It's Warhammer Time

A Grim World of Perilous Adventure Returns
Cubicle 7 released the much anticipated Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e (WFRP4e) in pre-order digital format over the weekend and I have had the chance to give it a good once over and want to now announce that I am pleased with what I see. This is not the final document and we are told there may yet be some changes to the final including some additional illustrations and maps. As it stands today, I think it is a very attractive book that definitely gives the Warhammer "grim and perilous" impression.
Whether reading or just flipping through the pages taking in the illustrations it is evident WFRP4e is an old friend. It is mostly the same game as I recall from 1e and 2e. There is new artwork, but it looks familiar and a few new concepts like Fate, Resilience and Resolve. The roll under d100 mechanic and familiar career classes and professions are here and a non-human PC is still an unlikely outcome percentage roll of the d100.
Like earlier editions, 4e seems to be a complete game in one volume with enough detail for veteran gamers, but much of the text seems aimed at beginners. There are plenty of moving parts and room for thoughtful play, so I wouldn't call WFRP4e a simple game. It is old school in the emphasis on random chargen - there are no power-built starting characters here. That said, some random PCs are going to be tougher than others. That's life in the Old World.
Before I leave the impression that WFRP4e is just earlier WFRP repackaged I should mention there is this little difference that permeates through everything and it is HUGE - Success Level! (SL) A combat round is an opposed skill test and the higher SL wins. You can actually both fail the test, but the higher SL still wins and scores a hit. Because of SL, the whiff factor" is gone in 4e. No more "we both miss" results. A more talented fighter will likely benefit over a less skilled one because his SL will be higher even on a miss. SL determines damage on spells using a Channeling roll for divine magic and a Speak Language roll for arcane magic.
Much can be assumed from the cover illustration which hearkens back to the original. One might say "it is the same, but different".

The Midderlands

"A green-hued - dark fantasy, old-school mini-setting and bestiary set in a twisted middle-England." Nominated for Best Cartography among this year's ENnies, The Midderlands is a sweet little (green) gem that fits perfectly in the palm of my hand and into my OSR collection. It is quirky and original and oh so beautifully rendered in a book that is art itself. I came late to the Midlands party and picked up digital copies of the work after reading good stuff about it. I soon began my journey reading and studying this fantastic place, part fairy tale, part nightmare, written by Glynn Seal, Edwin Nagy and Mark Nolan and started mining it for ideas. There are so many good ones, that I quickly began thinking how I could just run their version whole (I never do that).

The Midderlands was released last year and received such a good reception in the hobby community online that this year when a campaign to fund publication of a follow-on book, The Midlands Expansion, gave me the chance to get the printed bundle of green-hued goodness, I delightfully placed my order. I now have the original volume as well as the expansion, color maps and referee screen. Written using Swords & Wizardry as the default system, The Midderlands material works well with White Box or any of the OSR simulacrum.

Everything about The Midlands breathes a rich (green) atmosphere. This is the kind of game product that keeps on giving. It is inspiring to read and look at. It is filled with details that beg to be borrowed and used in one's own campaign setting and it is complete and integrated and full of random (table) surprises so as to never grow stale even if used straight out of the book. The Midderlands is representative of what the OSR does in SPADES. Creativity dialed to eleven.

Worst Edition

The fine folks over at Nerdarchy have posted a video today titled Is There Really a Worst Edition  which got me to thinking. What would I consider the worst edition of the game that started it all?  Well, I prefer to dwell upon the positive, so I would probably ask that question in terms of what is the best edition, and I think that obviously depends on the individuals playing the game. What do they like, want, expect, enjoy about their game? I suppose some may prefer one edition as referee and yet another as player. Finding enough like-minded players to make a table can also be a factor in which edition one plays (ours is largely a social hobby). Finally I think the best edition is the one you have the most fun with. So maybe that should be the question? "What edition delivers the most fun for you?"
Anyone who has read this blog knows I prefer the Original Game, the three LBBs that came in a White Box. I love the freedom and inspiration to create which exists in this edition and is really unequaled in any subsequent official edition or OSR reimagining. The fact that the original White Box game seems incomplete in places and its language can be interpreted in many ways is a big part of the appeal. I admit, I like the opportunity to make things up, both coming up with rules to try while pondering the game and improvising while at the table. As referee that is part of my fun.
As a player I prefer to be surprised by the referee, entertained is probably a better word for experiencing what each referee does with the White Box at their table. There is no rules lawyering in White Box. You learn the game by playing. The rules are what the referee says they are. I believe my interest in collecting and reading OSR games is also driven by the enjoyment I get from learning how someone else thinks the game could/should be played. There seems to be no limit to the variety of ideas people can come up with.

Echoes of the Old Ones

Dark City Games
The newest title from my favorite producer of solitaire adventures is Echoes of the Old Ones and I am greatly amused by this title. Dark City Games, the publisher of Echoes and many other fine adventures, all of which are suitable for solitaire or group play, has kept the spirit of Metagaming's MicroQuest genre of tabletop roleplaying alive since 2005 and as such represents some of the earliest Old School publishing efforts. Like all of the Dark City Games adventures, Echoes is a complete game (with downloaded rules) including map and counters. It can be played using Dark City Games free rules, Legacy of the Ancient Worlds, or TFT or even GURPS.
I know this comes as a surprise to anyone reading this blog (not), but I am a devoted fan of old school adventure gaming! There are so many of the old game systems which I find still interesting and worthy of play that I can hardly find time to reread them, let alone play them all. Add to this enormous collection all the fascinating takes on the old school rule systems which the creative minds in the OSR have published and my stack of beloved "old" games is taller than I am.
I heard earlier this week that Steve Jackson Games is running a Kickstarter for reprinting Melee and Wizard - the original The Fantasy Trip products designed by Steve Jackson which he authored while working for MetaGaming- so I am super excited about that.  The Kickstarter runs until August 24, 2018 and has already hit several of its stretch goals. And yes, that's the same TFT that can be used to play Echoes of the Old Ones...Old Ones...Old...Ones.
Well, you get the idea!

Corruption in Middle Earth

...and OSR Role-Play
I have been pondering on both Middle Earth and role-playing- they are closely related in my thinking. By no means are they synonymous because I generally don't use Middle Earth (ME) as a setting for most of my fantasy RPGs. Thanks to White Box and every edition since, the ME racial tropes are classic adventure game inclusions: dark lord, orcs, elves, dwarves and hobbits...even ents and balrogs (by any other name).The works of J.R.R. Tolkien have influenced thinking on a general level, especially among gamers and the role-playing community. It's just part of our cultural DNA at this point.
As a game setting, ME has always presented some challenges, principally because gaming in ME was not what the designing authors of White Box set out to do. The LBBs are generic in that they draw from various sources and support various styles of play. The implied White Box setting covers a lot of ground and includes some elements that fit nicely into ME and many which do not.
My preference is for a darker and more magical ME than some others might prefer. Therefore for me corruption is a must to promote the dark and dangerous feel I want to project during a game set in ME. The Shadow should be hanging over the party ready to drop and swallow them up at any moment. I think this contrasts nicely with the tranquility of the Shire and the Last Homely House East of the Sea. The periods of watchful tension while adventuring verses the relief and safely of taking refuge in a protected place is a central theme to my ME.
Corruption is one of the chief ways the forces of darkness assault ME and its inhabitants. Exposure to evil and the effects of temptations, fears and weaknesses can gnaw away at the individual until they come under the sway of the powers of darkness. Mechanically I have used various subsystems to represent corruption. Currently I favor a Saving Throw verses Death when PCs are confronted by a source of Corruption such as taking evil money for an evil purpose, casting black magic, or picking up an object of some power derived from the Evil One. Success may result in resisting the Corrupting influence entirely or the loss of a single Constitution point. Failure may result in the loss of points of Constitution in the form of a die roll (a D3 points for minor effect, loss of D6 or higher for more powerful evils). As long as one's Constitution score remains above a twelve, the PC "will withstand adversity", resisting the call to evil.
Using the Bonuses and Penalties to Advancement Due to Abilities table from Vol. I, Men & Magic as a guide, a loss of Constitution points that results in a score of twelve or less can produce certain "traits" related to the advancing corruption. These traits are not tentacles or horns, but rather bad tendencies suitable for role-playing, such as "greed", "despair", "cruelty", "dishonesty"- Traits which when acted out will themselves lead to further tests for Corruption. Eventually the corrupted character may succumb to corruption and become a servant of the Shadow to be handed over to the referee as an evil NPC. How fun!
This mechanic obviously relies upon the cooperation of the players who must role-play the effects of corruption, and the internal struggles their PC has as they attempt to resist going over to the dark side. That is what role-playing is in White Box. With its roots in wargaming, the adventure game can be played by rolling the dice. That is one way to use the system, but many of us take it a step further and inject some personality, motivations and other aspects into our imaginary playing piece and that is the source of role-playing. A Fighter is a Fighter until the player imagines something more for the PC they control. This is player agency! This is narrative control! This is role-playing.

With Two Hands...UP!

The ENnies are the awards at GenCon given to outstanding products in the hobby. Voting is now open and we members of our hobby may go to the ENnies website and vote for our favorites.  Being an avid fan of the Old School style products and play, I am pretty please once again to see several OSR products among the nominees for the best our hobby produces. Zweihander is one of those products and it is up for both Best Game and Product of the Year! Not bad for a kickstarter funded labor of love in a year with several other outstanding products in the competition.

Zweihander: Grim & Perilous RPG, by Grim and Perilous Studios' Daniel Fox, is 691 pages of beautiful thematic artwork by Dejan Mandic and grimdark inspired design. This big tome oozes setting atmosphere. Its on every page. For a fan of the grimdark sub-genre like me it is sweet music...in a haunting flat key of course. Zweihander is old school, but not D&D. Rather it draws its inspiration from Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play 1st Ed.
There is no mention of GW's Old World in Zweihander and I think it is the better because of it. The original Warhammer FRPG is still available (at least in digital format) for those who desire it. What Zweihander offers is release from the proprietary setting and freedom to explore grim and perilous worlds of our own creation...even better than the original in the thinking of this fan of DIY.
Daniel Fox offers us a very detailed and well explained game. In his own way he addresses some of the quirks and questions encountered in the original, which may suit some fans of the original, or may not. Personally, I like. Did I mention the game is detailed? Mr. Fox seems to spare no ink in this love letter to what has to be his favorite game and Zweihander has many examples and lengthy explanations in an effort to make the system easier to understand. If I have a criticism of Zweihander it is length. There are a lot of words here and I am generally a fan of the rules lite approach. Regardless, Zweihander is awesome and to me deserves to not only be nominated for Best Game and Product of the Year, but to win those honors.

Assimilation

Burning Everything
You can almost make out the (stealthy?) title of the book pictured above. It's the Burning Wheel Fantasy Roleplaying System Gold Edition and I frequently describe it as my favorite game that I never play. The Burning Wheel came to my attention several years ago during a period of intense searching for my "Holy Grail" of RPGs. I was rapidly losing interest in the most popular games of the day (4th Edition and Pathfinder) and had not yet come to clarity regarding White Box, the debt I owe it, and the place it has played in my thinking over these many years. Indie games offer alternatives to what the big publishers market and I knew I was looking for an alternative to what I was starting to call "the miniatures game" and its main competitor, "the bloated rules game".
Many of the indie games, then and now, explore narrative elements in roleplaying, i.e. they emphasize story telling over simulation or gamesmanship (referring to terms used by Ron Edwards in discussion on The Forge forum a few years ago). The Burning Wheel has definite narrative elements relying on Beliefs and conflicts and the evolution of the character both through generation as they travel through various life-paths from birth to the day adventure begins and as their Beliefs, goals and Traits are "tested" and modified or replaced. This is not a game about leveling up and getting more powerful (although skills do improve as you use them).  It is a game about altering some aspect of the shared make-believe world, even if it is just the PC who changes.
The Burning Wheel is an adventure game. It is also a game of discovery, of immersion, and reflection. The Burning Wheel handles social conflict with the same degree of detail given to combat and the game experience is definitely at its most rich when the players get attached to their PC and involved in the conflicts. The life-path chargen system is aimed at this by helping us to really get to know our fictional character before actual play begins. It is the referee's job to challenge the characters' Beliefs and changing Beliefs can be a major theme of the story that develops during play and a major source of reward to the player.
Reading the Burning Wheel and becoming familiar with its concepts has changed the way I approach every other RPG. I am more likely to consider the importance of social conflict, verbal arguments and changing beliefs as a part of adventuring. I look at characters differently, both PCs and NPCs. The Burning Wheel uses Resources and Circles which represents the environmental and social resources a character can draw upon, things such as wealth, income and credit, and the connections, relationships and affiliations the character has formed and can depend upon for influence, aid and sometimes complications.
In real life behavior often has consequences and choices can lead to unexpected ends. Gaming is fiction and how much of this one wants in their tabletop entertainment varies greatly, but a system like Burning Wheel can take the group where ever they want to go. I would say whatever system I play, I Burn it a little bit.

Emergent Story

and this Old School Gamer
"Th[e] story is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the action and reactions of the player characters as they interact with each other and the dynamic world in which they live." (taken from Dresden Files Accelerated)
While I hesitate to expound on a single way to have fun playing the games that together make up our hobby today, I do like to talk about my preferences and how I like my own games to be. Dresden Files Accelerated is a Fate Accelerated game, meaning it uses the Fate system derived from the Fudge narrative engine (using Fudge Dice - six sides, two minus, two blank, two plus) and streamlined under the Fate Accelerated version. It is published by the fine folks at Evil Hat Productions who also do the Dresden Files in three big volumes and the Fate Core and Fate Accelerated rule system books. They are all high quality products which fall under the indie game umbrella as I understand it.
Games which emphasize narrative, or "story", sometimes feature mechanics to distribute control of story among the players. Players are empowered through use of various in-game rewards, to spend the game's currency to interject story elements which may occur to them as they play, things which can be beneficial to their character or just something the player thinks is entertaining. Ultimately the referee, who adjudicates the rules and has a better understanding of the setting than any other player, has control of what is allowed, but many such narrative game systems make that control a "last resort" and discourage its use.
As mentioned, Fate, on which Dresden Files and Dresden Files Accelerated is based, uses Fate points or tokens as the currency that can be spent to inject narrative elements into the game during play sessions. This happens in a couple of ways. The referee may offer the player a Fate point if some event can directly affect how the character reacts based on certain PC characteristics called Approaches. In turn the player my reject the suggestion, paying a Fate point to "resist" or they may go with the "compel" and bank the Fate point to be used later to give their character a boost (such as re-rolling the dice) or adding some narrative element of their own invention into play.
Fate points are a relatively soft way to add player control to the game's narrative. Although there are other systems which give the players greater control of story elements, all such mechanics to a degree alter the dynamics between players and referee and together with games that use complex character builds and extensive amounts of rules that attempt to cover everything so that referee rulings are virtually eliminated, all seem to be universally directed at mitigating the negative effects a bad referee may have on the game despite often being labeled "player agency".
Before I totally wander off-topic, let me return to what emergent story means to me. Story is what the quote above states - it is what happens during the game. Story at my table is not written by the referee to be acted out by the players in some form of tabletop play production.  It is also not something the players (or referee) dictates as it occurs to them at the table in some "oh wouldn't it be wonderful if this happens now" wish fulfillment. The choices and ideas the players make in response to the setting as described by the referee and the results of the dice are what creates the story. It is cooperative, but not necessarily collaborative. Depending on the choices made and the outcome of the dice, the story may go very badly for some or even all of the players. The "high stakes" of putting the PCs into "danger" adds immeasurably to the excitement and pay-off of play using the old school style and letting the dice decide. As referee or player, I may roll Fudge Dice, but I roll in the open and I don't "fudge" dice!

The Lost Tentacle

It Grasps for Thee
For some time now I have been drawn into the depths of the RPG sea where sunken cities and alien gods lie slumbering...I hear the call of great Cthulhu reaching out in the corners of my consciousness as I reach for my new 7th edition game tomes. Planning and scheming, my brain feverishly plots an elaborate path leading to an ancient tomb in Mexico where lies buried secrets long lost to the eyes of man...secrets that may unlock ancient horror and madness. Only play will tell.
Yeah, this post is about my on-again-off-again obsession with Sandy Petersen's classic RPG Call of Cthulhu. As I have mentioned before, I returned from Gencon in 1981 with a copy of Call of Cthulhu, a game which changed how I approach role-playing; a change which likely has helped keep me excited about this hobby for over 40 years. CoC forced me to take role-playing a character seriously and elevated adventure games to a new level of challenge and a much broader scope of possibilities beyond the excitement of being a momentary "hero" in the game. CoC showed me how role-playing can have all the depth of a novel complete with unfolding story, plot twists, character development...a novel my friends and I write together as we play. It helped me explore the concept of "hero" beyond "he who defeats the monster". Heroics can be having the courage to look behind the door, fighting through the insanity to save humanity, even at the cost of personal defeat. Things got a lot more complex and this no doubt extended my interest in the hobby which became yet another tool to explore what it means to be human.
I have always enjoyed the d100 mechanics of CoC, even more so than those found in RuneQuest which originated the d100 Basic Role-Play system Chaosium has used to power CoC and other games. Sandy Petersen seems to have hit the sweet spot in d100 with CoC. Chaosium's current 7th edition makes all the right additions for me and improves an already great game. The change in characteristic values to dice roll multiplied by 5 allows one to talk about the half roll (hard success) and the fifth roll (critical success) and therefore changes a success/fail model into one with degree of success in simple user friendly terms. Borrowing the advantage die from other games, 7th edition allows the use of two tens dice to be thrown as part of the d100 mechanic - use the higher for advantage, the lower for disadvantage.
The classic CoC early twentieth century setting is perhaps the most accessible setting for a role-play adventure game ever because it is both familiar enough for us all to feel at home, yet isolated by the lack of hand-held technology, no police on call and no atomic age weaponry. Man has not yet been to the moon and we can pretend planet Mars might be inhabited. Weird science seems possible, in a campy, entertaining way, and we can make in-game assumptions about things like electricity and generally be correct. It was the idea that CoC could be played in different eras of man's history that really awakened my sense of possibilities however. Official supplements have set the game in Victorian Europe, the Roman Empire, Dark Ages Britain and Constantinople and the French Revolution. One's imagination soars with the story possibilities and because you are dealing with the weird and supernatural, it doesn't all have to strictly make sense.
Pulp Cthulhu is an official 7th edition supplement from Chaosium which I added to my collection last year, but have not played. Pulp takes the game into the 1930's which arguably isn't that much different from the 1920's, but Pulp also changes the tone of play and introduces more fast-paced action and harder to kill PCs. Want to ask fewer questions and just go in swinging...that's kinda what Pulp seems to be about. There is also an available adventure book for Pulp involving snake men. R.E. Howard would approve, I think.

Going All "Cowboy"

The Maverick
White Box is a group game. The cast of often disparate player characters is called "the Party" implying they are of like mind and similar intent. It is a cooperative game where everyone plays with the group in mind, hoping their individual play will add to the fun for all. It's a social game with an implied contract that players will make democratic decisions based on the welfare (and fun factor) of the entire group, share the risks, care for the wounded, rescue the distressed and divide the treasure. Going off on your own playing "cowboy", and refusing to be a part of the group is generally frowned upon.
There are of course good reasons why the game is generally played in this cooperative way. The group is stronger than the individual and in many ways adventure games resemble a "hunter - gatherer" existence where group dynamics are essential to survival. Imagine the situation where a referee had to juggle a table full of adventurers all off on their own, each doing something different. The game would slow to a crawl and the surprise factor would greatly diminish as players overhear descriptions of encounters they are not yet present for. There is good reason the Original Rules state that there should be one player (the Caller) designated to speak for the group.
This all works pretty well playing in the dungeon environment for which the Original Game was designed. It even works fairly well for the wilderness as the group travels from one location to another. Where it starts to break down is adventuring in the urban environment. There characters are tempted by there being just so much to do and moving about town as a group accomplishing one task at a time may seem slow and inefficient. Why should the entire party of seven all go to the armorer together just so Sven can make his purchase?
The urban environment is a social place where one is likely to do more talking than fighting. It lends itself to more intrigue and mystery type adventures where the characters often find themselves in the role of investigators. The challenge with an investigation is that clues can be missed and characters can show too much caution leading nowhere and then what? Sometimes shaking things up a bit just to see what falls out is a viable tactic. It often takes the actions of that one player who is willing to stick their head into the noose, so to speak, to move the plot along and get the action rolling again. While White Box and dungeon crawling in general may punish the cowboy behavior of acting alone, such bravado may help the party achieve an investigative goal, but it can also come with some serious in-game consequences - especially for said maverick.