The Fantasy Trip Kickstarter: A Good Deal?

After 35 years, Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games has finally re-acquired the rights to The Fantasy Trip, the tactical fantasy combat and light roleplaying game he developed in 1977.

The Fantasy Trip is comprised of a number of game books:  Melee, a game of tactical man-to-man combat; Wizard, a game of wizard duels;  Advanced Wizard, additional rules for Wizard characters; In the Labyrinth, role-playing and world building rules; Advanced Melee, expanded man-to-man combat rules;and 11 or so setting and pre-programmed adventure books.

The rights to The Fantasy Trip were owned by Howard Thompson, the President of Metagaming, and when Metagaming folded in 1982, Howard demanded an outrageous price from Jackson for the rights to the game, which Jackson refused to pay.  Thus, the game ceased to be published or officially supported after 1982.

The game retained a cult following, however, and people continued to play and support it.  Dark City Games even developed its own similacrum of The Fantasy Trip, called Legends of the Ancient World, and published numerous additional pre-programmed adventures, including The Dark Vale, which I previously reviewed on this blog.

Jackson recently took advantage of a copyright law that permits a creator to re-aquire the rights to their intellectual property after 35 years.

Steve Jackson Games is currently running a Kickstarter to fund the production and distribution of a revised version of the game.

In considering whether the new Kickstarter for The Fantasy Trip is a good value, I looked at the original price of the various game books, and applied the inflation incurred during the intervening period.  The original publication years, price and the inflation based on the US Consumer Price Index are indicated below.

The basic pledge for The Fantasy Trip is $60, and it included, as of the Kickstarter launch, the material from all five of those publications. Using the above amounts, you are paying less, in today's dollars, than the cost to buy the original five game books when they were published back in the day.

Of course, this price is before shipping, but then you also need to factor in the extras that are being provided with this new printing, including dice (not included in the original game), a box to hold the game in, melee character pads, two sheets of mega-hexes, proper indexes in each book, and Tollenkar's Lair, Death Test, and Death Test 2 pre-programmed adventures (which are an additional $10 each of added value).  All of those extras add $40 of overall value, and more stretch goals are yet to come.

If you have never played The Fantasy Trip before and are interested in the game, or if you have the gamebooks and want a cleaned up version of the game to play again, you should check out the Kickstarter.

Fighting Fantasy Kickstarter And Otherworld Digital Miniatures

I haven't supported kickstarter projects in nearly 18 months.  One of the last I supported was Darkest Dungeon, a video game that recreates, in large measure, the feel of the Torchbearer RPG.  There have been few projects since then that have attracted my interest.

The new Warlock of Firetop Mountain kickstarter has me intrigued.  The video game itself looks like a bit of retro-fun, and is a digital re-imagining of the first Fighting Fantasy choose-your-adventure gamebook.



What really got me excited was the partnership with Otherworld Miniatures.  It appears that the video game designers have digitized the amazing line of Otherworld Miniatures and are using them as 3D representations of the characters and monsters in the video game.

I'm a big fan of the Otherworld Miniatures line, and this may be the factor that leads me to back this kickstarter project.  I'd love to see a stretch goal where backers could purchase the set of miniatures that were digitized for the video game.

Little Soldier Games: The Book Of Shamans

Here's something you rarely see in role playing game books anymore: bibliographies.

Little Solder Games' Book of Shamans, written by Ed Lipsett, and published in 1978, has a bibliography, identifying those books used to research the proposed game abilities of Shamans. 

Joseph Campbell's "Hero With a Thousand Faces" and J.G. Frazer's "The Golden Bough" appear among the nine books listed in the bibliography in the Book Of Shamans.

I've always wondered, was The Book Of Shamans also published in digest book format, similar in size to the Book of Sorcery and Book of Demons?  My 68-page copy of the Book Of Shamans is printed in the larger, journal format, but this website indicates that it was also published in Digest format.

Anybody have a digest-sized version of the Book Of Shamans?

Darkest Dungeon CRPG: Cosmic Horror

A brief interlude before posting more Magic Realm play-by-plays...

Darkest Dungeon is currently on Kickstarter.  I don't normally play computer role-playing games, but Darkest Dungeon reminds me of Diablo, one of my favorite computer games, so I just had to back this one.

Check it out!

Gygaxian Words Of Wisdom

Jason Zavoda, owner of the wonderful Hall of the Mountain King blog, posted the following text, of a Gary Gygax letter that appears in Alarums and Excursions Issue 2.  I have copied and pasted the text here, because it provides tremendous insight into Gygax's thoughts on Dungeons and Dragons.  I will let you draw your own conclusions about which Gygax, this 1975 version or the later AD&D version, was more correct regarding several topics he touches therein.

Dear Lee;

Hello! and our thanks for the two copies of AandE. Brian Blume takes care of SR, and he immediately made off with one copy of your zine, so you can rest assured of the trade arrangement.

It certainly is a good feeling to have so many persons enjoying something one had a hand in creating. I have been a sf and fantasy fan since age 12, a wargame enthusiast since age 10 and began designing and writing about 1965. The games and rules are fairly successful these days, but I have yet to sell a sf or fantasy story, and that will be my next real project -- in a year or so when I have time to rewrite my favorite fantasy novel in hopes of something more than the usual rejection slips.

In case you don't know the history of DandD, it all began with the fantasy rules in CHAINMAIL. Dave A. took those rules and changed them into a prototype of what is now DandD. When I played in his "Blackmoor" campaign I fell in love with the new concept and expanded and changed his 20 or so pages of hand-written "rules" into about 100 ms. pages. Dave's group and ours here in Lake Geneva then began eager and enthusiastic play-testing, and the result was the DandD game in January of 1974. It is an ongoing game, as the GREYHAWK booklet shows, and when Dave hands me the ms. for BLACKMOOR I am sure that there will be more alternatives yet. I have personally worked out enough material lately to do still another supplement, and the heaps of material sent in by fans would certainly fill another -- besides providing a good bit of material for publication in SR. So as long as players desire, TSR will continue to provide more DandD goodies (although my partners bemoan the fact that this tends to deprive the historical end of out operation.)

If you have seen WAR OF THE WIZARDS, you are aware of how imaginative and creative a man Professor M.A.R. Barker is. We have arranged, finally, to publish his masterwork, EMPIRE OF THE PETAL THRONE. Professor Barker has been at work on his fantasy world creation for something like 40 years! It shows in his work. I hardly know where to begin in describing EPT. First, I must liken the whole of the Professor's work to JRRT's (and I understand that Professor Barker has a novel which he hopes to complete soon!). The whole of the game EMPIRE OF THE PETAL THRONE is perfectly thought-out and logically structured. Its form was influenced by DandD (and I am greatly flattered about that) although its author had been testing various other forms prior to the publication of DandD.

I will not describe the world of 'PETAL THRONE, for Professor Barker does that himself, far better than I could hope to, in his game. Suffice it to say tht we have spared no expense to do it justice when TSR publishes it. The box will be about 9" x 12" with a full-color illustration of the city of BeySy on the cover. The Professor is also one heck of an illustrator, and he did that map in a medieval style with building erections, larger-than-life figures of men, and so forth. In addition to a rules book (about the same number of words as DandD, possibly quite a few more) done in two-column, 3 1/2 x 11 size with a plastic ring binding so it will open flat to any section, there will be three full-color, plasticized mapboards (similar to the one found in STAR PROBE). Two are the map of the world, and the other is the city of Jakala. The first two are done with permission, on SPI hex maps, while the latter is done on a slightly smaller hex grid. The unfortunate part is what the whole will cost -- the $20 price range -- but we plan to make the separate parts available so that much cash won't have to be laid out all at once. We expect the work to be available by 15 July.

We also have a wonderful "parlor" version of DandD dungeon adventures coming up fairly soon -- great for when there are only non-addicts to play games with, for the family, or when there is only an hour or two for play. The game is well done, and its components are top-quality, and we expect it to be popular for many reasons -- not the least of which is it will help DandD enthusiasts demonstrate to the uninitiated why they love fantasy games.

I sang through both of the tunes in "Music to Loot Dungeons By". Good show!

There seems to be considerable confusion amongst your contributors -- particularly those who tend to be in a flap about incomplete or unpalatable solutions (to them) of DandD rules/questions/problems. The game is complex and complicated. When it was released, it was by no means in a final (or even polished) form, but were we to sit on it for another few years in order to get it that way? Can a broad fantasy game ever be finished? Of course we could not hold off publication, for it was too much fun to keep from others.

Dave and I disagree on how to handle any number of things, and both of our campaigns differ from the "rules" found in DandD. If the time ever comes when all aspects of fantasy are covered and the vast majority of its players agree on how the game should be played, DandD will have become staid and boring indeed. Sorry, but I don't believe that there is anything desirable in having various campaigns playing similarly to one another. DandD is supposed to offer a challenge to the imagination and to do so in many ways. Perhaps the most important is in regard to what the probabilities of a given situation are. If players know what all of the monster parameters are, what can be expected in a given situation, exactly what will happen to them if they perform thus and so, most of the charm of the game is gone. Frankly, the reason I enjoy playing in Dave Arneson's campaign is that I do not know his treatments of monsters and suchlike, so I must keep thinking and reasoning in order to "survive". Now, for example, if I made a proclamation from on high which suited Mr. Johnstone, it would certainly be quite unacceptable to hundreds or even thousands of other players. My answer is, and has always been, if you don't like the way I do it, change the bloody rules to suit yourself and your players. DandD enthusiasts are far too individualistic and imaginative a bunch to be in agreement, and I certainly refuse to play god for them -- except as a referee in my own campaign where they jolly well better toe the mark. Let us consider the magic-user question.

We allow magic-users to employ the number of spells shown on the table, so a 1st level m-u gets exactly one 1st level spell to use once before he must go back to his books and prepare to use the spell once again -- or a spell once again. To allow unlimited use of the spell is to make the m-u's too powerful. There is a better solution, of course; one I have been aware of since the first. That is to utilize a point system based on the m-u's basic abilities and his or her level. Spell cost is then taken as a function of the spell and the circumstances in which it is cast and possibly how much force is put into the spell. All that would have required a great deal of space and been far more complex to handle, so I opted for the simple solution.

again, as a case in point, Ted Johnstone says I have trouble telling which rules are so completely obvious that he doesn't need to explain them. That, dear friends, is a statement which could only be made by someone who has never authored a set of rules or a game! Many of the rules which are completely obvious to me are totally obscure to others. I can say in complete truthfulness that I have had to explain each and every section of the rules to some players, either in person or by letter.

I desire variance in interpretation and, as long as I am editor of the TSR line and its magazine, I will do my utmost to see that there is as little trend towards standardization as possible. Each campaign should be a "variant", and there is no "official interpretation" from me or anyone else. If a game of "Dungeons and Beavers" suits a group, all I say is more power to them, for every fine referee runs his own variant of DandD anyway.

I recall that I told Bob Sacks that in Greyhawk we do not have existing religions included, for this is a touchy area. We have such groups as "The Church of the Latter Day Great Old Ones," Church of Crom, Scientist", "Brethren of St. Cuthbert of the Cudgle", and so on. Gods sometimes intervene. There are some artifacts and the like which aid clerics. In general, however, clerics are powerful enough without much aid, for they have quite a few advantages and work up very quickly. Fighters are really the ones whom everyone should be irate about, for they have the hardest time of it, if not backed up by other classes or by lots of other fighters or blessed with the most powerful of magic gear.

How does one use gunpowder weapons in the confined spaces of the dungeon? What happens to ears? Blackmoor has some gunpowder usage but the filthy stuff won't work in Greyhawk's world.

By the way, a score of 18 is only the usual top limit for humans in Greyhawk. We have monsters with intelligence scores well over 18, and one player is about to work out a deal which will jump his to not less than 19.

Please inform Ted that I too subscribe to the slogan "DandD is too important to leave to Gary Gygax." Gosh and golly! Whoever said anything else. However, pal, best remember that it is far too good to leave to you or any other individual or little group either! It now belongs to the thousands of players enjoying it worldwide, most of whom will probably never hear of you or your opinions unless you get them into THE STRATEGIC REVIEW. As soon as we can manage it, we intend to have expand SR, publish bimonthly and include a letter column.

Thanks again for sending AandE. It was most enjoyable. Watch out though, that it doesn't start DandD down the road of DIPLOMACY fandom with its constant feuds, bickering, invective, etc. Now tell the fellows to pick on Dave Arneson awhile -- after all he had as much to do with the whole mess as I did!

Regards, E. Gary Gygax

Tom Moldvay "Gets" Old-School

In addition to editing the 1981 Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set, Tom Moldvay also designed the under-appreciated and long out-of-print Lords Of Creation role-playing game, an RPG that emulates the World Of Tiers universe of Phillip Jose Farmer.

Published by Avalon Hill back in 1983, Lords Of Creation allowed characters to advance from basic human, all the way up to "lord of creation", beings who possess the power to create, and become lords of, pocket universes of their own.

The Lords Of Creation RPG sold poorly, and the planned fourth and fifth pre-packaged adventures for LOC RPG never saw the light of day, although the first three adventures were released: The Horn Of Roland; The Yeti Sanction; and Omegakron.

The third adventure, Omegakron, is set in the ruins of Akron, Ohio; a gamma-world-like setting, several hundred years after a devastating global nuclear and biological war.

Someone has subtly and maliciously altered history, thus creating this alternative "Omegakron" timeline that threatens to usurp the main timeline. The characters trans-dimensional gate to this alternative timeline, and search the ruins of Akron, seeking to identify the altered time event, so that the alteration can be undone and the main timeline saved.
The player characters are sent to Omegakron by the mysterious Time Adjusters, who through some unknown power, have been blocked from accessing this alternative timeline themselves, thus precipitating the enlistment of the adventurers.

Here is the first of two Omegakron examples of how Tom Moldvay "gets" old-school:

"I have purposely kept the origin of the Time Adjusters open to the Game Master's imagination. For one thing, I do not want to restrict the Game Master's creativity. Quite a few adventures can be designed around the Time Adjusters and the GM should be free to use his impression of the Time Adjusters, not mine. Secondly, too much explanation often ruins the mystery, and I prefer the Time Adjusters to remain mysterious. Besides, when I asked them, they wouldn't tell me where they came from."

During the Omegakron adventure, the player characters join the security forces of Akros, a bastion of civilization in the surrounding sea of chaos.
The characters discover that a saboteur has planted bomb aboard the Akros flying city, but the saboteur blows himself up, along with three other suspects, before he can be revealed and the location of the bomb uncovered. The GM hands the players a single page handout containing the police interview notes of each of the suspects , and the players must determine which of the four suspects is lying, thus revealing the identity of the dead saboteur and by extension the location of the bomb, before it explodes.

Tom Moldvay has this to say about this player-skill test:

"This particular encounter was designed to test the reasoning powers of the PLAYERS (emphasis mine), not the skills or powers of the characters. The bomber is the one person among the suspects who is lying. By comparing the statements, it is possible to deduce logically which person is lying, and which people are telling the truth. If the players can deduce who is lying inside of 5 minutes REAL TIME (emphasis mine) give each of their characters 200 xp. For each minute beyond 5 minutes, deduct 10 xp. The players should know in advance that they are being timed (since "real time" does not usually matter in an adventure)."Incidentally, here are two reminiscences of Lords Of Creation, from the RPG.net website:

Yes, this was an awesome game and still is. I ran it for years and everyone had a lot of fun. I bought the Horn of Roland, and Yeti Sanction, and Omegakron, but never could find the other two adventures, Mines of Voria and Towers of Illium, not sure they ever published them. It was chaotic, but the game system is simple and easy to learn and allows characters to feel like they are really making progress with every adventure as their stats rise. Better, from a game master's point of view it allowed me to send them anyplace I could imagine, favourite book worlds, far flung galaxies, strange new dimensions, the beginning of history, ANYWHERE, and I did:)I sent them to medieval France, to many alternate universes ( like the old Sliders series I enjoyed). I shrunk them down to microscopic size and they hung around in the microverse where they discovered the remains of a dying Lord of Creation and his mad invention. I turned them all into cats for one adventure when they angered one of the Animal Lords (from the Book of Foes). They even helped the lost prince of faerie reclaim his throne, the battle being fought on the streets of New York in the late 1800s. They spent a lot of time in the future too (lots of old Dr Who inspiration here). All in all a thoroughly enjoyable game that I still own. Heck I may see if I can get another game started:) Thanks for sharing your experiences, it brought back a lot of good memories.Ah yes, good ol' Lords of Creation. I bought the game, ran my first adventure and suddenly it was The Next Big Thing™ in our gaming group. Got all the adventures for it too, and still have all of it.This game was a total blast. Fortunately my friends also picked up copies so I could play as a PC as well. By the time we stopped playing all of our characters were Lords of Creation. We played for about 3 or 4 years in the late 80's as I recall.We had all kinds of bizarre adventures. One that I ran sticks out in my mind: I had the PCs arrive on a huge starship that was hurtling through interstellar space. Most of the humans onboard had been killed off by the rogue AI ship computer by using various models of killer robots. They eventually discovered that the ship was headed straight for Earth, and so had to find a way to destroy either the AI (and thus saving the few remaining humans), or destroy the entire ship. They tried to take out the AI but failed, and instead destroyed the ship (by making the "reactor core" go critical or some such, I forget exactly), and barely made it out in time. It was a real cliffhanger!On an adventure that a friend of mine ran, my PC aquired a unique weapon called The Voidal Sword™, a sword hilt with a "blade" consisting of the total absence of everything, a void in the multiverse as it were. It could cut though anything, anything at all... there was no defense against it. The next adventure was run by another friend and Romerac Elerion showed up and took it from me. Well, the original GM didn't like that and so the next adventure after that Romerac showed up again and gave it back... apparently he was just borrowing it :p My PC had that sword for the rest of his career, all the way up to Lord of Creation. Yeah, go ahead and try and take from him, I dare you :D We created an entire mythology around this game, added some powers, and all kinds of additional weaponry and artifacts. We eventually tired of it and moved on to GURPS. But man, what a blast we had! Good times.Also, I really like the old school black and white art in the rule book and Book of Foes, back when showing a little flesh just wasn't really an issue, you know what I mean? It's like after that, the roleplaying industry got all "PC" and could no longer show the dreaded boobie :eek: If you can find a copy of this game, I heartily recommend picking it up. There's nothing else quite like it.

Paizo: Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box

It's unlikely you'd ever catch me playing Paizo's Pathfinder RPG. Roleplaying being what it is, I can't say never: social will always trump system. But as the natural heir to Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, Pathfinder holds little allure for me.

It's the granularity. Like its cousin DnD 4.X, character generation and development is far too detailed, and i'm predisposed to viewing Pathfinder RPG as too much determined by character skills, scores and abilities; too little by player skill and role-playing.

So, given my obvious pre-disposition and therefore lack of interest in this game system, why bother purchasing and reviewing the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box? Two reasons. First, the shallow one: with certain exceptions, I really like the art of Pathfinder. I am a big fan of Wayne Reynolds, and the stable of other Pathfinder artists seem to maintain the same high standards. Second, I wanted to see if this Beginner Box set would moderate my pre-disposition against the Parthfinder RPG.

The Pathfinder Beginner Box retails for $35, compared to $20 for the DnD 4E Red Box starter set that was published by WOTC roughly a year ago. The Pathfinder box is 9" x 12" x 2.5" deep, and includes a one-page welcome page, a single-page advertisement for Pathfinder RPG and Pathfinder Society, a 64-page Hero's Handbook, four pre-generated characters (corresponding to the four characters pictured on the side of the Beginner Box), four blank character sheets, a 96-page Game Master's Guide, a 24" x 30" fold-out battle mat, a complete set of polyhedral dice, and 90 cardboard monster and character stand-up pawns.

Considering the breadth of contents, the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box compares very favorably to the DnD 4E Red Box Starter Set. Add to the above the following: the Pathfinder set allows you to go from levels 1-5, while the 4E set only allows you to go to level 2; Pathfinder includes another 64 pages of gaming material; Pathfinder includes stand-up, rather than flat, pawns; and the Pathfinder box is sturdier and more visually interesting.

With 64 pages of game material in The Hero's Handbook, Pathfinder goes into far more detail than Red Box regarding character creation. Paizo provides a solo pick-your-path adventure and an example of play in the Hero's Handbook.

The game mechanics suffer from the same malady as 4E: too many rules and too much dice-rolling. On the other hand, the art is amazing, and there's so much of it that it almost becomes a distraction from learning the rules. Paizo has gone all out here, though I couldn't say whether some or all of this art is recycled from other Pathfinder products.


Four pre-generated character sheets are included in the Beginner Box: Ezren, Valeros, Kyra and Merisel. The Beginner Box includes four cardboard standup pawns for those characters, but you can instead buy a set of pre-painted miniatures, which, at $12 for the complete four figure set, has higher production values and is more modestly priced than any pre-painted plastic figures heretofore produced by WOTC.

The 96-page Game Master's Guide delves into areas completely ignored by the equivalent Dungeon Master's Book found in the 4E Red Box. Most startling is significant page count devoted to gamemastering, building your own adventures, environments, magic items and random encounters. Pathfinder is noted for its prolific publishing of pre-scripted adventure path products, so devoting page count in the Game Master's Guide to building your own adventures is laudable. Like the Hero's Handbook, the Game Master's Guide is heavily illustrated: I will hazard to say that every page has some manner of illustration.

The Pathfinder battle mat is superior to the 4E Red Box effort. It feels heavier and is plasticized to stand up to more wear. And the cardboard pawns in the Pathfinder Beginner Box can be slipped into round plastic bases so they stand up. The Red Box equivalent are poker chips with pictures on them.

If you are playing DnD 3.5 or 4.X and looking for something just a little bit different, the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box may be just your ticket. This is good value for $35. Indeed, the gorgeously illustrated cardboard pawns are almost worth the price of admission alone.

For those that prefer old-school gaming, there is little here to convert you to the dark side. But if you're like me and have more money than sense, or want to support the underdog, you might consider buying the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box. While i'm unlikely to play Pathfinder, I don't regret this purchase.

Tomb of Horrors

SPOILER ALERT

Tomb of Horrors is one of those modules that is spectacularly misunderstood by those who never played or ran it, and those who began playing Dungeons and Dragons after the advent of 2nd Edition AD&D.

That the Tomb of Horrors is misunderstood will come as little surprise. The infamy of Tomb of Horrors, along with that module's relative scarcity to the uninitiated (at least prior to the advent of usenets, eBay and other resale markets), means that this module has become surrounded with a mythology not supported by the facts.

Both oblivious and informed role-players regard Tomb of Horrors as a killer dungeon. Absolutely true. But it is a killer dungeon almost entirely bereft of monsters. Tomb of Horrors is a killer dungeon not because of fell beasts, but because players fail to attend to the clues provided via the boxed text and module illustrations.

In the module's introductory paragraphs, Gary Gygax has this to say about the Tomb of Horrors:

"This is a thinking person's module. If your group is a hack and slay gathering, they will be unhappy! It is this writer's belief that brainwork is good for all players, and they will certainly benefit from playing this module, for individual levels of skill will be improved by reasoning and experience. If you regularly pose problems to be solved by brains and not brawn, your players will find this module immediately to their liking."

The uninitiated often assume that only uber-powerful characters, loaded to the rafters with magic weapons, items, spells, and skills, can last for more than a few seconds in, and successfully navigate through, the Tomb of Horrors. The truth is that it is not magic and CHARACTER skill that is needed to complete this module: rather, it is PLAYER skill. You get no perception checks. No daily powers. No pushes, pulls, marks and combat synergies. Just good old-fashioned player cleverness and problem-solving.

You can potentially complete the Tomb of Horrors without once engaging in combat, if you are careful and observant. Even the ultimate encounter with the Demi-Lich, Acererak, can be completed without a single spell thrown or weapon unslung:

"All that remains of Acererak are the dust of his bones and his skull resting in the far recesses of the [treasure] vault. If the treasure of the crypt is touched, the dust swirls into the air and forms a man-like shape. If the shape is ignored, it will dissipate in three rounds, for it can only advance and threaten, not harm....[however] if any character is so foolish as to touch the skull of the demi-lich, a terrible thing occurs..."

There is no need to kill the end boss guy in the Tomb of Horrors. In fact, if you choose to engage the skull of Acererak, you are more likely that not to be on the grinning-skull end of a Total Party Kill.

To defend the artificial nature of modern D&D mechanics and adventures, some have argued that the Tomb of Horrors is equally artificial, as the Tomb exists merely to be looted, just as modern adventures exist merely to award accolades and experience for monsters killed, quests completed, and synergies optimized. To argue thusly is to completely misunderstand what original and early versions of Dungeons and Dragons is about. Original Dungeons and Dragons was designed to allow players to emulate the sword & sorcery fiction genre, without a script. There is no predetermined plot in the Tomb of Horrors; no story; no lofty goals. Only those created at the game table by free agents (players and DM alike), rather than ones foisted upon the participants by the adventure's author.

As for the metagame argument that Tomb of Horrors exists for the sole purpose of being looted, that is also true. In early versions of Dungeons and Dragons, experience is earned primarily through the recovery of treasure. Just like the characters in sword & sorcery literature, those characters are no heroes: they are mercenaries and grave-robbers. Their motivation for entering the Tomb of Horrors is wholly transparent. They are looking for loot, and have heard that it can be found in Acererak's Tomb.

Eye Contact Is Important

This is the "other" reason why eye contact is important: the players in your Dungeons and Dragons game are relying on you to deliver the critical parts of the adventure environment. The visual (non-verbal) feedback you gather from the players is crucial in ensuring you are communicating your adventure environment clearly.

If you are looking at something other than their eyes (i'm referring here to the boxed text, folks) you're probably missing some important information.

Boxed text has always been a bugaboo of mine: I don't like when it is read to me. First, I can read it faster that you can say it, so just hand me the text and i'll read the damn thing myself. Second, the delivery is often mediocre, so I tend to tune out while it's being read. Third, boxed text sometimes delivers information that is superfluous to the encounter, so you just wasted my time and yours. Fourth, the reading of prepared text seems artificial and therefore interferes with player immersion.

I disagree with those who think that information about the environment must be pried from the DM. The DM acts as your eyes, ears, and rest of your senses. Therefore, when the players first enter an important area, any information that is easily noted (particularly if it is relevant to the area or encounter) should be immediately and clearly revealed. Again, eye contact is important here: the players will give you non-verbal feedback as to which parts of your delivery were processed and which parts were not. I'm never shy to repeat something, if I don't think the players processed that information, the first time around.

It is trite to say that people only hear 20% of what they are told. This axiom applies when a great deal of (or very complicated) information is supplied. That is, the more information you communicate, in a continuous stream, the more difficult it is for the receiver to keep all of that information in the forefront of their mind, and sort out the extraneous from the important. That's another reason why I dislike boxed text. The players sit there, passively, while the DM reads, and reads, and reads, and reads. Without eye contact, you can't tell when the players are beginning to tune you out.

When drawing dungeons, outdoor environments and other adventure locations, my preference is to include little bits of one or two-word reference text, and small icons representing certain features, on the map. This allows me to quickly confirm critical details, so as to spend as little time as possible looking down at my papers, and as much time as possible looking at the players. That way, I can easily assess whether I have successfully communicated the environment, and anticipate what additional information is needed to help the players navigate the adventure.

Diablo: Claustrophobia And Fear

I was on hiatus from Dungeons and Dragons during the 1990's, so I was only vaguely aware of the TSR death-spiral, ascent of Magic: the Gathering, and eventual sale of TSR to Wizards of the Coast.

Most of my game-time was filled with computer games, my favorite being the original Diablo, released sometime around 1997.

This game scared the crap out of me. I seem to recall that the backstory was revealed intermittently throughout the game, and so for me it was a game of discovery, albeit a rather bloody, monster-laden one. I loved that there were dark shadows around the edges of the screen, and that the music instilled a sense of dread, horror and foreboding. The game-play was very claustrophobia-inducing.

I never got into Diablo II. Some of the mystery of the original Diablo was lost. It may have been the different music, or the fact that you knew what to expect, having played the original Diablo, but Diablo II didn't give me the pulse-pounding experience of fear that I got from the original game.

How does Diablo relate to old-school gaming? Like Diablo, part of the fun of role-playing games is not knowing what is going on, having incomplete information, not knowing if the monster is killable or not, and not knowing whether or not you will survive.

Red Box Calgary - Inspirational Art

Pat, another Calgarian, and the blogger behind Ode To Black Dougal, also has a little site called Red Box Calgary. The purpose of that site is to promote B/X Dungeons & Dragons games in Calgary, an objective I heartily endorse. He has proposed that we start up a new B/X campaign this Fall.

One suggested setting for that upcoming B/X campaign are the dank and horror-filled catacombs, crypts and tunnels beneath an ancient, sprawling and corrupt city. This setting possesses a certain appeal to me, as I am currently reading several of Jack Vance's The Dying Earth novels, and that setting reminds me of Kaiin, a crumbling city, whose abandoned outskirts and underground tunnels hold mysteries and danger. The idea behind the campaign is that the DM duties will rotate amongst the participants. If the other participants were up for it, that would allow each of them to develop their own portions of a shared world, and link them all together in a more-or-less coherent framework.

Another option is to create a Caves Of Chaos styled campaign, where each DM takes one of the cave entrances in a box canyon or valley, and develops it, allowing for later linkages between the complexes. The above art is inspiration for the later suggestion. The art is by Michael Komark, and is from the D&D 3.5 Players Handbook II.

LotFP Weird Fantasy RPG: Rules Review

In my estimation, Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing is yet more proof that there is still life in the original Dungeons & Dragons ruleset. Within Weird RPG's 48 page rulebook, James Raggi has married the OD&D ruleset with weird tropes and his own particular brand of lunacy, to create a game that feels like OD&D, yet is also vaguely unsettling and unfamiliar.

Right off the bat, Weird RPG re-arranges our familiar six prime abilities and places them in alpha order (Charisma, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Strength and Wisdom), making us re-think our assumptions about the relative importance of each ability. Abilities are generated with six 3d6 throws, in ability-order, and Weird RPG employs the traditional B/X ability modifiers, ranging from -3 to +3. Weird RPG considers your character unsuitable for play if the sum of your ability modifiers is less than 0.

Another somewhat unconventional choice: no experience-bonuses for high prime requisites. In fact, no prime requisites at all. While you have the standard four classes (Fighter, Magic User, Cleric and Thief/Specialist) and demi-humans (Dwarf, Elf and Halfling), none appear to need any minimum ability score to be playable. So a Fighter or Dwarf with 8 Strength is possible.

The Fighter (and I presume Dwarf and Elf, though it is not explicitly stated) are the only characters who can improve in combat ability. This is a marked departure from OD&D where all classes improve in combat, albeit at different rates, but one that I do not strongly disagree with, since Fighters in Weird RPG no longer possess the ability to inflict multiple attacks on multiple low-level monsters. This rule change certainly encourages the Clerics and Magic Users to focus on their strength, spell-casting.

The re-imagined Thief, named the Specialist in Weird RPG, uses a novel mechanic to resolve the traditional thief skills. A d6 system has been instituted, with each specialist skill converted to a certain chance in 6 of succeeding at a task, whether it be picking locks, finding traps or climbing walls. As the character advances in level, the players spread an additional 2 pips between all of the specialist skills, gradually increasing them over time.

Weird RPG uses a three alignment system (Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic) but assumes that most characters (other than Magic Users and Elves who both tend towards Chaos) will fall in the Neutral camp.

The Starting Equipment section occasionally slips into Gygaxian excess. For those who want to get on with playing, the Weapons section is mercifully short: most weapons are smartly grouped into four classes, of minor, small, medium and great weapons, with each weapon within the class priced the same and inflicting the same damage. No more min-maxing based on cost and the best damage within a given class! And nine specific weapons possess additional characteristics, with each profiled in its own paragraph. Sadly, the much-maligned d12 is once again left out in the cold, as weapons do anywhere from a d3 to d10 damage.

On the other end of the Gygaxian-excess scale, there are nearly 70 miscellaneous equipment items, 17 unique ship types, 14 food items, and four sizes of tents. Since I am a fan of Gygaxian excess, I felt like Scrooge McDuck rolling around in his vault of treasure when I looked at those item lists. The relative pricing of items is always a tricky business, and depending on how you approach your game economics, you may want to fiddle with Raggi's prices. In Weird RPG, livestock is priced at 50 gp a head, while a riding horse is 15 times that, at 750 gp. A warhorse comes in at 7,500 gp.

Weird RPG has nine pages of adventuring rules, such as opening doors, foraging and hunting, the effects of disease and falling, light and vision, the passage of time, and so on. Some interesting insights and approaches can be found in these pages. Of particular interest to me was Raggi's approach to encumbrance. Rather than tracking weight, you simply track number of items, with each 5 items moving you up to the next level of encumbrance. While i'm not sure that I am completely satisfied with this approach, it is a novel and simple way to handle the issue.

Considering that Weird RPG includes 17 unique ship types, it is only fitting that it should also have its own set of Maritime adventure rules. Finding a way to boilerplate subsystems like maritime adventures and combat to a role-playing game has always been a challenge for RPG designers. Weird RPG provides its own travel, water-bourne chases, combat, damage and boarding rules. I'd be tempted, instead, to find a board or hex-and-chit game and simulate ship-to-ship combats and chases that way, but the maritime rules provided in Wierd RPG will certainly fit the bill.

What better way to pay homage to OD&D, than to include a comprehensive and detailed section on retainers? You will find four pages of rules and information on hiring and using retainers. This is one of my favorite sections of the book, if only because it revels in more Gygaxian excess, with 24 different types of retainers, along with rules for determining their upkeep, maintenance and loyalty.

Weird RPG also includes rules for purchasing and maintaining property and investments. The mechanics are relatively straight-forward, because, let's face it, its more interesting to go adventuring than paying attention to how well your estate is doing.

Finally, we reach the section on Combat. Weird RPG has a very rules-light combat system, but gives you several interesting options, such as pressing (a vigorous attack that costs you AC to employ), holding (waiting to see what the other side does before intervening) and parrying (where you gain an AC bonus but lose any chance of hitting your opponent). I presume your Strength modifier can be used for both a bonus to your chance to hit and added to the damage you inflict on your opponent, but I had difficulty finding the reference to same.

The last page of the Weird RPG rulesbook provides you with instructions on how to complete your character sheet. The instructions are useful, even to old-hands like me, and I marvel at how effectively the character sheet was laid out.

Overall, I am very impressed with the Weird RPG ruleset. I did not find any rules that seemed particularly jarring or out of place: they all seemed to fit together rather well. And the art is in keeping with the weird theme of the game.

Lamentations Of The Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Role-Playing

I had a pleasant surprise waiting for me in the mailbox on Friday. James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing game! With my wife away on a business trip for the weekend, i'm only, now, getting a chance to open up the box and have a look at its contents.

Here's the box, which is about the same size as the original OD&D collectors edition boxed set, or the Swords & Wizardry boxed set. Actually, it appears to be about a 1/4" shorter and an 1/8" wider than those OD&D and S&W boxes, presumably to accommodate booklets printed on European A4 or A5 paper, rather than the North American letter or booklet-sized paper.

And here are the Referee and Rules booklets. All of the basic rules you need to play Weird RPG are in the Rules booklet, while the Referee booklet contains advice on running a campaign. For the next printing, James may want to white-line the text at the bottom of front-covers, or print the text in white, to make it easier to read. The box itself is a clamshell style with corner tabs to keep the lid secure, rather than separate box and lid.

The compete contents of the Weird RPG boxed set is pictured above (not pictured is a small pencil and set of mini-dice that also come with this boxed set). The box is crammed full of booklets and materials. There are four booklets (Rules, Referee, Magic and Tutorial) an introductory adventure, sample campaign world, a "recommended reading" booklet, character record sheets, double-sided graph and hex paper, open game licence and adverts for Dragonsfoot and Expeditious Retreat Press. The best recent analogy I can use to describe this boxed set is that it is a weird version of the Swords & Wizardry boxed set, on steroids. At 60 Euros, I paid about twice for the Weird RPG boxed set as I did for the S&W Whitebox set, but i'm getting at least twice the value. I love my S&W boxed sets (I bought two sets, plus several extra Character booklets), but, to give you an example of the additional value, the Character booklet for S&W is 24 pages; the Rules booklet for Weird RFP is twice that, at 48 pages.

Similar to the S&W boxed set, Weird RPG has a separate Magic booklet. I like this publishing choice, as it permits the Referee to decide whether or not the Magic booklet will be available to the players. My choice would be to keep this booklet out of the hands of the players, and thus maintain some mystery regarding how magic operates. The Magic booklet contains all of the standard clerical and magical spells you would find in an old-school RPG: missing is a list and description of illusionist spells, but perhaps James has decided to exclude the illusionist from the Weird RPG game. Again, the word "Magic" at the bottom of the booklet could have been white-lined, to improve legibility.

The addition of a Tutorial booklet is an interesting feature of Weird RPG. It assumes that the game will be marketed to and purchased by those unfamiliar with, or uninitiated into, the world of paper and pencil role playing games. I applaud James' optimism, and hope that Weird RPG does indeed attract new players to the traditional PnP RPG hobby. But this Tutorial booklet is also valuable to those of us who are already well-acquainted with RPGs, as it provides some interesting insight into how James sees the role-playing game process occurring.

The Weird RPG boxed set also included an introductory booklet-sized adventure, Tower of the Stargazer. Stargazer is a 16-page adventure booklet, with a separate, unstapled cover, with the maps printed on the cover's interior, similar to those early TSR modules. While Stargazer is the same number of pages as another excellent introductory adventure, found in the S&W boxed set, The Vile Worm of the Eldritch Oak, Stargazer has 26 detailed locations, while Vile Worm has less than a half-dozen. Stargazer looks like another excellent adventure, in the unique style of James Raggi: this can be a profitable adventure for the cautious and attentive, but not everything in the tower is meant to be touched or taken.

A complete wilderness adventure framework is also provided in the Weird RPG boxed set, and is appropriately entitled Weird New World. Like Stargazer, Weird World had been published as a separate 28-page booklet and unstapled cover, although the cover folds out to reveal a 4-page wilderness map featuring an arctic climate. Weird World is broadly designed in the sandbox style: James Raggi has designed and chronicled a few adventure locations to get you started, but the world is large enough that the Referee and players can participate in a long-running wilderness hex-crawl without ever leaving the map.

Another pleasant surprise: James' version of Appendix N, entitled "recommended reading." Among those appearing on James' list of recommended authors are Clive Barker, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Clark Ashton Smith, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jack Vance, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells. Each author receives a detailed biography by a guest biographer.

I can honestly say that this is the closest anyone has come to publishing my dream old-school boxed set. Once I have a chance to delve deeper into the Weird RPG booklets and supplementary material, I will provide some additional comments.

Why OSR At All?

Someone asked the above question at theRPGSite.

I don't usually visit the the various gaming forums (as examples, the above, along with the Knights & Knaves Alehouse and Dragonsfoot) as i'm not really looking to debate the merits of various game systems: I started my blog to write about what interests me, and i'm thrilled (and consider it a bonus) when visitors share their comments. My visit to theRPGSite was prompted by a post on RPG Blog II, responding to criticisms of old-school gaming, old-school bloggers, and the explosion of old-school blog-sites in general. I have certain theories about the real motivation behind those criticisms, which I may end up sharing if it seems worthwhile.

In answering the above question, one of the commenters, Kyle Aaron, provided the following response, which I thought sufficiently succinct to warrant repeating here.

I dunno about being a member of any [Old School] movement, that's a bit pretentious.

All I know is, what I like and dislike. I like simple systems, short cheap books with black and white art, rules and setting descriptions, and useful example characters. And charts.

I like simple systems because most players are too lazy to learn complex systems, and it gets tedious when I as GM have to explain it to them during a game session. I like simple systems because when there aren't rules for everything you get to use your imagination, I hate it when you're in a game session and you say, "I do X," and the GM says, "ah, there's a rule for that... your skill... that's -3, and..." and half an hour later you roll and fail.

I like short cheap books with black and white art, I don't like big expensive chunky glossy magazine-style books.

I like rules and setting descriptions, I don't like flavour fic.

I like example characters the players could have in their first session, not example characters that can't be built within the rules and are just Mary Sues for one of the game writers.

I like charts which give us things to inspire character creation or setting events, so the dice can help our creativity.

And I like snacks. Snacks are important. Some call this Old School. I call it "what I like."

Old-School Gaming: Player vs. Character Skill

In the past, there's been a great deal of speculation in the blogosphere about what makes a roleplaying game experience "old-school". For many, one of the differentiating features of an old-school game is the emphasis on player rather than character skill. In addition to my own cursory remarks on this subject, you can find a couple of other posts on this topic here and here.

I have been giving this matter more thought, as a result of my recent purchase of Dragon Age RPG. On the back cover of the Dragon Age RPG boxed set (for levels 1-5), they make the following, bold pronouncement:

"Welcome to Dragon Age, a roleplaying game of dark fantasy adventure for 2-6 players, age 14 and up ... This is old-school roleplaying, where the story is YOURS to create and the action is driven by YOUR imagination.”

Sometime over the next several days, I will try to share my thoughts on whether Dragon Age RPG delivers on its promise of old-school roleplaying. For now, I want to make a few comments about player vs. character skill.

Many will agree that reliance on Player Skill for problem-resolution is a defining feature of old-school play. By ‘Player Skill’ I mean that the players provide a description of the action they are taking, the method of problem-solving they are using, or they actually roleplay the encounter, and the referee bases the results on how convincing the player’s description was. Sometimes the referee will make an on-the-spot determination that the attempt succeeded, and other times, a probability of success will be estimated and the player will roll to see if they succeeded.

‘Character Skill’, on the other hand, almost always revolves around the rolling of dice, and comparing the result of that dice-roll to a target number related to a specific skill, which is often written on the character sheet.

It can be argued that, even in its earliest iterations, Dungeons and Dragons included Character Skills. For example, opening doors, finding secret doors and listening at doors were three Character Skills, all based on dice-rolls. But before someone grabs that bit of ephemera to demonstrate that D&D has always been a character-skill based system, it should be understood that those skills were universal: any character could attempt any of those actions. When I think of ‘Character Skill’ systems, they have the added feature of specialization: a character can only attempt an action if they have the related skill (some character-skill based RPGs allow you to attempt an unskilled action, but all of those systems still anticipate that a dice-roll will be made to determine your success).

One of the criticisms of old-school play, and particularly in its reliance on Player Skill, is that it disadvantages those who are not ‘quick on their feet’, are unconvincing speakers, or are shy, and that Player Skill is susceptible to referee fiat. Those criticisms are justified, to the extent that, in the past, there were some mediocre referees who were unable to perform their roles as independent arbiters. Among other benefits, Character Skill systems were seen as the panacea to bad DMing: those systems took power out of the hands of those bad DMs, and allowed the players to roll dice to see if they succeeded, rather than having to describe their actions or roleplay an encounter, and depend on the judgment of the referee to determine their success.

And thus was born the comparison between “roll-playing” and “role-playing”.

My preferences clearly lean towards Player Skill, but I understand why some are uncomfortable with that style of play: some have had bad experiences with arbitrary or capricious DMs; others enjoy designing characters as much as they enjoy playing the game; some find comfort and meaning in system-mastery that accompanies many character skill systems; still others prefer the additional certainty that character skill-based systems provide. I’m sure there are many other reasons to prefer character skill-based systems.

I prefer Player Skill systems, because they seem to provide the most opportunity for immersive role-playing. But that is scary for many people (including me) because it requires a measure of vulnerability that can be quite uncomfortable.

As much as I prefer Player Skill, though, one of the problems with Player Skill is its lack of applicability to one significant part of fantasy roleplaying games: combat.

To my knowledge, there has never been any thorough attempt to create a combat system based on Player Skill. I’m not a poker player, so i’m speaking through my hat here, but I imagine a good Player Skill combat system would be a bit like playing poker – knowledge of your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, mannerisms and tell-tale clues would translate into your improved ability to defeat them in combat.

There is a measure of player skill currently involved in D&D combat. For example, knowing to use blunt weapons against skeletons, silver weapons against vampires and werewolves, or magical weapons against other creatures. But much of that seeming player skill is really system-mastery, not player deduction. I would love to use a combat system that employs Player Skill, in a meaningful way, to determine success in battle.

Review: Spellcraft and Swordplay

A tip of the hat to Jason Vey, the author of Spellcraft and Swordplay (S&S). In that game, he both asks, and attempts to answer the question, "what if Dungeons and Dragons had developed from the Chainmail:rules for medieval miniatures rule-set?"

Few old-schoolers are brave (or foolhardy) enough to try their hand at parsing and restating Chainmail. There are good reasons to avoid that morass. Chainmail includes at least three confusing, competing and irreconcilable matrices for resolving battles: one for mass combat, another for man-to-man combat, and a third for fantastic combat. Chainmail includes contradictory and poorly-written rules. It's mass-combat morale system is needlessly complicated. It even fails to properly define the six major classes of mass-combatants.

I give kudos, then, to Mr. Vey, for attempting the near-impossible. He tries to rescue much of the essence of Chainmail's man-to-man combat system, by bolting it onto a customized D&D-esque role-playing game rule-set.

In addition, Mr. Vey published one iteration of his re-imagined game in a three-booklet format, with rules collected in separate Character, Combat and Creatures booklets. I don't know whether that three-booklet version is still available, but it is a format to my liking, as I prefer to keep the rules, for the moving parts, out of the hands of the players.

While rescuing those Chainmail rules, for employment in his rule-set, Mr. Vey has also chosen to stray somewhat from the original Dungeons and Dragons canon. That choice may have been made, simply to meet certain requirements of the OGL. Changes may also have been made to "improve" or address deficiencies of the original D&D rules. Had I been advising Mr. Vey, I might have suggested keeping a tight rein on any changes, other than for OGL reasons, and adding those as optional rules to the game.

The material in the S&S booklet on Characters approximates the rules found in other D&D rule-books. You have your standard 6 abilities. The four standard classes (F,M,T,C) are there. Hit points are generated by d6 dice-rolls, with pips added to, or subtracted from, your hit-points, based on the character's class. You also have the four standard races.

However, some of the S&S character rules differ, often in unusual ways. For example, Greyhawk's ‘exceptional strength for Fighters’ rule has been included, but exceptional strength is generated by adding a d6-1 roll to any strength of 18. A ‘weapon mastery for Fighters’ rule has also been added, as a standard rule. Magic user spells are acquired by rolling a d3 and adding that number of spells to your repertoire, at even-numbered levels. And the Clerical power to turn undead is limited to once per day, with the undead making morale checks, rather that the Cleric employing the Undead turning table, found in the original D&D rules.

On the other hand, spell-casting rules, from the original Chainmail game, have made their way into the S&S Character booklet. A prime example of this is the spell-success table: as in Chainmail, any time a magic-user casts a spell, she must roll to see if the spell goes into effect immediately, is delayed by one round, or fails utterly. An appropriate nod to Chainmail.

Another Chainmail (and original D&D) rule appearing in S&S: multiple attacks for player characters. Each character has a number of attacks, closely associated with her level. For example, in both S&S and original D&D, they treat a 2nd level Fighter as two regular combatants, for purposes of attacking, using the Chainmail mass-combat table, and both also provide a +1 bonus to her rolls.

Moving on to the S&S Combat booklet, it employs, whole-cloth, the Chainmail man-to-man combat tables. In doing so, Mr. Vey has chosen to ignore the other two (competing) Chainmail combat matrices – the mass-combat and fantastic combat tables. I am sympathetic to that choice, to the extent that the three tables are largely irreconcilable. For example, on the Chainmail mass-combat table, an armored footman has a 16% chance of wounding another armored footman. Now have those same two armored footman (wearing Platemail and wielding morningstars) face off, using the man-to-man combat tables. Suddenly their chances of wounding have increased to 42%.

Similarly, exclusive employment of the man-to-man combat tables allows S&S to avoid the Chainmail ‘fantastic combat’ tables, which preclude Fighters, below 3rd level, from wounding any fantastic creature. Employing the man-to-man combat table, instead, allows 1st and 2nd level players to wound such fantastic monsters as Ogres, Giant insects and Cockatrices. In dispensing with the fantastic combat table, S&S uses a negative modifier to attack rolls instead, to make some fantastic creatures more difficult to hit.

Though I understand the decision to employ only the man-to-man combat table, I think Mr. Vey missed an opportunity to try his hand at reconciling those three combat tables (as impossible as that might appear).

As for the other combat features of S&S, there are several house-rules and modern approaches that have made their way into this rule-set: (limited) exploding dice on critical hits; two dice (use the highest) for two-handed weapon damage; individual initiative. Nothing terribly objectionable here, and some of it is embraced in many house-ruled old-school D&D campaigns. But those could have been added as optional rules, thus maintaining the S&S rules as a Chainmail/OD&D amalgam while still providing optional rules for those who wished to try them out.

S&S also dispenses with the gp = xp rule. Another unusual choice, given the source material, though not too surprising, given that Mr. Vey opines: “the vast majority of fantasy gaming resolves around battles. Swords flashing. Spells blazing, killing things and taking their stuff. That’s what this type of play is geared towards.” Experience is instead doled out for killing monsters, overcoming challenges, and good role-play. Not insignificant achievements, but not entirely in keeping with the exploration and treasure-hunting goals of original D&D.

There are many other features of Chainmail that made their way into S&S. Their inclusion makes this an interesting rule-set to use, for those who would like to see how the game would have played, had Chainmail been a greater influence on the development of D&D. If that is something that interests you, check out Spellcraft and Swordplay.

Replacing Hit Points With Wounds

I created this table several months ago, for some reason. Perhaps I was suffering from a particularly nasty flu at the time. Delirium can precipitate odd behaviours, such as creating the above table.

This table was supposed to convert hit points to wounds. The idea was that instead of rolling for hit points, and marking damage from attacks against those hit points, each player would have a certain number of wound points. One wound point would equal one successful attack.

Therefore, there would be no rolling for how many hit points of damage a character could take: instead, if a monster successfully attacked a character, she will take one wound. The number of wounds a character could take is dependent on the character's constitution and level. For example, a 1st level Magic-User with a 3 constitution will start with 1 wound. A 1st Level Fighter with an 18 constitution will start with 3 wounds. As the characters go up in level, their maximum wounds will increase.

I'm sure there is a good use for this table. Off-hand, i'm not quite sure what that is.

Perhaps I was reading Chainmail at the time. In Chainmail, Heroes can take no more than 3 wounds simultaneously without dying, while Superheroes can take no more than 7. I may have been "inspired" by that reference to Heroes and Superheroes, in creating this fever-induced table.

Do you think the beginnings of another fantasy heart-breaker are in there somewhere?

Chainmail Cavalry Combat

Several months ago, I expressed my dissatisfaction with the Dungeons and Dragons Cavalry rules. At the time of my first post, I noted that recent iterations of D&D have little, if anything, in the way of true Cavalry combat rules, to the point where there is little advantage to employing mounts, other than as beasts of burden.

I recently took advantage of "Read An RPG In Public" week, to read my copy of "Chainmail: rules for medieval miniatures" on the train, as I travelled between work and home. As most of you are aware, Chainmail was the default combat system for original Dungeons and Dragons (although an optional "d20" combat system was also provided in the OD&D rulebooks, for those without access to Chainmail).

In reviewing the combat tables in Chainmail, I was reminded of just how much more effective Cavalry was considered to be, in that set of wargaming rules. The Chainmail combat tables themselves are based on different numbers of six-sided dice and required target numbers for a successful attack. I have converted those dice probabilities into percentages, and displayed them in the above table. I am fairly confident in my math, but if any of my calculations are wrong, i'm sure someone will point those out to me.

As you can see, in the Chainmail rules, Cavalry is very dangerous. Take a matchup between a Heavy Horse (your typical Mounted Knight) and an Armored Footman (a well-armored Fighter). Based on the Chainmail rules, the Fighter has a 6% chance of killing the Knight. On the other hand, the Knight has a 55% chance of killing the Fighter.

Pity the Light Foot (your typical peasant militia) being pitted against a group of Armored Knights: the militia is given a 4% probability of killing the Knight, while the Knight mows through the militia 80% of the time.

Using the Chainmail combat tables for wilderness encounters would certainly change a player's view on the attractiveness of obtaining mounts.

Ignorant Players

No, this is not a post about how terrible some old-school Dungeons and Dragons players are. In fact, TO A PERSON, old-school D&D players (and DMs) are a fine, intelligent, imaginative, pleasant, and humorous lot, who just want to enjoy an occasional evening of casual role-playing.

This post is about one of my assumed tenets of old-school play, one that has gotten short shrift in the blogoverse: players should be largely ignorant of the physics of the game world. That is to say, they should have only the information they need to properly interact with the world.

For example, Players do not need to know that a falling body accelerates at a speed of 9.81 m/s2. They don't even need to know that falling damage in my game world is a flat 1d6 for every 10' fallen. All they need to know is that if they fall a distance of 10' or more, they will be injured, and the farther they fall, the more damage they will take. If the players begin with first-level characters, I should tell them that a fall of even 10' is likely fatal.

I consider this tenet of old-school play to be applicable to magical physics as well: the effect and potency of new magic is best revealed "in play", rather than at the moment the player obtains a new magic item or spell. For example, the bonus of a +1 sword should be revealed only when the character first uses it in combat. Similarly, the full impact of a "new" magic spell should only be revealed the first time it is used.

Some old-school DMs like to provide information about their assumed physics to the players. This is particularly true when it comes to magic items and spells. That magic spells appear in every Players Manual makes it difficult to manage this particular tenet and avoid player knowledge of the effects of those spells. I also appreciate that there is a certain convenience in a more forthcoming approach, as you can then assign the players the responsibility to manage the in-game effects of those physics, rather than having those duties fall on the shoulders of the DM.

I titled this post "Ignorant Players." Part of the fun of being a player is in facing the unknown -- being ignorant of the larger world in which you adventure. Being ignorant is fun, because there is great satisfaction in ferreting-out the secret machinations of your antagonists, discovering the secret passage to the treasure trove, facing and defeating unfamiliar foes, and solving the riddle above the entrance to the Dwarven mine.

That which is freely given is often unappreciated.

I sign off with a little piece of wisdom from the 1983 Mentzer Dungeon Master's Rulebook.

"For now, if you only wish to play and not run games, then -- DO NOT READ THIS (DUNGEON MASTERS) BOOKLET. This booklet contains information for the Dungeon Master. You will have less fun playing if you learn the information ahead of time! A big part of the game is the mystery and excitement that comes from not knowing all the answers."

B/X Dungeons And Dragons Character

So, several days ago I rolled up a character for P_Armstrong's face-to-face B/X Dungeons and Dragons campaign (Pat, I hope pre-rolling a character is okay!)!

The B/X campaign is scheduled to kick off on Sunday, February 28, at 11 a.m. at The Sentry Box, the largest and oldest FLGS in Calgary. On the Calgary Red Box site, several of us have been talking about exploring that most venerable and beloved old-school adventure site, B2, Keep On The Borderlands. There are currently four participants, but i'm sure Pat would be pleased to have even more players around the table: low-level D&D adventures are dangerous and fatal, and there is strength in numbers, both for combat, and in bluffing the monsters into giving you their treasure in exchange for their lives. Visit the Calgary Red Box site and/or visit Pat's blog, Ode To Black Dougal, if you want to get back into old-school gaming or are interested in seeing what all the fuss is about!

I rolled up a Magic-user, and called him Castor Brandlestix. Above is the character sheet that I used to record the information. Character creation took me about seven minutes, between rolling up his stats, buying his equipment, and picking his spell. Now i'm ready for adventure!

I am going to roll up three men-at-arms as well, and bring them to the game. That way, if my character falls in combat, I will have several replacement characters to choose from!

Edit - here is one of the three men-at-arms that I created: Brother Maynard, a Cleric. The other two, Bors and Ironside, are fighting-men.