When it stops being a game

This is a bitching and moaning post, but it does have a point to make about gaming in general, I hope, so please bear with me.

Recently, one of the players in the big AD&D game I take part in on RPOL.net wanted to start a new game of cowboys vs zombies using the Star Frontiers rules for the game. Since this is basically what I did with Caverns & Cowboys, I was definitely on board to see what he'd done with the rules.

And I wasn't disappointed there. He doesn't have magic as a player option, but a few of his ideas for skill choices seem potentially better and simpler than what I'd come up with.

So in the game, all the players are in the cavalry. No option to be anything else, that's the premise of the game. Fine. I knew that going in, I signed up for it. And I also realize this is a playtest for the rules mods. So things change every now and then as issues arise or questions are asked that he can't answer. Fine again.

But my first red flag was when before we'd even really gotten the game off the ground, he was trying to entice him into his "real" game of cowboys vs Lost World. That raised my suspicions that this game I'd already signed up for would maybe not be the best game, but I liked my character and decided to soldier on (yes, pun intended).

Now, the situation is we arrive in a town that no one has returned from for a few weeks and no telegraph either. As soon as we ride into town, zombies attack. My character is Native American and another is half Native, and as soon as they appeared, we agreed IC that they were wendigo. The GM went along with that, and has been calling them that ever since. Hooray for player input being accepted into world building!

But as soon as players started acting like players in an RPG, trying to tactically problem solve like good RPG players, he through both the NPC sergeant and GM dictate ruled that all characters except mine and another (who had been asked to investigate a house on the edge of town) were to line up Civil War style and blast away. No riding around to distract or lead off some of the zombies, no taking cover, nothing allowed by what he told us. Second red flag appears.

Luckily for me and the other player, since we were in the house when the firing line was formed, we were free to run across the street to the saloon where civilians were calling for help from the upstairs window. Inside, we found a couple of zombies. My partner attacked while I checked on the safety of the civilians then returned to help him fight.

This morning, when I logged on, the GM had made a big long post where he just arbitrarily moved everything ahead two combat rounds -- although that was far from clear from the post. Everyone on the firing line was arbitrarily moved back on the sergeant's orders, and my partner and I had just unloaded our guns on the two zombies in the saloon to minimal effect -- my partner missed with everything and I only hit once (although when I checked the die roller, actually he'd rolled that I hit with three of my five remaining shots in my six-shooter).

And only now, AFTER he decided to do this, is he asking for us to post our actions two or three moves in advance. Apparently, he'd forgotten how crappily beginning characters fight in Star Frontiers, and how little damage 2d10 or 3d10 bullets do to zombies that have on average around 45 Stamina points. And there are a crap ton of zombies moving in. And he's not letting most of the players do anything other than fire and reload. So, third red flag on the field.

I think it might be telling that since this morning, the only person to post besides myself complaining about this is a new guy who just rolled up a character. I think the other players might also have sensed this is not going to be the cool game we hoped it would be.

I'm usually one for letting novice game masters have some slack, and having run play tests, I realize the rules can and should change to reflect issues that crop up. But the lack of agency he's allowing most of the players makes me think that this isn't a game so much as a novel he wishes he was writing. And that makes me consider quitting the game. Because at that point, it isn't a game anymore.

I'll give it a few more days. See what he says, and what the other players do. But I think this brief interesting idea for a game may have just gone off to Boot Hill.

The Taking of Nasty Canasta: Rustler, Bandit, Square Dance Caller

We played Caverns & Cowboys again last night and it was another fun session. Ken couldn't make it (which is too bad, he is up on the genre so he brings a lot to the game) but Jeremy and Dean were able to show up.

I threw out three hooks: protect a wagon train of settlers planning to go through hostile territory to a new settlement, try to eliminate a dragon for the local cattlemen's association, or track down the wanted criminal Nasty Canasta. They chose the third.

Savvy readers who had awesome childhoods or who are awesome parents may recognize that name. I stole the character from Looney Tunes (Drip-Along Daffy, where Daffy and Porky try to rid a "typical Western town" of said villain). And funnily enough, although I didn't plan it to go down this way, it actually did play out in a similar manner to the cartoon I stole the idea from!

I also got to try out a simple "stud poker" mini-game that can be played by rolling dice to determine how good your hand is and then betting on it. It's not perfect, but it's simple and worked well enough in practice. With a bit of tweaking it could be used to simulate other types of poker as well. And it fits in well with the Cheat subskill of the Dastard skill set (which both Jeremy's PC and the NPC Nasty Canasta had).

Another successful play test! Oh, and Jeremy has been making some art samples that I think look pretty awesome and will likely be licensing from him to help illustrate the book when I get it ready for publication.

Test Run

Played some Caverns  & Cowboys last night with the guys on Hangouts/Roll20. There were a few minor issues, but mostly Dean, Jeremy and Ken had a positive reaction to the game.

There was a little bit of confusion with the different ability scores from D&D standard. I've based the system on the Star Frontiers d% system, so the ability scores and their abbreviations can get confusing. For example, in SF there is an ability abbreviated INT but it stands for Intuition, not Intelligence. LOG (Logic) is closer to D&D Int. Also, PER is Personality, but they kept assuming it was Perception.

Char gen is fairly easy as far as ability scores and skill selection, but buying equipment was the thing that slowed it down. Dean missed having "ready pack" options like in 4E and 5E D&D, so I may come up with some suggestions for that. Jeremy just copy/pasted my sample character's gear then added a few things he wanted, so that was fairly fast for him. Ken is a bit of an Old West history buff, so he was pleased to see the wide selection of gear available.

Anyway, Dean's suggestion of some sample starting packs would be a good idea to help people get into the game faster. Also, Ken (who played a doctor) noticed that I forgot to put medical kits and laudanum and other period medicines on the list. To be added. I should make sure other skill sets that need tools/equipment have them available as well.

The big departure from Star Frontiers is the magic system I cobbled together. I did some research on period mystical/magical belief systems (Jeremy appreciated this level of setting detail) and came up with some appropriate magical traditions. Using the SF skill system of one skill with discrete subskills as a package, each magical tradition is a skill and each spell is a subskill. They improve in potency as you level up the magical skill. Dean took Mesmerism as one of his starting skills, and put it to good use with a seance to gather information and later hypnotism to pacify a villain. So far, it didn't seem broken. The other traditions, and magic skills at medium to high level play still need to be tested, though.

The combat system worked well (I knew from Star Frontiers that it should). Chances to hit for beginning characters are low and there are more negative modifiers to attacks than positives, so there was a lot of missing by both sides. Dean was a bit put off by this at first, but since Ken and Jeremy were commenting on how this was more like a real firefight, where lots of bullets do miss unless you're really close to your target, Dean got on board with it. I know from experience that once those combat skills get up to around 3 or 4, combat gets a lot easier.

The scenario I ran them through was a simple one. Sheriff Bart of the town of Justice asked them to go to the smaller town of Liberty nearby and run off some bandits who had taken over the town. After a bit of haggling over the reward, they set out and on the way were ambushed by blink coyotes (blink dogs from D&D of course). They had trouble hitting the blink dogs, and took a lot of small bites. Finally, they wounded enough of the blink coyotes that the creatures decided to find easier prey and vanished. The party decided to head back to town to hire some extra guns to take on the bandits.

In town, Dean's character Schmitt performed his seance to contact a victim of the bandits and get some intel. They each also hired a rifleman to accompany them. When they got to Liberty, there were four bandits guarding a bridge over a creek south of town. They spotted the bandits, the bandits spotted them. Both sides took cover, and one bandit ran into town to alert the others. The firefight was fairly long, as I mentioned above, lots of missed shots (mostly due to range and cover penalties to hit). After five or six rounds the bandit leader, an ogre, appeared and charged across the bridge to attack with its spiked club. They did a good amount of damage to the ogre, but it nearly killed one of their hired guns before Schmitt could hypnotize it to sleep. Then, Sam (the hired gun of Jeremy's character Hezekiah) managed to roll a 01 and 02 to hit, which are knock-out rolls in the system. So two of the three bandits went down the same round as the ogre boss. The final bandit surrendered, and the other bandits carousing in town fled to the wilderness when they got the news.

When the ogre woke up, they questioned him (with a bit more hypnosis to make him talkative) and found their lair was a cave outside town. After securing the ogre with chains in a root cellar, they set out and found the lair, getting just over $1000 in silver coins, a potion, and a magic wand. On Hezekiah's orders, Sam drank the potion (the order was drink, not sip! Jeremy had maybe a little too much whiskey as we played!) and so had clairvoyance for an hour with nothing to view. :D Back in town, the sheriff of Justice arrived with a Justice of the Peace and they gave the ogre his trial, found him guilty, and hung him by his neck until he was dead.

So the scenario I sorta whipped up out of next to nothing worked well, and since the players were into the idea of D&D with Western trappings, it seemed to work out well. I think this little game has some promise.

Caverns & Cowboys

This is an idea for a game I've had for a long time now. And apparently I discussed it mostly on G+ instead of here on the blog. I did a search of the posts here, and only found a few mentions of it.

So what is Caverns & Cowboys? Not hard to guess. It's a Western themed game, but also a fantasy dungeon crawling game. Or that was the original idea. I'd thought maybe run it with a combination of Go Fer Yer Gun (or later Tall Tales RPG) mixed with Labyrinth Lord/Classic D&D.

I even made this map as a bit of a trial at a Wild West setting that isn't part of our real world. Did I share this map before? Maybe. I know I shared it on G+ a few years ago (the image file shows I made it in 2017).

Anyway, I let the idea go for along time. Now I'm back on it. Only not using a D&D style OSR game.

A few weeks ago, I started adapting the Star Frontiers rules for a fantasy Western.

Why Star Frontiers? Well, for one thing it's a skill/level based system rather than a class/level based one. The skill system allows more flexibility to create characters that cover lots of different archetypes.

In SF, and in C&C (this iteration of it anyway), you gain a handful of XP each game session, and a few more when you complete an adventure. Then you can spend them to improve your character's base ability scores and skill levels. You can add new skills easily just by spending a few XP if you want, or you can save up to level up your existing skills.

SF has Military, Technological, and Psycho-Social skill areas. I have Interaction, Combat, and Magic skill areas. Yes, instead of Vancian magic, I'm going with magic as a skill. The spells are your subskills, and you have a limited number of spell points to use to cast spells. Gaining levels in the magic skills increases the potency of the spells but not the cost. There aren't really many flashy spells like lightning bolt or fireball, though. I tried to go with 19th century thematic magic types.

Interaction skills run the gamut from cowboy to lawman to doctor to engineer to criminal. I've got the most skills here (although Combat skills have quite a few as well). And while SF makes Military skills the cheapest to learn/advance, I've made Interaction skills the cheapest.

I've also converted a lot of monsters. I took the list from Holmes Basic. I removed a few (for IP or thematic reasons), and added some more (for thematic reasons).

I just need to get the rules for awarding XP and for placing treasure/monetary rewards written up, and I'll be ready to start play testing it.

Tall Tales RPG - A Review

Tall Tales: Wild West B/X Fantasy Adventure Game by Mark A. Hunt is currently available in ebook (pdf) format from DriveThruRPG for $8. I'm not affiliated with Mark, don't get a dime for this review, or if you click on the link.

Tall Tales is, as you can guess from the full title and cover, an RPG set in the Wild West using the basic mechanics of the BX edition of D&D. The pdf is 96 pages, but it's in digest size and single-column layout, which makes it convenient for viewing on a tablet, I'd guess (haven't checked mine on my tablet yet). It's illustrated in color, using plenty of paintings found in the public domain, including several full-page illustrations.

The game covers character generation, has six character classes (plus a pay-what-you-want supplement with three more classes is available), money & equipment, rules for running the game in and out of combat, animal and human opponents, a section on XP/rewards/treasure, and a lot of novel little touches that fit the setting and mood of a Western. There's an appendix of suggested readings, mostly historical from the looks of it. There is also a character sheet (reminiscent of the classic BX/BECMI sheet) both on the final pages and as a separate pdf file in the zip.

For game mechanics, it uses the six ability scores we all know and love, AC, HD and HP, XP, Morale, yadda yadda yadda. If you know BX or BECMI D&D, you know most of the mechanics. One novel renovation of the rules is the saving throw categories. Instead of magic wands and dragon breath, you have things like Gumption and Observation. In other words, the saves function both as avoidance rolls for negative consequences and as skill rolls. And they're thematically appropriate to the setting.

The six character classes are Gunfighter, Desperado, Snake Oil Salesman, Mountain Man, Brave, and Singing Cowboy. The PWYW supplement adds the Lawman, Gambler and Preacher classes. Each character class is capped at 6th level, and hit dice cap at 4. It's interesting to me that Simon Washbourne's Go Fer Yer Gun rules (and all of his other games that I've checked out) also cap at 4 hit dice. I'm curious if it's some sort of convention laid down by Boot Hill? I never played BH, but was under the impression that it was level-less. It's not hard for anyone with any old school edition of D&D or a retro-clone to extrapolate higher levels if desired, although since the prevailing genre is medieval fantasy, maybe six levels of Western RPG are enough for most people.

Of the classes, they all have two to four simple special abilities that they can use. Some improve with level, some don't. Most are what you'd expect. Gunfighters are the toughest and ablest combatants. Desperadoes try to cheat and swindle, Mountain Men are adept at survival and get a wild animal companion. Braves are excellent trackers with a few spiritual gifts for healing and divination. The Medicine Man gets an interesting potion brewing ability, which becomes more reliable as the character gains levels. With enough time and some luck, they can brew potions to help the party (eight sample potions are provided in the rules). The Singing Cowboy has the ability to charm their way through encounters and also has a trusty mount.

The three classes in the supplement add more of the same. The Gambler has some luck influencing abilities. The Lawman gets community support and a deputy/sidekick. The Preacher gets a charm-like ability and minor healing ability. I'd say they look like they're not necessary additions, but don't seem likely to break anything if added in to a campaign.

Instead of dollars, the game uses gold pieces. Weapons cover common melee and ranged weapons of the period (tomahawks, spears, cavalry sabers, pistols, rifles, shotguns, dynamite, bows, etc.) Armor has an interesting twist. How well you're dressed determines your AC. Work clothes are like leather, fancy duds are like chain (but cost the same as plate in D&D), and heavy clothes protect like plate (but cost the same as chain in D&D). Wearing a white/black hat and/or a tin star can act like a shield, improving AC by -1 each (optional rule, but I like  it). General equipment covers lots of period-specific gear you might want, including livestock, land, town services, and musical instruments. There are special rules for mounts, as well as construction costs for buildings. Several pages are devoted to retainers (all in all similar to BX).

The game mechanics are all, as far as I've seen, identical to BX or BECMI mechanics (searching for secret doors, pursuit and evasion, falling damage, stuff like that). I'll be honest that I did skim through this section since it does seem so similar. There may be a few small differences and tweaks to some of the mechanics, but for the most part it looks the same to me. One area where it does make some changes is the saving throw rules. Not only are the categories different (and also used as skill rolls in some instances), but the rules also suggest that failures don't always need to be drastic failures. Sometimes, a failure might be a success but with complications. A failed jump might leave you hanging by your fingertips on the opposite ledge. A failed Riding save might mean you drop your weapon. Things like that. Again, this is a nice modification to the rules that helps set the feel of a lot of Western media (especially old serials like The Lone Ranger or Zorro).

The rules for running encounters and combat also seem more or less, if not exactly, the same as BX. There are a few additions. There's a fast draw rule for modifying initiative and chance to hit. There's a "shields shall be splintered" type rule where once per session a character can avoid damage but take a penalty to hit and movement for 24 hours by getting "shot in the arm." These are some nice touches that make it a bit different from standard D&D but again fit the theme and tropes of the source material well.

The last 20 pages or so of the book have details and suggestions for fleshing out the setting (including the wild animal and human opponent/NPC stats). There are lots of interesting bits of advice, lots of random charts, and all sorts of goodness to get the feel right. What is the town like? What are the NPCs like? What happens if the PCs get arrested and sent to trial? What happens if the PCs hang around town all day or all night? How much loot do the opponents carry? How much money can the party get if they pull off a stage coach or bank robbery? This section has a lot of useful information to help spur your imagination and present interesting challenges to the players, and to help the GM keep the game moving.

I mentioned above that the format is digest size pages and single column. This makes the pdf very easy to read. The pdf is also bookmarked, making it easy to navigate. I did find plenty of spelling/formatting errors...but then I teach English as a Foreign Language so spotting mistakes like that is just something I'm trained to do. And since I have found a few mistakes of my own in Chanbara now that I'm playing it again, I can't complain.

The game has an Open Game License at the end, so you're free to use the Open Game Content in it in your own products or create your own derivative works.

Overall, it's a nice simple set of rules. I should probably go over Go Fer Yer Gun again and do a comparison post some day. I like both, but Tall Tales seems a bit simpler over all which means it's probably going to be the base rules set if I ever get my Caverns & Cowboys game idea going.

A lucky find

I was searching Google for public domain Western/cowboy pictures.

I found this:

http://io9.com/5945916/read-the-lost-adventures-of-six+gun-gorilla-the-greatest-cowboy-gorilla-in-fiction

Goin' down in a blaze of glory!

I spent the past hour or so perusing Simon Washbourne's Go Fer Yer Gun! OSR Western RPG.  Awesome stuff.  And best yet, it's free at RPGNow.com (link in the title there). 

The game has ten (eleven really) classes for Western themed RPGs including gunslingers, preachers, braves, scouts, mavericks and wandering monks (the optional 11th class and one I'm obviously partial to).  Hit points are generally low ("name level" is level 4), and gun damage is pretty high.  I've never played or even looked at the Boot Hill game, but having heard stories of its lethality, I can see how this game might be similar.

Anyway, I'm still working on grad school stuff (one out of three final papers completed today), so not much time to game.  And definitely not time to run a game.  But some day, I may use these rules to either run a straight up Young Guns/Fistful of Dollars/True Grit/Magnificent Seven style game,

or else mix it with Labyrinth Lord (and Stars Without Number?) for a game based on Stephen King's Dark Tower series.