Caverns of Thracia & Dark Tower

Goodman Games reprints
Caverns of Thracia, published in 1979 by Judges Guild stands as one of the great play aids in the history of our hobby. Author Jennell Jaquays writing under the name Paul Jaquays, gives us a dungeon with a theme, monsters that make sense in the environment, multiple entrances and exits, multiple paths around each level and multiple ways to go up and down between levels. In other words, she teaches us how to do a dungeon adventure.
Caverns of Thracia is a pseudo ancient Greek mini-campaign setting that includes a ruined polis and four-level dungeon beneath. There are competing factions, the Death Cult of Thanatos and lots of other challenges to entertain players. Quite popular still and long out-of-print, Caverns of Thracia demands a pretty high price when it can be found on the secondary market.
Dark Tower, also originally published by Judges Guild in 1979 and authored by Ms. Jaquays is another classic dungeon adventure and well deserves a reprint. Dark Tower is the creation of an evil god set on destroying the forces of good, who conveniently live nearby. The Play aid draws the adventurers into the conflict between good and evil, fought out by cultists and priests, adventurers and monsters, and the gods themselves. Before I make this sound like there is more plot than sandbox, there isn't. The play aid is basically a situation and an area, competing factions and a place for adventurers to make choices.
Goodman Games has been steadily re-releasing some of the better Judges Guild products over the last couple of years. These are play aids written for the Original and early Advanced versions of the game we love and have not been "updated" to the current edition. These modules are tough in terms of PC death and assume large parties of 6-10 characters. Fortunately, I think editions such as White Box are ideal for experienced players to handle two or even three PCs at a time. Having two or three PCs makes it less of a problem when one (or two) meet death in a dungeon delve. Most of my high-level PCs have died at least once, after-all there are spells in the old game to bring the dead PC back to life.
It is my opinion that Jennell (Paul) Jaquays is one of the unsung heroes of our hobby. I say this for a number of reasons, foremost is her considerable talent in writing Play Aids. In an era when we didn't get much from TSR in terms of dungeons or play aids, Ms. Jaquays wrote play aids for several different tabletop games systems before moving on to the computer industry and in the process gave us some excellent examples of how to do adventures and dungeons. I have heard the term Jaquaying a dungeon used to indicate "making it the right way". The few early TSR dungeons published were designed for tournament play which meant they were linear, deadly and often had little or no rhyme-or-reason to their "ecology". 

Working Stiff and Special Snowflake

Making it all work together
Literature plays a significant role in influencing the type of story we are interested in telling at the game table. If our literary tastes run to superheroes saving the world from an evil plot or to the charming noble winning the hand of a true-love, we all tend to at least start out the hobby making characters who resemble our imaginary idols. To be sure, these "idols" take many forms and represent a multitude of "power levels", everything from the common peasant/working stiff to off-planet alien superheroes able to fly between planets.
In many ways it is difficult for a campaign to accommodate both superhero and working stiff. Perhaps less troublesome is the unique "special snowflake" PC, which may fit in power-wise with the rest of the campaign, but is so unique and unusual in other ways as to be problematic. I am talking about characters that run counter to type, the ONLY good example of an evil race, the LAST member of a race thought extinct for centuries. It is perhaps human nature to wish to stand out in a crowd, it can be more of an issue to draw a crowd where-ever one goes.
The art of crafting a unique and interesting PC that fills a niche in the party and is both interesting to play and to witness being played, is probably developed only over time. Modeling a PC on a character drawn from popular media is much easier. I prefer to run low-powered games and that seems the default of White Box and many other systems. As PCs gain levels and power the game changes, but most PCs start more in line with common people regarding power. Obviously a little above "normal", but not "super". Like-wise, I tend to prefer working stiff type PCs which blend into the milieu nicely over the special snowflakes that require extensive explanation and backstory, which frequently requires repeating every time the PCs encounter a new NPC. Yes, I play this out. It seems a necessary part of maintaining verisimilitude in the campaign.
The role-playing game is an implied social contract, to borrow a phrase, and as such each player is both entitled to play the game they want while also expected to fit into and be an active part of the collective endeavor. If it sounds like a balancing act, I think that is exactly what it amounts to. Balancing everyone's fun against the fun of everyone else.
The same can be said for a referee's setting or world. Some settings are definitely "working class", some more "special snowflake". One of the most important aspects of setting to me is that players be able to make meaningful choices and alter the world, if even in modest ways. As early designers noted it is also desirable for the PCs to fit into the setting and be a part of the make-believe society. Setting a destructive fire or taking out the head of the local thieve's guild should be within the realm of possibilities. The world should be changing and PCs should be able to be a part of that change.

The City of Terrors

UK print of a T&T solo
I have mentioned before my fondness for fantasy solo adventures. Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo wrote the very first one, Buffalo Castle (1976), for Ken St. Andre's Tunnels & Trolls (T&T) rule system. I saw these fine gentleman again at Origins over the weekend.  They were gracious enough to both autograph a hardcover copy of the new Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls. The popularity of the solo adventure peaked before hand-held devices made video gaming more portable, but in their day they were very popular.
The T&T solos were first published by Flying Buffalo Inc. using a standard 8 1/2" x 11" softcover format. In 1982 Puffin Books of the UK published their first Fighting Fantasy adventure game book, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, in standard mass market paperback format. The Fighting Fantasy series were sold alongside science fiction/ fantasy novels in bookstores and reached a wide audience, both in the UK and overseas. About this time, Corgi Books, another UK publisher, entered the market with a series of digest sized paperback editions of the T&T rules and solos. The City of Terrors (1986), pictured above, is one of the Corgi T&T solos. In addition to resizing, the Corgi editions have new artwork and include an abbreviated version of the T&T rules, so The City of Terrors is a complete product. Unlike the Fighting Fantasy books which were just about fighting, this T&T adventure book includes rules for magic and has a list of spells that can be cast while adventuring in the solo. There are also a number of weapons and armor types to choose from, all adding variety and improving replay-ability.
The City of Terrors is written by Michael Stackpole, who did a few T&T solo titles for Flying Buffalo before moving on to novels. Mr. Stackpole is one of the many unsung heroes of our hobby. In addition to his work as a designer of games and solos, Mr. Stackpole authored several defenses of the hobby when it was under fire from some radical haters who wanted to equate it with devil worship. His articles "Devil Games? Nonsense", "The Truth About Role-Playing Games" and especially "The Pulling Report" (1990) effectively discredited the hostile opposition and quieted the nonsense criticism.
The City of Terrors, in its Corgi edition, is 96 pages, including 17 pages of rules, broken into numbered paragraphs where the decisions the reader makes together with some combat and saving throw dice rolls determines which numbered paragraph the reader turns to next. A number of illustrations connected to the paragraphs are scattered about the book, many are "inspired" by the original illustrations for the American edition and I find it amusing to compare the two. Flipping through the pages, I am reminded of the gonzo nature of this particular solo. Mr. Stackpole would go on to write a number of Star Wars novels and his interest in space is evident here through the encounter with a spaceman, complete with a selection of high-tech devices.
No urban adventure setting would be complete without an encounter with the criminal element. The City of Terrors does not disappoint my expectations, in fact it's hard to avoid such an encounter, but it's entertaining and provided you survive , worth the trouble. There is a lot more to do in The City of Terrors and I shall not spoil any more of the discovery. As a final note to this post, next week I will be traveling for work and I always throw in a couple solos when packing. Maybe it's time for another visit to The City of Terrors...

Complex or Rules Lite?

Is White Box a complex game or a rules-lite game?
I haven't given much thought to such things until recently. I notice that some systems bill themselves as "rules lite" like it is a good thing. Gamers talk about crunchy mechanics and most of us have been through the "more complex equals more realistic" hoop. Verisimilitude gets brought into the equation and sometimes I'm not sure what we are talking about anymore.
Complexity can come about for more than one reason. While learning White Box, I recall thinking it was very complex (teaching it can be complex too). There are a number of dissimilar subsystems, seemingly incomplete explanations that assume knowledge I didn't have and not much in the way of examples. The game changes somewhat each time the PCs level up and at certain levels the whole scheme changes, examples include when the party gains access to "invisibility" and "raise dead".
Putting that aside and looking at the game as a "one-off", there are a lot of pieces to this puzzle. Before the game can begin, there is preparation necessary above that of figuring out the rules. A referee must build a world, or at least a dungeon level for the players to explore. Then there is character generation and equipping the character, i.e. shopping and spell memorization. The perils of exploration, resource management - light source, surviving traps - making saving throws, mapping and getting through stuck doors. Once an encounter happens, there is the possibility of combat, which may involve spell casting. Morale may affect hirelings and monsters as things go badly. Providing things go well, there will be treasure and experience gained. All this is likely to take place in a single evening of play. In a campaign all the pieces are in constant motion.
While it is true that the basic concept is to "describe what you want your character to do and roll the die", which is simplicity itself, having rules to make sure things are handled consistently from one similar situation to the next and make things fair between players adds complexity. White Box depends on the referee to handle many things that will occur outside the scope of the written rules and this may be seen as a kind of complexity, one requiring a more experienced referee. As incomplete as they may be, the original three little brown books together number 110 pages of rules. This is no easy body of material to master and commit to memory since many of the sub-systems use unique mechanics.
Perhaps a truly rules-lite system would be one without levels where character play remains the same from session to session. There is no universal mechanic in White Box to apply to all situations, but perhaps rules-lite systems are marked by such a universal mechanic. We generally think the labels "rules-lite" and "rulings not rules" go together, but maybe that isn't necessarily true either.
It seems I am a bit shaky on just what a "rules-lite' system is or isn't, so how can I tell if White Box is complex or rules-lite? Maybe it's both? Maybe it doesn't matter?

New Game

Some thoughts on how we got where we are...
It all started with the White Box - well, maybe before, with the idea that led to the White Box - with some innovative wargamers, who painted miniature figures, who wrote rules for how to play games with the miniature figures and played those games around a table in a social setting with friends, usually rolling some dice.The games were based on shared interests in history and games, so the figures and rules were researched and based in history. Some of these guys - gamers were mostly men in those days - also liked to read science fiction and fantasy (sword & sorcery) stories. Also some of the wargames were man-to-man where each figure represented a single person, often with an individual name. The idea that led to the White Box was simply to combine this man-to-man style wargame (which is almost role-playing) with their interest in fantasy tropes.
At this point the hobby is born and our collective journey begins with this simple idea to mix the tabletop game and an interest in fantastic stories. Centered around Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the gamers in Lake Geneva and Minneapolis/St. Paul started to experiment. Chainmail got a fantasy supplement, a few pages in the back of the book, so miniature wargaming could be done with dragons, etc. Dungeon, the boardgame by David Megarry is evidence that the boardgame side of tabletop gaming was also experimenting with the new idea. Those early games led by Mr. Gygax, Mr. Arneson and friends would result in the Little Brown Books - White Box.
With publication the idea gained a wider audience and a new hobby was off and running as word spread quickly among several related groups - tabletop gamers, science fiction fans, etc. that there was this new "game thing" related to what we already know we like. Word spread that it was fun and fresh and like nothing else and lots of people wanted to try it. The target audience was (and is) bright, imaginative people who do what bright, imaginative people do - they they come up with even more ideas, variations on a theme, one might say, rule additions, new mechanics, whole new games which branch out into settings not covered by a fantasy role-playing game. Games about space travel and exploration, games about comic book superheroes, about cowboys of the old west and more.
The following steps were to broaden the scope of the new idea to encompass just about every way to play as a character in a story collectively told in a group. Then some of these bright, imaginative folks started to ask questions about the nature of this new thing, role-playing. How could it be used to develop useful real-life skills like teamwork, what value did it have in maturation and character building, problem solving. The internet allows a whole new level of communication, idea sharing and interfacing and sites like The Forge started talking about role-playing games in an analytical way. Theories developed and questions posed. Interfacing with social sciences, the discussion about the role stories play in our identity as individuals and groups began to include role-playing.
So now the question may be asked..."Where are we?"  Hasn't the idea grown beyond a simple game? I can't imagine that Mr. Gygax or Mr. Arneson or anyone else involved in the early days of the hobby could imagine what the idea would grow into. The popularity of the role-play game, in all its many forms, has resulted in the original idea directly influencing popular culture. So, we have come this far, and are still wondering where we are?

Shadow, Sword & Spell

Neo-Old School Sword & Sorcery RPG
Continuing to work through my stack of favorites from a couple years ago I have come to Shadow, Sword & Spell (SS&S) is written by Richard Iorio II, Looking through this 190 page digest sized book I am immediately reminded of why I placed it among my favorites. SS&S bills itself as "a humanistic, pulp fantasy game" with roots in the swords & sorcery genre of the 1930s to 1960s.  The authors listed as "inspiration" include some of my favorites, Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith as well as others. Tone and feeling, horror and discovery, secrets and mystery are described as what SS&S is about. These are all elements which I try to bring to my personal game as referee.
The tome pictured above is the Basic SS&S rulebook and in the tradition of B/X there is also an Expert rulebook in blue. Basic includes everything needed to play the game and Expert just adds more. The system mechanics of SS&S is Rogue Games' Twelve Degree engine (also used in other Rogue Games designs such as Colonial Gothic). The Twelve Degree system is a universal mechanic that involves rolling 2d12 equal to or under a Target Number (TN) to succeed. This is called a Test. There are three types of tests depending on whether your roll is opposed or against an ability or skill. Degree refers to how much difference there is between the roll and the TN, allowing one to refer to Degrees of Success or Failure. Characters are created with Hooks, which are story devices which can earn the player boons in the form of Action Points which in turn can be spent for free re-rolls, bonuses to TN and other advantages.
Chargen in SS&S is on the quick and easy side. Attributes, including sanity, are assigned values from a point pool. There are no classes, everyone is an "adventurer", but background does help define the character, such as being a user of magic. Hooks and skills round out the PC. Magic in SS&S is consistent with the sword & sorcery tradition therefore it is uncommon and practitioners pay a price. Each spell cast costs the caster vitality (health or hit points). Alchemy is offered as an alternative to spell magic, but even there one gets the impression the practitioner is delving into knowledge "man was not meant to know".
The last third of the Basic book is devoted to referee advice, setting and sample adventure. It is here that Mr. Iorio really catches my attention because he espouses the kind of game I strive for at my table. Gritty, challenging, focused on humans leading a hardscrabble, working stiff existence, the world of SS&S is as much about individual survival as it is robbing tombs, exploring lost cities and helping dispossessed rulers reclaim their crowns. While fabulous treasures await, it is assumed the successful adventurer will quickly squander (gambling, drinking and whoring away) any fortune gained. The publishing company is called Rogue Games and SS&S is all about rogues.
Mr. Iorio's Golden Vine Region is one of my favorite settings ever. It is part R.E. Howard, part renaissance Italy, and hits the sweet spot (in my opinion) with just the right amount of information to inspire the imagination and furnish lots of hooks and opportunities for sandbox play. Like in any good sword & sorcery setting, the Golden Vine Region bad guys are mostly humans and the author gives pages and pages of statted-out baddies of the human persuasion. There are a few "monster" type creatures here as well, just to add the occasional horror element (horror must be infrequent or it's not horror) and an introductory adventure that may suggest the mood in which the author games his setting. Though I didn't directly import the Golden Vine Region into my own Dreadmoor, I admit to borrowing heavily from what I found here.
While there are similarities to B/X, SS&S is its own game. It takes some of the traditional elements of the hobby and reinterprets them through a fairly narrow lens giving a system that has a lot of "personality" of its own. SS&S seems to know what it wants to be and I think does it quite well. The Twelve Degree system took a bit of thinking on my part to wrap my mind around, but I think now that I get it, it would produce a vary fast-paced, exciting combat where taking chances could pay off or result in injury to the PC.

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG

Adventure like 1974 intended you to...
No discussion of my OSR favorites would be complete without mentioning Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game (DCCRPG). I would say Dungeon Crawl Classics as a concept predates the OSR. The idea started with Joseph Goodman publishing old style dungeon crawl modules for 3rd Edition. The idea was an instant hit with old guys like me that never lost our love for the original game. I collected the entire line and have run DCC #1 Idylls of the Rat King (my favorite of the line) several times.
In 2012, Joseph Goodman published his own role playing game as pictured above. DCCRPG makes use of the OGL and is not am simulacrum of any old edition, but rather a game going back to the inspirations that led to White Box, Appendix N from the Dungeon Masters Guide. Mr. Goodman actually refers to his game as "Appendix N Gaming" and I think he is right on. DCCRPG is written so that it supports playing in the manner and style of the stories found in Appendix N.
So what's in this massive 470+ page book besides tons of old-style gaming art? The rule mechanics themselves build on everything up through at least 3rd Edition, but with a re-imagining of the game to make it feel more like it's literary roots. At its core DCCRPG is a d20 game using a twenty-sided die roll for most tasks, except when it's a d16, or a d24 or some other odd new shaped die. DCCRPG makes use of the usual polyhedron RPG dice and then adds in some extras referred to as "Zocchi Dice", referring to Lou Zocchi, hobby personality and dice salesman extraordinaire. Ascending AC, 3rd Edition saves, and class and level are all familiar mechanics. DCCRPG borrows race-as-class from B/X and it seems to work here as the emphasis is on human PCs.
There are some significant changes to the familiar mechanics, however. Clerics turn things that are unholy to their religion, not just undead and don't use-up their spells when cast, but may annoy their god if they cast too many spells. Wizards don't lose their spells automatically when cast, but roll-to-cast and may fail, succeed, fumble or crit with their spell. Magic is chaos, unpredictable, wild and potentially corrupting. Warriors benefit from better critical hit tables and can use "mighty deeds of arms" to dominate combat. Thieves, Dwarfs, Elfs and Halflings (walking luck charms) round out the available classes.
Before you get the idea this is a game of powerful characters doing epic deeds altering the history of the world, let's talk about the "funnel". Author Joseph Goodman has taken the low-level character death syndrome and made it a part of the rules. Players are encouraged to roll-up several PCs and send them through a funnel adventure. The PCs are zero level peasants with very little equipment. The point is many will die and the ones that emerge alive will level-up to become your 1st level characters. The survivors will presumably also have some personality developed through play at this point.
DCCRPG is a relatively big book. It is lavishly illustrated in a style that definitely reminds me of the oldest days of the hobby, which is the intent. A lot of space is devoted to tables. Each magic spell has a separate table with various effects depending on the roll of the caster. A spell may whiff, do as expected, do better than expected or go badly astray. Remember that magic is chaotic in DCCRPG. Patrons play a big part in magic, especially the more powerful magics. Patrons may be drawn from the gods, demons, elemental forces, aliens or just about anything the referee wants to invent. Several examples are given in the rules. The DCCRPG book is a complete game package with monsters, treasures and two introductory adventures, one is a "funnel".
I have not run DCCRPG, but it is not from a lack of trying. So far I have been unsuccessful in talking anyone into a "funnel" where two-thirds of the PCs die (in hopefully entertaining ways). I will admit, this sounds a bit dark - graveyard humor dark - especially in a hobby culture where character death hardly ever happens. "Why, way back in the day, sonny, we used to go through a stack of characters before midnight and be glad we had the opportunity to play."
"The times, they are a-changin'." Bob Dylan said that.

Mythras Imperative

Introductory d100 Rules
Mythras, the Design Mechanism's new name changed and updated RuneQuest 6 is an essentials style core booklet up for free download now. I find the cover illustration by David Benzal fits the title nicely. The book is called Imperative and that kinda sums up my feelings regarding it. Convention season is here and living on I-70 between Columbus, Ohio where Origins is located and Indianapolis, Indiana where Gencon is located I am blessed to be able to usually attend both. I always have a shopping list and at the top this year is Mythras and Chaosium's new RuneQuest Classic reprint and Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition. Imperative is a nice pre-convention teaser and I hope there will be a full version of Mythras soon.
Conventions are magical places. Designers, vendors and hobbyists all gather to exchange ideas, see what's new, show off their work of the past year, play the games we love and which bring us together, meet new friends and get re-acquainted with old ones. It reminds me of the ancient idea of a fair, with all that entails. I think it a fair comparison.
Having downloaded and read through Mythras Imperative I see much that is familiar, as I expected. Mythras is obviously descended from RuneQuest 6. The d100 mechanic is carried on here as it has been since the very first edition of RuneQuest. There are some changes, however. The d100 system is a skill based system with no classes or levels. Mythras introduces some more modern skills in an effort to cover more periods than RuneQuest 6 did. Professional skills now include computers, demolitions, electronics and sensors.
Character generation is similar to RuneQuest 6 with an expanded career list (to accommodate more modern settings and cultures). There seems to be more emphasis on passions, which is a nod to indie story-games I believe. They made their first appearance in the RQ line in 6th Edition, but seem more fleshed out and integrated here. Combat is similar to RuneQuest 6 and is therefore on the crunchy side. Combat styles, weapon choice, combat actions and special effects all seem rather similar to previous Nash/Whitaker RQ, although I see no mention of strike ranks or weapon reach in Imperative and Mythras includes modern guns and ballistic armour (Canadian spelling!).
Noticeably absent from Imperative is any magic rules, although the Design Mechanism says the full Mythras rules will include five types of magic (same number as in Runequest 6). There is a very short bestiary (5 critters), just enough so the player/referee can see how they are done. The full rules will presumably include many more. Mythras Imperative is only 32 pages. By contrast RuneQuest Essentials (soon to be discontinued), the free intro version of RuneQuest 6, has 200 pages. Imperative seems to have enough here to play in just about any genre that a referee wishes to use it, however. Will there be a desire for more? I assume that is what the folks at Design Mechanism hope so they can sell the complete Mythras rules.
Now, back to that evocative cover illustration. There is a story to be told there and I definitely want to be a part of that story. Working on it now...

The Secret Fire

More than an RPG?
George Strayton lists some unusual names in his dedication to The Secret Fire. Unusual only in the sense that they appear in an OSR game book and not a book on philosophy and religion, I suppose. Included are Plato, Eckart Tolle, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Thich Nhat Hanh, D.T. Suzuki, Ralph Waldo Emmerson and others. Using the words fear, wonder, mystery and magic, Mr. Strayton describes the kind of tabletop experience he is going for in The Secret Fire (SF).
The Title itself is a reference to Tolkien and in many ways SF is a traditional fantasy role-playing game. Like White Box, SF is a game of exploration, but that is perhaps more clearly stated in SF. Exploration of the setting, to be sure, but also exploration of role, and ethic, and symbolism, and the greater meaning of things.
SF assumes a dark and dangerous setting, where careful preparation and attention to detail are perhaps more important to survival of the PC than combat prowess, spells and hit points. Playing one's role is emphasized through the use of an in-game currency called energy points that are earned through roleplay, including alignment behavior, and spent to activate abilities or influence story narrative.
PCs can be one of four main classes, (Callings in SF terms), holy one, (cleric), thief, warrior or wizard. all are similar to, but also somewhat different from, the standard White Box class with an emphasis here on "color". Wizards cast spells of the following description rather than level one, two, etc., Cantrips, Order of the Lowly Ram (1st), Order of the Rising Star (2nd), Order f the Soaring Phoenix (3rd), Order of the Lord of Pentacles (4th) and Order of the Master Dragon (5th). The major Tolkien-esque races are in evidence with some interesting random character trait tables.
I acquired this tome a year or so ago and it has remained on my favorites list. Verisimilitude and immersion are words which usually catch my attention and they are the stated goals of the referee in SF. Called the Master Creator or MC it is their job to create a believable environment for adventure and to encourage players to get immersed within their character roles. SF provides a few mechanical tools toward this goal, but a lot of it seems to be emphasis and encouraging a table culture conducive to achieving the goal.
I like the author's goal and I frequently encourage the style of play set forth and described here in SF even while refereeing other games. I think I see why the author lists the names he does in the dedication. There is a consistent emphasis on mindfulness, deliberate action, and immersion in the story, on drawing upon archtypes and shared myths, the collective unconscious and the common human experience to achieve a higher level of gaming experience that borders on the existential.Or maybe it's just me exercising my need for order by trying to pull it all together in some great meaningful way.

Vornheim

It's a Play-Aid, It's an Art Project, It's Both!
I have been going through a stack of favorites from a few years back when I was first becoming aware of the Old School Renaissance (OSR). I am rather late to the scene as evidenced by the number of signature products that were already popular when I first started reading OSR blogs, ordering books and delving into the richness that has had a significant impact on my experience of the hobby. Having never completely abandoned my love for, and use of, some of my oldest RPGs, White Box, RuneQuest, Tunnels & Trolls and The Fantasy Trip, I have nevertheless played many of the newer systems and regularly play the most recent versions of the most popular fantasy games.
Finding a community of like-minded enthusiasts for the old systems has given me much joy. I find the new products released as part of the OSR very engaging and are now some of my favorites. Among the new OSR finds I really like is Vornheim: The Complete City Kit by Zak S. published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess.
Zak S., aka Zak Sabbath, aka Zak Smith is sometimes controversial, but nevertheless a genius in my estimation. His game aid Vornheim is as unique and useful a product as any I have encountered inside gaming or out. Every inch of space, including the inside of the dust jacket is covered with art and game tools in the most brilliant way conceivable. Ostensibly, this is a city guide, but to characterize it as such would be to ignore how much more there is here than just a city. The hard cover of the book is a unique dice rolling device allowing virtually any die to be replicated by dropping a d4 (or similar non-rolling object) onto the cover. It's a brilliant use of space and a very creative idea.
If you don't know already, Zak S. is an artist...I mean a real working gallery artist. So the artwork here is not so much in the book as "is the book". Like his more recent, In A Red And Pleasant Land, also published by Lamentations... the book itself is a work of art. It's more than pretty, however, there is a whole campaign setting here in the slender 64 page tome. Having viewed Zak's I Hit It With My Axe video series, I recognize much of the Vornheim material as it is used in the "Axe" campaign.
Vornheim is a great urban setting and I won't spoil it by describing specific features. I think experiencing it fresh through the book itself is worth the wait. I will say that much like Judges Guild's City State of the Invincible Overlord, there is much useful material here that a referee can carry over into any urban adventure making it useful well beyond the city's walls. Vornheim is one of those treasures that is just too good to keep to myself, as a result I have purchased several copies which I have given away just to "share the wealth"...and hear people tell me how great it is.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess

Weird Fantasy Role-Playing
Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP) is the work of James Edward Raggi IV. It is a thin volume of Rules & Magic based on the open source game license and falls generally into the old school renaissance family of products. Mr. Raggi's unique take seems to be the "weird" as is in evidence by the cover and 18+ content warning. The hard cover Player Core Book pictured above is the latest iteration of LotFP having a 2013 copyright. There were two previous boxed editions of the game which come with additional referee material.
A few years ago when I was first discovering the OSR (Old School Renaissance), I purchased and read some of the cornerstone publications of the sub-genre, OSRIC (Old School Reference and Index Compilation), Basic Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord, Dark Dungeons and Swords & Wizardry, to name a few. All are variations on the older out-of-print versions of the world's most popular game editions. LotFP is closely related to those other products, but with the "weird" twist that makes the game a bit darker and more horrific. The rules themselves give some of this weird flavor, but it is in the artwork (cover above), many pieces featuring the signature flame haired princess, and early adventure modules that the weird mood is most evident.
In terms of system, LotFP clings most closely to Basic/Expert, but there are significant changes so I don't really see LotFP as a simulacrum. Gone are the flashy spells like fireball. Fighters are the only class that improves in combat skill. Clerics and magic users gain spells and hit points, but their to-hit number stays the same as they level. LotFP uses race as class for the non-human dwarf, elf and halfling. The thief is replaced with the specialist class which reminds me to mention that LotFP replaces the percent based skills with a clever d6 method I really like.
Mr. Raggi is also the author of the Random Esoteric Creature Generator and states he prefers original monsters so there is no bestiary for LotFP. Of course, borrowing monsters from any old school version of the game will work fine, but I think Mr. Raggi is on to something here. Original creatures and original magic items, all with history connecting them to the milieu has a lot to recommend it as a practice.
I have been a huge fan of LotFP since I first discovered it (although I admit I don't play it). The original boxed version of the game came out in 2010 and included some excellent referee material that is not included in the Player Core Book, which has the number one printed on the spine. I am hopeful that Mr. Raggi will eventually release a volume 2 which will include an expanded version of the referee material that was in the box, because I think it contains some of his best work. The adventure mods published by Mr. Raggi are equally compelling and weird, the early ones being my personal favorites.

RuneQuest 6

What's in a Name Anyway?
According to the rumor mill, RuneQuest 6 is changing its name this summer and will be known as Mythras from now on. I have to say, as much as the name RuneQuest means to me as my second love in the hobby, I am rather excited about the changes ahead. I am pleased that Pete Nash and Lawrence Whitaker of the Design Mechanism will retain rights to the excellent game they have designed and look forward to purchasing a couple copies of the new Mythras as I anticipate the Design Mechanism will take this opportunity to tweak and improve the system a bit. the name RuneQuest will return to Moon Deign and Chaosium who will (according to rumor) be working on a new version of RuneQuest more closely resembling the classic 2nd Edition I first fell in love with. All good news as I will soon hopefully have two new game-books to read and enjoy with two lines of supplements, etc.
Mr. Nash and Mr. Whitaker designed the Mongoose RuneQuest II rules which have become Legend since Mongoose lost the rights to the RuneQuest name some time ago. Legend is also a nice game and continues to be supported by Mongoose Publishing. So history repeats itself with the renaming of the Design Mechanism version of RuneQuest. How many versions of RuneQuest does the hobby need, one might ask? I can't answer that of course, but taken one bite at a time I am enjoying them all. There isn't a one of the several versions of RuneQuest (renamed or out-of-print) that I don't think is a good game. I have played them all and enjoy them all. They are all similar in that they use the same basic d100 mechanic, are skill driven, classless and crunchy systems. Some are no longer tied to Glorantha and that is OK, there is so much more one can do with this game than play in the world of Glorantha (although I consider Glorantha one of the best game worlds).
RuneQuest 6 isn't strictly Glorantha based, although it certainly is compatible. The Design Mechanism folks created Meeros, a fictional bronze-age, Greek-like setting for the examples, of which there are many and they tell an interesting story themselves. The Design Mechanism has also released several settings for RuneQuest 6, my favorite being Mythic Britain, a version of the Arthurian myths. I certainly hope to see many more products from The Design Mechanism under the new Mythras name. Classic Fantasy (pictured below) is the first such release using the new Mythras name and logo. A version of Classic Fantasy was previously released by Chaosium as one of their BRP Monograph Series publications.

Classic Fantasy is a toolkit to play classic dungeon crawls with the d100 RuneQuest/Mythras system. Now if this sounds a little odd, having spent many hours trying to do that with RQ 2nd Edition, I think some rules help is in order. Classic Fantasy also brings the traditional races and class and level mechanics into the d100 system allowing a blend of styles. The Design Mechanism version is expanded (338 pages) and updated to use the new Mythras version of d100.
RuneQuest 6, at 456 pages, is the largest and most extensive treatment of the RuneQuest system to date. There are five magic systems - folk magic, animism, mysticism, sorcery and theism - a small bestiary and a lot of play examples as well as material dealing with culture, economics, cults and careers. The combat system is on the crunchy and deadly side, which is consistent across the other RuneQuest editions. The authors state this is the edition they always wanted to make. It is a big book, but it is also all one needs to play the game.
As a fan of both the Design Mechanism's RunQuest 6/Mythras and Chaosium's classic Runequest 2, I am hoping both systems will continue to be supported by their respective publishers. The news I have read regarding Chaosium's plans for RuneQuest are very inspiring and I am looking forward to a lot more d100 goodness in the future.

The Die is Cast

Sanctity of the Dice Roll
The hobby is rooted in wargames where dice are rolled in the open and results, no matter how unexpected, are sacrosanct. By accepted tradition there are no "do overs", no roll again for a better result. The die is cast, as the saying goes (attributed to Caesar and others) and however it comes up, that's it. Coming from a wargame background, this is the way I approach White Box dice rolling. I expect it's the way the designers (also designers of wargames) intended. At some point, referee fiat in some games came to allow for changing the dice rolls (fudging) if the die gave an undesirable result, such as death of a PC.
The table convention of the referee rolling dice behind a screen so as to shield from view the outcome may have originated with thieves looking for traps or hiding in shadows because they arguably would not immediately know if they were successful or not. As skills entered the game and rolls were required to detect lies and spot hidden, these die rolls were often behind the screen for the same reasons.
The practice of the referee rolling dice out-of-view of the players, together with increasingly complex and time consuming chargen practices contributing to a reluctance to kill a PC has prompted many a referee to "fudge" a die roll, or three, in an effort to prevent PC death. This is made much easier when the dice are rolled out-of-view. Apparently this became a widespread habit at some tables, though not at mine. I recall when I started to referee 4th Edition, the WotC guys (ones with the red/black official shirts) informed me that it was "policy" to roll dice in the open for all to see. I recall this because I have always done this. It was explained to me that 4th Edition was designed with balanced encounters in mind so there should not be any need to "fudge" die rolls to avoid PC death...OK...
I can say some nice things about 4th Edtion and maybe in some future post, I will. At this point let me say that as referee I am pleased to roll the dice in the open. Even for reasons that players might best not know the outcome...they don't usually. I tend to roll a lot of six siders with a number in mind, frequently not stated aloud, that determines success or failure or an event happening or not. I roll the die in the open, then describe what the PCs see, hear, etc. Sometimes it's nothing, just a die roll. Keeps them guessing! If they pay close attention, the player may eventually guess what I am up to, and I see that as player skill.
One of the responsibilities of the referee is to be fair. Rolling the dice in the open and playing out the results as rolled seems fair to me. When a chamber pot is emptied out an upper story window above the adventurers, what could be more fair than assigning each a number and rolling a die openly to determine who is the likely target. After-all the unlucky PC still gets a saving throw verses Dragon Breath to avoid the worst!

Red Box

Race as Class and other differences
If you discovered the hobby in the 1980s or maybe the early '90s chances are it was through the Red Box. Red Box is the 1983 version of the Basic Rules. The first Basic Set was written by J. Eric Holmes and saw publication in 1977. Dr. Holmes' Basic came out before AD&D and was an effort to make the three LLBs more accessible to folks with little or no wargaming background. Despite some inconsistencies, I think it was a good idea and a good game...although it only covers character levels 1-3. By 1977 Gary Gygax and TSR had decided to split their fantasy RPG line of products calling one Advanced (AD&D), the other Basic/Expert (D&D). White Box would be retired in the process. Mr. Gygax would devote much of his future time to writing the Advanced books.
As a result of this "split" and other later edition decisions, D&D has really become more than one game. Like many who started with White Box, I tend to adapt the later versions to fit into my preferred way of running the game, so I say everything I referee has a good dose of White Box. This is definitely true of the way I used Red Box. The Red Box and other boxes in the product line, Blue Box (Expert), Green Box (Companion), Black Box (Master) and Gold Box (Immortals), had good production quality and featured illustrations by Larry Elmore that make them very attractive, even today as collector items. The Red Box gave a good explanation of the basic rule mechanics and idea of roleplaying and was an easy intro game for new players. I refereed many a game in the '80s and 90's using Red Box with my White Box alterations. In 1991 the color boxes (not Gold) were brought together in one hard cover volume called the Rules Cyclopedia, which I still occasionally have at my table.
Red Box included some significant rule differences (from White Box or the Advanced game) which have come to be associated with the Basic/Expert rules in general, such as race as class. In Red Box it is possible to play one of several classes if the character is a human- cleric, fighter, magic-user or thief being the basic choices. The traditional elf, dwarf and halfling are also available as player character races, now called demihumans and each is its own class. Level limits still exist as compensation for the demihuman racial advantages (such as improved vision), but  generally top-out at higher level than in White Box. I think race-as-class makes some sense if the campaign is highly humanocentric with the occasional non-human. 
In 2000, Wizards of the Coast brought the two D&D lines together, dropping the name "Advanced" and released their 3rd Edition game, which differed significantly from all previous versions. Red Box, like White Box before, entered the realm of "games of yore". They still fetch a nice price on the secondary market and I assume Red Box, like White Box, still has a following.

Agent of Death

Deluxe T&T Solo
I enjoy having an opportunity to talk about Tunnels & Trolls, one of my favorite FRPGs, so when the above solo came in the mail a few days ago I started thinking about this post. Tunnels & Trolls, (T&T) came along right on the heals of White Box and author Ken St. Andre claims it as the world's second published RPG. T&T introduced a lot of firsts to the hobby, however, and among those were the first solo adventures. Agent of Death, here upgraded to the new Deluxe level rules, is one of those solo adventures.
I have also mentioned before my fondness for the pen and paper solo format as a preferred way to enjoy a game when friends are not available. Agent of Death is a large solo containing 64 pages of numbered paragraphs and illustrations. Rather than the usual one entry point, Agent offers the player a choice of three possible entry paragraphs, each rather unique. The adventure itself can be fairly short or quite lengthy depending on the choices made and of course the skill and luck needed for survival.
The adventure is set in the City of Khazan, founded by and named for Trollworld's greatest mage, the Great Khazan, who is rumored to be asleep on an island outside of time. The city is currently ruled by the Death Goddess herself. The title, Agent of Death, means what it says - that your character can become one of the Death Goddess/Empress' Agents, if you have what it takes! To succeed you will need a truly powerful PC, virtually a "superhero". If the player doesn't have one already, it is possible to become such a character during play of Agents.
Hela's House of Dark Delights is one of the attractions adventurers may visit while in Khazan, the city of monsters, and it appears here in Agents as one of the possible starting points or as a destination encountered while exploring the city. Hela's is an enormous obsidian pyramid that first made it's appearance in Different Worlds Magazine issue 22, July 1982. The polished ivory sign above the door reads, "House of Dark Delights. Beware of your wish, it may come true." Hela is a goddess from another dimension and things that happen inside her house don't always turn out as expected, but visits are usually memorable (for those who survive). The menu inside Hela's offers several interesting choices, indeed!
Lest I spoil the experience by going on, I will just say the Deluxe Agents solo is a nice upgrade that is consistent with the Deluxe treatment given to some other titles recently re-released for Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls and I find it definitely worth revisiting. It is written by system rules author, Ken St. Andre himself in his usual wickedly humorous style. If the prospect of Hela's doesn't lure you in, the cover illustration gives some hint at what else may be found while playing the adventure. Ah, but there's still more, much more... so, adventure awaits!

Fresh Ideas

From Forty Years Ago
I spent this past weekend with friends at an historic miniatures gaming convention in Nashville, Tennessee. White Box (and therefore the RPG hobby) has its beginnings in wargaming with miniature figures. Like many of my era, my involvement in miniatures wargaming predates my exposure to role-playing by a number of years. Among my friends there is considerable cross-pollination with some having started their hobby interest with role-playing and moved to miniatures and some vice versa. Some favor fantasy, some historic subjects while gaming. Many of us graze freely on both sides of the fence.
Knowing my love of such items, at the beginning of the trip one of my friends presented me with the above volumes. At down-times during the trip and since I have been reading in said volumes and although it isn't my first acquaintance with either, I find new things to think and talk about each time I  have perused them.The first thing to grab me this time was the cover art.
Supplement I Greyhawk has the more simple illustration of the two. A rather stiff looking warrior with sword and shield facing a beholder, who looks something like a sleepy moon. Perhaps the warrior, who looks to be drawn in a very sword and sorcery style with winged helm, lots of bare skin and sandals, has been paralyzed or turned to stone, hence the stiffness and the beholder is looking at the reader with a slight drool! I am wondering what the pile is just in front of the warrior's left foot? A rock and plant? A campfire? A pile of ash from the beholder's disintegration ray that used to be the warrior's companion?
The illustration on the cover of The Runes of Doom, The Arduin Grimoire vol. III has more density. Again there is a moon-shape in about the same position as the beholder, but this is clearly a moon with exaggerated craters. Why is it there? A small winged figure hovers just below the moon. In the foreground of the composition is a combat between three adventurer types (one looking like Clint Eastwood/David Hargrave) and a tentacled horror of some sort. The background is dominated by a mountain fortress complete with skull architecture and shining beacon.
I like to see what kind of story I can come up with to imagine based on an illustration and the cover of Runes of Doom offers quite a bit to work with. The citadel with the beacon is the source of trouble (obviously!). The old sorcerer who lives there is messing with forces man was not meant to control in his desire for world domination. The beacon has made a gate connection with the moon from which the tentacled beast and winged fellow both originate and is drawing in local peasants to feed the tentacled godling. Having penetrated the sorcerer's defenses and discovered his secrets, the adventurers fled the citadel (for reinforcements?) only to be pursued by the sorcerers' minions. I am sure you can come up with a better story, but you get the idea.
"Fantasy being what it is, it appears that there will never be an end to the development of fresh ideas," writes E. Gary Gygax in the Foreward (sic) to Supplement I. I certainly hope Mr. Gygax is correct. Two years after Supplement I, David Hargrave published Vol. III of the Arduin Grimoire in an effort to add his own fresh ideas to the fantasy gaming hobby. Obviously Mr. Hargrave is building on ideas first published by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, but he certainly is adding his own ideas among which in this volume are a hundred each of new spells and new monsters, new character classes, new rule variants and random tables galore. That's David Hargrave, energetic and enthusiastic about the hobby almost to the point of mania. Mr. Hargrave is both cheerleader, always getting me excited about the hobby and inspiration, always prompting ideas. Many of his random tables are merely lists. Two of my favorites from Vol. III are Most Wanted Highwaymen & Brigands in Arduin & Its Environs and The Recorded Areas Of Treasure And Death Within The Arduinian Borders. Around these two tables an enterprising referee could probably build an entire campaign. Any single entry can be an adventure in itself.
Supplement I is of course the introduction to the Greyhawk campaign including the unique character classes, rule mechanics and monsters found in that milieu. The supplement is organized along the same lines as the original LBBs with headings titled Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. Mr. Hargrave organizes the material for his Arduin campaign in a similar way, although without the headings. Toward the front of each volume the new character classes may be found. For Greyhawk the thief class and the paladin subclass are described. One of the Arduin character classes listed in Vol.III is also Mr. Hargrave's take on the paladin.
It is common for Mr. Hargrave to dial things up to "eleven" in Arduin and paladins are no different. He starts by saying the existing paladin is just a fighting cleric. Paladins in Arduin are "warriors with a near-mystical religious fervor". The Arduin paladin is basically a berserk fanatic who constantly seeks to convert others. The rule changes make the paladin fit more with the Arduin milieu where everything seems a bit bigger, more powerful and extreme.
Greyhawk offers changes to White Box rules such as the addition of a weapons verses armor chart variable weapon damage and variable hit dice, and new ability score bonuses. The Runes of Doom also offers changes to the rules including a new hit point system which greatly increases 1st level hit points and decreases the rate at which hit points accumulate as the PC progresses up in levels. The stated result is so that low level characters may more readily join expeditions alongside higher level PCs and not seriously jeopardize the game. In White Box higher number of hit points are a major way in which PCs improve therefore making them much more resilient in combat. Arduin with it's much higher character levels (150+), uses a number of rule changes to manage play at the higher levels.
The Runes of Doom follows the format of the previous two volumes in the Arduin Grimoire series mixing rules and tables with commentary and advice from Mr. Hargrave regarding how he runs his game. Arduin is world, rules and philosophy all in one. Sometimes referred to as a gonzo setting, maybe the first such, because technology is freely mixed with fantasy and anything else that Mr. Hargrave thinks would be cool to add to his game/multiverse, vol. III offers brief commentary on "Techno Magik" (Magik in Arduin is always spelled with a "K") reminding me of Arthur C. Clark's Third Law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
After running afoul of the Tolkien estate lawyers, Mr. Gygax got rather touchy about IP and conflicted with Mr. Hargrave over Arduin, but I can't help but think The Arduin Grimoire represents the kind of fresh ideas that he himself predicted would continue to flow from the field of fantasy...being what it is.

What's at the Center?

Depends on the Angle
"Characters. They are the foundation of Burning Wheel. Nothing matters so much as the character, and nothing happens without a character being involved - either directly or indirectly." so Luke Crane writes in the opening to his excellent The Burning Wheel FRPG. Character-centric is the way I would describe the approach described here. The character drives the action, is central to the story that develops during play and therefore must be at the center of the game. It's all about the character. So what happens when the character dies?
Role-playing games can be seen as an extension of literature and story-telling. I believe the hobby has been around long enough to talk about traditions. Traditionally, many campaigns have centered on the setting or world, with various characters who have come and gone, some leaving their mark, and a few who may have changed the world in permanent ways. The campaign is seldom tied to any one character or even to the adventures of a single fellowship of characters. Characters and even players may come and go while the world itself remains the same, changing, but recognizably the same.
From one angle, I could say the game is always about the PCs. They are the actors on the world stage. Whatever happens is the result of players involving their characters in situations, making choices, rolling dice and all the other activities of a role-playing game. Theirs is the story that emerges from play. But a really good world deserves to be the setting of many stories, told through the actions of many PCs. No matter how complex and time consuming the chargen system is, creating the world is way more involved and time consuming for the referee. The best settings get richer as they are played, growing with input from the players. As time goes on, the story becomes bigger than individual PCs and a (hi)story of the world starts developing and the PCs seem to fit into this world. It is at this point that the game seems most real and play becomes immersive. That is the view from a second angle - the world-centric view.
The importance of tracking time and keeping notes in a campaign cannot, as Mr Gygax said, be overstated. The passing of time and the recording of events is what allows the world itself to come alive. Otherwise it is merely a stage, props in the backdrop that seem to change at a whim of the referee rather than in a way that seems natural to the events in game play. Effort spent by the referee in recording changes in the world is just as important as recording changes in a player's character.