End of Year Assessments and Aspirations

 

Gaming projects I've been noodling around with and their working titles, an incomplete list:

 

Flanaess Sector: reskinning AD&D 1E as a space opera game, with new classes, spaceship combat, equipment from 1E/4E Gamma World, and intelligent aliens drawn from the intelligent species of Monster Manual/Fiend Folio/Monster Manual 2.

Towers of Saltgate: city-as-dungeon-crawl supplement in the tradition of City-State of the Invincible Overlord, the Chaosium Thieves' World boxed set, or even modules like "Dwellers of the Forbidden City".

 

Shining Swords: a space opera game in the tradition of Star Wars ("A New Hope" more than any of the other chapters), Traveller, or the Eric John Stark stories of Leigh Brackett, using the rules system found in Flashing Blades, especially including the careers and social climbing adapted to space fantasy; possibly with psionics, but very much not sure about that - even if it does, note that moving things with mind power did not show up at all in that first chapter of Star Wars.

 

Millennium: medieval fantasy, covering 486CE-1487CE, Europe to Persia, Scandinavia to North Africa. Really, a thorough revision and reworking of Fantasy Wargaming by Galloway et al.

 

Alpha Cephei: using the Cepheus Engine SRD to clone the MegaTraveller edition of Traveller, with my own setting centered on Terra.

 

Days of High Adventure: my own D&D, working from the already very stripped-down Swords & Wizardry: White Box, stripping it down to the barest essentials, then building it back up to a more complete rules set focused on long-term campaign play, possibly in combination with Towers of Saltgate, but certainly some sword & sorcery setting; would include faction rules and other GM tools designed to allow players to take full initiative and agency.

 

I really should just pick one at a time, focus on it, and not throw it away when I get frustrated with it… and try to ignore the most frustrating part, publishing and production, until I can actually look for solutions to questions like editing, art, and layout.

[Obscure Games] Flashing Blades

 

Fantasy Games Unlimited was notorious for publishing excessively complex games like Chivalry & Sorcery, Aftermath!, or Space Opera, but in fact they just as frequently published games of normal complexity, like Villains & Vigilantes or Psi-World. Some of their games, like Bunnies & Burrows, were on the much less complex side of the hobby. And that is where we find ourselves with the swashbuckling game, Flashing Blades.

Character creation is fairly straightforward, with a few stats each rolled on 3d6, a number of figured stats including a hit point pool, the choice of several character backgrounds that give varying access to skills, giving different skills a cost of one, two, or three points each, and a number of skill points to pick up those skills. In addition, a character can learn how to fight in various ways, from picking up the skill on the mean streets to formal instruction in a fencing salle. Finally, the character can have any of a number of advantages or be burdened with a secret that gives story hooks to the character.

Non-combat skills are easy to use, simply rolling against one of the character's stats if the skill is possessed, half the stat if it isn't, and getting bonuses for a couple of levels of increasing mastery. In addition, mastery of a skill should cause the Referee to call for rolls less often, only for situations of increased difficulty.

Combat isn't much more difficult, being a process of figuring the chance to hit on a d20, rolling for hit location by picking a target, rolling 2d20 and using the result that is closest to the target location, and doing damage that is reduced by armor rating.

But a swashbuckling game would be remiss if it didn't provide a way to rise in society, and in some ways the heart of the game is found in the social status and careers. Characters start with a social status based on their background and possibly their advantages if those provide them with a position at the start of the game. They may use their skills and background to enter into any of various careers, whether in the army, the royal bureaucracy, the Church, the banking system, or a number of other possibilities. Each career starts with a low-level position, such as a minor bureaucrat, law student, or priest, then provides opportunities for advancement as the game progresses, potentially advancing as far as Pope of the Church! Of course, most characters will not make it so far in their careers, but even a Town Mayor or Provincial Tax Collector has significant clout. There are also minor careers that can be pursued, such as rising as an official within a Gentlemen's Club. The most active characters might even pursue careers in several directions. Holding a number of positions can increase the character's social rank, after all.

Most of the supplementary materials for the game simply provided some adventures to undertake, but High Seas in particular expanded the game by providing for life in the Caribbean instead of France, and opened the possibility of playing a pirate, with information on how that sort of a career could be pursued.

Designer Mark Pettigrew was only 19 years old when the game was published in 1984, but its clean design and sophisticated approach to a lifetime career speaks to a solid understanding of how those could work in a gaming environment.

In the end, it's an excellent game. You can still buy it in print or PDF. PDFs are available at DTRPG, while the print game can be ordered from Fantasy Games Unlimited directly. I do not get any kickbacks or anything from those links, I am only providing them for your convenience.

Games That Influenced My Current Understanding Of RPGs

I'm still working on the follow-up to the "What is Magic?" post, describing what spirits are, exactly. I also need to write up the events of the Deindustrial Future game, where the players' characters fought off a major assault by the forces of the antagonist—or antagonists, as the case may be—and realized that they may have been making some bad assumptions about what is going on. However, because I want to post something before the end of the year, this will be a simple social media game about my history in gaming. All it really is is a list of "games that influenced me", but I want to include some commentary to make it worth your time to read. Without further ado, and after the first two in no particular order:

1. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st edition - This was, of course, the first RPG I played, before I had even heard the term "RPG". I learned a lot about gaming from this, in part because I had no idea what I was doing. It was where I learned that having followers is a good thing. It was where I learned that maybe you shouldn't trust your fellow players, but also that you could generally rely on them if they weren't dicks. I learned what it means to be able to attempt anything, even if you might or might not succeed. Some of those I would count as life lessons, too. I learned that resource management is a fun game in itself, even if it took me years to be able to articulate that lesson.
2. Traveller - Since it was the first game I'd ever run instead of just being a player, this is where I learned the value of Referee tools. Random encounters, rumor tables, world generation procedures, and so on mean that the Referee can concentrate on the arc of the story and leave the details up to the dice. This has served me as well in learning what the value of divination is outside of gaming, too.
3. Call of Cthulhu - This is where I learned that even a single rule, if properly designed, can thoroughly change the experience of the game by altering the approaches that the players will tend toward.
4. Champions - I didn't know it at the time I was playing it, but this game taught me that point-based character creation is terrible. Even if the intent is otherwise, it encourages players to find as many loopholes in the system as they can. This is also called "system mastery", and it continues to infect some games to this day. Some games revel in that, such as Pathfinder, while others, such as GURPS, try to minimize it.
5. RuneQuest, 3rd edition - Proved that it is possible to use points to generate characters and not have it be awful. On the other hand, it does this by limiting the point use to only one segment of character creation, the skills of the character. Technically, I probably learned this with 2nd edition and with Call of Cthulhu, but I really like 3rd edition RQ and wanted to include it in this list.
6. Marvel Super Heroes - I learned that the description of a power—what Champions calls "special effects"—is very nearly as important as the mechanics of the power. I also learned that the direction of complexity that I was heading deeper into was not necessarily the best direction.
7. Pendragon - There are other ways to play a game is what Pendragon taught me about gaming. Adventures can be had without making "adventuring" the centerpiece of the game. Instead, adventures can serve a larger purpose of supporting the play of families and the exercise of power politics.
8. Hârnmaster - This game taught me that not every situation affecting a character is best simulated as a pool of resource points, but that conditions applied to the character are often the better tool to use. Also, that characters don't have to be high-competence to be fun to play. Other people learned that latter lesson with Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing, but this game was my lesson in that.
9. Flashing Blades - Here I learned that the proper focus of a game is on the players' characters, even if the events being portrayed are larger than those characters. I also finally came to understand the lesson that I should have learned in Traveller or even earlier, that character development is not necessarily something that affects stats and skills.
10. GURPS - Taught me that the math in the game is important, but that it should absolutely not be something that the players have to deal with much. It should be baked into the system as much as possible.
11. Lace & Steel - Here, I learned one part of the lesson that even small things can make an adventure more fun, by helping to immerse the players into the setting. In particular, the concentration on the small indignities of travel, and how this encourages characters to choose to pay for better accommodations when available, taught me about the little things that matter to characters.
12. Swordbearer - Like the previous entry, I learned that even seemingly minor elements, presented correctly, can add immeasurably to play, with travel being another area treated especially well, in this case by detailing how things like setting and striking camp, the condition of the travelers, weather, and so on affect matters. I also learned that sometimes finances are better handled abstractly, since the characters shouldn't be worrying about every last copper piece and so neither should the players, at least in some settings.

That gives an even dozen games, though I could have included more. I learned things from Chivalry & Sorcery, Fantasy Wargaming, Vampire: The Masquerade, TORG, Rolemaster, and many others as well, but I have to stop somewhere. That's not even counting the negative lessons—other than Champions, which I think was one of the most important lessons—such as the WotC editions of Dungeons & Dragons.

FINALLY!

So, after several years of looking in varying degrees of intensity, I finally have a (hopefully) regular gaming group again, for which I am running the game. It's a couple of old friends who live in the area.

When they agreed to let me run something, I gave them six choices:

• MegaTraveller: Noble House - This would be my own MT setting, using my conversion and update of the Pocket Empires rules from T4 (which aren't complete right now, but I would have worked extra hard to get them ready in time to run the game). The story would revolve around a noble house and its retainers, and the intrigues of a rival house to discredit and dismantle them.
• Top Secret: Special Missions Bureau - A Top Secret game set in the early '80s, with Cold War intrigue and globehopping adventure. I intended to take the results of the game and use them to provide a background for a second arc which would take place in the modern day.
• White Star: The Flanaess Sector - In this one, the players would be gritty, down on their luck adventurers in the Flanaess Sector, against a background of interstellar rebellion against a distant empire. I'm afraid that I didn't present this option to the players very well, though it was considered.
• Flashing Blades: Scourge of the Caribbean - Swashbuckling pirates in the Caribbean Sea!
• GURPS Deindustrial Future - I presented this as a cross between Stephen King's Dark Tower series and Fallout without the nukes. The setting is the future a few hundred years after our civilization runs out of petroleum to fuel it. While electricity, and technology, does exist, the large-scale networks of power transmission and transportation infrastructure do not. Characters have access to items up to TL7 (most TL8 items require far too much interdependent, and so unavailable, infrastructure), but cost 2x as much as normal for every TL above 4 (roughly the 16th-18th centuries), which is the maximum easily sustainable technology level. The culture is heavily influenced by the American West, simply because that's easier to get everybody on the same page, but the world is split into, effectively, city-states and tribal chieftains - not unlike Europe's Migration Era after the fall of Rome. There's also some magic of a relatively subtle kind ("Path/Book Magic" for those of you who know GURPS) along with spirits, and alchemy of the standard GURPS sort ("snake oil") along with some other things like Gunslingers and traveling preachers of a sort.
• CORPS Old Solar System - Dying Mars with its ancient civilizations and canals crossing the cold deserts, overcast Venus and its vast, jungle swamps, shallow seas, and saurian monsters. I hadn't yet figured out what would be around Jupiter and Saturn (or further out yet!), but Mercury was to be largely drawn from Space 1889's "Nodding World" with its planet-girdling World River. Lots of inspiration from C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett.

After some discussion, the players settled on the GURPS Deindustrial Future game, despite the fact that none of them have played much GURPS (they have an ongoing Champions game and have stayed focused on HERO System, though like most sensible people they shied away from the sixth edition of that game). Since I haven't played much 4E GURPS myself, things have been a learning experience for us all. I hope to write up some about their characters and their first adventure (a saloon brawl that took us a long time because of our collective unfamiliarity with actually playing the game)  soon.

I Really Need To Be In The Habit Of Writing

Well, as has been the case for a couple of years, I didn't really post a lot last year. I'm hoping to change that - which I've said before, so who knows how it'll turn out this time.

One good thing in my gaming life lately is that I've finally figured out some of the details of the sort-of retroclone of MegaTraveller I want to do. Cepheus Engine seems like the perfect place to start, since it doesn't have any of the weird and confusing restrictions that are in the MgT SRD. It should be easy enough to redefine difficulties to fit the MT ones (separated by 4 points instead of 2 as in the CE version), and then going back to the original version for things like aging, encounters, and so on. A major change to the task system I want to make is to drop tasks one category. That is, instead of a Routine task succeeding on a 7+ and a Difficult one on 11+, the Routine task will succeed on 3+ and the Difficult one on 7+. This is to compensate for the assumption that the Digest Group people had that a character would typically have a DM of +4. It allows me to get back to Traveller-style assumptions about skill levels. With the added emphasis on level-0 skills in MT, that makes the increase of difficulty by one category for lacking the skill back into a meaningful thing. Another change will be to make exceptional results happen at a margin of 4 points instead of 2, but that's probably not meaningful to the casual reader. Damage results in combat will remain the same, though.

Notice how I called it a "sort-of" retroclone. That's because I've decided that I want to make some more radical changes too. For one, I'll be getting rid of the "hit points" system that is common to Traveller, and replacing it with an "injury" model of wounds. That is, when you get hit, there will be a mostly descriptive result that applies to your character until it heals. For example, "moderate bleeding slash to right arm", which consists of the following elements: moderate, bleeding, slash, and right arm. "Moderate" indicates the severity, which influences how long it takes to heal, the kind of treatment required, and also determines how much that wound affects attempts to perform other actions. "Bleeding" means that the wound is causing blood loss (which is the one place where there will be a sort of hit points). "Slash" is mainly important for determining what sort of treatment would be required to help the healing process. "Right Arm", obviously, indicates which tasks are affected by the wound. There are a number of other elements that could end up in a wound description, too, and during healing it could become infected.

Another thing I want to do is write it as a fantasy game instead of an SF one. I've been intrigued by the idea ever since the Thieves' World boxed set included Traveller statistics for the characters of that setting.

A big change (some will think) that I want to make is to revise character creation. Characters will start at a young age and not go through a career lifepath. Instead, there will be a number of skill points that the player can spend to give starting skills. After that, the MT methods of improving skills will come into play during the game. I want to model a lot of that on Flashing Blades, actually.

Another change I want to include is a personality system derived from the ones in Pendragon, Fantasy Wargaming, and Lace & Steel. I feel like that is something that can improve the game experience in a fantasy setting, which is usually more intimately connected to character motivations than an SF one generally tends toward. Yes, that is an over-broad statement. I hope that people will find the personality system I write to be useful in their SF games too. Heck, I might end up writing a new version of this game that goes back to the SF setting.

Anyway, I've been working on that. This is my first post since July. Here's hoping that I can post some more.

Games I'd Like To Play Redux

Yesterday, Douglas Cole at Gaming Ballistic wrote up some of the games that he'd like to play, and then today Peter V. Dell'Orto at Dungeon Fantastic did the same. Since I'm stuck in the review that I'm writing (for a recent game, of all things), I figured, "what the heck?" and decided to do the same. I've written things like this before, but I like the focus of limiting myself to three games (not a hard and fast rule, but that's what those two gentlemen did). And anyway, my list has changed slightly from those earlier lists.

1) Top Secret. I recently ran across the flowchart that Merle Rasmussen put together in Dragon magazine #40, and looked at my slowly growing draft of a TS retroclone. Then I remembered how much fun the game was, and how much fun it looks now. It's an odd game, occupying a niche closer to the Mission: Impossible TV series than the superheroics of Bond or Bourne (or the movie version of Mission: Impossible), more like Secret Agent/Danger Man or To Catch A Thief than Munich or Three Days of the Condor. And yet, it can manage to fill those other roles as well. Sometimes. When the dice fall right. The person running it would need to have access to a lot of the articles that appeared in Dragon magazine, especially "Pop the Clutch and Roll!" in Dragon #78, which gave a good, gameable system for car chases.

2) Flashing Blades. Especially using the High Seas supplement to play pirates in the Caribbean - but I wouldn't turn down playing in France either! There is still no better game for swashbuckling adventure. Character creation is as quick and breezy as the game system itself. Yeah, there are some clunky bits (weapon skills, notably), but they work without needing to be changed. The idea of having a goal in the form of the careers that a character can pursue is brilliant and quickly puts the players in the position of generating the adventures on their own as they maneuver and intrigue for power and position.

3) Traveller. Classic, Mega-, GURPS, Mongoose, I don't care. I'll even play New Era, T4, or T5 (though I won't be as happy). I do have a strong preference for Classic or Mega-, largely because I like the simplicity of the mechanics and clean feel of the gadgets and setting (Mongoose is a little too baroque for me, though the mechanics are good). GURPS is not a bad choice, though the system isn't as pristine. New Era is alright, but the system was not the best thing that GDW ever came up with. T4/T5 are pretty similar, and I don't like the way that the system has gone much, but at least it isn't SpaceMaster (I kid! I'm kidding! SpaceMaster is totally better than Space Opera. I'm kidding again!) I'd probably like any of them even more if the setting was the Referee's own, developed from the game assumptions, rather than the Imperium universe. Not that I dislike the Imperium, but ever since Virus it's kinda lost its appeal in all eras to me. Well, the GURPS "No Rebellion" alternate timeline is pretty cool. Too bad they had to go to the Interstellar Wars era in 4E, forcing everyone who just wanted to play the default setting to do a tonne of conversions. Easier to just roll up some subsectors and go. The point is, though, that Traveller is a pretty awesome game, maybe the best for me.

Of course, I'm not counting games that I'd run (well, I'd run Traveller). That is currently a fixed list: AD&D 1E (with small alterations), GURPS Fantasy Old West (which I am running for myself using a solo GM emulator), MegaTraveller, Fantasy Wargaming, Space 1889 (not the new one, the original GDW game), Chivalry & Sorcery. There are a couple of other games that I'd like to play, too, but not as seriously as the three I listed. Hârnmaster, D&D 5E, and RuneQuest 6E, notably, as well as any of those that I said I'd run.

What are you looking to play?

Top 10 Gaming Products

Over at Dyvers's blog, he's asking for lists of our Top 10 favorite gaming items of all time. To simplify things, I limited this to RPG items for my list. Anyway, here goes…

10) The Arcanum, Second Edition.

This is probably the best Old School set of published variant rules for D&D. It is well thought-out, addresses many of the problems perceived in D&D at the time, and keeps the things that make the game simple and quick, such as character classes and advancement through collecting treasure and defeating foes. It does include options for the more problematic things that would later get incorporated, such as experience bonuses for "role-playing" (without bothering to define that), but not many. Finally, it includes a simple skill system, armor that reduces damage, spells that aren't forgotten (but are limited in number of castings per magic user per day), and other simple, obvious fixes that would eventually become nearly standard in gaming. Ahead of its time, while still retaining the best of the origins, this remains one of the best rules systems in general.

9) This entry has been removed. I cannot continue to support the game that was listed.

8) Lords of Creation.

Tom Moldvay was given free rein when Avalon Hill was making a desperate attempt to remain relevant in a market increasingly moving toward roleplaying games, and he came up with this. In what may be the most gonzo setting ever, the whole of reality and alternate realities is opened up to play. The player-characters are given maximum freedom for advancement, hoping to eventually be able to achieve the status of Lord of Creation and create their own settings, alternate worlds, and so on. Along the way, they might learn magical powers, acquire cybernetic enhancements, fight dragons or robot soldiers, even travel into the poetry of William Blake. Seriously, one of the alternate world settings is derived from the poetry of William Blake. There is nothing cooler than that in gaming. Since the very next session could take players into the Nine Worlds of Norse mythology, an alternate world where Boudicca was not defeated by the Romans, or a crystal forest hiding crustaceous humanoids guarding a staff of power, the game was wide open for anything, and was able to handle it with cleverly designed (though, to be fair, occasionally difficult to understand) rules systems that still felt a lot like D&D.

7) Adventures Dark and Deep Bestiary.

There have been a lot of monster books over the years. None of them has been as good as this one, which includes every creature from the AD&D monster books (less, of course, the ones that WotC has reserved for itself as "product identity" - though those have been replaced by versions created to be effectively the same but with different names and physical descriptions, as many people have been doing). Mr. Bloch did not stop there, though, creating a whole batch of creatures of his own design to add in. Among them are the Faeries and their Sidhe Courts, which are some of the best things to come out of the OSR movement (which is not to take anything away from the many, many wonderful things which that movement has produced). I love this monster book more than most, and of course it is easily used with any compatible game.

6) World of Greyhawk Boxed Set.

What can I say about this that hasn't already been said? It is exactly what (A)D&D needed in a setting, with an interesting balance between the idea that would later become known as "Points of Light" and the clash of Kingdoms that drives medieval wargaming. As people have looked at this over the years, the cleverness built in has only become more apparent, adding pathos to the unfortunate direction taken by subsequent products in the line. Including everything from amazingly euphonious, yet still absurd and camp, names to interesting factions and organizations, there is more implied adventure in any one area of the setting map than some settings have in their entire worlds. Topped off by that amazing Darlene map and some really helpful random encounter tables, there is little else that a DM would need to run a wide-ranging campaign for years.

5) Pagan Shore.

I love Pendragon. It is among the best roleplaying games, and one that I wish I were able to play more often. I'm personally most fond of the Fourth Edition rules, but I'm not a fanatic about any of the editions. Whatever, though, the one book in that game line that rises above anything else is this one. Giving a description of a society that is as alien to most modern-day gamers as the Aztecs, but doing so by building the cultural differences into the rules, players will soon find themselves approaching the mindset of the Iron Age Irish. There are a few quibbles to be had, but almost all of those have been addressed by people online, such as a discussion of how to incorporate the actual legal systems of Iron Age Ireland into the game in a way that is neither intrusive nor overwhelming of the adventure parts. It really does work, too. It doesn't hurt that I have a deep and abiding love of the Irish culture and very often want to play a character from whatever the closest analog is in the game world.

4) Flashing Blades.

Despite being one of the most popular settings for adventure fiction throughout the years, the 17th century has seen remarkably little treatment in roleplaying games. One of the earlier (but not the earliest, by any means) games to address that period was Flashing Blades. Marrying a relatively simple game system to a detailed and deep social climbing system, the game calls forth the ambitious swashbucklers and supports that style of play with rules that encourage such behavior without privileging "story" over game play. I'm fairly certain that the only reason this didn't do better than it did is that it didn't have a magic system. Of course, there is little way to include such a thing into a game of this subject, so that is not surprising at all. That said, it might have done it well if the next product on my list had come out a little earlier.

3) GURPS Voodoo: The Shadow War.

This was a game I didn't know I needed until after I got it. At the time, I was simply addicted to GURPS, so I was picking up just about everything that came out. When I got a look at the magic system, though… Look, up until I saw this, I was of the opinion that the RuneQuest magic system was the best one around - and don't get me wrong, it is excellent in many ways that have still not been matched by most games - and the one in Fantasy Wargaming was a glance at what might have been possible had it undergone more development. This one, though, hit every button of what I wanted in a magic system. Mages are not walking artillery pieces, they are subtle (except for the ones who aren't). Magic isn't just wave-wave-BOOM, but a process of conjuring spirits in smoky temples that are kept in the back rooms of Curandera shops and sending them out to do one's bidding. Yet, it still makes this all a part of an adventure game. Some magicians are Spirit Warriors, letting themselves be ridden by powerful Lwa who can do so much more than mere human beings can. The setting was, at the time, very nearly the only one on the market which dealt with race in the Americas in a relatively mature fashion, and was a surprise in that most, or even all, of the players' characters would be black.

2) AD&D 1E Dungeon Masters Guide.

Obviously this was going on my list somewhere. It has been, and rightly, lionized over and again, so I don't really feel the need to add to that general acclaim. Suffice it to say that there are few books out there which include as much useful advice, and none which include the density of advice and actually useful charts per page. Admittedly, one must get used to the writing style, which has been described as "High Gygaxian", but for myself I grew up on it and miss that idiosyncratic voice in gaming. Even if D&D isn't your game, you will almost surely find something of value in here, even if it's just to learn that there is a difference between jasper and onyx or discovering a passel of different terms for "prostitute". This is one of the most recommended books in gaming history, and it is for good reason.

and coming to the pinnacle, what could be better than the DMG?

1) MegaTraveller Boxed Set.

OK, I know that it is rife with typographical errors, mistakes, and other problems that gave this game the nickname "MegaErrata". Still, the first game I chose myself was Traveller, seeing that little black box in the bookstore that served as my first dealer of gaming products, and finding out that it had a book all about starships. Now, all these years later, having played or learned seven (or more, depending on how one counts it) different editions, I have come to the conclusion that this is the edition that did everything closest to right. It retains the flavor of the original game, while still fixing the problems inherent in the original design. It is compatible enough to use the supplementary material for the classic game, but can also make use of a great deal of the material written for T4 or T5 with only minimal conversion, and material for TNE with a little (a lot, actually) more work. Outside of the errata problem, the only disappointment about this game is that it was cut short before being finished, due largely to whatever happened with Digest Group - for example, only two of the alien races (plus two extra human cultures beyond the default one) of the default setting were ever converted to its specifications. The only edition which came as close as this one to perfection has been the Mongoose edition, but I have my own problems with that one.

Random Notes

I don't have much to say at the moment, but here are some things that have been going through my head in relation to games.

- I guess I'm the only person around who isn't thrilled with Tunnels & Trolls. I'm happy for those of you who have been waiting for this.

- I don't know what to make of the things going on with Dwimmermount. I'm sure that it will work out in the end, but I am sadly reminded of the problems that plagued Space 1889 when it was first published.

- It's amazing how many things can go wrong with a boardgame. Still, Ogre is a great game and everything will be excellent, I am sure.

- It's been so long since I've created an adventure in the old style that I forgot how difficult it can be to design a secret door. Does anyone know of any resources that outline different types of secret doors?

- I'm developing a more precise understanding of what my ideal game should look like. Sadly for me, there is no published game that sits in exactly that sweet spot (I'm pretty sure that it's somewhere in the space between OD&D, Runequest, GURPS, Swordbearer, Flashing Blades, Pendragon, and Hârnmaster). I suppose that as my understanding becomes more complete I will be designing something that works there.

- I want to do another Obscure Games review, but I'm just not sure which game I want to do.  Maybe I'll do another poll to find out what other people want to see.

- Pathfinder MMO. But it can't use the Pathfinder rules in any way. O… K? Things have gotten weird in the mainstream gaming companies.

- I played the new X-Wing miniatures game yesterday. It was fun, and feels like flying space fighters in the Star Wars universe should feel. It helps that I won both games (I flew an X-Wing against two TIE fighters, the first time using the quick start rules, the second using the full rules), though the second game was extremely close - I actually lost until my opponent recalled that he wasn't allowed to fire in the situation we were in. I got the opportunity to exclaim, "I can't shake him!" So, that was satisfying.

O Fortuna

One of the things that occasionally shows up in rule sets is the idea of "luck" as being something that a character can have that is not connected to the normal luck of dice rolling. For instance, in Fantasy Wargaming, almost every interaction with the rules is affected by a luck roll that can itself be modified by the native luck of the character (as a special ability gained during character creation). In GURPS, there are several types of luck advantages, each of which allows varying benefits, such as re-rolling dice (the most common) or narrative benefits (like "Serendipity", which forces the GM to include one "fortuitous but plausible coincidence" per game session). CORPS Luck causes all rounding done in any calculation (except character creation and calculations that do not directly affect the character) to be in the player's favor. Some games have Luck as a characteristic (such as Tunnels & Trolls and Flashing Blades) or as a roll based on a characteristic (the Luck rolls of Basic Roleplaying and its progenitor, RuneQuest, both of which are based on the Power characteristic).

But what is "luck"? Why should it be different than just the result of the series of dice rolls made during the game?

Obviously, in those games which include it as a separate concept, luck is an active force in the game world. Rather than being a description of events after the fact, it is a prescriptive concept that rests in certain people and not in others. It (usually) can have the qualities of "bad" or "good", so that those cursed with bad luck see detriments in the game world, while those blessed with good luck see benefits. From this, we can conjecture that it must be an actual force in the world, and not just a description of relative fortune.

The term came late to English, but was based on much older concepts in Northern European (Germanic, Scandinavian, and Celtic, mainly) societies. In those societies, the success of a community, or a person, derived from its connection to the invisible world. In most cases, the community would have a connection through its sacrificial religion, especially through the institution of sacral kingship, which is the origin of political kingship. In this institution, a person would be chosen as the representative of the community to act as a sort of high priest. His (or sometimes her) duties would include observing various ritual taboos, engaging in ritual activities, and living a virtuous life. Failure in any of these was thought to bring ruin on the community. An individual would have a similar connection through his or her particular ritual and personal actions that would affect his or her life. For instance, a person might build his house on an elf path and see his luck drain away, or she might sing a particularly pleasant song in a place that the elves are present and find that she is afterward living a charmed life. On the larger scale, a bad king (for instance, one who gave bad judgments) would bring ruinous weather, unchecked banditry, and failed crops to his community, while a good one who observed his taboos, was pious, and embodied the virtues of his people would see pleasant, peaceful days and bountiful harvests under his reign.

So, "luck" was the favor of the invisible world. That matches pretty well with RuneQuest and Basic Roleplaying, where Power is also the characteristic that is associated with spirits and magic. It also fits well in games like Flashing Blades, where God has ordered lives for good or ill. What would be interesting would be to see ways of affecting the luck rolls and advantages. Luck could be used as a way of enforcing alignment (or whatever) restrictions, by making characters who do not live up to their professed philosophies lose luck, and those who hew closely to the restrictions of their ethos gain it.

(Inspired by a couple of comments here.)