[Old-School Game] Getting Started With Characters - Character Classes

 

Classes from the MCDM game.

Mine are somewhat different 

I didn't hit the ground running, I guess, when I made my plans, but maybe that's okay since I've added one more thing: I want to make my own OSR-style game. That is, I want to use straightforward mechanics—no elaborate skill system, embellished personality system, detailed combat system, and so on, though I could use rules that do those things in an obvious and direct manner (though they don't need to be as rudimentary as, say, the alignment system for personality rules or weapon proficiencies and secondary skills for skills). The art will be in finding what level of "obvious" as opposed to "detailed" I am willing to accept. To an extent, I'll be returning to something like the WRG game exercise from early days on this blog, though I don't know if I'll be specifically using the WRG Ancients/Medieval 6th edition rules I was focusing on back then.

As good a place to start as any might be characters. Other than the decisions made in play, how should characters be distinguished from one another? I like to think that there are a few characteristics that distinguish individuals in an adventure-fiction context. There are inborn traits, which can be thought of as a character's ancestry and innate talents. In games to date, those are mostly represented by the character's "race" (or, more recently, in an attempt to move away from the "blood will tell" eugenics assumptions found among some early fantasy authors, "ancestry" or "species") and "attributes" (sometimes called "characteristics", such as Strength, Intelligence, or the like). Then there is the character's profession, represented traditionally by a character's "class" or "skills", or a lot of times both of these. In some game designs, these things get muddled up, with innate talents and ancestry being represented by whatever the game calls its profession, such as games where "elf" is a character class or whatever. While that is a defensible position, I prefer to clearly distinguish matters that are inborn from ones that come from training, that is, nature from nurture, as the usual formulation has it.

I want to focus on character classes now, though. First of all, what is a "character class"? My understanding of classes in D&D is that they represent a statement of how the player intends to approach the game, with the most fundamental decision being whether the character will use magic or not. After the original division of characters into "Fighting-man" or "Magic-user", people came up with other approaches, so that very early on someone wanted to focus on fighting "undead" monsters like Professor Van Helsing in the Hammer Films Dracula movies, resulting in the "Cleric" class, whose association with religion implied some sort of Saint-like powers, to make them useful in scenarios where the undead aren't present. Most early character classes were simple extrapolations like that, so that a "Thief" was a character intended to be like the Grey Mouser or Cugel the Clever, which is why they include a means to dabble in magic without being a fully-fledged magic-user. The "Monk" was for players who liked Shaw Brothers films. The "Ranger" was Aragorn or maybe Robin Hood, perhaps with a touch of Jack the Giant-Killer?* And so on.

All of these approaches imply a particular set of skills, but it maybe doesn't need to be that way. Going back to the fundamental distinction of whether the character uses magic or not, I'll cut the number of classes back to "Adventurer" and "Adept". To handle characters who dabble in magic like the Grey Mouser and Cugel the Clever, I'll add a compromise class that I'll call the "Practitioner". because magic, historically, has included the ability to heal, I'll include healing magic, and a character's available spells will define what sort of magician they are, rather than defining it by class. Perhaps we will define a way to distinguish magicians who are better at one sort of magic or another later on, when we discuss talents and attributes.

However, I think that there are more approaches, other than magic or no magic, that are pretty fundamental. One is often covered in older games more as an afterthought, which we might call the "command" or "social" approach. Traditionally, this is usually relegated to a "Charisma" attribute, but I think that it deserves a more fundamental place. I'll call that class the "Envoy", and a dabbler who uses a bit of social but is also action-oriented to a degree, perhaps somewhat similar to the "Warlord" class of some later D&D editions, I'll call the "Commander". I think that an Adept who is also social would be just a different sort of Adept, focused on spells of enchantment and charm, so I won't need that sort of compromise class.

Finally, some players might want a character who approaches the game from a place of knowledge and skill. While I haven't yet discussed how I think training and skill could work, I'll just note for now that a character focused on that sort of play will be called an "Expert", and there won't be a need for a compromise class as the others, as I conceive them, already include elements of this category.

So, to summarize, I see the game as allowing players to select one character class to define their character fundamentally, from the choices of Adventurer, Adept, Practitioner, Envoy, Commander, or Expert. To round out characters, I'll discuss a character's species, their talents (characteristics or attributes), and their profession (which I will disconnect from their class).

*And why that particular combination? I suppose that the idea was that characters had to have more to do than just follow tracks. Since the class was given even more wilderness and survival abilities as time went on, it does seem that Gygax and others understood the abilities as being a little underwhelming in relation to other classes. 

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.

EDIT TO NOTE: I have been discussing this class elsewhere, and there have been some changes. I'll post it to this blog when I feel that it is more finished. 

 

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.

 

Quick Post: The Thief-Acrobat

Snipped from a video in a UPI story about the
"Spider-Man" burglar in China in 2015.

People I know who play AD&D don't, for the most part, really want to use Unearthed Arcana anyway, but I was involved in a discussion that was pretty down on the Thief-Acrobat. Some were even saying that it was useless in a dungeon, which, uh, how can a parkour expert not be useful in a dungeon? I guess their DMs didn't really use traps and obstacles?

Anyway, the discussion got me to thinking, and I do agree that some of the class's abilities should have been boosted slightly to make the class competitive with the other classes in the game, especially some of the overpowered UA monstrosities like the Cavalier or Barbarian—though I think that the Thief-Acrobat is mostly in line with the original 10 classes in AD&D and I'd be happy to include it, unlike the Cavalier and Barbarian. So, here was my suggestion:

I do agree that some of the abilities should have been boosted a little to make the split class more competitive with the other classes, but those are simple fixes like making the pole vault equal to twice the level (12' at 6th, 14' at 7th, etc), standing broad jump equal to level+2', running broad jump twice that, and make falling so that the T/A simply automatically subtracts 1d6 from falling damage at 6th level, and increase that subtraction by 1d6 per level (as an aside, I'd stick to the simple 1d6 per 10' of falling damage, to a maximum of 20d6). I'd probably also allow bonuses in areas with good geometry for things like tic-tacs and the like. (Then I included a link to a list of parkour moves in case the people involved didn't know anything about the art of movement.)

So, yeah, just a quick thing to throw out there for  AD&D 1.X edition games.

Linear Fighters, Quadratic Magic-Users

I have been working on the follow-up to the article on magic, but it has gotten out of hand a couple of times as I keep finding myself going off into tangents. It's a big topic, but I am trying to boil it down.

But today I am going to talk about AD&D and other D&Ds.

A big complaint some people have about the way that game is balanced is that Magic-Users increase in power at an increasing rate throughout their careers, while Fighters tend to increase steadily. This is formulated as the Fighter improving on a linear basis, while the Magic-User improves on a quadratic basis. It certainly does seem like a conundrum, since Gary Gygax was writing AD&D on the basis of many, many hours spent running the game at a real table, for hundreds of players. How could he have missed something so obvious?

As with many things, the answer is right there in the rule books.

Gary knew that Fighters and Magic-Users had different focuses for their careers. Each was, after all, a statement by a player about how they wanted to interact with the game and setting. Everyone knows this. The other classes, Cleric, Thief, and so on, are all later attempts by various players to come up with a particular and new way to approach the game and setting, usually based on a particular fictional role model. Clerics were to be Fearless Vampire Slayers in the vein of Van Helsing in the Hammer Dracula films, Thieves were largely the Grey Mouser from Fritz Leiber's stories (and, yes, a little bit of Vance's Cugel the Clever too), Monks were an attempt to model Shaw Brothers wuxia films, Rangers were Strider/Aragorn. Later, the Barbarian was to be Conan.

The thing is, this was supposed to be a model for the character's whole career, not just a set of powers that were nifty. How did Gary see these characters spending their late careers?

The Cleric, of course, would be a fantasy Bishop, in charge of a holy temple with all of the attendants that implied, as well as believing peasants who would provide an income through their labor. This reminds me that AD&D is also explicit that the majority of the world does not have a class or level, and so most religious leaders are probably not able to cast spells, though perhaps more people who are able to are drawn to holy orders and so there would be more than among the general populace. But I digress.

Thieves become leaders of organized crime institutions, obviously.

Magic-Users, it seems would retire to a tower, presumably to pursue their studies, but they would also have a body of laborers who would fund them in exchange, it is to be supposed, for protection from threats.

Which means that Fighters should probably also have a body of laborers to protect in exchange for tax monies. Like, I would say, a noble. And what is the source of a noble's power? The number of swords they can command. And that is exactly what a high-level fighter gets access to: a loyal troop. But they only get this power if they pursue it by clearing a barony of sorts. This is where many players lose the plot. There is a perception that only hardscrabble adventuring is fun, that the logistics of running a small domain make the game bog down into boredom.

But D&D was a wargame first, and the people who played it were wargamers at heart. For many, the whole point of play was to get to where they could command fantasy troops. Exercising power means dealing with other power-brokers in the setting, which means more opportunities for adventure, not fewer, since a baron can surely equip an expedition into a ruined castle, but murderhoboes can't usually broker deals that affect the lives of thousands or more.

But this still doesn't explain the Linear/Quadratic disparity, I can hear you say. Magic-Users, the argument continues, are still more powerful at any given level.

It is true that an individual Magic-User up against an individual Fighter will have a great advantage, with some abilities that the Fighter will have difficulty countering. That said, AD&D introduced a system whereby a Fighter could prevent the Magic-User from casting by interrupting the ritual. In addition, there were requirements for material components, as well as motions and words, that made the Magic-User's job a little more difficult. Adding these together, along with the overwhelming power of masses—one thing that people learn quickly when designing wargames rules that attempt to duplicate the D&D combat system on a mass scale is that even the most powerful of heroes will have a hard time against tens or hundreds of opponents. Swords & Spells, Battlesystem, and others found that they had to emphasize the abilities of heroic individuals, or alternatively games like Delta's Book of War learned that most D&D "heroes" weren't even worth representing on the battlefield as separate figures. Even powers like a Magic-User's spells, which seem overwhelming at the individual scale, turn out to have only small effect at the battle scale—enough, to be sure, to be worth simulating, but they only steer a battle in relatively subtle ways.

Meanwhile, the loyal troop attending a Fighter steer the battle very directly.

Myself, I think that a character should get experience for the money that they take in by taxing their domain. This encourages them to expand their domain and keep it safe from threats, since the more people they protect directly affects their experience gains. That would also encourage players to play the endgame for its adventuresome qualities instead of avoiding it in favor of more dungeon-delving, murderhobo adventures. More likely, these days, I'll simply give players experience for money spent rather than collected, but I won't make any distinctions about where they got it.

And money spent on a castle is money spent.

Aliens In Spectacular Science Stories - The Koni

Not quite right. They should both be lops.
Plus, more rayguns.

As a sort of preview of the way I am going about this, I have been giving some excerpts from the manuscript in progress. Last time was the Haashek, who are pretty much Lizard Men. This time, I introduce the Koni, but I'll only give the specifics of one of the three possible Koni character classes. The other two, the Koni Seer and the Koni Tinker, are going to be specialized versions of the human classes of Psychic Warrior and Scientist, respectively.



Koni

A more typical Koni example.

Koni are small beings, around half the height of a human, and weigh around 12kg on average. They are covered in short, usually brown fur and have long ears that hang on either side of their head. They look rather like a cross between a rabbit and a teddy bear. Koni prefer to live in underground warrens, surrounded by others of their kind, and enjoy eating, sitting in the sun, studying in their study, and producing offspring. They are not, typically, very adventurous, but some few get the urge to travel to distant places, though always with the intention of returning home with stories to tell to the next generations. These special Koni choose between three classes, the Koni Adventurer, the Koni Seer, or the Koni Tinker. Because of their unassuming natures, Koni require unusual amounts of Experience Points to rise above 4th level, no matter which class they choose.

Koni Adventurer Advancement Table

Level	Exp. Points	Hit Dice (d6)	Saving Throw	Defense Bonus
1	0	1	14	+2
2	2,000	2	13	+3
3	4,000	3	12	+3
4	8,000	4	11	+4
5	110,000	5	10	+4
6	220,000	6	9	+4
7	330,000	7	8	+5
8	440,000	8	7	+5
9	550,000	9	6	+6
10	1,100,000	10	5	+6

To rise to levels higher than 10, the Koni Adventurer must accumulate Experience Points equal to double those of the previous level. Therefore, 11th level requires 2,200,000 Experience Points, 12th requires 4,400,000, and so on.

Koni Adventurer Class Abilities

Prime Requisite: A Koni Adventurer may choose whether to use Strength or Dexterity as their Prime Requisite, but the player must choose one or the other on creating the character, and may not change it thereafter. A Prime Requisite of 15+ gives a +5% bonus to earned Experience Points while a Prime Requisite of 6 or lower incurs a penalty of -5% to Experience Points gained, as normal.

Small Size: Because of their size, Koni have a higher Defense Bonus than human Adventurers do. However, they lose all of it if they wear most types of armor, as normal.

Deadly Accuracy: Koni have an almost preternatural ability to hit their targets with ranged weapons. They gain a +2 bonus to hit with any missile or beam weapon. This includes artillery.

Near Invisibility: If they don’t want to be seen or heard, it is very difficult to find Koni. In any non-combat situation, a Koni can move in such a way that they can’t be seen if there is any cover at all, even shadowy areas, and their silent movement is the stuff of spacers’ wonder-stories.

Saving Throw: Koni Adventurers gain a +2 bonus to saving throws against death and poison, and also a +4 bonus to saving throws against psychic abilities.

Establish Warren: At any time after reaching 4th level, a Koni Adventurer can establish a Warren if they choose. Usually, this will be in a pleasant dale, a beautiful river valley, or among pastoral hills. Once established, other Koni will come to settle the Warren.

Obviously, the Koni are very much inspired by the halflings of Swords & Wizardry, but as usual I am trying to eliminate artificial level caps in exchange for procedural, practical limits. The idea for how to increase the class above fourth level came from Brave Halfling Publishing's The Halfling Adventurer. The original idea for Koni came from several sources, notably the Bunrabs of Swordbearer and the whole setup of Bunnies & Burrows, but also the GURPS adaptation of that last.

Spectacular Science Stories and Psychic Powers (and Tales of the Space Princess)

I finally got hold of John Stater's Tales of the Space Princess (not to be confused with James "Grim" Desborough's Machinations of the Space Princess, which is a very different game), and I love it! I especially love it because it's very similar to what I've been trying to do with Spectacular Science Stories. Oops. Still, there are differences in our respective approaches, so I'll keep going. I want to write a more complete review of Stater's game, but I need to do some research first, so it will wait. In fact, I want to talk about many of the other games that cover similar territory, from TSR's High Adventure Cliffhangers: Buck Rogers to Warriors of the Red Planet. Maybe even the FGU Flash Gordon game if I can manage to afford a copy.

Instead, right now I want to talk about Psychic Powers and the Psychic Warriors of Spectacular Science Stories. My initial brief for them was "like a cross between Jedi and Lensmen, by way of Blue Öyster Cult", and I didn't have much more than that to go on at first. I've been playing with different ways to represent their psychic powers in the game, initially looking at a variation of the D&D Vancian system (discarded as not really good at representing either Jedi or Lensmen), then thinking about ways to adapt the WEG Star Wars RPG approach to the Force (also discarded as it would push the class far too close to Jedi for my liking). Finally, I decided to examine what makes Lensmen different than Jedi, and to consider what it was about "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" that I could import to make a real difference in the class.

Not wanting to abandon the Jedi connection entirely, I looked at the WotC Star Wars method of handling the Force, too. Most of it was either too complex, too tied in with "Feats", or too close to the WEG version to be useful to me. I did like the idea of using hit points to power the abilities, though, as that helps to emphasize the fact that hit points aren't physical damage, plus it gives a potentially interesting tactical puzzle to the Psychic Warriors - spend hit points for powers or save them to soak damage?

The main thing about the Lensmen is that their powers don't really have much of an effect on the physical universe directly. Their real strength is in their ability to affect the minds of others and to sense things at a distance. On the other hand, I didn't want to completely discard the Jedi ability to manipulate things at a distance, though I also didn't want Psychic Warriors floating space fighters around by wiggling their fingers.

What I think I am going to do is divide abilities into Power Groups, like Telepathy, Psychic Combat, Self-Control, and so on. Each Power Group will have five levels of ability, each with one power. At each character level, the Psychic Warrior's player gains two levels to distribute among the Power Groups as he wishes. I currently have six Power Groups (Healing, Probability Manipulation, Psychic Combat, Remote Sensing, Self-Control, and Telepathy), so it would take a character being at 15th level to have all of the abilities at their full capability. Since that would require 20,480,000 experience points, that is a long way off for most characters! Plus, I do plan to come up with other Power Groups (and let my playtesters come up with some if they want), as well as providing loose guidelines for Referees to develop their own. Psychic Warriors do not become a master of every psychic ability there is.

Here are my current notes for Psychic Powers. Note that most of them are not defined enough to even have a cost yet. Also, the Healing abilities will only be usable on others, never on the Psychic Warrior using them (except for "Transcend Death", which can only be used on the Psychic Warrior using it).

Healing

1. Soothing Touch (heal 1d6+1)
2. Cure Disease
3. Healing Hands (heal 3d6+3)
4. Neutralize Poison
5. Transcend Death (become an astral being)

Probability Manipulation

1. Lucky Break (reroll one die roll)
2. Gremlins (machine malfunctions)
3. Serendipity (useful coincidence)
4. Probability Control (specify one die roll)
5. Telekinesis (move object up to 10', cost: 1 per pound or fraction)

Psychic Combat

1. Mind Block (counter most mind-affecting psychic powers with a save)
2. Distraction (minor hallucination distracts target)
3. Psychic Whip (1d6 damage, can't wound/kill)
4. Invisibility (become unobtrusive)
5. Neural Overload (save or fall unconscious 1d6 turns)

Remote Sensing

1. Danger Sense ("I have a bad feeling about this.")
2. Sense (get a general description of a remote location "A room containing four dogs", "An open plain with a tree, and no animals or men present", and so on)
3. Clairvoyance (perception as if at a remote location)
4. Psychometry (detect history of an object)
5. Precognition (general sense of future events)

Self-Control

1. Ignore Pain
2. Rapid Recovery (recover from wounds faster)
3. Resist Heat/Cold (save for half damage)
4. Strength/Endurance (feats of strength, increased damage, and so on)
5. Regeneration (regrow limbs, super-fast recovery from wounds, etc)

Telepathy

1. Empathy (detect emotional state of a target)
2. Read Thoughts (detect surface thoughts of a target)
3. Send Thoughts (transmit thoughts to a target)
4. Suggestion (Jedi mind tricks)
5. Mind Control (direct control of actions, edit memories, etc)

Keep in mind that I am also going to be disconnecting hit points from injury. Basically, while you have hit points you aren't injured, but when you run out and get hit you roll on an injury table. Note that the Healing Power Group doesn't actually allow you to heal physical injuries! This is deliberate. I am thinking about the idea of Advanced Powers, which require two Power Groups at high ability to be able to choose them, and which give one powerful ability instead of improving any of the Power Groups.

I'm still thinking of ways to play up the "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" angle. Maybe introduce a streamlined Sanity system from Call of Cthulhu? I dunno. Maybe the Mind Control ability is enough, since it will allow editing of a target's memories.

Aliens In Spectacular Science Stories - The Haashek

As I work on the options available to players, one area that requires a bit of work is the selection of aliens that the players may choose to play. Some are more involved than others, of course, but a number of the options I have been considering require only a single alternate class. For instance, the Haashek (or Gorrans, I still haven't decided) have only a single class option, similar to the Human class of Adventurer. It is called, predictably, the Haashek Adventurer, and the class is based on the Swords & Wizardry monster stats for the Lizardman. I'll give the writeup as it currently exists, and then discuss some of the features.

                                                             

Haashek

Haashek are reptilian humanoids whose civilization is centered around the abundant wetlands of their homeworld. They are very pragmatic, perhaps even cold and calculating by Human standards.

Haashek Adventurer Advancement Table

Level	Exp. Points	Hit Dice (d6)	Saving Throw	Defense Bonus
1	0	2+2	17	+4
2	2,000	3+1	16	+4
3	4,000	4+1	15	+4
4	8,000	5+1	14	+5
5	16,000	6+1	13	+5
6	32,000	7+1	12	+5
7	64,000	8+1	11	+6
8	128,000	9+1	10	+6
9	256,000	10+1	9	+6
10	512,000	11+1	8	+7

Haashek Adventurer Class Abilities

The Class Abilities of Haashek Adventurers are exactly the same as those of a Human Adventurer, except that the Haashek Adventurer may not choose a category of Weapon Specialization and the Haashek Adventurer has the following Class Abilities additionally:

Natural Armor: Because some of the Haashek Adventurer’s Defense Bonus comes from the alien’s natural armor, they retain a +4 bonus to Armor Class even while wearing other armor. As usual, though, the extra bonus for higher level goes away when armor is worn.

Breath Holding: A Haashek Adventurer, like all of the race, can hold its breath for a very long time in comparison to Humans. If the specific amount of time becomes important, count it as 10 rounds (of 10 seconds each) for each point of the Haashek Adventurer’s Constitution score. This gives a range of from 5 to 30 minutes before the Haashek has to take a breath.

Movement: Haashek are fairly ungainly and slow-moving on land, but swim quickly. On land, a Haashek Adventurer has a movement rating of 6, but they swim at a movement rating of 12.

Claws: Haashek Adventurers take no penalty for attacking unarmed, due to their sharp teeth and claws.

                                                             

In many ways, this class is much like the Human Adventurer, as it notes. There is an additional 1+1 Hit Die at all levels, and the progression of the Defense Bonus is significantly different (Defense Bonus is a special bonus to Armor Class given to a character who is not wearing armor; this is to encourage genre conventions, and I took the idea from the WotC Star Wars RPG). On the other hand, the Haashek Saving Throw (single saving throw system) is significantly worse than the Human one, which starts at 14. Since I plan to use the Saving Throw as the basis of any technical skills like piloting spaceships and so forth, the Haashek is at a significant disadvantage in any situation other than combat, but in combat they are definitely superior in most ways (though the Human advantage of being able to choose a category of weapons with which they gain a +1 bonus to hit, and if hand-to-hand weapons a +1 bonus to damage, is pretty helpful too). The experience chart for the Haashek Adventurer is worse than the standard Human Adventurer, too, starting at 2000 xp for 2nd level, where the Human achieves 2nd level at 1500 xp. All classes in the game double the required xp at each level increase, with no level limit other than that geometric progression. The Haashek also gains a few minor benefits based on the monster writeup in Swords & Wizardry, mainly movement and breath holding, but also the natural weapons and armor.

I'm still not sure what the Haashek/Gorrans should look like. The picture above is one way to take it, but I'll probably leave it up to the artist I choose to illustrate them when I get to that point. Maybe they look more like Sleestak, or Gorns, or whatever.

Other aliens may have multiple class choices. For instance, the Koni ("coney", get it? I kill myself) will be able to choose from Adventurer, Seer, and Tinker in my current thinking. These classes somewhat parallel the Human options of Adventurer, Psychic Warrior, and Scientist, but will be somewhat different to adapt the specific details of the Koni race of course, such as generally reduced Hit Dice, sneakiness/unobtrusiveness, and so on. Mostly, I am thinking of ways to adapt some of the types from Bunnies & Burrows to that alien race and the needs of a raygun fantasy setting.

One other thing: I am thinking about changing the name of the game to Rockets & Rayguns, to keep the assonances of Dungeons & Dragons. Do you think that's too much? Is Spectacular Science Stories a better title?

Adventure Games, Goals, And Spectacular Science Stories

Adventure games are often presented, these days, in a manner that doesn't emphasize what you are supposed to do as a player. The first games were pretty straightforward and objective: collect whatever marker counted for points for your character (usually this was money, either as a means to get experience points or for the benefits that the money could produce directly in the game setting). Later, the objectivity dropped away and the goal became, basically, to guess what would please the Referee and have your character do that, because the Referee was effectively told to give out a number of these points on a purely subjective basis. Still later, there was no clear objective presented for games (by now universally called "roleplaying games" instead of "adventure games"), with the players expected to develop objectives for their characters in advance and pursue them without any real support from the game system.

Since I am basing Spectacular Science Stories on a set of rules (Swords & Wizardry: Whitebox) that is close to the earliest games, I want to try and stick to the objective method of giving out success points to the characters. Unfortunately, this presents a small problem, because there are three different sorts of raygun fantasy story that I am trying to emulate. I could probably make this simpler on me by getting rid of one or two of the three character classes, but I don't think that the game would be as enjoyable if I did.

First, there is the Adventurer. This can be dealt with just as in traditional adventure games, as the prototypes include such figures as Northwest Smith, who was just as much of a money-grubbing adventurer as any in D&D. Nothing needs to be done there. Next, there is the Scientist, for which I have found a great way to offer carrots that point them toward the sorts of behavior that you'd expect from that type of character (basically, they can get special benefits from exploring the mysteries of the universe).

What I'm left with, though, is the Psychic Warrior. This one is difficult, in no small part because they are portrayed in the source material (Star Wars and the Lensman stories, mainly) as above such venal matters as money. How do you give objective rewards to someone like that? Obviously, they could get experience points for "defeating foes", but that's entirely secondary in the rules to getting paid. I also want to make them, in some ways, like paladins, with few (and minor) technological items, relying on their psychic powers rather than worldly concerns in their pursuit of moral perfection. I've got some rules for "fallen" Psychic Warriors who fail in their moral pursuit, of course, but I'm still trying to work out how to make them advance properly. I don't want to just give them a set of experience point goals that are special to them and no one else. Maybe I should just add a set of "karma" experience point awards for performing specific objectively-determined actions. Not sure how I'd go about that, though, and there's the matter of what to do about villainous "fallen" Psychic Warriors.

My first thought was to let them donate their money and found items to the Psychic Warrior Temple and get extra experience points for that, but that doesn't seem quite right (though I probably will keep that, and also give Adventurers and Scientists a way to boost experience points by giving up money too). If you've got any ideas, I'd appreciate it.

Science Fantasy Space Opera Game

One of the things I am working on lately (because apparently I don't want to have any spare time to rest) is a science fantasy space opera game based on S&W:Whitebox. I like the streamlined mechanics and simplified character system. I've been thinking that there should be three character classes available to players for human characters: Adventurer, Psychic Warrior, and Scientist. Adventurers will be the general sort of adventuring character. Psychic Warriors take a cue from Star Wars, Lensman, and Blue Öyster Cult. Scientists will be of the sort who want to learn about the universe and build new inventions (and there is absolutely no truth to the idea that any of them are "mad", that's just absurd; "mad" they call me - but it is not I who am mad, it is they, with their blind adherence to "convention" and "morality"!). I plan to adapt the invention rules from the original Space 1889 for them, changing the specifics to fit the setting.

After that, I want to allow robot characters, but they won't get experience points. Instead, they will spend money to buy better equipment for their bodies and software upgrades, or even backup copies and extra bodies. The idea is that robots don't actually "think" or "learn" as such, but act in a way that is very sophisticated otherwise.

Alien races will probably have 1 to 3 character classes available for each, and I'll probably include a couple in the base rules that are just variations of Adventurer. I also might include one alien race that is more complex, as a sort of example of how it can work. I don't know if I'm going to adapt some of the ideas I had for the Flanaess Sector to this, but it would be pretty cool to have at least one or two of the aliens be from D&D. Gulguthra are pretty alien and fit the tone, and I've always liked the Neogi/Umber Hulk pair (though, of course, I'd have to use one of the Umber Hulk simulacra out there, since that is one of the monsters that WotC has reserved to themselves; I like the Underground Goliath of Adventures Dark & Deep). Not sure if those are suitable for beginning players, though.

I'm going back and forth on adopting an idea from the WotC Star Wars game and having the Psychic Warriors power their abilities with Hit Points (and then have a second pool of Body Points based strictly on Con). Right now, I am leaning away from the idea and just using a regular pool of Psychic Power Points for Psychic abilities.

I'm also going back and forth on genetically modified beings. I think that, if I do include them, they'll just be another sort of alien species, game mechanically speaking. I kinda want to have a space nation that is all about bio-tech, full of gene-lines that act as a social stratification, and such. Not sure, though, how I would make it so that players wouldn't just choose a genetically "improved" gene-line as a matter of course. Maybe I should take a hint from Dragonquest on that.

I'll include a form of alignment, based on the idea of Light Side/Dark Side Force (actually, I plan to draw on the ideas of community power as opposed to individual power), but it will only be important at all to Psychic Warriors. I like that idea of a sort of "paladins", "fallen paladins", "anti-paladins", "redeemed paladins", and so on.

I want the setting to be centered around a Terran Federation of some sort, but one that is teetering on the brink of collapse, like Rome in the early 5th century or so. I have some ideas for surrounding stellar states that can act as the barbarians getting ready to overrun the Federation. I also think that it might be worthwhile to provide hints that could lead to the Star Wars storyline of an evil manipulator setting up conditions for the Federation to become an autocratic state, but that a Referee could ignore if she wanted.

I do want the Federation to be an increasingly militarized one, with police forces that set up checkpoints where they check people's papers at random, engage in warrantless searches in force, and so on, because that stuff can lead to fun adventure, I think.