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.

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!

In Search Of Canon

WOTC's November 19, 2013 release of the re-mastered Original Dungeons and Dragons white box has been on my mind of late. 

Two books, which some consider so-called OD&D canon, were casualties in that release, having never made the final cut: Chainmail and Swords & Spells.  Tis a shame, since Chainmail germinated, and provided the original mass and heroic combat rules to, Dungeons and Dragons, and Swords & Spells was the progeny of Chainmail, filling the same role in OD&D, in updated fashion.

It may be that Chainmail's omission from the re-mastered release resulted from lingering doubts over copyright ownership.  But that rejection hardly seems plausible in the case of Swords & Spells, coming after the original LBB's and first four supplements, and undeniably a property of Gygax and TSR. 

Few would argue S&S is as useful as Chainmail, or, for that matter, the other supplements that were included in the re-master and release.  Still, the omission of both Chainmail and S&S reminds me of the scene from The Da Vinci Code, where, at the Council Of Nicea, the Christians debate and resolve which of the theological positions and gospels will be included in the Bible.  S&S should have been included, despite its lesser popularity and questionable rules-heft, if, for nothing else, historical value.

I'm no slave to so-called canon, of course.  I consider most any publication released during that initial blossoming of role-playing creativity a worthy addition to the game, just as I see modern attempts to graft to and restyle the original and reimagined rule-sets laudable. 

But there is, you must admit, something particularly charming and magical about the earliest D&D-esque publications, unstructured and divergent and un-self conscious.  Publications like the Arduin Grimoires.  Or the Little Soldier Games booklets. 

LSG's 1977 The Book Of Sorcery, authored by Dan Bress and Ed Konstant, was one of several non-canon OD&D sources that were whole-heartedly adopted as canon, at least among the role-players with whom I was acquainted. 

In the modern nomenclature, The BOS would be styled as fluff, rather than crunch, since BOS was rules-light, but flavour and idea-heavy.  There were rules, like the one below, enumerating the consequences of mis-cast spells, but much of The BOS was like the passage above, providing interesting flavour to the dangerous art of spell casting.

The early days of D&D were punctuated by the promotion of all manner of magical items and role-playing approaches.  The BOS pitched its own brand of magic item creation, as evidenced by the following passages, for communing instruments, rings of invisibility and enchanted swords.

I liked The BOS, Arduin Grimoires, and other non-canon D&D books as much for the art as the text.  Even now, I find the art in The BOS particularly creepy, and because it was by artists other than those in the TSR stable, the art brought a different esthetic to our game.

The BOS, and it's sister book, the Book Of Demons, contained quite a few images of demons and undead in unlikely situations and poses.  That art fostered a rather grim mood and lent itself to gritty, horror-filled D&D games.

 

 

One of the features of those old, non-canon D&D books was their similar shape and binding to that of the TSR publications.  The Arduin Grimoires and Little Soldier Games books were the same size as the TSR books, and fit conveniently within the White Box.  All the more reason to use all of them in your D&D games.

 

It's encouraging to see WOTC's issuance of re-mastered copies of the original D&D books, despite the regrettable absence of Chainmail and S&S.  And doubly encouraging is the recent, parallel re-publication of some of the non-canon third-party materials.  Hopefully modern and nostalgic gamers will discover those third-party materials and incorporate them into their re-discovery of Original D&D.

Armor And Shields Revisited

Rather than including shields as part of a character's Armor Class, they can be used to deflect a number of successful attacks, depending on the size of the shield.  The table, above, provides the various types of armor available in the game.  When an attacker makes a successful attack, the defender can attempt to use his shield to deflect the blow.  There is a 50% chance that a shield deflection attempt will be successful.

The number of opportunities to deflect attacks is related to the size of the shield.  A player can try to use their Buckler to deflect a maximum of one attack per combat round.  A Round shield can be used to deflect attacks twice per combat round, and so on.  Of course, the shield can only be used in this way if the attack comes from the front or side, and the character is not surprised.

Changing shields to work, as described above, makes the shield a much more powerful addition to a character's equipment.

Microgames: The Castle by Mayfair Games

Among microgames, those microgames published by Mayfair Games are the most obscure. 

Before the microgame market went bust, Mayfair Games published four microgames (Transylvania, Space Empires, I.C.B.M. and The Castle). 

I have already reviewed Transylvania, a fun little game of vampires and angry villagers.  The Castle, designed by Neil Zimmerer, has a style similar to Transylvania, with minimalist rules and and stylized counters. While Mayfair Games' The Castle shares some superficial similarities with SPI's Deathmaze and TFG's  Valkenburg Castle, two other excellent fantasy microgames, there are some interesting differences. 

The premise of The Castle is outlined above.  This microgame is basically a dungeon-crawl through a castle.  The goal: rescuing and escaping with the princess in order to collect a 1,000 gold piece reward.  This microgame can be played solitaire or competitively.

Like most Mayfair Games microgames, the ruleset is abbreviated.  The Castle rulebook is a slim volume of 8 digest-sized pages, but contains all the rules you need to play this game.

The Castle employs a fold-up mapboard.  The mapboard includes hallways, doors and rooms, through which the characters will travel.  At the top of the mapboard are tables, representing the combat abilities of the monsters appearing thoughout the map, with the associated damage those monsters inflict on the characters.

This microgame includes a sheet of counters, with the top row of counters representing the characters (Wizards, Clerics, Fighters and the Princess), gold counters representing treasure and items, and black counters representing monsters. 

Characters start with the number of hit points indicated on their counter:  6 for Wizards, 8 for Clerics, and 10 for Fighters. 

Monsters, too, start with the number of hit points on their counters: 2 for Bats, 3 for Goblins, 4 for Zombies, 6 for Gargoyles, and so on.

The gold treasure and black monster counters are turned face-down, and one of each is placed randomly in every room on the mapboard.  Thus, each room has a monster and treasure, but at the beginning of the game, you don't know what monsters and treasure occupy each room.

Your rescue attempt is complicated by the fact that the princess is being held in a locked cell.  In order to unlock the cell holding the princess, you must locate two of the six keys that are scattered amongst those face-down treasure counters. 

There are six keys, two of each of three types of keys: A, B, and Skeleton (S) keys.  You need a combination of those keys (AB, AS, BS, or SS) to unlock the cell holding the Princess.  Thus, this game is not simply about following the most direct route to the Princess, you must enter other rooms to locate those keys.

As you investigate the rooms of The Castle, you will encounter monsters.  This game employs a unique combat system: you roll one six-sided die, and that die roll determines the damage inflicted by both the character and the monster.

The number on the die roll represents how much damage the character inflicts upon the monster.  So if you roll a 5, you do 5 damage to the monster.  In order to determine how much damage the monster inflicts upon the character, you must consult the related monster table, printed on the mapboard, like the table above. 

In general, the lower your dice-roll, the more damage the monster will inflict.  For example, if you are battling the Behemoth and roll a 1, you inflict 1 damage to the Behemoth, while the Behemoth inflicts 3 damage on you.

Fatigue In The Magic Realm

August 23, 2009 is a date significant to me only because it was the day this blog was established. 

At that time, the stated purpose of this blog was to discuss several game systems:  Thomas Denmark's Dungeoneer; Metagaming's The Fantasy Trip; Dragon Warriors RPG; Dungeons and Dragons; and Avalon Hill's Magic Realm.

While I have ranged somewhat further afield, I don't think I have wholly neglected Magic Realm, particularly over the last several months.

Magic Realm has an innovative combat system that includes a system of recording combat fatigue. 

In Magic Realm, each character has 12 cardboard counters (called chits) that operate in many ways like DnD`s hit points.  For example, the above 12 chits are for the Black Knight (one of 16 available Magic Realm characters). 

Imagine that each of those carboard chits represent 1 hit point (more properly, a wound point, since each successful attack inflicted on a character results in a single wound).  So each character has 12 hit points. In addition to representing a hit point, each chit also has an ability attached to it, either a move, fight, spell or special ability.

The top row of Black Knight chits represent various moves that the Black Knight can make.  I have republished that first row of chits, below.

In the first row of Black Knight chits there is a medium move, with a speed of 4, which is somewhat fatiguing (a single effort-star).  The next chit is a medium move, with a speed of 5, which is easy, as it includes no effort-stars.  The third chit is a heavy move, with a speed of 4, which is very fatiguing (two effort-stars).

To use a DnD 4E analogy, think of those character chits as follows:  two effort-star chits represent daily powers; one effort-star chits represent encounter powers; and no effort-star chits represent at-will or utility powers.

Further consider that each round of Magic Realm combat is equivalent to a DnD 4E encounter. That means you can play a maximum of one effort-star per combat round (one encounter power) without penalty. 

However, if you want to play two effort-stars (a daily power, to continue the 4E analogy) you must set aside one of your single effort-star chits in payment for the fatigue you suffer in performing that fatiguing maneuver.

For example, the Black Knight may play the following combination of chits during the first Magic Realm combat round:

In this instance, the Black Knight has played a move chit with two effort-stars, thus suffering some fatigue.  However, the Black Knight still wants his Move H4** chit to be available for future combat rounds, so he sets aside another one of his single effort-star chits, in this case the one below:

As a result of the sacrifice of the Move M4* chit, the Black Knight now has 11, rather than 12 hit points remaining.  However, he still has access to the Move H4** chit (the Magic Realm equivalent of a DnD 4E daily power) for later re-use, as the Black Knight sacrificed an analogous encounter power chit to play the daily power chit.

During the second combat round, the Black Knight again decides to play two effort stars, this time in the form of two, single effort-star chits (the equivalent of two DnD 4E encounter powers):

Again, because the Black Knight plays two effort-stars, he must set aside another single effort-star chit to pay for the fatigue he has suffered.  Since he has two Fight M4* chits, he chooses to set one of those two aside to pay for the fatigue.  He does not need to use that particular chit, any chit with a single effort-star will do, to pay for the fatigue:

The Black Knight is now reduced to 10 hit points.  During the third combat round, the Black Knight decides to play only a single effort-star, as follows:

Since the Black Knight is allowed to play a single effort-star (single encounter power) each combat round without penalty, he suffers no fatigue this round.  Thus, the remaining 10 hit points continue to be available in the fourth combat round, during which he can again choose whether to suffer fatigue in exchange for playing a powerful Fight or Move chit.

Some Final Thoughts On Fatigue In DnD

I'm sensing more than a little exasperation from certain quarters regarding my plea for fatigue to be a recognized component of DnD combat.

For those "in the know", it will be plain that I'm no game designer.  I don't have the critical mind for it.  Nor the patience for endless stress-testing, to ensure a game component or system is sound.

I leave it the rest of you in the OSR community (the ones who possess real creativity and intelligence) to come up with novel solutions.

As mentioned earlier, hit points were re-purposed by Gygax to encapsulate many disparate elements of combat effectiveness, not to simply represent the capacity to absorb wounds.  Luck, fate, skill, endurance, willpower, concentration, and stamina are just a few elements encapsulated by the hit point pool, in addition to physical damage.  Despite that, very few, if any DnD, players utilize the hit point pool to its full potential.

In traditional DnD combat, the only way that your hit point pool can be diminished is if you absorb an attack from an opponent.  But it is acknowledged that this pool represents skill, endurance, concentration and strength of will, in addition to fate, luck (the avoidance of otherwise damaging blows) and capacity to absorb damage. 

If the hit point point pool represents skill and endurance, why can a player not exhaust some of that hit point pool to inflict additional damage on an opponent?  Effectively, the player would be expending some of their skill, and/or accepting some combat fatigue, in exchange for inflicting additional damage.

This sort of approach would not require any additional book-keeping, other than the book-keeping that every player already accepts, ie. tracking their remaining hit points.  It would also not contribute to that nay-sayer phantom, called "the death spiral," since the expenditure of the hit points would not affect the character's combat effectiveness, merely reduce her endurance (hit point) pool.

I leave it to brighter minds than mine to come up with a way to implement this, although off the top of my head, here is one approach.

During every round of combat, each player can declare, after a successful roll to hit, whether they wish to expend points from their hit point pool (become fatigued) in order to inflict additional damage.  The amount the player can expend from the character's hit point pool, in any round, is tied to the character's level and class. 

For example, Magic-users can expend a maximum of 1d4 hit points, per level, from their hit point pool.  So a 5th level Magic-user could expend a maximum of 5d4 hit points from her hit point pool.  In exchange for the assumption of that fatigue, she can inflict double the number of dice of extra damage. 

So if a 5th level Magic-User accepted 5d4 of hit points of fatigue from her hit point pool, she would inflict 10d4 of additional damage on her opponent.

Similarly, Thieves would use a d6, Clerics, a d8, and Fighters a d10.  In every instance, whatever number of dice was chosen (to a maximum of that character's level) for the assumption of fatigue to their hit point pool, twice that could be inflicted on one's opponent.

It should be obvious the potential effects of such a rule.  First, character heroics: that a character can "go down fighting" by selecting an assumption of fatigue damage that would take them to 0 hit points or below.  For example, a 5th level fighter, with only 8 hit points remaining, might select 5d10 of additional fatigue, in order to do 10d10 damage to her opponent, knowing that, while she might take out the monster, she will likely die in the attempt.

Second, there is a possibility that the number of hit points lost to fatigue will be greater than the damage inflicted.  That's the risk the player takes, in choosing to make this fatiguing attack.

Third, in order to make this sort of rule palatable to the players, the recovery of hit points needs to be increased.  I like the idea mentioned elsewhere of 1 hit point per round or per hour, rather than day, with, say higher recovery rates for sleeping, eating and drinking strong drinks.

That is a amateur's stab at the idea of combat fatigue.  I'm sure others have better approaches to this problem.  The point is, there is a way to recognize and account for combat fatigue, without adding significant complexity to DnD battles.

Combat Fatigue and the Failure of Gygax

Travolta:  That's how Ali took the title from Foreman.  He beat him with a rope-a-dope.  Don't you remember?
Slater:  I don't remember what day of the week it is.
Travolta:  Everybody thought Ali's arms had run out.  That he's running on empty.  But he's just setting Foreman up.  He's letting Foreman burn himself out.  And then, in the eighth round, here comes Ali; and poor George has nothing left.

-- Broken Arrow, 1996

Dungeons and Dragons does a lousy job of emulating combat fatigue.  And i'm not just talking about fourth edition.  We're talking every single edition. 

It would be tempting to blame Dave Arneson for the failure of DnD to emulate the effects of combat fatigue.  After all, he is the author of the hit point concept.

Arneson's hit point concept eventually became DnD's aggregated measure of luck, skill, stamina, concentration, life-blood and endurance.  In fact, after all these years, it is still argued that only the last few character or monster hit points actually represent the life-blood of the combatant.  For the most part, inflicting hit point damage represents the whittling away of your opponent's stamina, the sapping of his will and skill, and the gradual theft of his luck.  In a word: fatigue.

But nowhere in DnD's combat system do the effects of fatigue reveal themselves.  A character's combat abilities do not wane as his hit points decrease.  A figher's speed and combat prowess are undiminished, despite having suffered a 50%, 75%, or even 90% hit point reduction.  And in a perverse twist, 4E actually provides combat bonuses when some players and monsters become "bloodied".  If you can imagine, as one becomes "bloodied" (fatigued), combat ability actually improves.

While it is true that Arneson first implemented the concept of hit points in his pre-DnD games, it took Gary Gygax to unthinkingly promulgate their hybrid use, as a combined luck, skill, stamina and endurance measure, when publishing the earliest versions of DnD.  And to this day, hit points in all versons of DnD, including 4E, continue to function just as they did in 1974, as a rather ghoulish goulash of combat capability measures.

Gygax should have known better.  As an avid reader of pulp fantasy literature, he had myriad sources available to confirm that pulp fantasy role-playing games absolutely require some sort of combat fatigue emulator. 

Even something as simple as the loss of a single hit point during each combat round due to exertion would have provided some reminder to the players that fatigue is a serious matter in battle.

My clucking and finger-wagging at Gygax applies equally to those DnD game designers who came after.

You need look no further to see that continued failure, than to study one of the so-called "marvellous innovations" of 4E, the AEDU system.  The 4E AEDU system gives each character at-will, encounter, daily, and utility powers, and is a rather uninspired effort at combat fatigue emulation. 

It posits that there are certain daily and encounter powers that are so exceptional, and fatiguing, that they can only be attempted once per day or encounter.  That AEDU system has been roundly and justifiably derided, as riven by disassociated mechanics.  Most importantly, it eliminates an important component of player choice, since it prevents players from re-attempting a daily power, accompanied by some equally significant sacrifice elsewhere.

There's really no justification for the absence of combat fatigue emulation as a feature of DnD combat.  That few, if any, have recognized and rued its absence is the real tragedy.

Magic Realm Combat: Round 3

On to combat round three between the Black Knight and the Heavy Trolls.

In round two, the Black Knight undercut and killed Troll 1.  The Black Knight has been lucky so far, suffering only a couple of rounds of fatigue.

In combat round three, the Black Knight is going to do something a little different.  He is going to alert his mace so that he gets another quick attack.

As you can see, the Black Knight's "Fight M3**" chit is in the "Used this Round" box, on the right side of the combat sheet.  Because this Fight chit has a speed of 3, the Black Knight can use it to alert his weapon (since the speed of 3 is faster than the Troll's speed of 4).  The Fight M3** chit is placed in the "Used this Round" box, and is unavailable for any other activity this combat round.

However, playing that chit allows the Black Knight to play his mace in its alerted state with a speed of 3, meaning he cannot miss, since the Troll has a slower move speed of 4.

Once again, the Troll is placed in the top-most pink "Charge and Thrust" opponents box, and coincidentally the combat resolution roll of 2 results in the Troll moving to the bottom-most "Duck and Smash" box.  It matters not that the Black Knight's thrust attack does not line up with the Heavy Trolls duck maneuver, because the Black Knight's Heavy Fight chit, and the mace's speed of 3, combine to finish him off anyways.

You will note that the Black Knight played both a H6 Move chit and H6 Fight chit during this round of combat.  A character can only use a maximum of two effort stars per combat round.  Since the Black Knight's Fight M3** chit was played to alert his mace, he was unable to muster additional effort in his fight or move actions.  At the end of the third combat round, the Black Knight must set aside a third chit, representing the fatigue suffered in readying his mace for the killing blow on Troll 2.

The Black Knight was lucky.  He suffered three fatigue in dispatching the two Heavy Trolls.  The Black Knight can usually dispatch the Heavy Trolls if he attacks from hiding, however, he was caught flat-footed and in the open during this encounter, a position that would normally see him suffer at least one wound, and sometimes the loss of his shield or armor.

Magic Realm Combat: Round 2

During the first round of combat between the Black Knight and a pair of Heavy Trolls, the Black Knight failed to strike Troll 1.  Fortunately, the two Heavy Trolls also missed the Black Knight.

So now we move to the second round of combat, above.  Troll 1 is once again the target of the Black Knight, and is placed, initially, in pink attack box 1, with Troll 2 placed in box 2. 

Because the Black Knight missed during the first combat round, his mace becomes "alerted" (flipped over from its white to red side).  When alerted, the Black Knight's mace has a speed 3 regardless of the Black Knight's Fight chit speed, and the mace is faster than the Trolls' move times of 4.  That means we are guaranteed to score a kill, no matter what maneuver the Troll attempts, as we will undercut the Troll's maneuver.

Again, the shield is placed in the Thrust box, to cover the Black Knight's H4** Charge maneuver.  The H4** move is played, as we want to avoid the attack of the second Troll, if possible.

During the combat resolution phase, Troll 1 once again repositions to the bottom-most smash and duck attack box.  However, even though the Black Knight fails to line up with the Troll 1, the Black Knight's mace attack speed of 3 is faster than the Troll's maneuver of 4, so the Black Knight hits him.  Because the Black Knight used a Heavy Fight chit, the mace does heavy, rather than medium damage, thus killing the Troll (the red X through Troll 1 denotes a kill).

Troll 2 failed to line up with the Black Knight's Charge maneuver, as he was anticipating that the Black Knight would try to Dodge, and the Troll's M4 attack was not faster than the Black Knight's H4** maneuver, therefore the Troll did not undercut the Black Knight.

As a result of the Black Knight's double effort star (**)  maneuver, he suffers additional fatigue, so he will have to put aside a second chit.  Now the Black Knight will have to spend two "Rest" phases to recover the chits fatigued during the combat with these Trolls.

Magic Realm Combat Example

I promised a Magic Realm combat example.  Here is the first round of a combat between the Black Knight and a pair of Heavy Trolls.

As you can see, the Black Knight's H6 Fight chit, along with his Medium Mace, have been positioned in the top-most "Thrust Ahead (Hits Charge)" Attack box.  The H6 Fight chit was played, as the Mace is a medium weapon, and needs to be "overswung" with a heavy Fight chit in order to do heavy damage, and thus kill the Troll.  The Black Knight's attack speed of 6 is a slow attack: the Black Knight was counting on the Heavy Troll not changing his attack direction.

The Black Knight was attempting to strike Heavy Troll 1, who was originally positioned in the top-most pink "Charge and Thrust" opponents box, but that Troll switched to bottom-most "Duck and Smash" opponents box during the first round's combat resolution phase.  As you can see, the "repositioning roll" was a 2, resulting in a switching of the monsters in boxes one and three.

During the set-up for the first round of combat, Troll 1 was placed in the top-most pink Charge and Thrust opponents box.  Therefore, the Black Knight's shield was also placed in the left-most shield oval, to protect against that anticipated attack.  The Black Knight's Suit of Armor, of course, protects him from attacks in all directions.

Finally, the Black Knight's H4** Move chit was placed in the left-most "Charge" maneuver box.  The heavy move was selected because the Black Knight is wearing heavy armor, and therefore needs to play a heavy move in order to maneuver in his heavy armor.  The Black Knight's maneuver speed of 4 was selected because the Heavy Trolls have a speed 4, Medium attack.  Had the Black Knight chosen a maneuver with a speed of 5, rather than 4, both Heavy Trolls would have automatically hit the Black Knight, as the Troll's attack speed of 4 would be faster than his maneuver speed of 5.

The "double effort stars" (**) on the H4 Move chit tells us that this maneuver is very fatiguing.  As a result, the Black Knight will suffer fatigue at the end of the first round of combat, and will have to set aside one of his chits.  He will need to rest during a subsequent game day to recover from the effort expended during this first round of combat.

Because Troll 1 switched from box one to three during combat resolution, the Black Knight failed to hit and kill the Troll.  However, the two Heavy Trolls also missed the Black Knight, since neither "lined up" with the Black Knight's Charge maneuver.  And their attack speeds of 4 were not fast enough to undercut the Black Knight's maneuver speed of 4.

Magic Realm: Combat And Player Skill

One of the areas in which Avalon Hill's Magic Realm differs, dramatically, from Dungeons and Dragons, is in the combat system. 

Magic Realm uses a highly deterministic system to resolve combats. 

A player chooses their method and speed of attack, their armor, and their maneuver.  They then cross-reference those three choices against the attack and maneuver of their opponent.

There is no "to-hit" roll.  There is no rolling for damage.  You either kill the native or monster, or you don't. 

Likewise, the native or monster either hits you or they don't.  If a native or monster hits you, they can kill you outright, grab you in preparation for a subsequent death blow, wound you, or do no damage.

With certain exceptions, your chance of killing or being killed is within your control as a player, and depends on your choices, before and during combat.

There are five elements to the combat resolution system in Magic Realm. 

The first element is your direction of attack. 

You may recall that in ADnD 2nd Edition, each weapon is classified by type, either (B)ludgeoning, (P)iercing, and (S)lashing. 

Likewise, in Magic Realm, players may select one of three attack directions during combat: Smashing, Thrusting and Swinging. 

When playing your attack in one of those directions, you must include two things.  One, you need to play a readied weapon.  Two, you need to play a fight chit or a gloves card that is at least as powerful as the readied weapon. 

For example, if you played a medium axe as your weapon, you would need to play a medium fight chit or medium gloves card in order to use it.  Playing the above heavy (or a tremendous) fight chit with the axe would allow you to "overswing" it, resulting in the next higher level of damage being inflicted if your attack is successful.

The next combat element is these pink boxes from which the monsters or natives move and attack. 

In Magic Realm, the monsters and natives are not sophisticated enough to attack and move in different directions.  They either charge forward, while thrusting with their weapon, dodge to the side while swinging their weapon, or duck while smashing down with their weapon.

You place the monster or native you are fighting in one of those pink boxes.  If you a fighting more than one, you must place each in a separate box, and if you are fighting more than three you can place any additional monsters after 3 in whatever boxes you choose.  It doesn't really matter which box(es) they are placed in: during the combat, the monsters will change directions, so you have no control on which box they finally move and attack.

The third element is your defences.  Many characters start with, or purchase armor.  Your active armor counters are placed in these boxes.  As you can see, the suit of armor protects you from attacks coming from any direction, while the helmet and breastplate protect you only from certain directions. 

A shield protects in any of the three attack directions, but can only be placed in one of the three circles.  Therefore, a player must decide in which direction she wants to be protected by her shield. 

The fourth element is your maneuver.  A player can play either a move chit or boots cards (either of which whose strength is at least as strong as the weight of the character and everything she is carrying) or the horse she is riding, in one of these three boxes.  I suppose she could also play the Magic Carpet, if active, or use her broomstick spell, if she is playing the Witch.

The final combat resolution element is the Used this Round box.  Players can play fight and move chits to perform certain extra activities, such as alerting a weapon, running away, or going berserk (in the case of the Berserker).  Those extra activities require that the chit used to perform the activity be put aside, in this box, and are thus not available, that round, for other activities.

We'll look at the how a combat round is resolved, in a subsequent post.

Magical Boots

There are five boots treasures scattered throughout Avalon Hill's Magic Realm, to be found in the monsters' treasure hoards and natives' possessions.

Like the gloves treasures (providing their owners with fatigue-free attacks and other benefits), magical boots treasures provide their users with fatigue-free movement.

That is of particular value during combat, as combat is where fatigue is usually suffered.


The first set of boots is the Elven Slippers. When equipped, they provide the wearer with the equivalent of a light move chit with a speed of 2 (remembering that a move speed of 1 is fastest).

Many of the light characters, like the Elf, Woodsgirl or the Swordsman, already have an L2 move chit. However, that move chit may be played only with some effort. That additional effort is denoted by the existence of "effort stars" on that character's move chit.

For example, those three characters may have an L2* or L2** move chit. The single star means the move is somewhat fatiguing, while the double star means the move is very fatiguing. The possession and donning of the Elven Slippers, then, allows those characters to avoid fatigue when performing that speedy move.

Others, like the Druid, Magician and Witch, have no L2 move chit at all. The Elven Slippers are of enormous benefit to them.

The Elven Slippers are only good for light characters, carrying only light equipment. The Elven Slippers cannot be employed if the character is a medium character, or if the light character is carrying medium or heavier equipment or treasure.


When worn, the Shoes of Stealth provide the wearer with a light move with a speed of 3. Though not as fast as the Elven Slippers, the Shoes of Stealth provide the wearer with another benefit: allowing the player to roll one die, instead of 2, when attempting to hide.

In Magic Realm, every dice-roll is made with two six-sided dice, with the higher of the two numbers used to determine success. Since lower numbers are better, only rolling one die on in-game attempts improves your chances. In this case, since a 1 through 5 means you successfully hide, and a 6 means you fail, the Shoes of Stealth improve your chances of hiding, on a single attempt, from 70% to 84%.

Again, only light characters, carrying light equipment, can wear the Shoes of Stealth. However, they are the ones who most need an improved chance of hiding, since they generally rely on hiding and fleeing from, rather than battling, the monsters of the Magic Realm.


The Quick Boots are useful for light and medium characters alike.

With a medium move and a speed of 3, light characters will appreciate the additional carrying capacity this set of boots affords, while the medium characters will find the speed of 3, with no fatigue, of great benefit.

Most medium characters, like the Amazon, Captain, Pilgrim and Wizard, can all benefit from wearing the Quick Boots. Both the Amazon and Captain have M3 move chits, but the Amazon has one effort star on her chit, while the Captain has two, so they normally suffer some fatigue when performing that action. And neither the Pilgrim nor the Wizard have the ability to make a medium move with a speed of 3, so these boots are a real boon to them.

Even the Black Knight, if he trades his heavy armor for a medium breastplate and helmet, can take advantage of these boots.

The Quick Boots are also the only set of boots that provide fame if possessed. These boots of of no use to the heavy characters, other than the fame and notoriety they provide, or the gold that can be collected from their sale.


The Power Boots provide a heavy move with a speed of 4. They are of benefit to all characters (the light and medium characters for the additional carrying capacity, the heavy characters for the relatively fast move time that avoids fatigue).

The medium and heavy characters will appreciate wearing these boots, since a H4 move chit is normally accompanied by two effort stars.

The Dwarf, in particular, benefits from wearing the Power Boots, as he has no H4 move chit, and must usually rely on his duck move, which is sufficient for battling the monsters and natives, but is a fatal weakness when facing off against other characters.


Our last set of boots is the Seven League Boots. In addition to providing a tremendous move with a speed of 5, the Seven League Boots also allow the character to record an extra move every game day.

Those extra moves add up. Normally, each character has 4 actions per day. An additional move per day provides up to a 25% increase in the number of actions the character can perform.

The Seven League Boots can be worn by any character, and like any magic item that provides extra actions, should be equipped immediately.

While the speed of 5 may be slow, for a light and medium character, that is a reasonably fast move speed for a heavy character, and, again, avoids those heavy characters having to suffer fatigue.

Microquests: Death Test 2

Every 1970's game design house was strongly affected by the success of TSR's Dungeons and Dragons game.

If you look at the history of such established chit-and-hex firms as SPI and Avalon Hill, you see mad scrambles to catch up to the phenomenal growth curve of TSR, and capture some of the role-playing game market.

Then there were upstarts, like Metagaming, that came onto the scene just as TSR was finding its legs. But, despite being contemporaries, and settling (initially) into discrete niches, you still find them trying to horn in on the success of D&D.

Like SPI and Avalon Hill, Metagaming desperately wanted to penetrate the roleplaying game market. Their unique business model was microgames; small format chit-and-hex games that could be carried anywhere, and played anytime.

But after Metagaming's success with the Steve Jackson-designed Melee microgame, and subsequent further success of the spellcaster-based follow-up, Wizard, Metagaming poured significant energy into expanding those two games, creating what they hoped would be a full-fledged RPG competitor to D&D. That expansion led to the creation of "The Fantasy Trip", being Advanced Melee, Advanced Wizard and In The Labyrinth.

With the departure of Steve Jackson from Metagaming, TFT would subsequently become GURPS.

One of the Metagaming Melee and Wizard supporting lines was a series of Microquest boxed supplements. These were small format boxed adventures, that provided everything you needed to run a pre-programmed game, in either solo or game-mastered mode. Those microquests were not terribly sophisticated, as they were typical hack-and-slash fare.


But they included the most wonderful cardboard counters!

The above counters are from Death Test 2, a maze and set of arenas below Thorz' palace, intended to test the character's mettle, in anticipation of eventual employment in Thorz' mercenary army. As I observed earlier, the combination of skeletons, weapon-wielding octopuses, and other assorted denizens, was welcome inspiration for our middle-school imaginations.

The Importance Of Using Protection

And you thought combat in Original Dungeons and Dragons was deadly.

In Avalon Hill's Magic Realm, death comes quickly, and often.

Without armor, most Magic Realm characters are killed by a single well-aimed blow inflicted by any one of several monsters and natives. And that, regardless of how long you have been adventuring nor how proficient you have become.

That's why many Magic Realm characters begin their adventuring days with one, or several pieces of armor. And those that don't begin with armor either rely heavily on being fleet-of-foot and running away from danger, or spend the first couple of days chasing down some protection.

There are two kinds of armor in Magic Realm. The mundane armor, represented by grey counters, is included in your character's starting equipment, or can be purchased from the natives that prowl the valleys and woods of the Realm.

Mundane armor includes helmets, shields and breastplates, all of which are medium weight, are damaged if they absorb a medium blow, and are destroyed with a heavy or greater blow. It also includes suits of armor, which are heavy weight, damaged by heavy blows, and destroyed by tremendous ones. Any of those armor items are flipped over to their "damaged" side when their absorb their first blow. They are destroyed, if damaged a second time.

However, they can absorb lesser blows indefinitely. So a heavy suit of armor can absorb any number of medium blows and be no worse for wear. And the medium helmets, shields and breastplates can absorb no end of light blows without a scratch.

In addition to the grey, mundane armor counters, Magic Realm includes yellow armor treasure counters and armor treasure cards.

While there are several mundane helmets, shields, breastplates and suits of armor available to the players, there is but one of each of the yellow magic armor counters.

The gold helmet, jade shield and silver breastplate are worn by the mouldy skeleton, a special treasure site in the Magic Realm, and are heavy weight and are damaged by heavy (rather than medium) blows.

The suit of tremendous armor is found in the Crypt of the Knight, another special treasure site. The suit of tremendous armor is of little worth and cannot be carried by any but the strongest Magic Realm characters, like the White Knight, Berserker or Dwarf, as characters need to have tremendous strength to wear it. For those who can don this armor, it makes them a walking tank.

In addition to those armor treasure counters, there are three special armor treasure cards.

The first is the golden armband. Only light weight, but providing medium armor protection, this is a handy treasure for the light characters, who must otherwise forgo armor as they adventure in the Magic Realm. The golden armband is worth an additional 3 fame if sold to the Lancers.

The second treasure is the bejeweled dwarf vest. Worth an additional 10 fame if sold to the Soldiers (perhaps because the game designer failed to include dwarven natives to interact with?) the dwarf vest is but medium weight while providing heavy protection to the wearer. The bejeweled dwarf vest is also a great treasure, and so should be kept if the player has selected great treasures as one of her victory conditions.

The final armor treasure card is the golden crown. One third of the imperial regalia (the other items being the royal sceptre and the imperial tabard) the golden crown provides somewhat inadequate protection, being heavy weight and providing only medium armor. Its sale value of 50 gold, plus 20 fame if sold to the guard, and its status as a great treasure would tend to discourage players from using this as armor, unless absolutely necessary.