The Fourth GM Inspiration: Dyson Logos

 

The Fourth GM Inspiration: Dyson Logos

Dyson's Dodecahedron

Dyson's Delves

If I am going to use the 12 Days of Inspiration to highlight all of my favorite GM resources, I would be completely remiss if I did not bring up Dyson Logos's blog and books. I have gotten more mileage out of Dyson's postings on his site and used almost all the content of his Dyson's Delves books on Lulu in my campaigns over the last dozen or so years. Seriously! His cartography is incredible, providing evocative maps that don't always come with a keyed scenario, but contain enough conceptual imagery and "spatial evidence" of adventure to readily spark the imagination. His Delves books include many maps but also many keyed locations which I have adapted into scenarios in my own campaigns on numerous occasions. In fact my current Pathfinder 2E campaign is on map three of three of Dyson's maps I adapted to manage the first 6 or so levels of the campaign plot. Hell, while writing this I noticed he has hardcover editions of his Delves books which I decided I must have and ordered them (my old paperbacks are really falling apart).

There are a lot of maps you can find and develop online into your own games, but Dyson's maps are far and away the best in terms of being universally applicable to any fantasy RPG while still evoking a fantastic old school feel. I am sure most of you who still enjoy the print bloggosphere for RPGs already know who Dyson is, but on the off chance you haven't, and you enjoy customizing generic maps into your own scenarios, then you definitely should check out his blog and books at the links above.

Sidequest: The Role of Improv in Indie Zine RPGs

 While reviewing this various indie zine RPGs, I realized that an important component of this subgenre/style of RPG is the need for improv and emergent gameplay features. Most of the indie games I have explored in this style of game have a heavy focus on providing tools for unanticipated/unplanned gameplay elements, whether that be from randomized charts you roll on to programmed adventures which include very minimal detail to deliberately allow the GM to riff on the content. All of this leans in to the dominion of the field of improv, which of course goes beyond RPGs, but using improv with these kinds of games is facilitated by also aiming for simpler mechanics; fewer moving parts mean easier improvisation without rules causing a contradiction.

Improv is a necessity in any RPG, but for a lot of bigger name RPGs with more complexity in design and setting an emphasis is on providing a sandbox full of toys. While you can improv a random new monster design in D&D 5E by throwing out some stats real quickly, it's going to be mechanically harder to make it interesting than, say, concocting a new random monster in Mork Borg, Mothership or Into the Zone. 

Likewise, many pre-published modules for games like Pathfinder, Traveller, D&D and other big name RPGs are loaded with enough details that the GM often only needs to consult the module to get the needed answers, and we all are familiar with GMs who are not terribly good at thinking off the cuff and as a result tend to try and hedge the players in to "recognized" actions within the module. Honestly, not everyone is good at improv, and in my many years of gaming I can say that this is a key reason there are far fewer GMs than players out there. 

The indie zine scene modules are emphatically directed in the opposite direction, of course. I think part of this is because there's a large segment of the hobby that consists of gamers who do not actually find satisfaction in muti-hundred page tomes filled with elaborate and preset details. Improvisation in gaming can be immensely satisfying, and for many having a starting point from which to riff off of is much more satisfying than having to parse out an elaborate scenario where all variables are accounted for. I know this is what grabbed me when I ran the Haunting of Ypsilon 14, a tri-fold introductory module for Mothership 0E. The "aha" moment for me was realizing that the tri-fold was taking what amounted to exactly the same level of outlined module details I might make for my own game design, then repackaging it into a format that used the economy of design to improve its utility while necessarily requiring the GM to improv; a room might contain only one sentence with the key information you need to know about it, requiring the GM to elaborate as they see fit on extra details. The monster is basically described, primarily a stat block, so my version of the haunting creature is probably not exactly the same as another GM's would be. But the module goes even further in providing randomized events, including where the monster is in the complex in a given turn, who the next victim is, and so forth. It means that any time one runs the module, the play through will be different. In the end, a double-sided tri-fold module generated nearly four sessions of playtime for my group. I think the expectation is it will be good for one night of gaming....but between the sort of group I have and the level of improv I engaged with on it, the module lasted us much longer. 

In contrast, I tried running some Starfinder and Pathfinder Adventure Paths a while back and found them intensely limiting and restrictive. People complain about railroad type modules an gameplay, and unfortunately Adventure Paths tend to do this. Linear gameplay in this sort of module can be satisfying to a certain kind of player or GM, but it may not work well at all for players who are accustomed to having more directional control over their futures, or GMs who want to be surprised at what happens in play as opposed to preprogrammed narrators who might as well be reading from a pick-a-path programmed adventure book for all the lack of freedom the adventure path allows.

I guess what I am saying is that I can see why this new market of indie zine RPGs lean heavily into playstyles that actively encourage improv and emergent, unanticipated gameplay experiences. This is a market that I think has been underserved for a while now. It's not enough to say something is "OSR" anymore, as OSR gameplay, while it can encourage a certain level of improv and emergent gameplay is still also incredibly restrictive in that most OSR products are slaved to a specific feel and approach of the early hobby defined by original D&D or AD&D, and is why so many OSR games are just different reskins of the same OD&D rules interpretations. In the end, with an OSR game you're still dealing with orcs, goblins, elves, dwarves, magic missiles and any myriad of OGL compliant D&D tropes. The new indie zine RPG wants to build into spaces untouched by game setting convention, and the best of these indie zine RPGs do exactly that. 

Okay, next week I'll review Into the Zone, Screams Amongst the Stars and probably Death in Space!

More Classics Return: Swords & Wizardry Complete, Revised Kickstarter!

 First, the Kickstarter is here. I'm kind of excited about this. While I rather like Old-School Essentials, I admit to having had the most overall fun with Swords & Wizardry Complete. I'm not a minimalist OSR guy, so the S&W Complete edition is important for me to capture the state of gaming as I experienced it at the start in 1981. It's not perfect (my core experience was pure AD&D 1E), but it gets close. OSRIC is nice, but its a very utilitarian experience.....S&W Complete has a style that is evocative of the times and which I find quite inspiring.* The fact that it works well with 0E D&D, 1E AD&D and B/X content all at once is a big plus, too. 

Anyway, with the new S&W Complete KS going I poked around a bit and noticed something: the new edition is a return to form through Mythmere games, Matt Finch's original publishing label, and it looks like S&W is back in his hands. When you go to Frog God Games it appears that S&W has been de-emphasized (I had to search a bit) and they also mention OSE now.  I have no idea why this change happened....and no time recently to probe the depths of the internet to see if anyone knows, so if you happen to know why feel free to post here and let me know. Maybe Matt just wanted to have control over a new edition.

Either way, I did some comparing of Shadowdark RPG to Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised and decided I have enough 5E variants to last me a lifetime, but I'd love that nice print leatherette cover design and a revised S&W Complete for the shelf, or maybe even a future campaign. Time to break out my old S&W Complete Otus cover edition again and think about what I could do with it. 

OSE is still a great take on OSR gaming, and I admit it does some things much better in terms of rule organization and how it mixes classic B/X with Advanced content....but I look forward to seeing what a revised S&W looks like, and also enjoying the distinctly visceral, always engaging, and inspiring feel of S&W can once more bring to the table.

*It's also the only OSR retroclone (barring Castles & Crusades, if you consider it as such) that I have done any self-publishing for. 

Decision Paralysis and the Fantasy Heartbreaker Genre's Evolution

 Back in the 90's a game which appeared to be overtly influenced by D&D was generally called a fantasy heartbreaker. It was typically considered a game in which the author, having house-ruled AD&D over the years, had finally reached the point where his interpretation of the game attained special significance: it was so far removed to one degree or another from AD&D that it looked like a different game, and the author was so enmeshed in his interpretation of said game that he could not imagine any other game (including AD&D) being more worthy of consideration for play than his own.

Some of these early fantasy heartbreakers languished unpublished. In the 80's and early 90's in particular the everyday nonexistence of an internet meant that sharing your fantasy heartbreaker required publishing it through the channels available at the time, which also did not include print on demand. There was no Lulu or Onebookshelf to realize your dream. If you were savvy and talented then you could turn your heartbreaker into a real game with a real following (I consider Palladium Fantasy to be in this category, for example). If you were less talented then the results could prove interesting (If you've ever heard of World of Synnibarr it is regarded by some as on the more extreme end of the fantasy heartbreakers). Most are completely forgotten, though.

Today, fantasy heartbreakers still exist, but thanks to the transformative era of the D20 OGL 1.0a we have more "mechanically consistent" heartbreakers than ever.....we just don't call them that. The entirety of the OSR is essentially a subgenre of fantasy heartbreakers, as is every single D20 era system which thought to demonstrate that it was better and more efficient at doing D20 than D20 was (be that Fantasy Craft or Grim Tales, to name a couple). The OGL at least made it possible to comfortably do this legally, and also allowed for a unifying structural arc over the entire mess. 

A side effect of this is that today we have an abundance of published and often well supported game systems which are all essentially variants on the same D&D theme, sometimes to the extent that they are collectively each fighting for a corner of the same specific experience, rather than collectively offering anything particularly new. When you have this mixed with a GM like myself who likes to collect way too many books this can lead to scenarios where it becomes, at times, troubling to think about which flavor of D&D you want to play at any given moment. Like, really annoying!

I mean, on my shelves alone I have the following (this is what I have after my great purge a couple years ago, mind you):

13th Age - for people who liked the direction of D&D 4E but didn''t want the map/minis harness.

D&D 5E - the current D&D, carefully designed to emulate how people play over what the rules said.

D&D 3.5 - the beast that started the last 20 years of gaming evolution.

D&D 0E - the original, characterized as the root of all things OSR by some.

AD&D 1E - the version associated with Gygaxian prose and endless unique subsystems.

AD&D 2E - the version I actually enjoyed playing the most for all of a decade.

Pathfinder 2E - Paizo's attempt to distinguish itself from the competition, but also my current fave.

Pathfinder 1E - the one that happened when WotC abandoned its base .

OSRIC - the first successful attempt to show how the OGL could revive old school design.

Labyrinth Lord - the OSR version for people who loved B/X D&D (and also AD&D).

Dungeon Crawl Classics - the carefully designed aesthetic and focus on procedural randomness plus unusual dice to evoke the sense of the 70's like a scratch-n-sniff that smells like your uncle's waterbed.

Mork Borg - I think this is for people who love ideas but also don't like words that explain things unless those words are grim, dark, metal, etc.

Troika! - also for people who like ideas but aren't big on coherence, and also who loved Fighting Fantasy as kids.

Palladium Fantasy - I've got the most recent edition, but would argue that Palladium is the definitive original heartbreaker. 

Mythras Classic Fantasy - it might seem odd to include this, but it fits; Mythras is a Runequest based system and CF is all about changing Mythras so that you can play it like AD&D...but with more percentiles.

Swords & Wizardry Complete - the definitive OSR clone of D&D 0E, allegedly (except for all of the others), but arguably the most playable and fiddly of the different 0E variants.

....there are likely others I have forgotten about sitting in storage or whatever.

The point being: there are a lot of different systems out there currently that let you achieve your exact and highly specific brand and flavor of D&D that you want. For some reason I have a lot of them on my shelves. I have gotten rid of others in the past.....as much as I enjoy the style of play Castles & Crusades evokes, for example, it was simply too close in feel o D&D 5E for me to keep it around. There are other contemporary old school clones that are simply not quite worth the effort when the original editions are now all back in POD; why bother with For Gold & Glory, for example, when I already have all the AD&D 2E stuff I could bear?

But the real question I run in to is: why have all of these systems on my shelves to begin with? As a collector the answer is obvious: so that my relatives and family must do a lot of back-breaking cleanup in my study when I die. But aside from that.....I find that until that fateful day all these fantasy heartbreakers lead only to momentary confusion as I find each one has its merits and is worthy of attention, yet I only have so much of that to go around, and only a couple times a week to game. As such, I inevitably need to choose the games that best fit my actual playstyle, and those are only a handful, to be honest. 

So....this was a long post to come around to saying that I may need to look at another Ebay selloff soon, or maybe I'll just start boxing some stuff up to clear out space and take them to the local bookstores. If I do this, I figure I'd need to let my collection settle down to the following:

1. The edition I am most likely to run consistently (Pathfinder 2E) 

2. The edition I am most fond of because it does everything I want it to (D&D 3.5)

3. The edition I know is most popular so should keep for that reason alone (D&D 5E)

4. The edition with the most nostalgia and for which I actually would be willing to play again becasue of that (AD&D 2E)

There's also Dungeon Crawl Classics, which I would be inclined to keep because I feel it tries hardest to do its own thing. 

The rest.....should probably go. Hmmmm. We shall see!

Short vs. Long Form Adventures

One of the great things about the market today is that there is no shortage of material for your favorite D&Dish game. Whether you're playing D&D 5E, Pathfinder 2nd Edition, Labyrinth Lord, Swords &Wizardry, Old School Essentials or literally dozens of other variants, retroclones and heartbreakers there's both a system to suit your needs and a mess of scenarios to make prep easier.

While perusing a variety of recent finds I have been enjoying, for their own purposes, a range of modules....but these modules are not all created equal. For example, Trilemma Adventures is arguably a huge bang for its buck, with dozens of scenarios wrapped in a setting and bestiary suitable for adaptation to your preferred system. Age of Extinction, by contrast, is a pricey six book series for Pathfinder 2nd which will get you close to level 20 albeit through a process of reading an elaborate campaign in Golarian which is exceedingly difficult to adapt to your own setting (and likely not worth adapting to other rules systems).

Still...taken as a whole the typical Pathfinder adventure path may look huge, but they are designed to be digested in six discreet pieces. Not so with most WotC modules, which are monstrous incarnations of mega campaigns. When you buy one of these you are getting everything including the kitchen sink in one gigantic purchase.

In many ways it seems like the conventional wisdom for D&D and Pathfinder in their contemporary editions, the pinnacle of achievement over the last two decades, has been the extensive long form adventure campaign. Most of 5th edition's published modules amount to lengthy campaigns, designed to provide structured frameworks for leveling up to 10th level or greater. Only a few adaptations of older works such as Tales from the Yawning Portal focus on smaller scenarios (and even then providing a framework to interconnect it all together). The only one of these I've run was the early release of Siege at Dragonspear, a level 1-10 romp in four parts.

I don't really understand this style of long-form adventure design. I am much better with (and can appreciate) a good setting book such as the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica (well, as long as the book is engaging and fun to read, which most sourcebooks are not). I get more out of the content in Volo's Guide to Monsters than I do out of the latest 300 page super module. I suspect I am not alone in this; for many who GM, the creative process is more rewarding and may be the key reason to play; but there are many who enjoy reading and puzzling out these giant modules to provide much needed direction to their group and games.

Products like Trilemma Adventures, of which there are lots and lots of examples (from Dungeon Full of Monsters which flirts with being both mini and mega to AAW's Mini-Dungeons series on down to Dyson Logos' amazing collections) are designed to provide tools to a different kind of GM, the kind who likes improv and needs only a seed to grow a mountain. Plus, if you like campaigns that are deliberately less structured or more focused on hexcrawling then mini dungeons and short-form scenarios provide plenty of content for populating your wilderness without also committing to memorizing hundreds of pages of content.

The fact that the market is so well served on all fronts right now is a good sign. Most short-form and mini adventures are coming from the indie, OSR and small press side of the equation, but an argument can be made that even Paizo and WotC know there's a market (just not one worth chasing beyond a limited set), and their respective Pathfinder Society and Adventurer's League modules may actually cater to some degree to this market (and not just organized play).

That said....once again I'll toot the horn for Goodman Games, which has built an entire business structure on short-form modules (with an occasional long-form gem like The Chained Coffin) and of course putting an emphasis on making them eminently readable and fun. Like with my prior article, the notion of readability and the even more important factor of being Fun to Read is extremely important to modules, and if someone were able to collect more than anecdotal evidence I sincerely believe we would find that the modules most played are, on average, going to correspond the modules that were the most fun to read (and well-designed too, no doubt).

Ironically, Goodman Games is also responsible for one of the most interesting cases of short to long form design you can find: the Original Adventures Reincarnated Series literally take the classic modules of yore and, under license, adapt these short form gems into modern long form designs. Yes, they can take a 32 page module like The Isle of Dread and turned it into a 200+ page adaptation (while somehow still being the original module, a feat in and of itself). If ever there was a better example of how the short form module contrasts with the long form, this is it.

Weird OSR Quirks

I've been revisiting various OSR titles from the last fifteen or so years. OSR as a corner of the gaming industry is an interesting duck; it has a certain defined size and it's own specialized corners of what is arguably a cottage industry of gaming in general, and those quirks are often quite strange or unique. Here are a few of the oddities I have noticed or questions raised when I review the OSR titles I am familiar with or own in some form....noting of course that I used to be much, much more involved in the OSR games on this blog and have run campaigns in S&W Complete, C&C, OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, SWN and White Star, so those tend to be the ones I am most familiar with. For my purposes enjoyment of the OSR movement stems more from appreciation for these rules on their own merits; starting as a gamer in 1981 left me with nostalgia more for the campaigns, people and general fun, but even from day one I was heavily modifying the rules to include skill systems, class freedom for demihumans, and other things some OSR circles consider sacred to the concept.

Anyway....the list! More musings than anything else:

1. What's the deal with Devils in OSR?

Devils appear in the AD&D Monster Manual, and are tied to the nine-point alignment system. As a result, a preponderance of contemporary OSR titles do not touch on devils because they often seek to emulate OD&D or B/X D&D, neither of which traditionally had complex alignments, therefore did not have need for lawful evil devils. In B/X they simply avoided demons and devils entirely. As a result of this you can only really find devils on OSRIC, and they tend not to show in games using only law/neutrality/chaos as the axis of alignment.

This has led to some oddities. For example: Frog God Games has adapted large tomes of monsters across multiple systems, leading to stats for devils which make sense in Pathfinder or D&D adaptations, but also leading to their appearance in Swords & Wizardry which otherwise is missing the parade of devils traditional to AD&D.

2. Weapon Proficiencies - Hassle or Mission Critical???

OSRIC is very faithful in catching the key salient rules of AD&D 1st edition while also making it a clear, comprehensive modern explanation of the rules. It is, so far as I can tell, the only version of the game to also faithfully adapt weapon proficiencies. Other games emulating later editions (such as For Gold & Glory) also do this, but aimed at AD&D 2nd edition sensibilities. Otherwise? You really don't see weapon proficiencies come in to play at all. B/X and OD&D variants need not worry, but for example even "inspired" ruleset like Castles & Crusades avoid these mechanics or bake them in to the fighter only.

3. Taboo Skill Systems

There's a compelling case made in Matt Finch's treatment on what Old School Gaming is that OSR treats the play experience not merely as a simulation letting you live vicariously through wizards, rogues and fighters but as a challenge to the player. There's an equally compelling argument going back to before 1981 when I first started gaming that says that having characters with a way to guage skill sets that may not be possible in the player allows for a better simulation. I once gamed with an avid GM in the early nineties, as an example, who argued that if you did not tell him in details HOW you saddled and rode your horse then you were doomed to failure. He allowed no room for players who were less proficient or knowledgeable in such matters than their characters might be; it was a sort of Villains & Vigilantes style thought process on gaming, the notion that your character was very much YOU in every sense of the word, just with a sword or superpowers or magic added on....but somehow not skills reflecting knowledge that a fantasy character might have but a modern gamer might not.

Back in the 70's and 80's when you decided you wanted agame system with a robust skill mechanic you wrote your own game. In AD&D land you waited until the Wilderness Survival Guide came out, a book which I distinctly recall I hated with a passion by then because I had already been exposed to smarter skill mechanics in Runequest, Palladium Fantasy and even GURPS (also the then late-great TFT). Today, in the OSR movement, you avoid skills like the plague, or maybe provide a simple mechanic such as a "skill" save or something....unless you're trying to replicate AD&D 2nd edition or BECMI, in which case go for it. SF retogames have skills....but see next!

4. It's always "Like Traveller, but OD&D"

Barring the Cepheus Engine which has lite versions of Traveller by Mongoose, few SF retroclones actually do retrocloning for the SF games of the 70's and early 80's, but they all have a habit instead of doing, "OD&D, if it were scifi" instead. Why is this? Stars Without Number is OD&D inspired with a loose Travelleresque skill system attached. Other SF games tend to be "retro inspired" rather than actual retroclones; I have seen nothing that even tries to actually emulate Classic Traveller, Space Opera, Universe or Star Frontiers, to name the Big Four I recall back in the day.

Some of this could be limits of the OGL, but the truth is the OGL has been applied very creatively to emulate mechanics of all types, so it should be possible. This unfortunate tendency to make the OSR all about OD&D and later iterations leaves a large hole, I feel, in the power of modern rewrites to bring back older systems as close to the spirit of intent while being legal as possible. For now, though, we instead have a field filled with games that evoke some of that, but maybe fill a niche of "this would have been an awesome game to have back then, but at least we have it now" type systems. Just imagine, for example, if White Star had been released in 1980....that would have clobbered Star Frontiers (IMO)!

5. OSR Is Weird and Sometimes Lurid but Also It Really Wasn't Like That

Okay, for some groups out there it may have felt this way, and maybe for some golden period in the early seventies there very likely were some groups that felt like Dungeon Crawl Classics as the genre is re-re-envisioned today. But the truth is: all the deliberately kitschy retro games out there from DCC, Venger Satanis, Lamentations of the Flame Princess and so forth, the original market was not predominantly about this. It's a better notion that there were definitely tables where such gaming went on, but the level of R-Rated content, X-Rated content, or just plain trippy hippy "too much LSD before the game session" content was not so common. The stuff we see today in the OSR movement which contains wild recreations of over-the-top madness is good now because it reflects a modern environment which lets people do really crazy stuff with their old buddies, but when I was a teenager the craziest thing we got up to was timid by comparison, totally PG stuff for its day and age.

Ultimately, the really crazy content out there today is great fun (if you're in to it; I admit I only like the DCC stuff of what I listed above) but its highly specific to tastes and tolerances of a subset of this cottage industry, a bit like how Heavy Metal is out there, but most comics are a lot more timid. Still, the prevalance of this content in the OSR probably gives the young'uns an interesting (and false) impression about the Wild West of the old days of gaming!


Anyway.....just random musings....

Year in Review: Tabletop RPGs of 2019

I've written a bit less than I have in prior years in 2019, so if you follow the blog you can probably guess where my energy and interest remains focused, more or less. So don't be too surprised by the  RPG products which I have found to be sufficiently compelling in 2019 that they have soaked up a nontrivial level of time and/or interest, a massive feat these days....rather than rehash how much I love Pathfinder 2nd edition, Cypher System and "other," I'll just point out some trends in the hobby I noticed this year:

The Year of Old Favorites Getting Facelifts

This was the big mark for 2019 as far as I was concerned. Savage Worlds got a facelift to a new, reorganized edition which didn't change much but helped consolidate the game into a cleaner edition. So far we only have a few books out for it, but Savage Worlds Adventure Edition looks like it will work a a good "one book standalone" for most people's needs.

Meanwhile, the Cypher System Revised which started as part of the "Your Best Game Ever" Kickstarter from Monte Cook popped out on time with --you guessed it-- a heavily revamped book with few to no rule changes but a ton of organizational changes and additional content.

Finally (well, for my focus in the hobby) we had the formal release of Pathfinder 2nd Edition, a clever revamp that feels more like a new system spun out of the D20 family more than a regular old 2nd edition of its predecessor. Pathfinder 2E quickly seems to have become my groups' favorite system, and as a result it has been almost entirely the only system we've been playing on Saturdays and Wednesdays since August.

There are old favorites out there which have yet to see their time in the sun (GURPS and Hero System both deserve a "modern day" treatment, if only to see what that looks like) but it's good to see that many systems can get a revamp without critical changes to their core mechanics (okay, well 2/3rds of such systems, anyway!)

The OSR Shifted a Bit from the OD&D Core

This year saw the release of The Fantasy Trip in print for the first time since it's death in the early eighties, as well as a slew of new content. It witnessed a return of Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes in a slick new reprint with additional material to bring the game into the 21st century without changing any of the original game. It has brought a range of interesting Swedish fantasy games in the OSR vein with a keen ability to handle hardcore old school dungeonering and hexcrawling without being distinctly D&D in the form of the Fantasy! RPG and the impressive Forbidden Lands boxed set (which I finally got a copy of).

It's not that classic-D&D focused content is gone, but more that there seems to be a branching of interest in what the OSR can offer, and that's a good thing.

The Bloggosphere Contraction

It's fairly evident when you look around: many blogs of old are now gone, or on life support. The old era of dedicated gaming blogs has dimmed a bit, probably due to the pervasive rise of vlogging through Youtube. 2019 was the year I first really noticed it, to be honest, but even I find more and more RPG vlogs creeping into my Youtube feed, which is where I'm finding most Pathfinder and Starfinder content these days, for example. Still, there remains a hardcore crowd that I believe is mostly made up of other bloggers keeping it all alive. Tragically, we old guard probably without much exception would find it hard to transition to a vlog environment....I have zero interest in putting my face or voice out there; the blog for me has always been a deliberate exercise in writing, not visual presentation.

Class Restrictions, Race Restrictions - Critical to OSR?

Every time I think about firing up an OSR game I run in to a wall with the tradition of restricting races to certain class level limits, excluding them from certain classes, and of course the old school limitations on multiclassing.

Back in the 80's I ran a looser version of D&D, sticking to class/mutliclass restrictions, but ignoring level limits for the most part. When 2nd Edition AD&D arrived it provided rules for ways to alleviate restrictions on demihuman leveling past the "cap," usually by increasing XP. D&D Encyclopedia somehow ignored the issue by adding a letter-based weapon class advancement in. In retrospect it seems amusingly ad hoc and reflective of a determination to stick with tradition by finding weird optional work-arounds for a problem that was inherently arbitrary. By the time D&D 3.0 arrived on scene, the reality of just how arbitrary it all was became blindingly evident.

As I was parsing out Swords & Wizardry Complete for considering an OSR game once more, I was reminded of this problem. Faced with the reality of traditional old school approaches, I was left with the following problem:

--Do I run the OSR game with my modern sensibilities and simply sweep aside racial/class/level restrictions? Would that really be very OSR if I did?

Or....

--Do I adhere to them strictly, and design a setting that expects and enforces them? No elven paladins, no multiclass humans, no 20th level halfling fighters.

Option 2 would make for some fun and highly specific world building....for a bit. But the arbitrary nature of the distinctions in classic AD&D not only don't jive with my world building interests now, I have to remind myself that they didn't back in the 80's, either; these are rules from the original game which I had to houserule out, and as such for me they were never very OSR; I never liked them then, and find it hard to like them now.

But....if I do option one above, then I am faced once more with a different conundrum....why not just run a more modern iteration of the game? And if it's D&D 5E, why not just use the optional gritty mechanics in the DMG to simulate the more restrictive magic elements?

So now I'm back to thinking about ways to use 5E to run the kind of game I want again. Or, of course, Cypher System....the game which caters most closely to my GM style these days, and a system which inherently rewards players with ingenious descriptor/type/focus combinations in a way that a traditional OSR game can't even conceive of.

The Really Cool 3rd Edition Swords & Wizardry Complete Book (Very Late Praise Episode)

I already feel that Frog God's Swords & Wizardy Complete is my overall favorite OSR ruleset. It's the one which most closely feels like and reminds me of the AD&D days when I actually ran, covers both descending and ascending ACs to suit to taste, have the one-save mechanic, and provides the AD&D class with race and multiclassing architecture that I was most familiar with. It's also a very complete package in one volume, with all the magic, monsters and rules in one book.

When Frog God released a revamped 3rd edition with the cover I think of as the "dragon lotus" image I decided to not worry about it, since I already had two copies of the Otus edition cover. However, recently I saw that the Frogs were having a Labor Day sale so I snagged a copy for half price, and now that I've had time to absorb it I have to say, it is probably the coolest looking book for an OSR title released by the Frogs and most others. If you like good aesthetics with your OSR titles, there are really only a few places to go that provide top notch art and design*....and S&W Complete 3rd is now one of those books you will want for both content and art.

I've been getting an itch to dig back in to OSR lately. If I do, it will be a tightly focused S&WC campaign, with an intent on experiencing classic old school gaming; I'm getting a little burned out on modern D&D I think, and would like a little more "bite" in my fantasy gaming, albeit without having to go to a more complex system like Mythras. S&W Complete is very good for this sort of game, when you want to play D&D but you want the PCs to be mindful of their mortality, at-will spells don't exist, and healing is a rare commodity to be doled out carefully.



*e.g. Troll Lord's full color Castles & Crusades books are very striking. Anything that Zak Smith produces is artistically high quality, stuff like that.

White Star Galaxy Edition Now In Print!

More specifically, over in print at Lulu.com. Head here to use Tenkar's affiliate link (help out the Tavern!) and also get a 20% off code and free shipping good for today only (SHIPSAVE20).

If you liked White Star and wonder if the Galaxy edition is worth it, I'll just assert that I really like the layout of this new edition, which is a better design and includes new info beyond just the core rules and companion, so I'm actually really happy with this Definitive Edition. As soon as I have this book in my grubby little paws I'm going to spring a new White Star campaign on my group*.....so they have been warned!



*If I'm not running a SWN campaign, that is....

Reviewing the 2017 Gaming Predictions

Back in December 29 of last year I made some gaming predictions/analysis about where things ought to go for 2017....so how did it stack up?

1. A Companion Book for Fantasy AGE

--NOPE!!!

As it turns out, Green Ronin got Blue Rose out this year, announced a Modern AGE (though that will probably not come out until sometime in 2018) and that was about it.

2. WotC Releases a Player's Tome for D&D 5E

--YEP!!!!

Sure enough, the did it: Xanathar's Tome is also for DMs, but contains plenty of new archetypes for players, new background details, and loads of little bits that D&D 5E needed. I wish they'd do this every year, but understand that the game's focus is on less splat...so maybe 2018 will give us a new monster book, instead.

3. Starfinder support for straight SF

--NOPE!!!!

Starfinder is fun, but it's pure fantasy space opera of the Nth order. I still contend it needed to be a broader toolkit, but for what it does set out to do, it does very well. So I suppose this is a wash. Given how saturated the market has become with SF game options, though, I would suggest that Starfinder probably is doing fine by distinguishing itself with its fantasy-based Pact Worlds universe and this was probably a smarter move on their part than directly competing with Star Wars, Star Trek, FrontierSpace, a re-release of Star Frontiers in POD, Traveller, Coriolis, and probably two dozen others I haven't mentioned, never mind all the generic systems with SF support. So yeah.

4. Swords & Wizardry goes mainstream

--NOPE!!!

The new edition came out but it doesn't appear to have changed S&W's saturation in the market. If anything the OSR seems to be dominated by the more innovative titles which are better described as "inspired by" as well as a slew of weird "we are going to repurpose the fuck out of B/X D&D" releases on rpgnow that are all over the place. So no mainstream OSR title.

5. GURPS Returns

--YEP!!!

Hell yeah it did. Dungeon Fantasy has re-energized GURPS, and then Steve Jackson Games got GURPS on to rpgnow which was a bold decision on their part, but brings it back in to the "view" of most gamers who don't frequent e23. They are looking to a future of new stand-alone, Kickstarter-funder releases similar to Dungeon Fantasy, and lastly Steve Jackson also regained control of his content for The Fantasy Trip, which was GURPS's predecessor, which based on his comments on the GURPS forums he plans to re-release as-is, meaning a very "lite" version of the system which inspired GURPS will be available again soon.

SJG could move too slowly on future plans, but for 2017 at least GURPS got some much needed love and attention.

6. Pathfinder 2.0 

--NOPE!!!

They could be quietly working on this, but they didn't announce it. There are lots of streamlined design decisions in Starfinder, but I feel many of those are designed to suit the space fantasy laser gun elements of the setting and may not be so ideal for straight fantasy gaming. There's a planned release schedule that suggests no 2.0 announcement for 2018, either....and judging from the diehard dislike of the Wilderness Adventures book's shifter class, the Pathfinder core will not be happy with anything that isn't fully public in playtest, so I suspect no 2.0 is in the works right now, or the foreseeable future.

So...2 out of 6! About par for the course with any good fortune teller, in other words....

Some Combat House Rules for The Hero's Journey

After messing around with The Hero's Journey, in thinking about how combat is handled with a mixture of deflective (AC) and reductive (reduction value). The book includes some optional rules for GMs who find reduction value gets in the way of conflict resolution, but I felt you could do this with a bit more nuance. Here's three rules I would suggest to improve the combat experience in THJ:

Critical Hits

If a PC or foe roll a natural 20 on their attack roll, they get a critical hit. They may do one of the following with a critical hit:

Deal damage directly, bypassing armor
Deal 1 point of damage directly to the armor (permanently reducing it; armor with a RV reaching 0 is useless)
Automatically deal maximum damage with their roll

This option lets foes damage armor, bypass armor and also choose maximum damage against unarmored opponents. Just remember that they only get one option!

Parrying

If you can absorb damage with armor in THJ, then why not also parry attacks? If you are wielding a weapon and you want to parry, then make an attack roll against the target number your foe rolled. If you roll higher than the final attack roll (with modifiers) then you may roll the damage value of your weapon, convert it to reduction value, and reduce the total by that amount.

Under this system, while using the crit rule above, you can damage weapons used to block you or bypass them on the crit. If you deal damage to a weapon, it loses 1 point of RV, which is equal to the average of it's damage roll, rounded up. So a two-handed sword, with 2D6 damage, has a RV of 7 for purposes of damage dealt to the weapon. You record this as a "-1" and each time you try parrying again with the weapon you roll the parry value and subtract this total. If the damage on the weapon increases, note it as -2, -3, etc. until it reaches the maximum RV based on the average roll, at which time the weapon breaks.

Daggers under this system have a special deflection property: they roll 1D6+1 for determining RV rather than the actual damage roll of 1D6-1.

You could also treat shields like this. Give bucklers a RV 1, regular small shields an RV 3 and larger shields an RV 5. You have to choose to parry with the shield if you so choose, and like weapons they can be targeted and damaged.

Sundering

Sundering becomes a specific option under these rules. You can elect to bypass attacking your opponent and aim for his shield, armor or weapon. In these cases the attack roll is aimed at sundering the protection of the defender. Sundering attacks are always at a -2 penalty. A normal success that is not parried will result in the attacker rolling damage against the armor, shield or weapon.If the total damage is higher than the RV of the targeted piece of gear, it's RV is reduced by 1.  So an orc with a 2D6 two-handed sword decided to sunder the paladin in plate, targets the armor, and deals 12 damage. The paladin fails to parry and is hit....7 points are aimed at the armor, and the plate armor goes from RV 5 to RV 4.

Sundering is a declared attack, and because it targets gear it does not deal HP damage to the target.

Fumbles

On a natural "1" on the roll, a critical failure, the GM can rule that one possibility of the fumble is that the RV of a parrying or attacking weapon is reduced by 1.

Repairing Armor

It costs 10 GP per RV and 1D6 hours for a blacksmith to hammer out and repair armor, weapons and shields to reduce damage. Bows, wooden shields and leather armor may require different specialists to repair, and may not be worth the cost.

Damaging Magical Armor and Weapons

GMs can rule that magical arms and armor cannot be damaged, but a more realistic method is to declare that they get a saving throw. Anytime a piece of armor, shield or weapon would take damage, and it is magical, it adds its magical modifier to a saving throw, with a target number of 10. If the magical gear rolls 10 or better then it is undamaged. Repairing magical armor requires special skills and typically is 100 GP per RV fixed, and takes 2D6 hours.

Creatures with Natural or Magical Armor 

If the GM rules that the natural armor is the source of the RV, then the RV cannot be reduced. Alternatively, RV can be reduced but all extra damage rolled is delivered to the target. Magically granted RV should not be possible to reduce (due to spell or nature of supernatural entity) in most cases. A lycanthrope, for example, is naturally resistant to damage but also does not take any damage from unsilvered weapons. In this case, I would rule that the RV of the werewolf can't be reduced.....unless a silvered weapon is used to sunder.

The Hero's Journey: A Look at Character Creation and Rules Differences

Last year James Spahn produced his own OSR fantasy game, "The Hero's Journey." It was a really nice looking book with an evocative cover designed to remind older gamers of those classic Tolkien novel covers, with a simple, stylized depiction of a pastoral fantasy realm, each layer of the image suggesting more mystery and adventure just over the horizon.

Since then I have been waiting for more of "The Hero's Journey" content but James is only one man, and he's got lots on his plate. I thought I'd take some time to explore this game, which has some very interesting twists to it. I figured exploring character generation might be one good way to talk about this system, so here goes....

I decided to roll up a random PC and ended up with a half-elven wizard. I’ll talk system after the stat block…

Name: Cahrain Desmedre

Race: Half-Elf male

Class: Wizard; Level 1; XP 0

Profession: forester; Alignment: neutral

Strength 14

Dexterity 15 (+1)(improves AAC)

Constitution 9

Intelligence 15 (+1) (5 bonus languages; extra 1st level spell slot)

Willpower 16 (+1)

Charisma 13

Appearance 9

Luck 10

HP: 6, HD 1; BHB +0; ST 15; AAC 11

Half-Elven Traits: martial amateur (long sword), Arcane Dabbler (charm person 3/day), fast learner (+5% XP), star sight

Wizard Abilities: magical awareness (detect magic at will); spell casting (2 1^st level slots/day), +2 save vs. magic

Languages: common (Middle Tongue), elvish, orcish, Southron Tongue, Old Tongue, deep speech

Spell Book: read magic, arcane dart

Gear: simple clothes, backpack, 60 GP, long sword (1D6 dmg),

Notes on Character Generation:

Stats: THJ has eight stats, renames wisdom as willpower, then adds appearance and luck. The luck stat has some interesting extra mechanics….if you are lucky, that is! Stat generation is not based on D&D conventions and in fact each race has a different range of dice to roll. In our half elf example, above, each stat was 3D6 except for charisma and appearance which were 2D6+6. (Yes, I rolled poorly.)

Professions: THJ adds in professions, which are not unlike a more detailed version of the background trade from AD&D 1E. You roll, get a short list of things you can do with it, and your starting gear. This is a nice touch and something I’d be tempted to port over for use in any OSR game.

Classes:  I went for a conventional class, but THJ has a dozen interesting options including some weird ones like jester, duelist, cavalier and acrobat. These are all reminiscent of older AD&D classes from the early eighties, introduced in Dragon Magazine, but their versions here cleanly reskin them for the more basic conceptual turf of S&W.

Tweaks in Hit Die and AC Mechanics: THJ does interesting things with hit dice, hit point caps and armor. Armor now has a reduction value, which does not improve your AC (or AAC if you prefer ascending AC), but instead is a damage reduction value….so plate mail, for example, reduces attacks by 5 points. Armor class is still improved by shields, though, which grant an AC bonus (as a deflection bonus). This is an impressive -2 for a buckler and a whopping -8 for a large shield. By simply virtue of mechanical integrity it strongly enforces the idea that all fighters in THJ will be sword-and-board guys hiding behind large shields.

Hit points now only roll for the first three levels and starting at level 4 all advancement is a small static number (typically +1 or +2). For our sample young wizard above, that means he could at most hope for 17 hit points by level 7 (the cap for half elves)….as wizards only get +1 HP at level 2 and +1D6 at level 3, then it’s +1 per level after that. A fighter’s top bonus, assuming a CON of 18, could be a max of 39, however, so the wizard doesn’t seem too poorly off here.

The hit point thing seems interesting because it doesn’t look like the monsters took much of a hit on their hit dice, with most having plenty of dice to roll. This is S&W White Box inspired however, so monster hit dice are rolled on D6s, but a hill giant with 8 hit dice is still going to average 28 hit points.

Level Caps: THJ keeps level caps in place. Each race has a listing of what level caps and allowances are available….the system is designed to go only to tenth level however, so many of these limits aren’t so bad. The level caps did make more sense in AD&D where the non-human races at least had the option of multi-classing, something not discussed here.

Oddities: when rolling up the sample PC I opted for wizard because the minimum intelligence to be a wizard is 15, which seemed like a squandered opportunity if I didn’t go for it. That said, the wizard’s starting allotment of spells and spell slots is a little vague in detail. I assume that the spells per level on the wizard chart is how many slots he gets, since that info must be listed somewhere, right? But then that means he gains….how many spells at first level? From the text I am unable to determine this. It’s almost like adhering to tradition, as I recall in AD&D 1E and 2E both finding out how many spells your magic-user started with was never in the section (or book) you’d expect it to be.

Although I like the concept of armor which absorbs damage, I think the system doesn’t go far enough….what about parrying rules, or deflection rules? If you are going to add in this distinction, then it is worth considering what it means for other components of the game. That said, just getting plate (which absorbs 5 damage points) makes your fighter terrifying against most foes if they roll a typical 1D6 for attack damage. Sidebar rules offer some options for GMs who experience trouble here.

I’m still trying to decide if a fighter under this system would benefit more from the extra die of damage a two-handed sword does (2D6) vs. just taking a long sword and large shield (1D6 damage but you gain a whopping AAC 18).

Alignment: THJ focuses on the law/neutrality/axis order of 0E D&D/S&W. There are a few paragraphs on this which after reading over a bit I felt were saying, “most people are neutral, but a few aren’t.”

So as you can see, from looking at the character generation side of THJ there are a lot of quirks and tweaks that would strip the title of “retroclone” from THJ but keep it squarely in the “OSR camp” anyway. I like a lot of the ideas presented here, and think that the most interesting ideas include the luck stat, the damage reduction value of armor and the weird but clever way of restricting character hit points. I am not sure how it would play out yet….my gut tells me the weak HP structure for PCs coupled with the boundless changes for the monsters would make the game feel both deadlier and more difficult, but this may be a desired result.

The book is a pretty complete package, with over 120 monsters and a robust array of magic items on offer, and just enough GM advice not to feel anemic. I am not sure if I would grab it up and run it over, say, S&W White Box, but there is definitely a lot more flavor and many more options in TSJ than there is in its predecessors. It states it's S&W White Box compatible, too....and for the most part it definitely is (you could use monsters and modules with ease).

If James produces more for THJ down the road I will be intrigued to see where he takes it. I'd like to see something with rules for multi-classing options for humanoids, parrying options for weapons, and more depth of design similar to the professions option in character generation.

Pacing and Time Expectations in Role Playing Games

Diving back in to Runequest 6 recently has had me thinking about the pacing of RPGs. Not just "mechanical pacing" which, to give you an idea, is a major issue for various editions of D&D as well as more elaborate systems like Runequest....but also the inherent design expectations of just how much time you should anticipate investing in a campaign.

Pretty much any system can support short campaigns and one-shots, but such campaigns rarely offer a glimpse in to the long term play mechanics the system espouses. Some games do seem to factor this in to a certain degree, possibly using a fast advancement mechanic like a carrot on a stick to entice players to play more....I think D&D 5E's first four levels are designed this way, for example. Runequest 6 is interesting in that you get some potential to level up at the end of every session (unless you have a stingy GM) with skill roll chances. However, the real potential in advancement requires taking the time to hoard those skill rolls so you can boost attributes or pay for the cost of learning new skills and finding new magic...which can be a time consuming process and requires two things: that the players look for downtime to train and advance, and that the GM give them that time. By contrast, a character can start a career at level 1 in D&D and end up level 20 mere months later in a very fast paced campaign.

I've never seen a Runequest game go long enough in any edition to experience the length and breadth of this sort of advancement (my longest RQ campaign went about 24 sessions); most of my campaigns are structured around 6 month to year-long storylines/events which presume that we've ultimately got only so much time and need to maximize how we use that time; a game like D&D 5E lets us plow through a pretty decent 10 level campaign in 6 months, for example, with advancement baked in to the process. On top of that, RQ6 is more granular; when you have a combat it will be both higher stakes and more detailed, and take more time. As a result, less "gets done" in a certain sense, while in D&D you'll have more bang for your buck. This is, admittedly, a contrast of two very different flavors and not a statement on either system, but if I had to draw an analogy I'd say RQ6 was a great system for running "Master and Commander" while D&D was a natural fit for "Pirates of the Caribbean." And this isn't even addressing prior versions of D&D such as 4E or Pathfinder, where you also ran into slowdown due to mechanics as well.

Other systems, such as 13th Age, actually build a range of options in to how the GM can handle advancement based on the needs of the group while also providing you the best and fastest tools for quick mechanics. You can run a campaign that lasts dozens of sessions before reaching level 10, awarding new levels at the pace the GM wants. You can do incremental advancement which lets the GM dole out micro-rewards over the course of play. Or, you can do a ten-session, ten level campaign in a glorious zerg rush to the top. I used to be annoyed by 13th Age's system and even worked up some house rules for an XP mechanic, since XP is a great way of providing a trackable "reward mechanic" without actually disrupting the leveling process. But now? I realize that if you want to experience the full game, and you've only got 10 weeks to do it, 13th Age offers you a pretty compelling option here.

There's an entire subset on this issue as well: OSR games. They offer mechanical simplicity but also let you scale them quite nicely to suit the GM's tastes. Played by the book, for example, S&W with GP as XP leads to some quick advancement over time, and people don't slow down until hitting levels 6-8ish. You can also get a lot more done in one OSR session than any other game I've mentioned in this post. There's something incredibly attractive about a system that offers a guaranteed "maximum return on fun" and the OSR systems definitely do that.

In the end, this is mostly a thought exercise for me, and a way of identifying why maybe I end up playing certain systems a lot more (D&D) while pining for others but never actually playing them that often (RQ6). I think a protracted campaign in RQ6 that lasted years would be amazing, a chance to see the system shine....but perhaps, ultimately, I am more of a "Pirates of the Caribbean" kind of guy, and thus why D&D always ends up as my go-to game.

White Star: Quinlon Disruptor Tech

Quinlons have played a role in both campaigns I've run so far. In the Dark Stars setting they are a fringe group with little organization, working as pirates, scavengers and traders in Netherspace Sector, with their militarized coalition trying to make a bit of headway. In the new Regency Campaign, the Quinlons are a major force, and are basically imperial fascists who have allied with the Order of Typhon to indirectly aid the Vegan Empire by siezing control of the Independent Sectors that lie between the Vegan territories and the Regency, allowing the Vegan naval supply lines uninterrupted access to attack their enemies.

In both setting I've described the quinlons the same way: large humanoids, looking vaguely like Predators which cross-bred with Reavers from Firefly and then adopted the aesthetic look of the guys from Mad Max: Fury Road. They have a penchant for decorating themselves heavily with metal piercings and tattoos, and despite vertical mouths they have eerie, human-like eyes. Sure, quinlons are technically White Star's "not-klingons" but in many ways they fill a great niche for "space orcs and/or other prominent foe" as well, so why not spice them up a bit!

Anyway, quinlons are known for dangerous but effective technology. Here's some of what I've developed for them in my campaigns so far:

Quinlon Disruptors

Quinlon disruptors come in pistol and rifle varieties. They are notorious for their unreliability; any time a disruptor rolls a "1" on an attack roll, roll a D20 again: on a 1-2 or 19-20 the disruptor explodes, dealing 2D8 damage to the target and anyone within five feet of the explosion. On a 3-4 or 17-18 it jams and the user has to eject the energy clip and replace it that round.

Disruptors are notorious for dealing severe damage. When a target takes enough damage to drop to zero hit points, it must make a saving throw (modifiers to saves for explosive or death effects apply). If the target fails, it is disintegrated.

Quinlon disruptors come in several varieties: the standard disruptors are mass-produced and handed out to shock troops for quick use. Antique disruptors are more reliable (they only blow up on a 1 or 20) but also require 1D6 hours maintenance per week after being used or the reliability goes back to normal. Outsourced disruptors are also possible. In the Regency Campaign, the Vegan Empire strikes a deal with the quinlons and supplies them with mass-produced disruptors that include a non-lethal stun setting. These disruptors can be set to deal non-lethal damage to targets, knocking them out; in reality, any one reduced to zero hit points when hit by a modifed disruptor at stun still have to make a saving throw, or the damage is treated as lethal (but they are not disintegrated).

Disruptor types include:

Antique Disruptor Pistol (1D8+2 damage; Range 100; ROF 2; Clip 20; failure risk; disintegration risk)
Antique Disruptor Rifle (2D8 damage; range 200; ROF 2; Clip 20; failure risk; disintegration risk)
Modern Disruptor Pistol (1D8+2 damage; Range 100; ROF 2; Clip 20; higher chance of failure)
Modern Disruptor Rifle (2D8 damage; range 200; ROF 2; Clip 20; higher chance of failure)
Disruptor Pistol with Stun (as regular pistol above, but "stun" option built in)
Disruptor Rifle with Stun (as regular pistol above, but "stun" option built in)

Purchase Costs: 

Disruptors are illegal in most areas of space, so the costs below reflect "cost in Quinlon Space" vs. "black market prices" everywhere else:

Weapon                                   Quinlon Cost            Black Market Cost
Antique Disruptor Pistol          100                            500
Antique Disruptor Rifle           200                            1000
Modern Disruptor Pistol          50                               250
Modern Disruptor Rifle           100                             500
Disruptor Pistol With Stun       75                               375
Disruptor Rifle with Stun         150                             750

Overcharging Disruptors

Anyone with sufficient technical skill (such as engineers) can set a disruptor to overcharge by bypassing it's already shaky safety mechanisms. Doing so turns the disruptor into a lethal bomb which detonates, dealing 5D8 damage to all targets in a 25 foot radius. This destroys the weapon, and anything in the radius that hits zero hit points must make the save or be disintegrated. When overcharging, the user has 1D4-1 combat rounds to get away before it explodes; if the result is "0" then it explodes immediately! If you are using a skill system, a successful skill check (DC 15) will add 1 to the countdown timer.

Dark Stars XV: Netherspace Sector Survey Report 6

This time around was spent more or less entirely in spaceport Curiosity-796, orbiting the moon called Relic, in an otherwise dead star system. Relic has evidence of a vast civilization which wiped itself out 20,000 years ago...yet another victim of the Netherspace Sector curse.

The crew in summary had the following events take place:

1. Most of the crew ran out to find ways to spend money, then realized they needed to "call home" to the empire to get their stipend and pay updated. It turns out that the spaceport, a fringe of the surviving remnants of the Human Commonwealth, has a 2:1 exchange ratio for local Commonwealth Credits (CCR) and Imperial Credits (ICR) in the PC's favor. Yay. Interstellar Communications still take days to travel so they have a wait for their credits to arrive.

2. 101010 discovered the glorious robotic emporium. I've been modding cybernetics rules to give robots more stuff to toy with, and also extended his leveling chart indefinitely....White Star needs a robust robotics supplement for robotic PCs.

3. Tamralese hatched from her chrysallis, now made of strange matter from another dimension. Recovers memories....can tell something is wrong (she can feel the elctromagnetic bonds of force holding matter together, and nothing feels "normal" enymore), tries to get a pheremone implant and poor chopshop is blown up in the process when they try to graft normal matter to her body. Boom.

4. A grumpy alien with a mysterious key to Cargo Hold 779 brings it by...he recognizes the ship, says Tesla Dane wants the key to return to the ship, and leaves. Also, an envoy from the Station Governor arrives, explaining he needs speak with the crew leader. Group sets an appointment.

5. Crew eventually spends money wisely on actual ship repairs and equipment then waits for extra funds for frivolous spending. Meanwhile heads off to check out Cargo Hold 779.

6. Along the way a trio of chilopteroids looking to collect a bounty unleash an Energy Eater on them. Fight ensues....it's a tough fight! But the group wins.

7. Group kicks chilopteroid ass.

8. Group opens cargo hold 779. They find an immense crate, almost too large to store in their own ship's hold, and lots of additional crates of ship supplies. When they discern how to open the master crate it reveals a structure of crystal, silver, gold and platinum with an immense orb at the center. Dyvinil figures out how to feed it dark energy to power it up. It's a Mind Core to a Dark Star! And there's a notebook from Tesla Dane in the crate, too....she indicates her next quest goal: find a body for the mind core, leave it on this station for safe keeping in the interim.

9. The mind core reveals it is weak, and needs a proper body and power source, but imparts some data on what it is. Apparenly the Dark Stars created the first star knights...the first ascended species imbued with the power to manipulate dark energy. Those beings eventually mutated and became the Void Lords. The new generation of the star knights was created to destroy their predecessors. This mind core was a concientous objector....it turns out that such objectors are not appreciated, and the mind core was cast out in the area of the Serpent Nebula, a fate almost akin to death. Tesla Dane found the entity and recovered it.

10. Amidst this discovery, six Special Inquisitors of the Emperor himself show up and attempt to requisition the mind core. The group is suspicious, and a fight breaks out (except Tamralese, who leaves under orders of the inquisitors and heads to their ship like a good citizen). Sam pops ALL the grenades. The group survives but it was a tough battle.

11. Group heads back to ship. They manage to get the mind core stowed in their cargo hold. There are many mysteries to be answered:
--Why did the special inquisitors of the emperor show up and act so strange?
--What does the station governor want?
--Why did the Dark Stars exile this member of their species to the Serpent Nebula?

Stay tuned for more!!!

Genres that Need an OSR White Box Treatment

At the beginning of January I was thinking that a good forecast for this year was that we'd see more innovation in OSR rule sets with unique settings, but I wasn't thinking big enough...I focused on subgenres of fantasy and muddied the waters. My total conversion to a White Star sort of gaming focus lately had me realizing we need other non-traditional fantasy genres to get the White Box treatment. Right now we have White-Box/0E inspired games for science fiction (White Star), planetary romance (Warriors of the Red Planet), starship troopers (Colonial Troopers), super heroes (Guardians), fairy tales (Bloody Basic Mother Goose Edition), Totally-not-Warhammer-40K Space Hulk (Hulks & Horrors), espionage and X-Files (White Lies), urban fantasy (Skyscrapers & Sorcery), and no doubt others I don't know about or own. Some genres are well-represented (such as pulp adventures), just not with the White Box style.

Here's five genres we don't have represented properly yet, that I'd really like to see (followed by a mess of other suggestions):

5. Cyberpunk "White Hack"

Actually there is Stark Space, a sourcebook for White Star, that provides a nice expansion to cover this genre. But an actual dedicated Cyberpunk genre ruleset is not in the mix right now, anywhere. If I want to run guns as a solo or fixer in Night City, there's really no ideal system to handle this right now without grabbing White Star, Stark Space, and maybe White Lies and duct taping them all together with some classic CP 2020 for setting material.

4. Zombies "White Death"

The only OSR-styled zombie tome out there is Rotworld, which is actually a rendering of the classic Pacesetter game system in zombieland. It's a good straight-forward treatment of the genre but it is not what I want: a White Box treatment. A tome with some survivor classes, tons of equipment/salvage/survival rules and a load of cool GM tools for hexcrawl survival in zombieland would be amazing.

3. Post-Apocalypse "White Fallout"

Shockingly there's no real competition out there for post-apocalyptic emulators outside of Mutant Future, which of course is the Labyrinth Lord system with a very heavy coat of Gamma World colored paint. I like Mutant Future, but would love to see a White Box version in the same style and feel as White Star or White Lies, or possibly Warriors of the Red Planet.

2. Time Travel "Doctor White"

There's nothing like this anywhere for a classic OSR style. Instead we can look to the reprint of Time Master, or maybe Time Zero for Savage Worlds....but a White Box approach to time travel could make for a really interesting sort of setting. The challenge would be in figuring out how to handle a scenario generator for multiple timelines, and work out an over-arching set of general themes for the GM's toolbox...sort of how Dr. Who style time travel is one flavor vs. Star Trek or Quantum Leap type time travel. I feel like this could be a really interesting project for the right brave soul (not me, alas).

1. Cosmic Horror "White Doom"

Right now the closest effort at horror in OSR is Silent Legions, which is a Sine Nomine book so we know it's good, and closely aligns in general with the 0E aesthetic for the most part. But Sine Nomine is known for thick tomes with lots of elaborate detail and implied background....contrast Stars Without Number to White Star, for example; the former is like an encylopedia of procedurals and the latter is like a VCR loaded with Star Crash....if you've only got a couple hours to kill option #2 is going to be much preferred. The horror genre needs something like this in a White Box format....one with a bunch of ready to rumble monsters, quick and easy rules for evil magic, some investigator classes, and maybe some efficient setting rules for a few key eras to help the GM along. I could really use a White Box styled horror game, is what I am saying....

And the Rest....

Absent from this list is the steampunk genre, which I'm not personally fond of, but I suspect someone could make a great OSR White Box game out of. I've also omitted genres that are not represented right now but which may be better served by other game systems' styles, such as schlock horror which is usually best with one-shot session systems. A wide range of OSR White Box games could easily spring out of an effort at adapting all sorts of historical settings into the system and style, however. Imagine an Imperial Rome White Box book, or one focused on ancient Greece. These have the disadvantage of requiring the proper level of work and research....and sometimes the effort spent in documenting the setting for use in an OSR system can make it hard to show restraint in the design, making more complex iterations of the game more suitable to the job at hand. That said, I'd love a good, clean White Box style book like "Ruins & Ronin" but exclusively for ancient Greek adventures, or Norse adventures...or Roman, Egyptian or even later periods. How about a Caribbean Adventures White Box? Think The Legend Pirates sourcebook, but actually useful.

Dark Stars XIV: Kedrak Prime

37 Kedrak Prime

The Kedrak system is doomed. The main star is about to go nova, and is an immense, ancient red giant which has engulfed much of the interior system. The gas giant Kedrak IX  has two dozen moons, and one inhabited moon called Kedrak Prime.  This civilized local world is unaware of what is about to happen; locals are a humanoid aggressive alien species of felinoids called the Keddirak, a lost colony from thousands of years ago during the pre-commonwealth expansion of the old keddirak Federation (which eventually collapsed, leaving countless felinoid worlds seeded throughout the galaxy).

Physically the keddirak are classic cat-men (Felinoids, see White Star core). The people of Kedrak Prime are survivors of a lost era of their expansionism….they have vague records of this time period, but no memory of how the old Federation collapsed (but war is a likely reason). There are relics of this ancient period still visible, including three immense terraforming atmospheric scrubbers. The machines failed long ago, and the keddirak regard them as almost mystical relics of their forgotten age, proof that they came from greatness and will one day ascend again.

Kedrak Primeis currently dominated by two world super-powers locked in a perpetual conflict: the Order of the Claw and the Razor Union. This has motivated them to spread in to space, and they have sophisticated late 21^st century equivalent technology, cybernetics, and efficient nuclear power. However, advanced weaponry, foldspace technology and more have eluded the keddirak.

Among the keddirak is a growing movement of scientists and free thinkers called the Science Union who stand in opposition to the perpetual cold war. They are aware of the dire predicament that their world faces, and know that it is only a matter of time before the red giant star collapses on itself, blowing its matter out in to space and leaving a white dwarf in its wake….the entire star system will be dead at that point. They have engaged in active searches and broadcasting in to space on primitive radio transmission in search of the ancestors of the keddirak, but without success….so far.

Possible Plots:

Quinlon imperials are offering foldspace technology and weapons in exchange for slave recruits in their armies (the quinlons love using keddirak catmen as shock troops and have taken keddirak from other lost colonies for this purpose).

Chilopteroids have been studying the keddirak with the intent to harvest them for slaves, albeit secretly.

The Science Union will attempt to contact PCs who enter the system and beg for assistance in fleeing their world, emphasizing that the system could perish any day when the red giant goes.

A black ops branch of the Order of the Claw has hatched a plan to capture an alien vessel, and needs a target. They are using highly experimental technology recreated from a hidden vault in one of the terraformer ruins to create an incredibly dangerous and unstable quantum teleporter. Those who use it do not intend to return without a captured starship, and they go armed with the toughest armor and slug throwers the keddirak can make. The transporter range is limited….a target vessel needs to be within 1,000 km, so a separate diplomatic division is prepared to try to convince any alien contacts to come in close enough to use the device.

Star knights entering the system who investigate the local culture may be shocked to learn that there is an order of keddirak star knights….alien mystics who study The Way and appear to have learned how to manipulate dark energy without exposure to the Dark Stars…..

Keddirak Characters: Keddirak can be alien star knights (from Between Star & Void), alien brutes (core), alien mystics (core), the quixotic alien from Five Year Mission, and possibly others at the GM's discretion. Keddirak have nasty claws that deal 1D4 damage on a strike, and an uncanny sense of smell.

Dark Stars XIII: Netherspace Sector Survey Part 5

This week's game was quieter, thanks to our guest players being absent. The group got a lot done, and there was much plot and serious effort at enjoying the game to be had! Good stuff all around.

Quinlon salvager/dreadnaught Dark Claw

Roster of the crew of the exploration cruiser ISS "Juan One":
101010 the combat robot
Erin the star pilot and her trusty emancipated void lord snub fighter Sole
Dyvinil the totally not Sailor Moon star girl and her cosmic space Nancat
Dirk the rugged mercenary
Tamralese the xenosociologist, aristocrat, super model and secret sociopath
Samaros the crewman and survivor of Blight (NPC)
Oski the engineer (NPC)
Max Fuller the crazy transporter who's lost his mind after touching a "Mother Box' (NPC)
Medical Bot NB8 (NPC)

The session more or less went like this:

The group left New Germanican space in a hurry, only to be ambushed by non-baryonic dark matter aliens in Transitional Space. Three of the alien ships, which were effectively invisible except for a gravitationally interactive "signature" that the PC's ship's sensors could detect and use to form a picture of sorts  showed two carrier craft and a warship of some sort. They had captured the cruiser in three gravity beams acting like tractor beams....and inside the beams a boarding party of dark matter aliens!

Erin's AI-infused void lord snub fighter Sole mentioned that the Void Lords called these beings the In-Betweeners, or the "Vogel" in the Void Lord language.

The crew did all it could to bust up the ships' gravity beams, which would quickly turn into powerful torque weapons, using increased graviton beams to rip and crush the ship. Erin could pilot "into" the torque to avoid too much damage while Dyvinil, Dirk and 101010 targeted the hell out of them....but the laser weapons weren't too effective, until they direclty targeted the actual ships; the lasers didn't seem to damage the ships but did disrupt the source of the beam energy. Once all three beams were interupted Erin jetted out of the area.

Meanwhile the vogel boarded in the upper crew quarter area. A fight ensued, during which it became clear they didn't care about lasers at all...the nearly invisible beings only displayed eerie colors of red and black energy as the light refracted through their bodies, which appears to be infused with gravitons to let the dark matter aliens interact. Using graviton particle guns the aliens managed to be formidable, but Sam the alien brute chopped one in half with a star sword....the dark energy of the star swords could harm them! 101010 figured out his newly installed particle beam cannon also harmed them. The aliens were defeated....but each one "imploded" in a graviton particle wave collapse on death, and being too close could cause harm...Sam lost some skin to the graviton implosion, and Dirk's arm was badly broken as he was almost sucked in.

After the dust cleared the ship had a massive engine failure and dropped out of t-space into the middle of nowhere, surrounded by other dead ships. They figure out they've jumped several parsecs, and are resting a light year from the Dark Twins, two immense black holes with a great nebula of gas between them, slowly engaged in a death spiral.

The group started on repairs but it was going to take at least a day. Once power was restored to minimum functionality a quick scan detected dozens of dead ships, and a few with faint heat or energy signatures. Several events took place from here:

1. A chilopteroid salvage ship showed up (suspicious!) and began investigating each ship with an energy reading....they powered their ship down although IR emissions would still give them away. Before the chilopteroid ship got to the ISS Juan One  (the cruiser), another ship dropped out of t-space and immediately cloaked....minutes later a quinlon dreadnaught blows the chilopteroid ship to bits!

2. Tamralese (corrected name! formerly Marlese) went into a chrysallid state in her room, as her form begins to change to the strange matter of the Stellar Librarian's universe in the midst of all this.

3. The crew investigates the mysterious hatch into the cargo unit attached to the bottom of the ship, which Dyvinil recently opened and discovered contains the frozen remains of the former captain of the ship, Ephemeron, along with an eerie growth of biomechanical substance that is super-cooled. Since the hatch was opened and closed the "growth" of silvery material has been creeping out of the hatch and quadrupled in covered area.

101010, Erin and Dyvinil decide that the substance is probably a variant of the Von Neuman Plague nanovirus, and they proceed to irradiate the area and repurpose some stasis units to freeze the area around the hatch to keep it under control. Efforts appear successful.

Amidst all of this Erin and 101010 read/process the diary of Captain Ephemeron she found. It reveals much interesting detail: the ship they are in was originally his, and was called the Star Dolphin before it was scrubbed of any IDs and repurposed by Captain Lars of the Makamian Imperial Navy for their "survey" mission. Ephemeron's last mission was to accompany Tesla Dane into Netherspace Sector! He believed in her mission, which started with a quest to find out the relationship between the Void Lords and the Dark Stars (the planet-sized starlike energy beings which created the star knights) and turned into a quest to stop "the void lords and the betrayers" but the diary doesn't elaborate. She intended to co-opt the Von Neumann Nanovirus to do this, reprogramming it...they found samples at Hapson's World, but this is where an accident happened and Ephemeron contracted the plague. They froze him to slow it down while a cure could be found. Ephemeron also confirms that Tesla Dane did release a version of the virus many years ago in New Germanican space that specifically targets and destroys t-space tech. Much was learned here.

4. The NPC Max Fuller who is obsessed with a "Mother Box" he was supposed to receive (I wrote about this subplot before, right? Hmmmm) is found in his underwear worshipping a metal fabrication of the mother box, and something about how it will reveal the true gods and the true way. Shades of apocalypse, but none of my players read DC comics so BWAH HAH HAH
...they try to keep him restrained.

5. The quinlons that blow up the chilopteroids begin investigating wrecks with signatures. They approach the PCs. Erin diplomatically invites them aboard before they blow the hull and send in salvagers armed with disruptors.

The quinlons are led by one Captain Zassa Tamralane. Recall that in Dark Stars quinlons are 1/3 klingon, 1/3 predator and 1/3 average dude from Mad Max. They are spooky looking. As it turns out, Captain Zassa is one of the many quinlon independent mercenaries in this area...they are salvagers. But apparently they are also actively at war with the chilopteroids. She offers to trade equipment or services to repair the PC ship in exchange for useful goods; she detects a faint trace of Void Lord tech on their ship, but the PCs decline, offering functional stasis pods instead. She agrees (inexplicably) and provides recovered engine parts from the recently destroyed chilopteroid ship in exchange.

No one seems to suspect (until they read this sentence) that the quinlons may have been so agreeable because they got what they wanted without having to fight. What that is remains a mystery.

6. While pulling out used stasis pods for trade the group notices a stasis pod assigned to one Thomas Hill is now vacant...he is missing. No one's been down here for days so they are not sure how long but initially assume it malfunctioned during the power loss when the ship dropped out of t-space. 101010 starts searching for the missing formerly frozen crewman. His record suggests a criminal thug, yet another of the hapless recruits of the devious Captain Lars.

101010 detects motion in the hangar bay....and finds evidence someone is tampering with Sole, the void lord snub fighter Erin re purposed long ago! He, Erin, and Dyvinil work to stop whatever is happening....

So it turns out Thomas Hill is an alias for a void knight spy who was awakened at a specific time. He had already gathered a great deal of information from the ship, and used an override code to gain control of Sole. Erin yanked the circuitry while the ship was powering up for an escape; the ship blasted the bay doors open and Erin's latent psi ability saves her as she develops vacuum adaptation. 101010 targeted the laser cannons and did enough damage to warp the barrels so they couldn't fire. The void lord "Hill" is using cloaking tech, but jumps out of the cockpit and almost disintegrates 101010 with a ball of corrupted energy. He then tries to kill Erin with a thought but fails...her psi resistance kicks in. Dyvinil transforms into an image of the space unicorn they had met on Blight and attacks...her cat attacks (remember, Dyvinil is a "totally not sailor moon" star girl) and 101010 blows holes in the void knight's armor....they defeat him.

On his body they find evidence that he was going to flee to a location called Void Station Vartinimos, only a parsec away. He knew the old code necessary to "leash" Sole and Erin works on fixing that backdoor control issue for her snub fighter. He also had downloaded all of the ship's data and survey information to date....with close attention evident in his data on two subjects: Tesla Dane, and the Mother Box! Apparently whatever Max Fuller was involved with, it's bigger than people realize...

The group gets some advice from Oski on possible locations where they can limp to a full feature star port for proper repairs, and set out to do so. Ironically they take about four times longer than necessary as they weave their way through The Tiberon Anomaly, but somehow they come out unscathed, although they get great survey data on the timepsace distortions in the area and record data on three massive wormholes spiraling around something undetectable except through gravity waves.

The group passes through Kedrak, and discovers a civilization on a moon around a gas giant at the edge of the system; but the system has an immense, old red giant nearing a collapse point. The moon's civilization is comprised of a race of cat-men who have developed 21st level space technology and even have space stations and some other moon colonies, but that's it. The ship is detected and contacted on primitive radio channels by three groups: two military groups of opposing factions trying to suss out what they are, and a scientific research group thinking they are the aliens destined to come save them from the imminent destruction of their star system when the star collapses. All three sides want help....but one does launch a missile (or something) at the ship's location, ETA 3 weeks.

The group finally decides to send the research group a pod containing an interface to a limited-AI computer they can hook up, which will teach them how to make foldspace drive tech. They send duds for the military groups to chase. They then leave....no one's feeling overly charitable right now!

The group heads for Curiosity 796, and they arrive in-system to find an indepenent space station orbiting the moon "Relic." The Taylor-9 Station is an independent station, part of the old Libertarian Commonwealth that survived (miraculously) the void lord incursion a decade ago. They are assigned a docking berth for repairs....the only rules are that they must not be harboring the Von Neuman Plague (uh oh) or smuggling cannicks. The group bribes the inspectors to look the other way.

At this point, the only real concern is that there's also a chilopteroid exploration vessel in port.....

TO BE CONTINUED!

Taylor-9 Commonwealth Freeport