin Cities that started to play various versions of the new roleplaying game they started calling the Dungeon Game or simply Dungeon.
The image above is a reconstruction of an early version of the game Dungeon as written out by Craig VanGrasstek and can be found on Jon Peterson's blog Playing At The World. I am grateful to both Mr. VanGrasstek and Mr. Peterson for making this piece of our hobby history available. In his Forward to the rules, Mr. VanGrasstek describes an expanding series of mazes or dungeons run by diiferent referees who had played the game maybe once before and by the time of his writing down his rules the new game is being played in many different mazes or dungeons in the area with somewhat different rules in use for each maze.
I like to think of those heady days when the idea - dungeon delving - was so new that players couldn't wait to give it a try and were willing to create their own rules to make it all happen. The idea was the novelty, a group including fighters, spell casters and clerics (they are all three here in Dungeon) go down a dungeon and have adventures, exploring, fighting and finding treasures. How you rolled dice and determined the outcome might vary considerably, but the fun of kicking in a door, fighting some baddies and grabbing their loot was definitely here from the start. I am tempted to find a few willing friends and give Mr. VanGrasstek's rules a try...with a few tweeks of my own of course. I'll bet the game will feel very familiar.
About the same time as Mr. Arneson was running his Blackmoor campaign and various other area gamers were delving in their own homegrown pen and paper dungeons, local gamer David Megarry developed the idea into a boardgame he called Dungeon! which he later published through TSR. As I recall, there is much in common between the Dungeon! boardgame experience and those early dungeon crawl adventures.
In music and in art it is common to find a movement of artists that inspire and encourage each other in taking their craft in new and creative directions. They borrow ideas from each other and experiment with changes, bouncing ideas off each other and sharing their thoughts and criticisms. It's how the creative process seems to work and when it's on, there's something "magic" about it. Twin Cities, Minnesota (and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin) had that magic in their gaming communities in the early 70's. What a thing it must have been to witness and be a part of!
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Salt To Taste
Medieval Flavoring
With the subtitle, Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns... Mr. Gygax nominally claims the white box as a medieval style setting because it seemed to him that much of the sword & sorcery literature which inspired the game has a somewhat medieval flavor or feel to it. I also think the origins of the game in a variant on the medieval campaign run by the authors influenced the use of the title word "medieval". To be sure, reading the works of R.E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien and others I find they are full of kings and swords and warriors on horseback. The default white box technology level (leaving aside magic) seems more medieval compared to an historic timeline. Perhaps this is as Mr. Gygax had in mind.
The white box rules certainly do not deal with social caste, fealty, the medieval church or any of the social and cultural aspects of medieval society. It seems rather more a blend of heroic myth and the modern western cultural ideals of working hard, getting rich and building one's own little "kingdom" in a world of fantastic creatures and magic.
The referee can add additional mechanics to model medieval society and make the chosen milieu feel more chivalric and courtly as a part of their individual customization of the game. Many published settings and a few subsequent rules have taken this approach over the decades since the white box made its appearance. Early games such as Chivalry and Sorcery and King Arthur Pendragon have tried to take the medieval world setting more seriously by adding extensive rules for social background and chivalric behavior thus encouraging play that more closely reflects a medieval mindset. Harn is a setting that draws heavily from medieval history for it's gritty, realistic feel and Harnmaster, the rules written specifically for gaming in Harn carry the theme forward. In such rules, glory, honor or reputation, romance, family and other achievements often take the place of acquiring wealth and hit-points as a measure of successful play.
My Personal experience with such games is that it is difficult to find players who are willing to put forth the effort needed to alter their thinking to a consistent medieval mindset. In other words, I have found that a little salt goes a long way when flavoring a medieval setting. (I like the analogy of salt because the middle ages was a barter economy and salt was valuable and often substituted for coin.)
Referring to kings, dukes and milady, calling oneself a knight, and building a castle all seem to be quite appealing, but that's often about as medieval as many folks want to go.
With the subtitle, Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns... Mr. Gygax nominally claims the white box as a medieval style setting because it seemed to him that much of the sword & sorcery literature which inspired the game has a somewhat medieval flavor or feel to it. I also think the origins of the game in a variant on the medieval campaign run by the authors influenced the use of the title word "medieval". To be sure, reading the works of R.E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien and others I find they are full of kings and swords and warriors on horseback. The default white box technology level (leaving aside magic) seems more medieval compared to an historic timeline. Perhaps this is as Mr. Gygax had in mind.
The white box rules certainly do not deal with social caste, fealty, the medieval church or any of the social and cultural aspects of medieval society. It seems rather more a blend of heroic myth and the modern western cultural ideals of working hard, getting rich and building one's own little "kingdom" in a world of fantastic creatures and magic.
The referee can add additional mechanics to model medieval society and make the chosen milieu feel more chivalric and courtly as a part of their individual customization of the game. Many published settings and a few subsequent rules have taken this approach over the decades since the white box made its appearance. Early games such as Chivalry and Sorcery and King Arthur Pendragon have tried to take the medieval world setting more seriously by adding extensive rules for social background and chivalric behavior thus encouraging play that more closely reflects a medieval mindset. Harn is a setting that draws heavily from medieval history for it's gritty, realistic feel and Harnmaster, the rules written specifically for gaming in Harn carry the theme forward. In such rules, glory, honor or reputation, romance, family and other achievements often take the place of acquiring wealth and hit-points as a measure of successful play.
My Personal experience with such games is that it is difficult to find players who are willing to put forth the effort needed to alter their thinking to a consistent medieval mindset. In other words, I have found that a little salt goes a long way when flavoring a medieval setting. (I like the analogy of salt because the middle ages was a barter economy and salt was valuable and often substituted for coin.)
Referring to kings, dukes and milady, calling oneself a knight, and building a castle all seem to be quite appealing, but that's often about as medieval as many folks want to go.
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Published Settings
Regardless of the rules used, it isn't hard to find a published setting for almost any kind of fantasy game imaginable. I like some better than others, but much of that has to do with personal preferences. Some are closely tied to settings created for novels or movies and I generally find them less appealing for gaming than material created specifically for roleplaying. Like a lot of things in this hobby, I am partial to some of its oldest products.
Glorantha has become over time one of my favorite game settings. I can recall the early days of playing at Runequest 2nd ed. and being frustrated with the peculiarities of it's default setting, Glorantha (Ducks?), aspects of which seemed contrary to the heroic literature I liked to draw from when gaming. It took several years, but I eventually started to understand how to take best advantage of the strengths Glorantha offered as a published setting. Glorantha taught me to roleplay in Glorantha rather than try to use Glorantha to game my way. Glorantha is its own unique thing, with its own stories to tell. Some game world's demand respect, while others are easily molded into what the referee wants. It's been quite a while since I refereed a game set in Glorantha, but I have come to favor a "voyage of discovery" form of gaming where the uniqueness of the setting unfolds as the PCs travel about interacting with everything new.
Harn is another favorite fantasy world with some of the most beautiful maps and detailed descriptions ever published for the hobby. Harn itself is a large island which has given it's name to a world setting as well as several editions of rules written to take advantage of it's unique qualities, Harnmaster. Published material for Harn is packed with what I would call adventure hooks, one or two line descriptions, often of historic note, that could be developed by the referee if the players show interest. The NPCs are well developed and Harn is one of those "heavy immersion" settings where it is possible to play for hours interacting with NPCs, developing connections and relationships and pursuing "business" interests. Of course nothing about Harn prevents the PCs from dungeon exploring and killing orcs (foulspawn) if that's their pleasure. It's just that Harn has so much more to offer, including a real feel for the experience of spending the night in a hay barn.
Both Harn and Glorantha I tend to use "straight out of the box". The settings are incredibly detailed and half the fun of refereeing them is doing the background reading. Harn is a low magic world with a very historic feel to it. It has been described as "realistic" and I think applying it to Harn is as accurate as the term can be when describing a fantasy world. The publishers of Harn material (there are currently two) use a "start date" so that referees can rest assured that official canon won't overtake their campaign. Published material all uses the same in-game date and anything that happens from there forward is all your own campaign. That's the way I like my published campaign and Glorantha, Tekumel and others can be run that way as well.
Judges Guild's City State/Wilderlands setting will forever hold a special place for me among published settings. Judges Guild was one of the first publishers of any kind of referee aid and really taught me a lot about how the white box game could be run. Judges Guild published the works of several authors and therefore there was considerable variation in their line, which helped a young referee see there was more than one "correct" way to play this new game. For my money, the City State/Wilderlands products stand up well in comparison with more modern publications and continue to offer the referee one of the better published sandbox-type settings.
I have become a recent fan of Tekumel, at least from the standpoint of a setting to read about and study. It is one of the oldest game settings, but can be difficult to approach due to it's alieness. Some world settings I just read about and never referee, Tekumel may be one of those. Some world settings I borrow ideas from and although I may never referee specifically in those settings, parts of them become integrated into another setting such as my own Dreadmoor (a combination of original and borrowed material heavily influenced by my favorite fantasy novels).
Greyhawk is the background setting for many of the classic TSR adventure mods and as such the background for many games I have refereed using those published modules. Often appearing as nothing more than a few names or a small area map during the play session, Greyhawk always had an overall theme or feel to it that influenced white box and later edition publications. The standard game races, classes and monsters were Greyhawk, especially after the publication of Supplement I.
Middle Earth and other settings from fantasy literature influenced the white box itself (as described in Appendix N from the DM's Guide) and many publications since. I absolutely love many of those settings, but I have always found it easier and more satisfying to borrow elements from them rather than to try and referee a game using one of them as a specific setting. I didn't have to read far into Appendix N before I could easily see the genesis of some of the elements of the game right there in the pages of the novels and short stories listed.
So it's about time I get to the image at the top of this post, Titan. As it says on the can Titan is the world setting of the Fighting Fantasy adventure books and the Advanced Fighting Fantasy tabletop roleplaying game (Dungeoneer/Blacksand/Allansia). Titan is a rather minimalist fantasy setting in that only the basics are covered in broad strokes that leave lots of room for individualization. Most of the classic fantasy troupes are covered, such as Arabian Nights style adventure, barbarians of the north, knights in shining armour (its a British thing, of course), pirates, etc. Titan is essentially a playground for the imagination (as reflected in the many Fighting Fantasy volumes as well as the tabletop RPG) and is supported throughout the line by some very nice art. As playgrounds go, I think it's a good one.
Legend is the setting of another early British tabletop RPG, Dragon Warriors (Dragon Warriors/The Way of Wizardry/The Elven Crystals/Out of the Shadows/The Power of Darkness/The Lands of Legend). Legend and the Dragon Warriors RPG have a very "medieval" feel where fealty to one's lord, forgotten haunts, and lots of mystery, a rather low magic, superstitious baseline and several engagingly good adventures all leaves me with a fondness for both the game and it's setting. Both Titan and Legend have provided me imaginary space for many hours of fun adventuring and are sentimental favorites.
I have just brushed the surface of the topic, and many other published settings are out there waiting to be discovered, explored, mined and remembered. The human imagination seems an endless source of fantastic settings, some better described than others and some more useful for roleplaying than others. If this hobby has given me nothing else, I am grateful for the faraway places I have glimpsed through the lens of published settings. The enjoyment that alone has brought me is well worth the effort.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Exploring Tekumel
And now for something completely different...
I have been immersing myself in the world of M.A.R.
Barker's Tekumel for the last few days. It's been around as a
sci-fantasy setting since the early days of white box D&D (Empire of the
Petal Throne) and crossed over into miniature gaming early on. Ral
Partha used to have a range of wargaming figures specifically for Tekumel and
there have been various army books and battle rules over the years. I
have seen large 25mm games at various conventions over the years, usually
involving a Sakbe Road (similar to the Great Wall of China).
If you have not heard of Tekumel until now it's one of the classic settings used for gaming. It ranks with Glorantha as one of the oldest and most widely developed, being the setting of several games, several novels and a multitude of fan produced material, mostly available on the web. Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance and Eberron are of course other game settings that have very large followings and much available material. Tekumel is probably the most alien of the big settings, way more alien than any of the TSR/WotC settings which are all pretty much based on medieval Europe.
Tekumel is a pocket universe consisting of a sun and five planets. Once part of our universe Tekumel was discovered and teraformed by space faring humans way in our future. Then it became a pocket universe of its own...no stars, nothing but the sun, five planets and their moons. On Tekumel, that's ancient history. The inhabitants of Tekumel, human and other, live a medieval type existence having lost both the knowledge and use of higher technology. They do have magic, as the laws of their pocket universe/dimension differ from our own. They have also discovered higher beings who can act much like the gods of our ancient human mythology.
If this is starting to sound like a fairly typical RPG setting, the similarity pretty much ends here. There are no elves, dwarfs, etc. The non-human intelligent species are mostly six-limbed, as are many of the fauna. The flora is a mixture of plants brought to Tekumel during the teraforming and indigenous plants which are mostly poisonous.
M.A.R. Barker was a professor of languages much like J.R.R. Tolkien, except where Tolkien studied Old Anglo Saxon, I believe Barker studied Indian and south east Asian languages. The worlds they created show this influence and Prof. Barker, like Prof. Tolkien invented languages specifically for their made-up peoples. The human culture of Tekumel more closely resembles ancient southeast Asian and Mesoamerican cultures than traditional western models as a result.
One doesn't have to read far into the history of our hobby before stumbling on the name "Tekumel". My one-and-only experience with Tekumel, however, was about 35 years ago playing EPT. I remember some of the uniqueness that I am now rediscovering, but obviously one game was a very brief involvement with the setting. EPT has a unique mechanism for introducing the new player to Tekumel (which was used in my introduction), and one I think I will use if I ever referee a game set on Tekumel. The players all start as "barbarians" from an undefined culture, just arrived at a major trading port, and new to the Empire and its ways. The outlander is quickly told they are only allowed in the "visitor" district of town. Clan membership and citizen status are everything in the Empire and the PCs have neither. They do have a future in the Empire however, because the clans and temples hire "outsiders" to do much of their more exciting work, such as dungeon exploring and treasure seeking. Who knows, working for such employers might even lead to adoption into a clan and eventual citizenship?
If you have not heard of Tekumel until now it's one of the classic settings used for gaming. It ranks with Glorantha as one of the oldest and most widely developed, being the setting of several games, several novels and a multitude of fan produced material, mostly available on the web. Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance and Eberron are of course other game settings that have very large followings and much available material. Tekumel is probably the most alien of the big settings, way more alien than any of the TSR/WotC settings which are all pretty much based on medieval Europe.
Tekumel is a pocket universe consisting of a sun and five planets. Once part of our universe Tekumel was discovered and teraformed by space faring humans way in our future. Then it became a pocket universe of its own...no stars, nothing but the sun, five planets and their moons. On Tekumel, that's ancient history. The inhabitants of Tekumel, human and other, live a medieval type existence having lost both the knowledge and use of higher technology. They do have magic, as the laws of their pocket universe/dimension differ from our own. They have also discovered higher beings who can act much like the gods of our ancient human mythology.
If this is starting to sound like a fairly typical RPG setting, the similarity pretty much ends here. There are no elves, dwarfs, etc. The non-human intelligent species are mostly six-limbed, as are many of the fauna. The flora is a mixture of plants brought to Tekumel during the teraforming and indigenous plants which are mostly poisonous.
M.A.R. Barker was a professor of languages much like J.R.R. Tolkien, except where Tolkien studied Old Anglo Saxon, I believe Barker studied Indian and south east Asian languages. The worlds they created show this influence and Prof. Barker, like Prof. Tolkien invented languages specifically for their made-up peoples. The human culture of Tekumel more closely resembles ancient southeast Asian and Mesoamerican cultures than traditional western models as a result.
One doesn't have to read far into the history of our hobby before stumbling on the name "Tekumel". My one-and-only experience with Tekumel, however, was about 35 years ago playing EPT. I remember some of the uniqueness that I am now rediscovering, but obviously one game was a very brief involvement with the setting. EPT has a unique mechanism for introducing the new player to Tekumel (which was used in my introduction), and one I think I will use if I ever referee a game set on Tekumel. The players all start as "barbarians" from an undefined culture, just arrived at a major trading port, and new to the Empire and its ways. The outlander is quickly told they are only allowed in the "visitor" district of town. Clan membership and citizen status are everything in the Empire and the PCs have neither. They do have a future in the Empire however, because the clans and temples hire "outsiders" to do much of their more exciting work, such as dungeon exploring and treasure seeking. Who knows, working for such employers might even lead to adoption into a clan and eventual citizenship?
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