Warlock is as it says on the first page, a variant of D&D and has been played at Caltech at least since 1975 (three play-test years before publication in 1978). The White Box as written is more like a set of guidelines or a design kit than hard and fast rules and they are by no means exhaustive in their completeness covering every conceivable situation encountered at the game table. Nor were they meant to be. Folks naturally made the White Box their own by changing and adding to the rules as written. At the time Warlock was written it was becoming fairly common to publish the house rules a group had been playing with for some time and which seemed to meet with some acceptance. Warlock refers the reader to the original edition of D&D to complete the rules...despite being titled The Complete Warlock, there are no monsters to fight, no magic items to discover and nothing about exploring the dungeon or wilderness. What The Complete Warlock does give are new rules for combat and magic and variants on the character classes. The rules seem written with an eye to replacing some or all of the pertaining White Box rules with Warlock variant rules. Combination characters, those with more than one character class, are seemingly pretty common in Warlock. Dwarf, elf and halfling are stand alone character classes (race as class) which can also be combined with some other classes for combination characters. The Warlock version of the thief class is as far as I know unique in that the thieving abilities are to be taken in spell-like slots. For example a 1st level thief can choose 1 first level thief ability from a list which includes abilities like pick most locks, sure strike dagger x3, hide in shadows, slight of hand, etc. The actual chance of succeeding at these abilities is much higher than a 1st level thief per White Box rules. The combat variant is a percentile system using a matrix of weapon type verses armor type adjusted by level and with any magic or ability bonuses/penalties added or subtracted. There are rules for critical hits and fumbles with hit location for the critical. Magic rules use a combination of Vancian spell memorization per White Box and Warlock spell points to power the memorized spell. Like many of the early variants/houserule systems, it is easy to pick and choose among the new rules treating them as plug-in "modules". In such a manner might the rules for magic be exchanged for those in the LBBs or perhaps rather the combat "module" be exchanged. I can recall a fondness for the Warlock version of the thief class and for a while adopted it for our White Box game, but I don't recall ever trying to play with The Complete Warlock as a replacement for the White Box as a whole. The Warlock Special Characteristics Table found some use and popularity in our game for a while as it allowed the PC an individualized bonus or handicap with various weapons, spells, abilities, hearing, vision, and etc. The LBBs opened the door to our gamer imaginations and Mr. Gygax and Mr. Arneson taught the world a new type of game to play. The Complete Warlock and other variants represent the work of various re-imaginings as gamers have sought to "improve" on the original. Before I leave the subject, I might mention the Warlock system has one additional connection of interest to D&D; according to gamer legend as it was the version of the game played by Dr. J. Eric Holmes who took the LBBs (and Supplement I) and edited/authored the first "Basic" version of D&D, the Holmes Blue Book.
No comments:
Post a Comment