Fistful of Lead Fantasy rules

A few weeks back, Bruce kindly let me take him on a play through of Wiley Games' Fistful of Lead fantasy rules. I'd been keen to give these a try, mostly to find out if they were a suitable set of mechanics to run some kind of Dungeons and Dragons game. The rules span three booklets (melee, magic, and monsters, respectively) and basically treat magic-use like a task role in the basic FFoL game engine.

To give these a test, I used The Barrows dungeon from Dire Den (link is a video explaining the dungeon, there are links in the comments to the maps) since this looked like a sensible dungeon crawl for low-level characters. I then banged up four basic characters (warrior, magic user, cleric, rogue), making them all level 1, except of the magic user, who I made level 2 using the premise that he'd brought together a new group after his old group suffered a TPK (total party kill).

The dungeon starts at the entrance with three doors to choose from. They all lead into a burial crypt wherein there lie zombies. The basic rules work just fine. We had to figure out some house rules about passing others in narrow places (-1 movement per crowded hex) and movement when there were no monster visible (a la Crossfire) but that was about it. The zombies are an easy encounter to explain the combat mechanics. And, unlike most FFoL games, it was mostly melee (there was more magic use in my playtest than in the game I ran with Bruce).

Once through the main level, players drop into the basement where more and fiercer baddies lie. One feature of the rules is that melee is competing d10 rolls and that can create some really swingy results (e.g., a healthy fighter attacks a downed skeleton and rolls a 1 to a 10, then the skeleton rolls well on the wound table and poof, your fighter is out of action). This effect can be attenuated a bit with magic (potions or spells). Whatever you think of that, it is dramatic and the effect runs both ways.

We skipped through the roleplaying aspect (since neither of us is really into that) and just tested the movement and combat mechanics. We had three fights (zombies, rats, and the big boss) done in an hour including me explaining the fantasy chrome to Bruce. I'd guess with some role-play, you could move through this dungeon crawl in two hours.

Bruce's observation was that role-players likely wouldn't be all that interested in the miniature gaming elements of the rules. I'd agree that you'd need a group that was at least a bit oriented towards miniature gaming (versus storytelling). I'd think the rules would work just fine if you wanted to have two players skirmish with separate armies (and are likely meant for this).

In both games, the adventurers won, once convincingly and one barely, relying on a fireball spell cast in the same room they were in (cough, cough)! Now maybe we know why the magic user was a veteran of a TPK!  Overall, the vibe was very reminiscent of the 1977 D&D basic box set (which I liked), with low-powered characters, basic monsters, and not a lot of chrome.

Fistful of Dice Endgame Mechanic

For the past couple of weeks, Bruce and I have been playing some Gangster scenarios using the Fist of Dice rules. The rules work very well for skirmish games and I played a short superhero campaign with them the spring.

One of the mechanics Bruce has been experiencing with is a turn limit one. Instead of a fixed turn limit or the game ending when an objective is achieved, he's been rolling 1d6 at the end of each turn and adding the following:

• +1 for gunfire having occurred in the game
• +1 for machine-gun fire having occurred in the game
• +1 for each figure KIA'd in the game

(Each modifier reflects how player behaviour increases the priority the police would give to responding to game events.) When the roll plus mods equals 12, we enter the end-game staged.

At this point, a random number of cops appears at a random board edge and play continues. At the end of each subsequent turn, the cops on the board take two moves towards (1) any visible figure or (2) towards the objective. If they make contact with a figure, then the figure is arrested and removed from play. A random number of new cops also arrives at another random board edge. Players can shoot the cops but the cop figures just recycle. 

The effect of this is pretty cool. The game plays on but there is much more pressure on the players to take action (i.e., chances) to win before the cops nab all of their figures. Basically, it feels like sudden death overtime. The random arrival also make its hard to plan and adds to the sense of pressure.

This mechanic could probably be used in almost anytime there is some kind of authority structure. For example, a shoot out in a space port could trigger the arrival of stormtroopers who detain everyone, including maybe any Imperials they run into (you never know who is secretly Rebel scum).

Overall, a pretty neat mechanic to change the tempo of the game at the end. It also encourages players to think about when they want to shoot and kill. In a hostage rescue, sooner may be better. In a search-and-rescue game, players (or some players) may want to avoid gunfire.

In a bloody game, the average point at which the end phase would be triggered is likely turn 6. But it could happen as early as turn 3 and as late as turn 9. You can, of course, fiddle the target number to shorten or extend play. Anyhow, a fun little add-on idea.