The Merchant Character Class

I haven't presented a character class for AD&D in a while, so let's do this one. The main thing I'm editing here is the Assessment ability, since I use a method from Dragon magazine issue 104, but have presented a really stripped-down version here, along with a radical simplification of the Forgery ability. Also, I'm switching to the "traditional" AD&D player races instead of those from my campaign setting. My version of the Merchant is based on my distaste for versions with magic or too many overpowered abilities, or overly complicated systems for their abilities.

 

The Merchant

Merchants belong to a subclass of Thief specializing in buying low, selling high, and finding markets for goods in the first place. To become a Merchant, a character requires a Charisma of at least 9, an Intelligence of 8, and a Wisdom of no less than 7. At first level, a Merchant will learn the use of 2 weapon proficiencies, gaining another every four levels. Merchants fight using the Thief combat table, taking a penalty of -4 when using weapons with which the character has no proficiency, and may select weapons from among: Caltrop, Club, Crossbow, Dagger, Dart, Garrot, Knife, Sap, Scimitar, Sling, Staff, or any one-handed sword except the Khopesh. They may use Leather, Studded Leather, Padded, or Elfin Chain armor but not Shields, may use flaming oil, and may use poison if the DM permits. Humans and Half-Elves may be Merchants and advance without limit. Dwarfs may advance to the 8^th level as Merchants, Elves to the 12^th level if their Charisma is 16 or higher, to the 11^th level if of Charisma 15, or to the 10^th level if of lower Charisma, Halflings and Gnomes may advance as far as the 6^th level as Merchants, and Half-Orcs may rise as high as the 4^th level. They save using the Thief table. Merchants advance according to the following table:

Experience Points	Experience Level	Hit Dice (d6)	Level Title	Sense of Direction
0-1,500	1	1	Haggler	30%
1,501-3,000	2	2	Bargainer	35%
3,001-5,000	3	3	Hawker	40%
5,001-10,000	4	4	Vendor	45%
10,001-20,000	5	5	Entrepreneur	50%
20,001-40,000	6	6	Trader	55%
40,001-75,000	7	7	Master Trader	60%
75,001-135,000	8	8	Merchant	65%
135,001-220,000	9	9	Merchant Prince	70%
220,001-440,000	10	9+1	Merchant Prince (10th Level)	75%
440,001-660,000	11	9+2	Merchant Prince (11th Level)	75%
660,001-880,000	12	9+3	Merchant Prince (12th Level)	75%

220,000 experience points per level for each level beyond the 12^th.

Merchants gain 1 hit point per level after the 9^th.

 

The Merchant’s Sense of Direction ability allows the Merchant the stated chance to avoid the effects of being lost when traveling. It does not improve beyond the 10^th level of ability.

Merchants have an improved ability to assess the value of items, having a ability to assess an item's value of 50%, +5%/level after the first. Failure will cause the DM to provide an incorrect value at the DM's discretion.

Merchants may attempt to forge documents, at the same chance as an Assassin of equal level (and further improving +5% per level after the 15^th in each category). (Use the system in Dragon magazine 96 or give a base chance of 45% starting at 3rd level, +5% for each additional level; the DM can increase or decrease the chance by 15% for more or less difficult forgeries.)

Merchants are skilled negotiators, and gain a bonus of +3%/level on the Reaction table, to a maximum bonus of +30%, in addition to any bonuses for Charisma or other modifiers.

Merchants are expert bargainers, and can always buy items for a 10% discount while selling them for an additional 10% profit, calculated from the listed price. If two Merchants are bargaining against each other, there is a chance of 50% +5% for each level one Merchant is greater than the other, that the higher-level Merchant will get the 10% alteration in price, else the lower-level Merchant gets it. Add the higher-level Merchant’s Charisma Reaction Modifier to this chance and subtract that of the lower-level Merchant from it. Do not use the negotiation bonus above in this calculation.

Finally, a Merchant can Hear Noise and Read Languages exactly as a Thief of equal level.

 

Notes On The Notes

Let's have some "behind the scenes director's commentary" about the notes I presented on my upcoming AD&D campaign.

The Tetradic Church is mainly inspired by an article in Dragon magazine issue 77 by Nonie Quinlan, titled "Elemental Gods". It argued for a less monster-style approach to gods and religions, presenting a model based on the classical Four Element system. The names of the gods are in Indonesian, Banteng meaning "bull, ox" and representing strong, solid earth, Kucing meaning "cat" and manifesting a sort of playful/cruel, almost-Dionysian air/wind, Naga Emas meaning "gold[en] dragon", the Church's understanding of fire, and Bidadari meaning "angel, nymph, beautiful woman", who is ever-changing water and the Moon.

The Church of the King of Life is inspired by the story game, Dogs in the Vineyard, and so is a fantasy version of the LDS/Mormon church. Like that game, my current plan is to leave specific scriptural justifications up to the players who choose to play adherents, or to the exigencies of play as I need them, but the patriarchal culture and Branch system of organization are the general basis of that religion. Padishah, of course, is Persian for "monarch".

The Weaving Goddess of Fate is my version of Gary Gygax's "Istus, Lady of Fate" from his World of Greyhawk setting, by way of the three Norns/three Fates, Islamic and Norse fatalist ideas, Irish weaving prophetesses, and so on. Her name is from Inanna, because I wanted that Middle Eastern connection.

The traditional D&D/AD&D cleric class fits best with those three religions, whose gods don't have hit points, per se. 

The Alien God is based mainly on G.R.S. Mead's analysis of what we know about Simon Magus. Aśundǒr and Śukar are words in Romani meaning, respectively, "listener", which is more or less the meaning of "Simon", and "brilliant, shining", a rendering of Helen, who was Simon Magus's partner, probably taking the role of Gnostic Sophia in his theology. I like the mix of Stoic, Neoplatonic, and Gnostic/Manichean ideas that Mead derives from the Simonian fragments we have. Plus, Mead's work is also a major influence on Tierney's and Rahman's "Simon of Gitta" stories, which are excellent sword and sorcery/sword and sandal/weird story yarns. There may come a time in the future of the setting when clerics of the Alien God travel the world of Dunia, but for now things are more personal, less involved with intermediaries.

I explained most of my take on Druidism already. Erodia is a rendering of Aradia, hero of an allegedly ancient Italian witchcraft poem collected by Charles Godfrey Leland. The name is related to the Biblical Herodias, but may also be related to Diana (I believe "Herodiana" is attested). Dunia, who gives her name to the world of the setting, is a Gaea-type (or Terra, Demeter, etc.) Briga's name comes from Celtic languages and means "High One" or "Powerful", the same as Brig in Irish legend, St. Brighid, Briginda, Brigantona, and so on. The particle also finds its way into Irish briocht/Gaulish briχtia, both meaning "magic spell", which I adapt as similar to "heka" in "Hekate/Hecate". Artor and Medraut come from Arthurian legend, being versions of Arthur and Mordred, and take roles in my game setting's Druidism from Robert Graves's poetic inventions that he tried to impose over historical ideas (and which have been adopted by some modern neopagans/Wiccans). The idea is, basically, that the Summer/Oak King and the Winter/Holly King meet in combat twice a year, representing the turning of the seasons, with the victor taking up the White Goddess as wife until the next combat. In reality, pretty weak sauce as theology in my opinion, but it has its supporters. Karnon is derived from "Cernunnos", a lightly-attested Gaulish deity of largely unknown (but perhaps not unknowable) character who was adopted by early neopagans/Wiccans as the Horned God of their craft, inspired by Margaret Murray's unfortunately flawed reconstructions. Whatever the historical flaws, I hasten to note, it does carry great meaning and depth for many. Mixing that with material from the Barddas of Iolo Morgannwg and other sources I mention, I get a fun naturalistic/esoteric philosophy that easily carries and supports the flavor of AD&D druids.

My vision of polytheistic cults worshiping/forging relationships with localized spirits is in part from long consideration of the place of gods depicted as a sort of monster in D&D-style games going back to Supplement 4: Gods, Demi-gods, & Heroes for original D&D (which used to be the only book from that edition I owned; it has since vanished from my collection, but at least I still have my original copies of Cults of Prax and Cults of Terror). As noted in my writeup, I'm looking to an article from Dragon magazine as the mechanical basis of this cleric-free religion cluster, though also including a version of the "warlock" class adapted to 1st edition AD&D terms and other approaches. I'm pretty sure there won't actually be any Zeus or Athena gods, those were merely examples demonstrating the idea of local epithets.

As an aside, I'm still working out the exact places of demons, devils, daemons, and so forth in the setting. Was it the demons or the devils who built the world-prison in opposition to the Alien God? Not fully sure. I'm actually leaning toward the devils at the moment. It will give them more purpose in the setting, and make Hell a somewhat meaningful place.

I didn't mention it, but that wasn't a comprehensive list of religions in the setting. Notably, I skipped over the Church of the Serpent, found among the Drakkonern people, my adaptation of the Dragonlord people found in Mayfair's Dragons supplement in their Role Aids line. I really liked the dragon civil war situation laid out in that supplement, and often work to fit it into my settings. The Dragon religion looks to four great elemental dragons, so it fits with my Tetradic Church, but I can also mine the Palladium Role-Playing Game, which also includes four elemental dragon-gods, for ideas. Another religion I have in mind is the Loathesome Toad Gods, inspired by Jeff Rients's Miscellaneum of Cinder, but also John Tynes's vision of the Lovecraftian gods laid out in Delta Green (as well as its supplements and follow-on games) and, especially, the D20 adaptation of Call of Cthulhu.

AD&D Game Notes

Bryn Celli Ddu, a barrow mound

Time for a post, to remind you I am alive.

I started off working on the Gygax75 Challenge, though I didn't stick strictly to its schedule. Mainly, I decided that the opening location would be a version of Portown, of Ruined Tower of Zenopus fame, with an additional megadungeon of my own devising located a short journey away. Further, though I don't mention it in the following notes, I've also placed Quasqueton, from B1 In Search of the Unknown, nearby. I figure that the Tower, smugglers' caves, and ghoul tunnels, a megadungeon/mythic underworld, Quasqueton, and the usual port city-based activities should give the players any number of hooks on which to hang their adventures.

My megadungeon, as noted, is found beneath goblin-haunted barrow mounds, which hold entrances to a mostly classic mythic underworld, a place where adventurers, through bravery, skill, and luck, might make their big score. 

In  addition to a house rules document (that remains somewhat in flux as I keep running into rules interpretations to consider; at least it's short, only four pages plus a couple of pages on changes to experience point awards), I've written up the opening situation as the initial player-characters arrive by ship in Portown, and a précis of the religions of the setting, noting how most of the additional character classes I plan to make available fit into the world's religious landscape. Here are those:

Introduction

The players have sailed from a town on the Gold Coast, where they grew up. Choosing a life of adventure rather than waste their bodies in the rapidly diminishing mines or live the quiet lives of peasant farmers, they’ve come to a town they’ve heard might reward a brave, and lucky, adventurer.

Portown is a small but busy trading port on the coast, with a population of perhaps a couple thousand or so, including people from all over the known world and perhaps beyond. Rumored to be built up from foundations standing on the ruins of an ancient city that may predate the coming of humanity, it lies a short distance, perhaps three or four leagues, North of a field of goblin-haunted barrow-mounds.

Stories tell of an underworld kingdom beneath the mounds full of riches and magical terrors. Many have gone into the mounds, never to return, but some few have come back to the surface with loads of jewels, gold, and magical swords, enough that there are always some brave, foolish, or desperate enough to try their luck.

The players step off the ship they’ve arrived with onto the wooden dock. Seagulls call in the overcast, leaden skies, and a strong smell of decaying fish and seaweed in brackish seawater permeates the air. North of the docks, the harbor is protected by a narrow spit of land reaching from East of the town, making the harbor into a cold lagoon. The dock leads up to shore, where large warehouse buildings line the boardwalk promenade, beyond which hints of other buildings can be seen through the alleys between the warehouses, and a few taller buildings peek over the roofs of the storage buildings. To the West, across a part of the harbor that projects south of the main lagoon, the fisher’s quarter hosts dozens of fishing vessels along a shore that leads back to hundreds of decaying houses. North of that quarter a peninsula stretches into the sea, with a lighthouse tower overlooking a cliff side at the North end. Access to the sea lies between the end of the protective jetty and the lighthouse. Beyond the fisher’s quarter, further to the West, a ruined tower overlooks the town from the top of a hill. Between the tower hill and the fishing quarter, a cemetery can just be seen. Not far from the tower ruins, a few hundred feet at most, on a smaller hill to the southwest of the tower hill, is a smaller tower in much better repair.

There is much bustling of working sailors along the docks and boardwalk, much shouting and strong language in a dozen different tongues, ropes being tied or untied, boxes of cargo being moved and carried, and some passengers lugging their own baggage to or from the shore themselves.

 

Religions of Dunia

Tetradic Church – The Four Elemental Gods: Earth “Bantəng/Banteng” (Solidity/Strength/Emotion, masculine), Air “Kuching/Kucing” (Wind/Weather/Intellect, androgynous), Fire “Naga Emas” (Sun/Craftsmanship/Manifestation/the World, genderless), Water “Bidadari” (Moon/Magic/Illusion/dreams, feminine) – clerics, cloistered clerics, exorcists, warrior monks, witch hunters.

Church of the King of Life – Padishah, God of Life – clerics, cloistered clerics, exorcists, paladins, warrior monks.

Church of the Alien God – exorcists, magic-users, warlocks, warrior monks. Aśundǒr  says he has come to rescue the souls of humanity, demihumans, and humanoids from the world, which is a prison built by the Demons to trap human/demihuman/humanoid souls, which are the fragmented light of the Alien God. Also, the Aion of Wisdom was lured into the trap and degraded by the Demons, finally incarnating as Śukar, a slave-prostitute he found and bought away from the brothel which owned her. Aśundǒr and Śukar are living humans who are teaching the philosophy of the Alien God with a retinue of twelve Disciples. 

polytheist sects – see note on gods in "Demonology Made Easy" – exorcists, magic-users, steppe shamans, warlocks, summoners, witches. Local gods may be manifestations of "deity-types", sometimes with related or even the same names as others of the type, usually given a location epithet (like "Zeus of Stonedale", "Parisian Athena", or whatever). 

Druidism – Erodia, Dunia, Briga, Artor, Medraut, Karnon – bards, druids, monks, rangers, witches. A sort of mix of Wicca and Taoism with other random influences, with three goddesses, Erodia the Huntress, Dunia the Earth Mother, and Briga the Wise, and three gods, Artor the Oak King, Medraut the Holly King, and Karnon the Antlered God. There's a philosophy of manifest Summer and potential Winter as the fundamental energies of the universe that combine and recombine as the Four Elements, the Eight Trigrams, the 64 Hexagrams, and other symbolic indications. I'm taking ideas from the Barddas of Iolo Morgannwg, European alchemy, Chinese Yì jīng and wǔxíng, Japanese kusei kigaku and onmyōdō, and mixing them all up with whatever takes my fancy. Dunia embodies the Summery Feminine, Artor the Summery Masculine, Briga is Wintry Feminine, Medraut the Wintry Masculine, while Erodia and Karnon are varieties of androgyny and “non-binariness”.

Denialism – "world is illusion", spoken by Kuhare Nadi the Enlightened One – exorcists, illusionists, monks, psionicists. Kuhare Nadi saw through the illusion that is the world and learned how to impart that knowledge to others. Some Denialists learn how to manipulate the illusion and create Phantasms or even create substance as Shadow. 

Fatalism – Inan, the Weaving Goddess of Fate – clerics, cloistered clerics, dervishes, exorcists, paladins, warrior monks.

[Obscure Games] Rolemaster

 Originally published as an alternative combat system for Dungeons & Dragons, followed up by an alternative magic system and finally an alternative character creation system, Rolemaster began as the individual books Arms Law and its follow-up Claw Law, Spell Law, and finally finished up in its basic form with Character Law and the GM-focused book Campaign Law. Shortly after, though, methods that helped distinguish the game on its own were published as optional rules set out in a series of Rolemaster Companions, with seven of those in the main series and several more focused on specific topics (like Elemental Companion or Oriental Companion; the latter, like AD&D's Oriental Adventures, came out before "Asian" was generally understood to be the preferred adjective for describing Asian nations and cultures, even though it seems obvious now). To my way of thinking, the first two Companions are essential for the game, with the first including the "Smoothed Stat Bonus" table and the second offering a complete listing of skills and their effects in the game. There are a number of other optional rules in the various Companions that some may like, such as alternate initiative and turn sequence systems, additional ways to use magic, more developed systems for mounted combat, and so on. All of the Companions also include new character classes, which are usually at least of interest (I'm personally a fan of Rolemaster Companion 2's Dervish class).

The game is really very simple in concept, with almost all actions resolved by rolling percentile dice, adding a bonus based mostly on skill, and either hoping for a result of 101+ or comparing the result to a table to derive a degree of effect. The dice roll, in most cases, is "open-ended", which means that a dice roll of 96 to 100 allows the player to roll again and add the result, potentially rolling more times if more results of 96 to 100 are scored (and a similar downward result subtracting additional dice rolls can begin on a roll of 01 to 05, continuing to subtract more rolls if 96 to 100 results are obtained on the negative dice, though occasionally rolls are defined as "open-ended high" which precludes such negative results). In Arms Law/Claw Law, the table for each different weapon is divided into columns representing different armor types and the result of the dice roll is cross-indexed to get a number of "concussion hits" to be applied to the target's hit points and, often, a letter result for a "critical", which is rolled by a percentile roll (usually unmodified) on a table to derive a more detailed injury result. Such "crit tables" are defined by the injury type and the letter degree, so that a critical result might be described a "B Slash", an "A Crushing", or a "C Burning" to indicate which specific critical result table and which column to reference. Most characters involved in combat will be affected by crits rather than accumulated concussion hits, especially as they move beyond the lowest levels.

Other than simple attack rolls, actions are usually defined as "Movement/Maneuvers" or "Static Actions", and rolled similarly by comparing an open-ended roll, modified by skill in most cases, to a column representing the difficulty of the action on a table found in Character Law.

The character creation rules give ten attributes to each character, rolled on normal percentile dice, rather than open-ended ones. These attributes provide a modifier, and in some cases a number of "development points" or other benefits. The player takes the total development points and spends them on skills which are given point costs that vary by character class. Further, the number of skill ranks that can be purchased at a time varies by character class, so that a Fighter can buy two ranks in most weapon types at each level, while magic-using classes can't buy more than one rank, and the situation is basically reversed when attempting to learn spell lists, so that magic-using classes can buy as many ranks in a spell list as they can afford, but Fighters are limited to only one rank in a spell list "Pick" per level, and that one for a high cost in development points. Skill ranks and attribute bonuses, plus some other benefits, are added together to give a total skill bonus to use when attempting to use a skill. For spell list "Picks", this allows a roll during the "level-up" process to see if the character acquires the spells of that "Pick" type from that list. This is usually 5 or 10 "levels" from the spell list. Casting a known spell costs spell points equal to the spell's "level". Some spell lists do not have spells of certain levels. The "Picks" that a character is allowed to attempt to learn vary depending on the specific spell list and its relation to the character's class, such as if it is a "Base" list for the class, "Open" or "Closed" in the category of spell use for the class (Essence, Channeling, or Mentalism), and so on, as well as if the character has any previous "Picks" from the spell list, such that a "C Pick" requires a previous "A Pick", a "D Pick" has a "B Pick" as prerequisite, and so on.

So, you can see that most of the game's complexity is actually front-loaded into the character creation and advancement process, contrary to its reputation. Some people find referencing the action charts to be onerous, but that seems a frivolous complaint to me.

After the core rule books, the game has some other supplementary books of value. Creatures & Treasures provides a good list of both foes and magic items. Personally, I only think the first one is worthwhile. War Law provides a mass combat system for the game, while Sea Law gives nautical rules and equipment, like ships and such. In addition, Space Master adapts the rules for SF games, with Armored Assault giving vehicle design and combat rules, while  Star Strike does the same for spacecraft. A setting book titled Dark Space offered a setting that mixed the SF and fantasy elements with some horror concepts.

In general, I don't think that the game deserves its reputation of being particularly complicated, though there is a certain amount of system mastery that is necessary to play characters of some types, with spell-using classes being more difficult to play than combat- or stealth-oriented ones. It certainly has a very particular flavor that is different than most other games.

Tactics in Adventure Gaming

Virtual tabletops have caused something
of a renaissance in tactical
adventure game play, if only
because miniatures and terrain are
expensive and computer graphics
are less so.

 

 I'm not sure where I was going with this, but maybe someone will get some value out of it.

Adventure gaming has always had an uneven relationship with tactical play. The earlier D&D variations tended to make combat largely abstract, but this was done from the perspective that the Referee (aka Dungeon Master, Game Master, or whatever) would have a solid grasp on how combat should flow so that they could rule meaningfully on how players' actions should play out. Other games, notably including Melee and Wizard, ultimately adding non-combat-related activities as The Fantasy Trip, but also D&D-descended games like RuneQuest, laid out a tactical wargame for play and built the rest of the adventure game around it. Many would go on to imply that the wargame's actual board-play could be foregone in favor of imagining matters, and the details of matters like regulating movement were generally of varying strictness anyway, with games like RuneQuest just saying that characters would move "3 meters" or whatever and leaving the actual implementation of that to the Referee, while Melee or Champions relied on detailed hex grids to place characters in specific positions relative to each other and objects in the scenario space.

Most adventure games built these tactical wargames around the character as a basic unit. This resulted in tactical games where the unit of space was generally on that scale, so that a hex might represent one or two yards or meters, sufficient to contain about one character, or sometimes a few of them. A two-meter or two-yard hex might also contain a horse, and so that was a frequent choice. Some game designers might concentrate more completely on the human scale, resulting in some games such as GURPS or CORPS setting the scale at 1 yard or meter per hex space, or even in the case of Swordbearer at 1 "pace" of 30 inches/2 ½ feet for its tactical movement regulation. For some games, though, a tactical unit might as frequently be something other than a human being-scaled object, or even larger than a horse. Car Wars for example, while not initially intended as an adventure game, was centered on vehicular movement and combat, while also allowing for "pedestrian" combatants on the field. Since a typical automobile is in the range of 5 yards long, the game centered its maps on a scale of 1 inch on the map representing 15 feet, making a quarter-inch into 3.75 scale feet, which is close enough to human scale. A couple of years later, GDW came out with an adventure game modeling military operations in the then-near-future, after a "limited" nuclear exchange in the future war of Twilight 2000, requiring it to be similarly built from the ground up to handle vehicles. Shortly after, the company would revise its flagship adventure game, Traveller, to incorporate ideas that had developed in the intervening decade, from a different modeling of weapon characteristics that had initially seen use in the tactical boardgame Azhanti High Lightning (a development of the earlier Snapshot, intended to cover the claustrophobic tactical situations of close combat aboard spacecraft, something not well handled with the "range band" system of combat in the classic Traveller game) and then been expanded in the miniatures wargame Striker. Perhaps intending to encourage more military SF in the Rebellion scenario, MegaTraveller was also built from the ground up to handle vehicle operations, mainly by changing the earlier game's 25m "range bands" into 15m squares, which also allowed the game's combat system to be easily scaled down to 1.5m squares to match the grids of deck plans for spacecraft that had been drawn up for the earlier Snapshot and Azhanti High Lightning games, or scaled up by orders of magnitude to handle other situations like mass combat units. Some of the alternate scales, notably naval warfare and space combat, were inconsistently handled for various good or bad reasons.

Other GDW games would go on to use this variable scale in order to handle resolution as well. Space 1889 alternately used large hexes of 200 yards to handle aerial vehicles like sky galleons, taken directly from the vehicle combat games Sky Galleons of Mars and Ironclads and Ether Flyers and more abstractly handled character movement in feet per turn, regulated by the Referee much as RuneQuest had done in its first few editions, or on close quarters maps with square grids. 2300AD, originally and somewhat confusingly (as it had no relation to Traveller) called Traveller 2300, also incorporated vehicles. Then, the so-called "House System" was developed for a new edition of Twilight 2000, among other reasons to revise the timeline and scenario to incorporate the rapid changes that had occurred in the late '80s and early '90s in regard to the Cold War between the US and the then-collapsing USSR that were so important to the game's setting. That system used a variable scale of 2m individual squares and (initially) 8m larger scale squares, followed by a change to 10m larger squares in a later refinement of the rules. Before the rules were refined, they were adapted to a few other settings: the Cadillacs & Dinosaurs comic book series (and soon also an animated series) and a cyberpunk/horror crossover called Dark Conspiracy. The former did quite well, but as a licensed property was somewhat limited in scope and potential. DC, unfortunately, was badly marketed (for instance, it took quite some time before I even really knew what it was, and the advertising made it seem like a Shadowrun knockoff more than its own game in part by using the same artists as SR). The refined rules, using a d20 to resolve success instead of the earlier d10 system, were then unveiled in an adaptation of the system to the Third Imperium setting of Traveller, though that interstellar polity was entirely (and, in retrospect, inexplicably given the previously existing fan base) swept away in the New Era. This was followed by a new revision of Twilight 2000 that included the newly revised rules, known as v.2.2.

As far as I know, that was the end of the heyday of games that deliberately incorporated human-scale and vehicular scale, if they used a tactical boardgame at all. GURPS and its imitator CORPS (and CORPS was a simplification and development of the earlier system that BTRC used in its games TimeLord, SpaceTime, and WarpWorld, which was similarly inspired by GURPS; another BTRC game, Macho Women With Guns, was another GURPS-inspired system, though more in that case as a parody - the company has since gotten its GURPS-worship out of its system, as their current house system, EABA, bears hardly any resemblance to the SJG game) were built for man-to-man combat and never easily handled even mounted combat due to the awkward scale. Later editions of D&D were similarly focused on human-scale in the tactical combat system at the heart of those games, though some effort was put in to handle such things as giants. Interestingly, they tend toward the same 5 foot (almost exactly 1.5m) spaces of games like Snapshot and MegaTraveller. But many games just dumped any tactical matters into the hands of the Referee, usually without even providing guidelines on how combat should flow, much less how to handle tactical considerations. Some games just turned matters into "story" issues, usually with "talking stick" mechanics like the "raise" system of Dogs in the Vineyard, foregoing tactics as a consideration at all.

It has become somewhat fashionable among "old school" gamers to disdain tactical combat boardgames in favor of more purely "theater of the mind", Referee-heavy combat resolution. While I do see a place for that sort of thing, I think that combat boardgames are also of value. It depends on the context, as Matt Easton might say. Tactical play, while not the only method or matter of interest in adventure games, keeps things from degenerating into resembling "JRPG" computer games, with alternating lines of combatants exchanging attacks and spells.

Some Possibly Unpopular Opinions Regarding Gaming-related Issues

1.  I will never attend a convention in Indiana. The people of that state have chosen to enact policies that make everyday existence dangerous for some people. There are some other states that this applies to, but Indiana is notably relevant in this at this time. I'm sure the populace of Indiana has their collective reasons for doing so, but whatever those might be don't change the hazard the state poses to some people.
2.  I don't play games to "tell stories". That's what writing is for. I might tell stories based on things that happen during a game, but that's a different matter. It was a severe mistake to reduce adventure games to writing workshop exercises, resulting in some "games" that are little more than glorified, sometimes overly complicated procedures for passing around a metaphorical Talking Stick.
3.  Playing wargames no more means that a gamer likes or glorifies war than playing Monopoly means that a gamer wants to be a slumlord or similar parasite.
4.  Adventure games work best when they don't assume an inherent "heroism" and invest characters with superpowers as if powers are the same thing as heroism. Heroism is, or should be, a quality of the player, not their playing piece. This opinion is, of course, complicated by the existence of adventure games centered around superpowered genre conventions like superheroes or shōnen battle anime, but I should hope that the basic point is clear to anyone who isn't being lazily contrarian. Such games should put players on a more or less equal footing with their opposition and allow the players to shine or fall on their own merits. Which is not to fetishize an unnatural "balance", as overcoming adversity should be part of the process, not merely testing tactical acumen. It's a fine line to walk for the person designing the scenario.
5. Speaking of that last, and a conclusion I keep coming to, "adventure game" is a better term for the sort of game I most like to play than alternatives like "roleplaying game" or "storytelling game", both of which latter terms have led to misguided design, at least from the perspective of adventure gaming. Are they now three separate but related hobbies? Maybe. Certainly the more extreme games, like Capes, Once Upon A Time, or Tales of the Arabian Nights no longer much resemble the classic adventure games that caused the first gaming explosion (the second was trading card games, the third computer games).
6. Not really an opinion, but a thought occasioned by that last: maybe I should write a taxonomy of sorts of games, to cover sports, parlor games, board games, dice and card games, wargames, adventure games, and so on. Basically, I would want to list out the various sorts of games that I see and try to capture the characteristics that seem subtly different but create entirely different experiences, especially between the categories of adventure games, roleplaying (or perhaps "role-immersion") games, and storytelling games that often get conflated as if they were all the same. It would be complicated by the fact that some games take elements of different types of games and combine them (like chess boxing and other kinds of combative chess variants or Dread) for various effects. And of course the perception that some are the same type even when they aren't creates issues as well. Ugh, it would be an involved project, for sure.
7. Complex games shouldn't have the stigma they are given. Most aren't really all that complex in the first place (Aftermath! really doesn't deserve the reputation it has, to pick a notable example), but even the ones that are create a distinct, unique, and sometimes enjoyable atmosphere of play. Mostly, people seem to object not so much to complexity but to elements and mechanics they find uninteresting for one reason or another. Those mechanics, though, are generally included to present an aspect of play that the designer wanted to emphasize. An example of a specific, common mechanic might be encumbrance, which was included to present a logistics challenge in many early adventure games, but is discarded as "too complicated" by some who don't understand the value of that kind of challenge. Similarly, people who aren't interested in weapons might chafe at measuring fine differences between various weapons that weapon enthusiasts might enjoy. "Who cares about a 3cm difference in length?" the dilettante might complain, "That's too much to keep track of." Meanwhile, the enthusiast enjoys weighing one tradeoff against another, even at the expense of "complexity". So, it isn't complexity that is the issue, it's what elements are you interested or not interested in weighing the relative merits of, and things like speed of play and ease of memorization are parts of that equation.
8. Somewhat related, can people please stop dismissing calls for "realism" by resorting to claims of "fantasy"? Yes, there are no dragons or fireball spells, but some people are looking to engage with those things as if they were real rather than treat them as merely story elements that fill plot and story purposes (or game elements chosen to fill out a mechanical matrix of game procedure options). While "verisimilitude" is perhaps more precise a term, it's pretty obvious that people looking for "realism" mean that, so why force the more cumbersome word on the discussions?

 Maybe more later.

Checking In

I apologize for being quiet for several months, and for not continuing my look at expanded Domain Play in AD&D. I do want to say that I'm still around, though I almost wasn't as I had a stroke in mid-January from which I'm still recovering. Mainly, it's meant that I've lost, hopefully only temporarily, the use of my left hand, which makes typing somewhat slower. Otherwise, there seem to be few or no major ill effects. We did learn that I've had some heart damage consistent with a heart attack sometime in the last five years, but I have no idea when exactly that might have happened.

 

For now, here are some things that could be of interest:

Over on Dice and Discourse, we have a post on using isekai tropes with GURPS Banestorm. That's a nifty idea that could use characters based on the players, original characters, or ones based on the players but with anime-style superpowers or even just bonus powers like Magery 3. Of course, not all anime uses high-powered characters (see, for instance, the excellent Ascendance of a Bookworm for an isekai example, though to be fair that one does eventually grant the main character some extra magic power).

Speaking of GURPS, Dungeon Fantastic had a quick discussion of why characters can't just target Vitals without knowing where they are. Personally, I think that's probably something that should be applied more generally: make a Physiology roll, at default if necessary, to target Vitals. It's not like a character can see where the kidneys or whatever are.

Enraged Eggplant has been adapting ideas from ACKS, especially the recent Imperial Imprint second edition (see, the initials make a Roman numeral "2", because Macris thinks he's more clever than he is; being fair, though, he's a good game designer, whatever his other shortcomings might or might not be) to GURPS. For my money, the most useful so far is adapting the Market Class rules, but there are other good ones if you look around over his posts since January. Market Class is an idea that should have been in GURPS City Stats, if they'd have thought of it.

I hope that you are doing well. Take care of yourself.

TSR/WotC Returns To The World Of Oerth

First of all, I don't yet have a copy of the new Dungeon Master's Guide for the updated 5E D&D. I'm poor and will have to wait until it can be fit into my budget. So, all of this is relying on the reports of others, first impressions, reviews, and so on.

The big changes have already been noted, being mostly some name changes that appeared on the map that was released to the public a few months back. The Scarlet Brotherhood's peninsula was renamed Shar, various tribal and "barbarian" peoples were given their proper endonyms to replace the exonyms that had previously appeared on the map, and sadly due to legal issues in the real world, the land of Blackmoor was renamed "Arn". Specifically, the Plains of the Paynims were renamed Plains of the Ulakandar (that should be "Uli", as Ulakand is a caravan town in the region rather than an ethnonym), Tiger Nomads are now Chakyik and Wolf Nomads are Wegwiur, the Rovers of the Barrens, while still called that in the text, are listed on the map as the Hunting Lands (which is correct as the name of the territory). The Frost, Snow, and Ice Barbarians are given their local names of Fruzti, Schnai, and Cruski. For some reason, though, the North Province of the Great Kingdom has been renamed to the cumbersome, ugly, and out-of-place "Aerdiaak", which doesn't seem to serve any useful purpose. I will certainly be altering that name at my own table for what the locals sometimes call it, and most people will call it the North Province when they need to differentiate it from the rest of the Great Kingdom.

In addition to renaming the peninsula on which the Scarlet Brotherhood stands, which as I've said in various places seems like a good thing to me, they've also chosen to rename the organization as the "Scarlet Order", which just doesn't roll off the tongue properly. In general, I'm not doing that, though of course as always it's nice to have alternatives available so that some NPCs might say that instead. Sorry, but ideologically racist, slaveholding supremacists sometimes might also be patriarchal in their terminology, and I see no reason to change that.

When discussing the Pomarj, it seems that the new writers are choosing to de-emphasize the fact that the peninsula is overrun by humanoid tribes and emphasize that they are acting as bandits and brigands. I'm mostly okay with that, though I do think that it's important to pay attention to the history and fallout of the Hateful Wars that led to the situation there. My general impression of the Pomarj at this point is rather like the Paul Verhoeven movie, Flesh + Blood, with bands of armed brigands and bandits, both human and humanoid, swarming the region and fighting each other over booty, slaves, and strongholds.

The writers have included three main lines of conflict that a given game could include: the rise of Iuz the Evil being the most notable, but also an entirely new conflict of the "chromatic" dragons (red, white, blue, green, black) being stirred to conflict by Tiamat from her home in the Nine Hells, where she is currently trapped. I forget which of the original conflicts is the third they've included, but it could be anything, such as the Drow and the Giants, the Scarlet Brotherhood and the Slave Lords, or the decline of the Great Kingdom under demonic influence among others. [Edit several hours later:] I see that the third conflict is Elemental Evil, which to me is already closely tied to Iuz, Zuggtmoy, and the Drow/Giants plot. I think that they would have been much better off treating the Scarlet Brotherhood, Slave Lords, and Wastri as the third conflict. Oh, well, missed opportunities are not unusual for the modern WotC/TSR/Hasbro conglomerate.

Most importantly, from my perspective, the new material adds notes on the cultural differences of different regions of the Flanaess, giving overviews of the way things are done in the West, East, North, and so on. That is what I want from a product like this, as to me the information contained in the Folio and Gold Box editions of The World of Greyhawk is most important and supersedes other sources, but new information helps to continue to flesh out the setting. I don't much care to see non-Oerthian types like "Aasimar" incorporated into the setting, as is done in the case of at least one leader, and would much rather they'd left that information alone. Changing a Viscount to a Viscountess here or there, as is done in Verbobonc, is a reasonable change, but I think that such things can be kept as they are or changed with no real repercussions to the setting so it should have been left up to the DM. This is especially true since the setting is supposedly included as an example of shaping D&D to fit a specific setting.

In the end, it seems like a reasonably worthwhile product even if it does do some things that seem only to make Oerth more like Toril rather than letting it flow with its own character. I'd strongly recommend getting at least a PDF of the Gold Box or Folio editions, or better still both, as a guidestone to the original shape of the setting, allowing the DM to adopt any changes knowingly and mindfully.

The Geist

The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall

All right, no more apologizing. Sometimes it'll just take me a while between articles here. That's just the way things go sometimes.

Anyway, in the previous entry, I talked about fine tuning your AD&D (or other) game for your specific setting. I thought I might provide a part of an example, since I have it handy, and also it's appropriate to the season. In my setting, I wanted the spirits of the dead to be less Evil. Sometimes, they're your ancestors! They do have a problem with the living, but not one where they feel the need to destroy all living things. So, the Ghost entry in the Monster Manual isn't very helpful, and most of the other undead spirits of the dead weren't what I was looking for either. However, there is the entry on the Kuei in the 1E Oriental Adventures book. OA was, in fact, a large part of shaping my ideas on fine tuning a setting, and its approach to the dead with an unfinished task fit my ideas on the restless dead very well. So, with some rewriting, here is the Geist, a replacement for the Ghost in my setting:

Geist (Lesser Spirit)

FREQUENCY: Rare
NO. APPEARING: 1
ARMOR CLASS: -4
MOVE: 18”
HIT DICE: 3 to 6
% IN LAIR: Nil
TREASURE TYPE: Nil
NO. OF ATTACKS: 1
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-6, 1-8, 1-10, or 1-12
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Possession
SPECIAL DEFENSES: See Below
MAGIC RESISTANCE: 10%
INTELLIGENCE: Average to Very
ALIGNMENT: See Below
SIZE: M
PSIONIC ABILITY: Nil
    Attack/Defense Modes: Nil
LEVEL/XP VALUE:
    3 HD: IV/180 + 3/hp
    4 HD: V/275 + 4/hp
    5 HD: V/405 + 5/hp
    6 HD: V/725 + 6/hp

A geist is a spectral entity, representing the soul of a deceased individual who has taken on a ghostly form. This transformation may result from the person passing away without proper burial rites, leaving behind unfulfilled life goals, or being murdered and not avenged. Visually, the geist retains the appearance it had in life, seemingly tangible but intangible to touch, as it cannot interact physically with the material world. Although they are not affected unduly by sunlight, geists tend to be more active during nighttime hours. Their alignment varies, depending on the nature of the task they must fulfill.

The geist's abilities vary based on its hit dice. These abilities are as follows:

    Hit Dice    Weapon Needed to Hit    Damage    
    3 HD                            +1                           1-6    
    4 HD                            +2                           1-8    
    5 HD                            +3                           1-10    
    6 HD                            +4                           1-12    


Other abilities of the geist include the following:

    • The capacity to shift into an ethereal state at will.
    • The power to take control of a living person, akin to the possession spell, which it can exercise up to three times daily.
    • Immunity to ESP, as well as resistance to charm, enchantment, illusion, and water-based spells.
    • They are impervious to psionic attacks.
    • They have an immunity to standard fire and cold damage, with only half damage taken from their magical counterparts.

In encounters, a geist typically seeks to possess a host. Successful possession results in the geist's form vanishing as it assumes control of the host's body to fulfill its unresolved earthly duties. These tasks might include seeking retribution, honoring a pledge, or performing sacred rituals for its release. A geist can maintain possession for extended periods if required by its mission, as illustrated by tales of geists completing lifelong vows through their hosts. Possession can only be ended through the host's demise, the completion of the geist's task, or through exorcism or a similar spell. Once freed, the host regains their faculties, oblivious to the events that occurred during the possession.

EDIT: It seems I forgot to include the data on the Possess spell. In OA, it's a 5th level Shukenja spell. The relevant factors are that it allows the user to possess, and so completely control, a creature of fewer hit dice, but the creature gets a saving throw vs. magic to resist. The possessed creature will not remember its time under possession. The possessor cannot use any class features of the target. If you prefer, you can substitute the Magic Jar spell, just as the Monster Manual ghost does, adjusting factors accordingly.

Fine-Tuning AD&D 1st Edition for Different Settings

First of all, let me apologize for having been so quiet. It's been a hard year and gaming has taken a secondary priority for me. Hopefully, I can concentrate on it more going forward. Secondly, I do want to get back to the series examining the "endgame" in AD&D, but that will have to wait.

Right now, I want to discuss something that not many people pay attention to, which is how AD&D can be adapted to different settings. If a setting is just a "Dungeons & Dragons" setting, then this isn't really as necessary. There are many similarities between Oerth (World of Greyhawk) and Toril (Forgotten Realms), as well as Mystara (the Known World of the Dungeons & Dragons line), and only a few small differences. Any number of other settings are similar in tone as well. But there are some settings which have a very different feel to them. Krynn (Dragonlance) is not much like the aforementioned settings, nor are Athas (Dark Sun), Aebrynis (Birthright), or, at least in general, the Crystal Spheres of Spelljammer. Looking to other companies' products, the lizardfolk-inhabited continents of Torsh in Judges' Guild's Portals of Torsh are specifically engineered to be like a dinosaur-filled Lost World, while the other worlds of the "Portals" line (Portals of Irontooth and Portals of Twilight) have their own distinct themes, tones, and feels. But enough of examples. We're here to examine what a DM has to do to create a specific tone and feeling for their setting. It's worth noting that games like GURPS are explicitly built around taking these steps, so a lot of these ideas come from there. One of GURPS's worst weaknesses is that it doesn't provide much of a place to start from like AD&D does. Everything has to be built by the Referee from scratch.

First of all, the DM is well-advised to go through and adjust the creatures in the Monster Manual, and perhaps the Fiend Folio, Deities & Demigods/Legends & Lore/Manual of the Planes, and Monster Manual II. A great deal of the tone of the setting comes from the sorts of entities that the players' characters might encounter. First of all, ruthlessly eradicate any entry that doesn't fit the setting. If the setting doesn't support having a variety of humanoids, eliminate the ones that don't fit. Perhaps the only humanoids around are Goblins, or maybe the whole line of Goblinoids—Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, and perhaps Kobolds—are present, but not Orcs or Gnolls. Or perhaps Gnolls and Flinds are present but not any of the others. Similarly, evaluate the demihumans—maybe there are Dwarves and Gnomes, and both are called "Elves" by the people of your setting, but there are no Elves as AD&D specifies them. Maybe you have another demihuman lineage in your setting, such as the Uldra found in Dragon magazine issue 119 or the Winged Folk of issue 51. Do you have Giants? Titans? Psionic monsters like Mind Flayers? Significantly, too, you will want to consider the various types of Men that can be found roaming your setting, and particularly the makeup of groups that might be encountered.

Next, once you've culled the creatures that don't fit the setting, find the ones that are different. Perhaps your Ghosts aren't uniformly Evil, and maybe their magical attacks aren't involved with aging. Perhaps you prefer to reskin the undead spirits found in the monster section of Oriental Adventures so that Evil ghosts use the description of the Gaki. What if you want Vampires in your setting to be more like those in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, or the ones in Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Saga for whatever reason. Those will require a rewrite in such cases. You will have to do these things for every entry in the monster catalogs, adding in your new entries and adjusting the old ones.

Once you've gone through that step, it's time to create new random encounter tables. I suggest using the ones in the DMG as a model, at least for the wilderness encounter tables, then adding additional tables specific to various regions of your setting, similar to the ones in the World of Greyhawk "gold box", that act to replace the checks for Patrols found on page 182 of the DMG. As for random castles, that's really up to the DM to include or not, depending on how detailed their maps for the region are. Personally, I prefer to have more control over settled defenses like that, but am perfectly fine with random encounters dictating the movements of nomadic or other rootless groups like Pilgrims. This may be the most work-intensive step involved, but it's an important one as it will dictate the frequency of various encounters. If your setting has more or fewer Fae-type creatures in an area, for example, then the players' characters should encounter them more or less often in any given encounter. A setting where most of the dangerous encounters are with bears and moose will have a different feel to one where Ankhegs suddenly burst out of the ground and Griffons regularly stoop on the party's horses.

Once the creatures of the setting are tuned to fit, it's time to work through the options the players will have. Perhaps your setting has only two types of player characters: Fighting Men and Magic Users, or maybe there will be a third sort of character who specializes in non-combative activities similar to Thieves. Or maybe there's a wide variety of character classes in your setting, such as versions of the Warlock, Sorcerer, or the Sha'ir from the Al-Qadim setting of the AD&D 2nd Edition supplements (as an aside, Jeremy Reaban has a bunch of character classes written up for AD&D, OD&D, and the D&D line over at DriveThru, all priced as "Pay What You Want" at this time, including a couple of reworkings of the Thief intended to fix problems he perceives in the class; if you hunt through the "character class" label on this blog you'll find a few others that I've designed or adapted from other sources as well, though also some dead ends of thinking toward an OSR-style SF game and some general discussion of the idea). At this point, you'll also want to be thinking about whether or not there are Psionic powers in your game, though you could also have thought of that while curating your creature lists. Other powers, such as the powers of the "Dreamer" semiclass found in Dragon magazine issue 132 or the Bloodlines found in the Birthright setting, might also come up for consideration. Perhaps you want to adapt the Kai monks and the Magnakai from the Lone Wolf series of solo adventure books. Whether you use Nonweapon Proficiencies found in Oriental Adventures and the Survival Guides or Secondary Skills from the DMG page 12, or perhaps a different system such as the one described in Savage Swords of Athanor (more discussion and resources can be found at this abandoned blog) will also have an effect on how your setting will feel, though a more subtle one perhaps.

Next, consider changing elements like Alignment. Perhaps you want to replace a generic "Law" with specific regions, governments, or individuals to whom loyalty might be owed. Maybe your definition of "Evil" and "Good" is different than the default assumption of treating Life as sacred or not. This can also have direct impact on the setting, such as a different cosmological structure than the "Wheel" cosmology laid out in the PH, DDG, and Manual of the Planes. Maybe you'll simply redefine "Evil" and "Good", for the purposes of spells, as whether or not something comes from the Invisible World or from the Perceptible World. Maybe your cosmological structure is derived from the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, or from the Aeonology of Simonianism, or even something more abstruse like the Books of Jeu and the Pistis Sophia, among many other similar schemes found around the world. Does your setting have Nine Worlds like those found in the branches of Yggdrasil? Maybe mysterious Otherworlds are found across the sea, like the magical islands found in Irish literature.

Another area to consider is the available technologies. If your setting is Bronze Age, it will have different types of armor than a High Medieval setting, while some settings will have gunpowder and others will have airships floating along trade routes across the world. At this point you should also decide on your system or systems of coinage, whether you want to redefine the weights of various weapons to be more accurate to history, and perhaps if you want to adjust the various other attributes applied to weapons such as damage, weapon vs. armor type adjustments, and so on, or indeed whether to eliminate some of the more fiddly bits.

Anyway, this should give you some suggestions of places to look to make your setting different than all of the others to be found out there.

Lucky 13!

Today, we celebrate 13 years of this blog. That seems impossible, since I only just started this blog yesterday, I'm sure. Well, no, checking my archive shows that I was working without a gaming group, something that is again the case due to personal conflicts with a couple of the members of my last regular group (and I volunteered to step aside to prevent any dramatics from happening), though I have also played in a couple of short-term games since leaving that group.

Since 2011, I have honed my gaming focus somewhat, moving away from my "gaming ADD" habits and narrowing my gaming to a few games that really do interest me. I'm old enough that I've tried most everything and now am fairly sure of what I like and don't like so I don't need to search around anymore. It's still a fairly broad range, from D&D-style games to Traveller-style, RuneQuest-style, and GURPS. There are also a few other specific games that remain of interest, such as Fantasy Wargaming, and Barbarians of Lemuria. I'm pretty willing to play any of those, as well as a few others like Pendragon, Lace & Steel, Chivalry & Sorcery, CORPS, EABA, Cyberpunk (Red or 2020, heck even 2013), and some others, but I'd probably only run AD&D (1st edition with some house rules), Swords & Wizardry: White Box (with extensive house rules), White Star (Galaxy Edition, probably), The Hero's Journey (2nd edition), MegaTraveller, RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, GURPS (4th edition), or Fantasy Wargaming anymore, and I've got AD&D, Fantasy Wargaming, or GURPS games more or less ready to go. Maybe I'd run Majus, Stars Without Number, or Worlds Without Number if someone pushed the issue, certainly I'd play them. And that's where I stand with gaming today.

[Obscure Games] DragonQuest

There were quite a few attempts to break the near-monopoly that D&D held on the early fantasy adventure gaming industry. A couple have withstood the ravages of time and have editions even to the present—here I'm mostly thinking of RuneQuest, The Fantasy Trip, and Tunnels & Trolls, but there are probably a few others. Many more lie by the wayside, though, and deserve to be examined for what they can tell us about their design and the interests of their designers.

DragonQuest was an entry from wargaming company SPI. Ironically, TSR would eventually buy out SPI and spend a short time publishing both games in competition with each other. Obviously, DragonQuest never presented a real challenge to the dominance of D&D, but it's a strange circumstance that it should have shared catalog space with the 800-lb. gorilla, however briefly.

The most immediately apparent difference in style between D&D and DQ lies in an artifact of SPI's design philosophy. In their search for exacting specificity in rules presentation, developed so that wargamers would always be operating from the same interpretation of rules with as little ambiguity as possible, SPI had adopted the "case system" for laying out the rules of the game. In this system, a main rule category would get a high-level denomination, say "1.". Then, specific subcategories would get their own denominative level, such as "1.1", and those could be broken into further levels, as for instance "1.1.A.". DQ mostly stuck to just two levels, with a few exceptions, with 87 numbered rules cases in the basic game book, most divided into multiple sub-cases. The book is also divided into 9 broader sections numbered with Roman numerals, but those did not break up the basic run of 87 numbered rules. Even the sample adventure, "The Camp of Alla-Akabar", uses this structure, with 17 numbered sections divided among 9 sections designated with Roman numerals. This layout philosophy makes the game easier for some people to learn, while obscuring the game for others. In the end, I'd say that it tends to make the game seem more closed to outsiders.

Characters in DQ are designed by a point system, but the number of points is random. A roll on a table gives between 81 and 99 attribute points to the player to divide among the 9 attributes, with results of lower amounts of total points giving higher maximum attribute ratings. So, a result of 81 points would allow the character to have attributes rated as high as 25, while the other extreme of 99 total attribute points would limit any one attribute to being no higher than 19. The average result is 90 attribute points, with no attribute higher than 22. Players then select the sex/gender of the character, with female characters losing 2 points of Physical Strength, but gaining them back as a point each to Dexterity and Fatigue ratings. A quick dice roll determines the handedness of the character, then the player gets to attempt to make the character a nonhuman if desired. A character can always be a human, so if that is selected, it is the case and things move on. Otherwise, the player can attempt up to three different "race" types with a percentage chance of successfully having a character of that type. The options are: dwarf, elf, giant, halfling, orc, or shape-changer. The percent chances for the nonhumans are fairly low, so there is a 30% chance of being an elf if that is desired, 6% of being a giant, down to 4% for being a shape-changer. Then, if the character is successfully a nonhuman type, they receive a multiplier for experience points, changing the number needed to buy various skills. Elves require 1.2 times as many XP, while orcs are allowed to buy skills for only 0.9 times the normal cost. Giants and shape-changers need to make another roll to find out which exact sort they are: giants can be of fire, frost, cloud, or stone varieties, while shape-changers can change form into a wolf, tiger, bear, or boar. I imagine that some GMs are likely to just allow players to select their character's "race" and leave the experience point multiple as the balancing factor that limits the desire to play a character of that type. After that, determine the character's astrological aspect, their family status, and starting money and experience. Like the attributes, more money means less starting experience and vice versa. After spending those and choosing elements like name and so on, the character is ready to play.

Combat is nominally a board game, with turns of 5 game seconds (called "pulses") and hexes of 5 scale feet regulating movement and position. It is derived from a melee skirmish game SPI had published called Arena of Death. The whole combat system takes up a bit less than 17 pages and has no surprises. It's well-designed, but brings no real innovations to the table.

Magic is a major portion of the game, and the designers even forgot to give any benefit to characters for choosing not to learn magic. This is remedied by a suggestion in Dragon magazine issue 86 in an article titled "The Warrior Alternative". As written, a player selects one of 12 magical "colleges" for their character to specialize in, or a couple more that were presented in an unpublished product that can be found out in the wild these days, which determines which spells the character can learn. Spells are cast by spending fatigue points and taking a minute outside of combat or one pulse when in combat. Why the difference in times? Because! You will get no further explanation. One college, the College of Greater Summonings, allows the character to call up a variety of demons. The demons are given names taken from the various spirit catalogues of the medieval and early modern periods, such as Gaap, Vassago, or Balam, though I don't think they owe much more than that to those real-world magical books.

As noted previously, skills are acquired by spending experience points, and can be raised in level by spending more experience points. The list in the rules includes: Spoken and Written Languages, Alchemist, Assassin, Astrologer, Beast Master, Courtesan, Healer, Mechanician, Merchant, Military Scientist, Navigator, Ranger, Spy/Thief, and Troubador in addition to various weapon skills, magic skills, Stealth, and Horsemanship. The more expansive a skill is, the more it will cost at each Rank. Skills are rated, generally, from Rank 0 to Rank 10 and can cost anywhere from 25 (e.g. Dagger) to 1000 (e.g. Healer) experience points for Rank 0. In addition, experience points can be spent to increase attribute ratings. Ranks are used to figure out the percent chance of success for an action using the skill.

In general, it's a solid game. The main complaint I'd have is that I can't see the point. It doesn't do anything particularly innovative, other than providing a very structured presentation of the rules. That said, its presentation can be a very useful matter, and certain elements like spending fatigue for spells cast and the tactical game are certainly solid ones. But it doesn't seem to have much that isn't already found elsewhere, such as The Fantasy Trip, RuneQuest, or even Chivalry & Sorcery. Plus, of course, there were numerous later games that did everything it did but better, such as GURPS, Fantasy Wargaming, or such modern games as Worlds Without Number. Still, it's not bad, just insufficiently ambitious, both for its own era and for posterity.

[The Domain Game] part 4: Raising Armies

This is the 1 2 3 4th part of this ongoing series, and it is time to discuss the wargamer's favorite part: how to get an army to send against your foes.

In AD&D, the subject is treated in the simplest way possible—just hire mercenaries, mostly. There are a few other options available, such as loyal followers or recruiting tribal bands, demihumans, or humanoids, but none are as generally useful as the mercenary option, and tribal bands and even demihumans are only treated cursorily. But the thing is, in history there were several options available, some used in some cultures and not others, and others that were almost universal. For this post, it's time to get out "Armies from the Ground Up", found in Dragon magazine issue 125.

The most universal method of raising an army is to put out a call to the people to send their sons out to die fight for their noble leader. In some places, this might be an explicitly guaranteed right for the nobility to call upon, while in others it might be a cultural prerogative, and in still others the noble sovereign might have to convince the people that it is in their best interest to bleed serve on the battlefield. "Armies from the Ground Up" chooses to call these the "fyrd", choosing a term used by the Anglo-Saxons before the Norman Conquest. The fyrd consists of about 30% of the population, or every male of reasonably sound body aged from 18 to 45 years old. The article provides the option to expand this fighting force by increasing the age of the fyrd by one or more years down and three or more up, so from 17-48, 16-51, and so on all the way to the maximum of every reasonably sound male from ages 13 to 60. Each unit of increase bumps up the potential size of the fyrd by 2% of the total population, so a maximum of 40%. The article makes the categories rigid, so that for every one year down the high end must be increased by three years and the total size of the fyrd increases by 2% for each such increase, but the DM might consider being more flexible and increase it by 1% for each year down and perhaps ⅓% for each year up. Or something like that, it's just an idea running through my head as I type this. The DM might also work out some factor to cover conscripting female population as well, but there should also be some kind of penalty for all of these, such as reducing the overall effectiveness of the fyrd when recruiting younger and older population, reducing the overall happiness of the population and showing that by reduced morale or loyalty numbers for the population, and so on, especially if the battle for which these citizens are being called up doesn't go well. Anyway, this is the ideal, potential size of the peasant army. In the event only a certain percentage will show up in time to march out, which "Armies from the Ground Up" figures by rolling 5d6, adding 55, modifying the number by a few factors such as tax rate, the leader's general domestic and foreign policies, and such and then using that as a percentage of the potential army. So, the base size of the army will be 72% or 73% of the potential army on average and ranging from 60% to 85%, with various modifiers bringing the final total from 45% to 100%. Keep in mind, though, that by default these are untrained peasants carrying what amount to slightly modified farming tools. It might be possible for the players to issue their peasants more dedicated weapons to use in these times, but that can get pretty expensive, especially if they are given armor.

Another sort of non-mercenary soldier discussed in the article that might be available is the militia. This is a group of people given time off from working in the fields or whatever and provided with basic military training and equipment. As before, the "Armies from the Ground Up" article provides some details on setting up a militia and the effects of calling them up for military service.

The third sort of troops that might be available in a domain are what the article we're referencing calls the yeomanry. This starts to verge on feudalism, so it might be limited to regions using that sort of organizational model. Yeomanry are relatively wealthy population who have been given special privileges such as lower taxes, the right to own and carry weapons and armor, and so on in exchange for the responsibility of providing their own weapons, armor, and training and responding to calls to arms. They also might bring along a few companions such as their sons (or daughters), apprentices, and similar members of their extended household, providing those with equipment and training as well. This is slightly risky, as it creates a portion of the population who are capable of rising against the lord if things go poorly, but they can usually be pacified by providing many nice benefits and entertainments. That's mostly up to the DM to work out based on how the players choose to approach the matter, and is one of those places where Charisma again proves that it had better not be the dump stat. It's also worth noting that citizen-soldiers of this sort are how Athens and other Greek city-states organized their armies.

There are other possibilities, not laid out in the "Armies from the Ground Up" article, such as the Roman practice of conscription, but for the most part these comprise the majority of troops that aren't mercenaries or similar professional armies. It might be worth a DM's time to work out how many population would want to join a volunteer standing army that is treated like mercenaries in terms of how much they are paid, or for simplicity just stick to the methods of hiring mercenaries that AD&D already provides. Certainly, the article from Dragon magazine issue 109, "Fighters for a Price", can expand the mercenary tables in ways that the DM will find very helpful.

Since mercenaries can also include marines, or troops accustomed to sailing and fighting on or from ships, it's also worth it for the DM to familiarize themself with the ship rules and perhaps consider using expanded rules such as the article "High Seas" and possibly its follow-up "The Oriental Sea" found in Dragon magazine issues 116 and 130, respectively. One advantage to those articles is that they include specifications for a ship's cargo capacity, something that the DMG unfortunately neglected, but which is important for both using ships for mercantile trade and determining the number of troops they can transport.

Anyway, this is as far as I planned out in advance for this series, though I hope to continue it anyway. I will try to think of subjects that need to be covered, or you can suggest things you would like some treatment of. I also want to work out a more systematized procedure for handling domain level events and so forth, but I'm still thinking about the details of that (for the most part, it would just be a formalized description of what's already in these articles). I might also discuss the implications of the entries in the Monster Manual and similar sources for settings, along with suggestions on how to vary them to more accurately reflect a particular setting. Would a post that provided an overview of some of the other articles I referenced ("In a Cavern, In a Canyon", "A Capital Idea", "The Thief Who Came in from the Cold", or whatever) be worthwhile, or is it just easier to point you to those articles (and do you need to be told where to look on the internet to find PDF copies of old Dragon magazines)? Do you want a similar summary for the Cleric, Magic-User, and Thief domain-game articles mentioned? Let me know!