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.
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
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.
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