Wierd Roleplaying Lands in New Jersey!

Late on Wednesday night, the Lamentations of the Flame Princess Wierd Role Playing boxed set arrived on my doorstep. I proceeded to spend most of the night reading through it and much regretted having to go to the office the next day. I must say that I'm impressed by this game. Raggi continues to improve his craft and set a high bar for the OSR in general: showing us all "how it's done" so to speak.

At first glance, the boxed set is just a bit overwhelming. The artwork is, simply put, astonishing. We're all familiar with the box cover and I'm sure that every single one of us will look at it and agree that it is a spectacular bit of work. But I'd like to take the time to put in a good word for the interior art as well: evocative, inspiring, and, if I may say so, not just a little fundamentally unsettling in some places (a certain bearded and distorted faced warrior image comes to mind here). On top of all of that, the books have terrific "hand feel." In my hands, they feel of equal quality with my old copy of the White Box sitting nearby, perhaps even superior in some aspects. The box and books are built to withstand the rigors of play.

We all know the contents of the box by now. Come on, let's all say it together. First out of the box is an introductory slip with something that every game should have, a very quick, concise definition of the contents and style of the game, though for the record, I would like to see that on the back cover, too, since the box presumably comes to the store sealed. It's also a bit of a quick instruction manual on how to proceed through the remainder of the contents and the now somewhat infamous disclaimer about male pronoun exclusivity. I find the warning about occult activity, mental abberation, and deviant behavior amusing and if I ever can get my act together, I'd ask James permission to copy it into any product I can put together myself. Perhaps it can become another in joke of the OSR, which I think desperately needs one.

Next out of the box is the Tutorial book. Disclaimer: this is the only bit of art in the box that I actually don't care for. The three figures across the top are just a little intrusive and don't strike the right vibe for me as I get it from the game. THey look more like the BECMI style ADVENTURE! type figures than the strange and wierd that the rest of the game gives off, though that little monster on the left is flat out odd. If it were me, and it wasn't, I'd have felt that the bottom image of the mob of peasants marching, pitchforks and torches in hand, to the castle gates was more than sufficient and evocative of the great Hammer Horror flicks of their day.

Anyway, I give the inclusion of a tutorial high marks, especially in a boxed set that purports to be a complete game. It's a mistake on our collective part to assume that anybody picking up the product is already a gamer and knows what it's all about if not the specific rules in play. It fosters a type of cliquism and continuity lockout that is problematic and obnoxious and discourages new adopters from attempting the game on their own. This tutorial artfully averts that tendancy that neckbeards have and takes the part of a kindly and patient referee walking a new player step by step through their first game (in this case, a haunted house) with quick instructions "on the ground" of how the basics work. The only issue I have with the tutorial is that it does go on longer than it should, but that seems to be because of the inclusion of an introductory, single person module there and an extended play example. This is fine, and I honestly don't see a way that it could have been done without compromising the step by step nature of the tutorial, I feel that some of the material there could have been pulled out into another booklet. One last note about the tutorial, I'm pleased to see a nice little glossary of important terms on the back in easy reach.

Next up is the Rules book with the titular Flame Princess I presume on the cover. Here we have what one would expect to find in the player's handbook. Character classes, in the style of the Basic game so long ago, the Cleric, Magic User, Fighter, Elf, Halfling, and Dwarf, and a Specialist (a renamed Thief). The classes are described completely with a refreshing brevity that is utterly lacking in today's published gaming supplements. It's excellent to find a comprehensive description of, well, anything that clocks in at under a full page of block text nowadays. The fact that the majority of character creation is completed within the first 17 pages of the book is no mean feat. Moving further, I find a surprisingly comprehensive equiment list containing in addition to classics such as the 50' rope, chalk, and shovel, some oddities like soap and manacles. What adventurer before has worried about his hygene? Or, for that matter, a pair of manacles? It speaks volumes in only to line items in a list in my opinion. There are, in addition, lists for weapons and armor, animals, vehicles, and basic services and an encumbrance system based rather than on weight like most others, on items. I find that last an interesting choice that shifts focus away from micromanaging weight distributions in the party to a systemized exercise in common sense. Rather than jiggering around with pounds to cram one more thing into the pack, it's simply a matter of counting items and moving on.

The rest of the Rules book contains, naturally, most of the rules a player would be expected to need to play the game. Swimming, climging, mapping, getting lost, healing, languages, movement, maritime adventure rules, rules for hiring retainers, rules for property and finance, and, finally on page 40, rules for combat. It's fascinating to me that the combat rules, which oftentimes are the first rules discussed after character creation, are quite literally the last rules presented in this game. It's obvious that combat, while important, is not the central focus of the game like certain other alliterative games out there. What's even better in my mind, is that the combat "chapter" is only six full pages, one of which is a full page illustration, and it covers as much as the AD&D books covered in significantly more page realestate. Again, that long lost art of brevity and concise writing coming to the fore again.

Digging further into the box, I come across the magic book. This is majorly, as one could divine from the title, a list of spells for both Magic Users and Clerics including the Turn Undead spell which is no longer an innate power of the cleric and a quick rundown of the rules on memorizing spells and research that most experienced players and referees will find themselves comfortable with. In fact, very little needs to be said about it since most of us will be able to walk through this book quickly and understand the vast majority of it.

And that, actually, is all one needs to play the game. All the rules (excepting monsters) have been covered and you're ready to start rolling characters and get moving if you're a player. But there's still a number of other books to pull out here. Next up is the Referee book with the serpent lady demon, a marilith without her swords. This, I make no qualms about it, is my absolute favorite book in the set. Without a doubt. Inside, you'll find no rules excepting for a few guidlines in the monster section, only frank and straightforward talk about how to run a game. Themes that run through the wierd role playing "world" such as science versus magic and mystery, horror versus the wierd. But better still are the meditations on how to construct an interesting adventure that captures the attention and imaginations of your players, treasure placement, maps, and how to build a larger environment and world than just the current explorations, how to build connections to the outside world. I'm immensly impressed by this tiny little booklet and how it manages to equal Gygax's own DMG in content and, in somme way, exceed it since it rises above merely a section of the rules intended for the referee. This is, very simply, the act of taking new referee's under your wing in text format. Kudos Mr. Raggi.

Next up, two adventures, one introductory and one exploratory. The "Tower of the Stargazer" is an excellent little introductory adventure based on the titular location and the players' explorations thereof. Classic and comforting and full of explanatory notes on not just how things function, but why they are there, it's as much an adventure as it is a tutorial for the referee in adventure structure. An excellent quality detachable cover with maps, a feature sorely lacking in most of the old school world, is a nice addition.

Where "Tower of the Stargazer" is a tutorial on adventure building, "Wierd New World" is the excercise portion of a referee's training. As is noted in the introduction, there is a lot of work to be done here to make the module work, and it's up to the local referee to do it. Expand the brief descriptions into a living and breating experience for his players and draw the links here that will draw them further into the wilderness and, eventually, to the pirates cave. This modules is a graduation ceremony for both sides of the screen. On the one side, the referee is ready to start building his own world and the campaign, and on the other, the players are ready to graduate beyond confined and comfortable little dungeon crawls and start making names for themselves.

The last booklet in the box is titled "Recommended Reading" and it's Raggi's own personal Appendix N. If anything, it is a great list of inspirations from which James himself has drawn, and which individual referee's can garner ideas as well. It's also a nice touch that the individual authors are not just listed, but extensively commented upon and guidance given to the uninitiated.

The rest of the box contents include a few character sheets and some graph paper for mapping, a tiny little pencil and an adorably tiny bag of dice that, while to any experience gamer are virtually superfluous, to a new player would be indispensible and certainly go a long way to creating a complete game in a box.

I only have two small issues here. First, I want the box to be slightly larger. I have this strange urge to fit all of my LOtFP books into it, and they just won't fit without overly stressing the box. Yes, it's nice to open up the box and find it surprisingly full, but I would like to have the option to store all of these products together in a single container to carry with me to games. This is a minor and, likely, nonsensicle complaint as it would be easy enough for me to just grab a larger box to put them all in, but still.

My second problem, and slightly more serious, is with the magic book. All the spells are, on the one hand, completely familiar to experienced gamers, and that's a plus on some level. However, it is siumtaneously a problem for me. They're all familiar and workmanlike and none of them, in my estimation, really earns the title of "wierd." In the description of magic users back in the rules book, we're told that they taint their souls bit by bit for power, but I'm just not seeing that here. Yes, I understand that there are the alignment restrictions, but that's just one thing. I know, I should be making that rule up myself if I want it here, but this is something that could have been a spectacular addition to the vancian magic system to complement the themes of the game.

Overall, I think that Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Wierd Fantasy Role Playing is, as a product, a spectacular success and I honestly hope that the first printing sells out entirely and a new printing is worked. I wish all the success that the author has earned. There will be a love hate relationship with this game, though. New school gamers (those inducted into the hobby with D20 versions of the game) will love the themes and ideas here, but will gnash their teeth and tear their shirts because it's not "intuitive" or "complete" or whatever it is these youngin's complain about today.

The oldest and crustiest of grognards, on the other hand, will wail and shout about how its not just like the old boxed sets and that it's bait and switch and that they were tricked by its presentation as a boxed set.

Meanwhile, if you take the box on its own terms, you'll see it for what it is: a truly excellent example of minimalist game design and a wonderful exercise in atmosphere and creation.

Full marks and my sincerest congratulations and thanks to Mr. Raggi. Most excellent, sir.

Fear and Insanely Brave PC's

Last time, I talked briefly about fear and horror in RPG's (D&D specifically) since it was so close to Halloween. Since I rarely am not thinking about horror stories (both movies and books really), and since I watched the excelent Dracula and His Brides the other night, I've further refined my thinking on this in terms of RPG's.

One of the most difficult realities to face when trying to run a horror campaign, or a campaign with horrifying elements in it, is that players tend to treat their characters as if they were absurdly brave. Of course, compared to the average inhabitant of any world, PC's truly are brave. It takes real courage to face down the average monstrous threats from bugbears to orcs, from kobolds to great wyrms, and most of the inhabitants of the Monster Manual: the average peasant runs in terror while the PC's stand their ground. Which is entirely appropriate in most instances. After all, most of us really do have the itch to play a heroic character seeking glory and riches (or maybe just riches).

But there are times when such courage becomes a little ridiculous. Whether you're actively trying to frighten the players/characters or they simply should be frightened, most likely the players simply are not. It's frustrating even if you manage to build up an unsettling atmosphere that it becomes just like any other action centric session once the veils are torn away and the center of the mystery is unveiled.

The comment (singular) from the last post recommended treating it like a horror movie, at least in part: turn the players into a passive audience for short times. This I cannot agree with. Simply put, this is a role playing game, not a horror flick. Part of, perhaps the main part of, the fear rests in the choices the players make, or are forced to make. It's about looking at your list of choices and knowing that there isn't a "good" choice and a "bad" choice, merely choices and few, if any of them, wholly worthy of the risk or likely to repair the problem(s) at hand. You've killed a vampire and taken his powerful magic item from him, but the local powers that be (a pack of wolfwere bards who run the nearby city and university) are in front of you and want that item. You don't know what they'll do with that magic item, but you can only assume that it will be nothing good, but keeping it from them means a fight and there's nothing at all you can do to stand up to them, at least for the moment. What, precisely, do you do here?

Is that horror? Or is that not? I'm not entirely sure, honestly, but it's something that certainly horrifies me, the thought of trying to do something good (yes, for the most part I, as a player, tend to create and run characters motivated a little less by the money and more by the thought of improving the world in some small way) and instead having merely transitioned the danger/evil from one place to another, or even worse, increased the danger inadvertaintly. Of course, the danger here is in pushing it too far and refusing the players any level of success instead of simply moderating or corrupted success. After a certain point, it feels pointless and the fun gets drained out of it all.

This is also, incidentally, where I believe the concept of fear and horror checks rests. These little "tools" for the DM out of Ravenloft the setting are there to tell the players how their characters feel. While certainly useful at times, it tends to be something with all the subltety of a hammer. They can be useful to be sure and can, in some cases, give cues to players who like to get into the swing of things to have a lot of fun, but most often they feel contrived and more like something that overrides player choice in favor of a "desired result." Something that results from too much faith and emphasis on plat rather than story as well.

One of the best methods for putting a little fear into players that I've found is in the monsters. No, not in finding stronger and more terrifying monsters, but in using them properly. Nothing puts a crimp in players' styles quicker, at times, than a monster that refuses to "play fair" by simply standing there and dying politely. More than likely, the monsters have plans and goals and are going to act to further them even when, or especially when the players aren't ready for them. Moreover, monsters don't play fair and limit themselves to attacking "military targets. Wanna upset a player? Take an NPC that they've become attached to, who has sheltered them or provided aid in some way, and have a frustrated opponent who can't strike directly at the players kill them or turn them instead.

Another great tool is monsters that "violate" the PC's, or do something just "wrong" enough the get past the character/player filter. I love Goblyns (spelled with a "y") for this. Nothing says scary like a moderately tough humanoid that will eat your face off the first chance it gets (literally). And for added fun, see what you get when you add just a little bit of low level telepathy or instant communication as they did in Castles Forlorn.

There have to be better ways of communicating genuine horror if not actual fear than turning the players into an audience and perfuse purple prose.

Assassins and Archetypes

One of the greatest strengths of D&D, I think, is the class system. No, it doesn't have ten thousand options for not only fighters and wizards, but "beguilers" (whatever the hell those are), knights, barbarians, warlocks, battle mages, etc. But that's not the point, nor the intent of the AD&D class system (and the D&D system from the little brown books and BECMI as well really). Instead, Gary Gygax's conception of a "class" was less of a packet of customizable character powers and abilities to help some poor dateless wonder realize his fantasies of playing a super cinematic character, but as broad archetypes, instead. Thus, a fighter isn't a job description, it's a category denoting "those who fight with armor and weapons in a martial manner" instead. A magic-user/wizard/mage is "one who uses arcane spells" and not a title. A thief - often the butt of grognardian displeasure because, of course, why does one need to belong to the thief class in order to steal? - is not so much one who steals as "one skilled in subterfeuge, stealth, and non-direct means."

Within these categories, the possibilities are numerous. Within the category of "fighter" for instance, lies the characters of an ex-soldier, Robin-Hood, a raging berserker, a swashbukling romantic hero, a town guard seargeant, or simply a degenerate thug. Likewise, the cleric category can encompass anything from Brother Cadfael to a frenetic ideological zealot. This is why I don't really like the multiplication of entities when it comes to classes. Simply put, they're just not needed, or they draw a distinction where none should be (i.e., why is it that all barbarians after UA are really berserkers? Isn't "barbarian" a cultural and social distinction instead?).

That's why, in the end, I don't see the need for an entire class devoted to the assassin. In the end, isn't an assassin merely one who kills for money? Why can't a member of any class perform that function? As it is, the class seems merely to co-opt part of the function of the thief class, but not as well. Ostensibly, a professional hired killer and a spy (two archetypes for the price of one?), but I simply do not see the need for this in the core rules say what you will about maturity, tone, of juvenality. The removal of the assassin from the core PHB in 2nd edition was, in my mind, a moderate improvement along these lines.

But what about the ranger, druid, bard, and paladin? Aren't they the same issue?

Yes, they are. And no, given the model of archetypes that I think Gary was following, I don't think that they're all together neccessary or needed within the core rules of the game. Each of their niches can be filled about as well by one or more of the other classes and good role playing as these extra classes can. Hell, the 2e PHB actually denotes the druid as a type of specialty mythos priest, but then goes out of its way to make it virtually impossible to replicate it via the guidlines given for special mythos priesthoods, so go figure.

In my mind, the only truly neccessary classes within the archetypal fantasy framework of AD&D are the Fighter, the Cleric, the Magic-User, and the Thief. All else is gravy.

Of course, one could take this argument far enough to say that there shouldn't be any classes at all and characters are entirely defined by what they do, but then it just wouldn't by D&D would it? We'd be off playing GURPS or something like that and there's no need to insult anybody by going there.

Emanent Death Not Imminent Death

One of the most frequent complaints leveled at the old school style games I see (and, let's be honest, one of the most inaccurately used points of "nostalgia" as well) is that characters die frequently and gruesomely and often pointlessly. That statue in the first room? Yeah, save vs death. Those who fail, die instantly as the things leaps across the room and throat punches your character. Those who succeed, make a new saving throw every minute until you fail. Then you die.

The belief that Old School dungeons were designed to be unfair PC death traps is, perhaps, a bit unfair. Imminent death, in the static between mistranslations, means that the old games have a "kill-em'all" attitude. That reputation is not entirely applicable, in my opinion as, more often than not, it seems to be based on the conflation of the Tomb of Horros with all modules and the perception of Gary as a "killer GM."

Of course, in reaction, the New School type of gamer pushed towards no save or die at all. It seems to have culminated in 4th edition's "save or minor inconvenience" mentality. Traps are now merely minor obstacles that can be plowed through effectively. The once terrifying powers of high level magic seem . . . less so in the name of egalitarianism of function.

Of course, I'm of a mind somewhere in the middle. Death should be emanant rather than imminent.

Yes, that's a butchering of the English language and I should be locked up for crimes against grammar, but that's not a surprise to anybody here I suspect. Let me explain.

By "imminent death" I mean that character death is all but certain if not immediate. Running through this dungeon, it's only a matter of time before you succumb to one of the plentifle traps forcing save or die effects, the vicious "grudge monsters," or simply the capriciousness of a dick ref. Death WILL happen, and it will be brutal and bloody and there's very little you can do except stave it off for one more room.

"Emanent death," on the other hand, is slightly different. Death is close, possibly even immediate, but it is far from a foregone conclusion. There's always a way for a clever, observant, and well played character to escape should he be intelligent enough to look, even if that way out is to walk away entirely.

That statue in the first room that lops off heads at the drop of a hat? All the clues that a player needs to realize that this is a challenge and to overcome it are present, if they bother to look. Blood stains on the blade, walls, and floor. Perhaps a headless corpse, or a corpseless head at its feet. A very close look from the door might reveal the joints at which the statue is meant to articulate. A detect traps spell obviously. Whatever the circumstance, there's always evidence there that allows the players to escape relatively unscathed, or even to excell.

This non-post brought to you by the fear of corporate layoffs.

Perhaps I'm imagining things here and this is the way all sensible referees run their games. If so, then grand.

Review: Death Frost Doom

There's not much for it, here, except to point you over to Grognardia's much better review and then add some of my own dithering commentary here to fill out this post.

First off, I was very pleasantly surprised by Death Frost Doom. On the whole, I've been displeased with the current slew of Old School modules on the publishing line. I'm not going to start talking specifics here because I'm not interested in starting a backdraft (with all 10 of my regular readers, yeah . . .) or engendering hard feelings through a hobby discussion portal. No doubt half a dozen folks will charge in and tell me just how wrong I am, but I will say that, in general, I feel that most of the modules I see coming out of the various publishers and the OSR fall prey to the same fault: they try too hard to imitate the Old School feel and atmosphere and fail at being good modules in their own right. This isn't to say that they're bad modules: they're not. They just, in my opinion, focus too much on imitation and not enough on innovation.

Jim Raggi's Death Frost Doom module, on the other hand, is very impressive in that respect. He certainly has respect for his inspirational material, and it shows strongly in his work, but at no significant point does the module come across as imitative of a particular thing except in spirit. In short, the module relies more on the atmosphere of the weird tale and less on the formula of the weird tale. And it certainly has an atmosphere that is unique among its fellows and makes it stand out.

I'm not going to go into details because James has already done a better job of that than I ever could: not superior only in writing skill, but in knowledge of the source material. It is notable, though, that there are a few places where the author's affection for the Evil Dead series shows through a little more clearly than in others.

One of my favorite things about this module, though I'm sure Jim will shout at me that I'm a clueless noob here, is that it is quintassentially Middle School. There is a story to the module, a strong and interesting backstory, but if the players don't learn it, it's not detrimental at all. It's also loose and vague enough that it can be comfortably bolted onto an existing campaign without too much struggle. One of the most rewarding things I can see in this module, from a player's point of view, would be learning what the hell went on at this place, what was buried there, and getting out alive to tell of it, being able to tell tales in the tavern later on that you outsmarted the pitfals and dangers of this place and came away filthy stinking rich for it. Or, if the players are incautious or just flat out stupid, this module has the capability as written to remake a significant portion of the campaign setting.

Well done, sir. I look forward to tormenting players with this one in the near future.

Evil is Petty

Following on from good men doing evil for the greater good, I'm moving towards one of my favorite, touchiest topics in terms of good and evil.

One of the commonest mainstay fantasy fiction (and sci-fi fiction for that matter)is the Evil Overlord. So common, in fact, that he has his own list that's moderately famous around the internet. Typically, the control vast armies of evil (draconians, orcs/goblins, insert evil monster of the week here) and are hell bent on conquering the world and molding it in their own image, but spend a great deal of time brooding in their tent or castle like Achiles until the heroes of the story (in our case, the PC's) are ready for the confrontation. It's a concept that's at once familiar and comforting to our inbred sensibilities, that a face can be put on evil, that there's an apparatus it has built up around it. The ability to name and identify the evil and, more specifically, to identify it as "that one over there" is empowering for most people, not only because it builds up the image of a confrontable font of darkness, but it's pseudo-exoneration of those who would oppose it, even if only in principle.

The industrial sized, world threatening, archetypal evil lord is such a common image and device that I'm sure everybody here could name at least half a dozen of them, even excluding Morgoth/Melkor, Sauron, and Hitler (as a literary device, really, and not neccessarily the real life figure).

At a game level, the concept is tremendously convenient since it allows us to build everything around a single, larger conflict. Dark Lord McScarypants is threatening Utopiaville and all kingdoms of sweetness and light in a bid to conquer the world and oppress the innocent and kick little puppies on the street. It's up to the heroes to stop him! Everything else just writes itself into that framework and there's really nothing wrong with it.

When we try to break out of the stereotypical molds of games, we tend to do away with the conspicuous Dark Lords and replace them with "the Big Bad Evil Guy" or BBEG as he's commonly referred to on the mind numbing gaming forums. This guy is a bit like a demoted evil overlord. He gives us the convenience of an identifiable source of evil, or at least of the identifiable troubles, but he's somehow less hokey than the overpowering overlord ruling from his thrown of skulls and clotted blood in the land of shadows somewhere over that direction, but could you maybe look into this strange influx of goblins we seem to be having before you run off and take care of that? More conveniently, with the redefinition of "campaign" as a 1 year start to finish story by the newer editions of D&D, it's something that gives a strong focus to the game. The players are there to investigate the machinations and doings of some evil being who is causing troubles locally or globally or whatever. Over a 1 year time period, sandbox play really isn't that great and, it seems, that D20 type D&D requires a stronger focal point than simply wandering around and looking for adventure. The big bad(s) are a narrative tool, just on a slightly less cosmic scale.

As comforting and convenient as that all is, it ignores some specific and overt realities: and how I do love reality for inspiration. The issue is that evil is petty. Evil is, for the most part, small, relatively contained, and self-interested. World spanning and archetypal evils like that are relatively rare. Far more common are small things, like wife beating, child abuse, murder of local political opponents, and so on. Open up the news today, and you'll find an example of just what I mean. For the record, I find that particular news item extraordinarily unpleasant and the punishment leveled against the girl far insufficient.

For every Morgoth, there are ten Sharky's. For every Hitler inaugurating genocidal campaigns against hated ethnicities, there are a thousand Cheyenne Cherry's throwing kittens into hot ovens just to hear the cries of pain and fear it makes before dying. And more often than not, these evils are motivated almost entirely by self-interest and not some Moorcockian esoteric concepts of law and chaos, good vs. evil. The evil priest lurking at the outskirts of civilization sacrificing innocents in the hopes that his dark master will grant him immortality in the form of undeath as a lich or vampire or specter. A man who rapes and murders a woman who, in town council, blocked one of his pet projects.* A woman who bathes in the blood of her handmaidens in order to preserve her youth and beauty. These kinds of people are memorable simply because they are realistic and believable and because their crimes are far more personal than any plotting and scheming dark lord.

Why am I talking about this? Simply because, hand in hand with "all politics are local" goes "most evil is petty, small, and local." While there might be vast, brooding evil intelligences out in the game world, plotting the overthrow of order, the downfall of light, or whatever, far more effective game villains are of the smaller sort. These kinds of opponents tend to stick in players' minds when they are encountered and, as I said within the Bernardo Gui post, force the players themselves to confront something that is challenging or difficult for them.





*I'm very clear here that such topics are not always suitable for all games, nor am I encouraging those who don't want to deal with such unsavory topics to every include them in their games, nor should such topics EVER be treated lightly.

Review: Hackmaster Basic

Well, I got mine about two weeks ago and have spent my spare minutes reading through it to get myself an opinion. For whatever my opinion is worth, here it is.

I'll admit right up front that I've not had the chance to play the game, and I might be entirely wrong about it, but then again, what's the internet for except for strongly held, mostly baseless opinion sharing anyway?

First impressions: The first thought I had when I pulled the book out of the mailing envelope (immediately after being annoyed with the postal worker who folded the book double in order to fit it in the mailbox despite the words "DO NOT BEND" in bold red lettering on the front, and immediately before the panicked moment of flapping my hands uselessly as I was attacked by half a dozen red ants swarming out of the thing) was "this is just too thick to be "basic."" Weighing in somewhere around 200 pages, this is well beyond what can reasonably be called an introductory book to a game. If anything, it gives the impression that the basic moniker is there simply to hearken back to D&D Basic, shamelessly so.

James was right, this isn't a particularly Old School product, at least not in the sense that Old School has come to be defined by the OSR (or whatever we're calling it nowadays).

Presentation and Physical Stuff: In terms of physical quality, this book earns high marks. The binding is sturdy,as are the cover and the pages themselves. High quality materials throughout and no obvious or glaring printing errors that can be a major drawback to any product.

Speaking of the cover, yes, it's an Erol Otus print, and a damn fine one. Evocative and just slightly comedic. That creature on the front (a variant of the hydra if anybody cares) is just weird enough to catch your attention and make you wonder, and just vicious enough (he's eating the fighter's leg for crying out loud!) to give you a hint about the tone of things within.

The art throughout is quite nice, though not entirely inspiring. It's certainly worlds better than the current "art" plastered all over more "modern" RPG's, that's for sure, but it just doesn't grab me. Don't get me wrong, I like the woodcuttings just as much as the next guy, but it's just not all there yet, and too much of it looks to be recycled from Hackmaster 4th for my tastes.

Other than issues of personal taste, there are no complaints in this department. The book, as a book in itself, is of excellent quality, and even after being folded in half for 18 hours in the mailbox, the entire thing recovered in less than 2 hours and now you'd never be able to tell. This book was obviously built for extended and hard use.

Content: If you didn't care for Hackmaster 4 as a game itself, then you probably won't like Hackmaster Basic (and presumably HMA since it's purported by the authors to be the same thing, except more-so). If you looked at Hackmaster as a source for clipping out interesting rules variations, then you probably won't like Hackmaster Basic very much as the new stuff here won't be of too much use to your AD&D type game: the differences are just too broad for easy portability.

Whereas the original Hackmaster could reasonably be called AD&D with a whole lot of house rules and attitude thrown in, HackMaster basic is a new animal. It's certainly heavily informed by the D&D Basic model: the four classes are, of course, fighter, thief, mage, and cleric and they've got the basic races down to human, elf, dwarf, and halfling, and largely they mean the same things. Mages still cast magic spells, clerics still channel the powers of their deities and often turn or command undead, fighters are really good at hitting things, etc. The rules, however, are not basic as we understood them back then.

Each race in Basic has its own little chart that helps you understand the gist of the rules governing it ranging from attribute modifiers (and there are several, not just the +1/-1 from the days of AD&D) to what talents can be purchased at discounted rates and the number of building points needed to purchase your way into each particular class. One of the greatest advantages to being a demi-human is that you can purchase your way into certain classes for a substantial discount (say, 20 points as opposed to an average 30) and if one follows on with typecasting, demi-humans will certainly excell at certain types of things. Dwarves, for example, make excellent fighters if but for a slightly lower movement rate and a reach penalty, both of which can play significant roles later on. Elves make good wizards, halfings thieves, and humans fall into their jack-of-all-trades role again. Of course, level limits are a thing of the past as, in Dave Kenzer's own words, "research shows that most gamers tend to be frickin' pussies . . ." and the increased cost to enter the class in the first place seems at first glance to help balance that out in the short and middle game. Long term, though, I guess that things would tend to even out on some level.

Attributes are rolled for by the standard 3d6 along with their percentile fractional values (typically used in the original as further gradations between attribute points and as stepping stones between advancing attributes between levels) and seemingly the same here. In terms of a basic game where attribute advancement is left out, I don't see the need for the fractional ability scores. It muddies the waters for those who don't know what's coming up. Though I can see the desire to leave as much from the eventual "final form" of HMA the same as possible rather than following TSR's model of slicing the game into two different lines.

Higher attribute scores are, as in AD&D, important to a character as they govern all sorts of things as how many hit points characters get, how hard they hit in combat, how quickly they can act, etc. Those who don't like a strong reliance on ability scores will not be overtly pleased here I think.

Up until this point, there's little difference between AD&D and HMB in concept. They both follow along the same models. But it's when we get to the nitty gritty of the rules that the paths diverge. In concept, the rules are very simple. In execution, though, I see a whole lot of individual nightmares.

Skills operate on a system very similar to the Aces & Eights model, though they start at 0% for untrained and ascend towards 100% for masters. There are some skills, known appropriately as universal skills, are things that pretty much everybody has some facility with. Things like Hide, Sneak, Climb, etc. fall into this category. Other skills, like animal handling, riding, and academic type skills fall into the category where, without training, you have no real hope of using the skill. You gain and advance skills by spending build points. Not a bad arrangement, though there are still more skills here than I think are helpful and, of course, I'm still a strong believer in the proficiency model of AD&D 2e. Overall, I think this skill system is an improvement over HM4 provided that the skills don't expand into idiocy as the original game's did and provided we don't slather on layers of complication that add little to the satisfactory feeling of the game.

Clerics deserve to be singled out since, it seems, Kenzer & Co. have finally done what so many have wanted before and created a separate class for each deity. A Cleric of the True is not the same as a Cleric of the Harvester, is not the same as a Cleric of the Riftmaster. Great! Except that they still look very similar except for a few paltry, desultory differences. Maybe I'm judging that harshly, though. It's nice to see at least some service paid to the concept.

Combat. Combat is . . . well . . . it follows hot on the heels of the successful model of Aces & Eights. Somebody made the very astute observation that, realistically speaking, combat doesn't happen in nice, orderly rounds, but in real time. So Hackmaster Basic operates on the "count up" system instead. The GM begins combat by calling out each second as it passes (i.e., "1: the orcs start their charge while you stand surprised, 2: they continue to charge . . ."). Once your initiative arrives (the point at which you realize combat has begun and aren't standing there gaping like a landed fish) you are free to act, though each particular action takes a certain amount of time. A long sword, for example, takes 12 seconds to "reset" after its first attack, so unless something happens in between, you can expect to be able to attack once every 12 seconds with your sword.

Movement operates on a separate, parallel track to hacking, so you can, each second, move a distance equal to your walking, jogging, running, or sprinting speed every second independent of what your sword arm is doing at the time. Of course, moving out of melee with a foe, assuming he stands there like an idiot, can lead to a counter "reset" for your weapon, but again, nothing in execution is simple as it is on paper. I suppose that's going to be the calling card of this game, in the end.

Trading blows is accomplished by an, in my opinion, excellent model: opposed rolls adding modifiers, high roll wins. I think that, in basic premise, that's a GREAT way of doing things and I've often pondered what the effect of turning AC into a modifier to a d20 roll would result in at the table. However, in the end, the simple makes way for a host of complications, many in the interest of realism. For example, not carrying a shield gives you a flat -4 to your defense rolls as, of course, these are very important items in medieval combat. Why, you might ask, do you suffer a penalty for not carrying a shield rather than simply get a bonus for using one? Well, that's because there's another complication later on for what happens when your oponent misses you while you're using a shield: you still can suffer damage from this as the book points out because your arm is, after all, right on the other side. There are, as well, different types of dice to roll for defense based on if you are caught unaware, or are helpless, or are being attacked from behind. Initiative dice are the same, a different one for each circumstance, though there is, as in most rules, a standard. Maybe its my pessimism, but I see the standard being excepted too often to be of much use, really. In the end, here, I'm left wondering whether I really want a realistic system as opposed to a comfortably abstracted system that blends into the background and is all but completely invisible at table.

For all that, though, combat itself is explained rather well, including via a nice little comic strip example. It makes me think that, given a little patience and practice, I could GM it successfully and make it fun, which is, in the end, the point of it all. If you're a fan of the comics, it'll make you chuckle and you'll probably appreciate it. If not, you'll probably be a little disheartened that such a bit of crucial info is dumped into a comic book format that you have to slog through.

Despite my overall negative tone above, I do think that the combat system is very interesting and worth a look through even if you don't plan on playing this particular system. It looks like it'll prove to be a gritty, violent, and brutal affair rather than the high fantasy swashbuckling that D&D can often fall prey to. Shields break with alarming regularity, wounds do not heal overnight, and those large pointy objects that were a minor annoyance to AD&D figher characters can be exceptionally dangerous with the risk of penetration and critical hits. Even when armor is absorbing damage, we're still talking big, satisfying numbers here even at first level. A three foot blade in the gullet is about as debilitating in Hackmaster Basic as it would be in real life, and that's a good thing.

Honor remains as yet another fiddly bit. Spellcasting has morphed into a strange, almost Arduinian combination of the Vancian slot system and a spell point system (I heartily encourage you to check out the book if only for that).

The monster selection is quite nice, though sparse considering what fit into the original Baisc books. Something on the order of 75 monsters including several undead like vampires, ghouls/ghasts, and wights. Dragons are conspicuous in their absence, though rumor has it that they are going to make an appearance in one of the KODT issues coming up. Undead no longer drain experience, but ability scores semi-permanently (there's a moderate chance that you can recover, but it's by no means a sure thing as it was in 3.x). Poison is a rather nasty affair, though not always of the save or die variety. All in all, an excellent selection of monsters to start the game with including a few classic Hackmaster creatures like the Sturm Wolf.

There are at least two sections of the book that I see as superfluous and as taking up more space than they are entitled to. First, there's a "Quick Start" characters section that you can download on the Kenzer & Co. website for free now to look over as a PDF. In my view, this is a basic game and it sure as hell shouldn't need a quick start setup. If anything, they should have included four or so pre-generated characters for that purpose rather than taking up half a dozen pages with marginally useful information.

The second was the dice rolling section. Yes, it's well written and very fun to read, and a lot of it needed to be said as so much "dice ettiquate" has been forgotten and ignored over the years, but really, it's too big for what it is and it should have been dropped in favor of streamlining the rest of the book, or for at least adding more monsters.

Overall: Despite my general negative tone above, I do think that Hackmaster Basic is an excellent looking game based on a read through and no practical experience with it. It garners 4 out of 5 stars from my questionable perspective, loosing points only because it's not really basic at all and the amount of fiddelyness is too much for my taste. It's apparant that Kenzer & Co's definition of Old School is significantly different than Matt Finche's.

Buy it if you enjoy reading a well written game that has a good sense of humor about itself and the entire hobby, but is much toned down since the last PHB.

Buy it if you love Hackmaster in general and would buy just about anything Kenzer published on principle.

Don't buy it if you're looking for an old school experience as it's defined currently by the Old School Revolution.

Don't buy it if you're looking for a basic, simple, and quickly grasped game.

A Note on Hackmaster and Kalamar: It should be noted that Hackmaster Basic is the first new product in the line that will specifically support the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting. As noted above, the Cleric class has been specifically subdivided into a unique class for each of Kalamar's many deities, though only a few make an appearance in Basic.

This connection is definately noticable, but hardly so overt that one couldn't adapt the game to another setting with relative ease.

Falling In Love With Swords and Wizardry

I splurged recently and picked up copies of Knockspell #1 and #2, Swords and Wizardry, and the S&W monster book. Of course, I had my downloaded copy of the rules beforehand and had gone through them more than once, but in seeing it all out on paper, I feel inspired by it. I'm beginning to see Thylia more and more in the light of Swords and Wizardry and am rapidly coming to a point where I'll use it instead of AD&D 2e if and when Thylia becomes an actual game.

Now all I have to do is find a group of gamers.

And some free time.

Supplements and Sorcery

James over at Grognardia talks about there being, perhaps, too many supplements coming out now from the Old School and the possible negative effects of this. Specifically, that the market - such as it is - will be "flooded with a glut of product" that will only be read, never used in play.

Of course, he's right. Coming from the 2nd edition background that I do, I can't ever forget some of the worst symptoms of a dying TSR. Hell, no matter how hard I try, I can never forget about elfish prosthetic limbs, nor rangers that turn into trees and grow third arms out of their chests, or any of a hundred really bad ideas enshrined as "options" in the Complete Handbook series of supplements. Of course, this bred the most despicable attitude I can think of in D&D: that of player entitlement - the thought that if the player wants something, he should be allowed to have it and that the DM is nothing more than a rules reciter and wish fulfiller. Maybe that's a little extreme, but not overly in my experience.

There's a great deal of good that can be said for a game that can be played entirely out of one book. That's what made Gamma World 1e and 2e so fabulous. Not to mention the Rules Cyclopedia (maybe that one's cheating since it's half a dozen books under one binding, but still). That's what makes Swords and Wizardry and Labyrinth Lord so great. One book, some dice, some friends, and a lot of imagination. No official supplements, add ins, or do-majiggers.

But then again, there's a problem with it too. If your game only has one book and no continuing publications (a magazine, some modules, a supplement here and there), then like it or not, true or not, a good portion of the fan base is going to look at it and call it a dead system and walk away. Except for Fight On! magazine (if you even know about it), Labyrinth Lord is pretty much a single product with nothing new on the horizon. Why would I pick it up now wen there's just oodles of stuff coming out of every quarter supporting Swords and Wizardry? Hell, as James himself said, there's practically a metric buttload of stuff I can use to fiddle with and slap a great game together, or ignore entirely if I want, but the community around that game is live and vibrant as evidenced by the published material. Labyrinth Lord looks, at first blush, to be a little dead on the vine.

Don't get me wrong, I really like LL and have a copy next to my chair for nightly perusal along with a whole passel of other gaming books. It's just that I'd like to see a Labyrinth Lord companion or something like that hit the shelves. I know, I know, shut up and or put up.

The horrific glut of supplements over the course of 2nd edition did one thing really really well. It imagined the shit out of AD&D. Hundreds of ideas just thrown at the wall to see what would stick. Every time somebody had a brain fart that read along the lines of "wouldn't it be cool if . . .", it ended up in a book that sold for $20 each to thousands. Yeah, maybe the dross to gems ratio was a little out of rational whack, but one must admit that amidst all the bunk, there were some pretty damn cool ideas out there! And the great thing is, no two people will ever agree on just what was cool and what was crap!

Take it to the current day. We've got little digest supplements and adventures and everybody's little brain farts being thrown into print via the internet or Lulu or whatever format for OSRIC and Swords and Wizardry and whatever other system clone is out there and there's a real hunger to see more, to put money into the hands of the creators. That's nothing but a good thing in my book, even if you find that 50%, or even 90%, of it is junk. You don't have to use the junk. You don't even have to use the gems. It just warms the subcockle region of my heart to actually be excited over some of these things again.

The Old School is viable again, and it's because people are throwing their ideas on paper and throwing it against the wall to see what sticks. It gives me real hope that one day, I'll be walking through a book store or, better yet, a toy store and see one of these books on the shelf for sale and a kid begging his mother for the $15 to buy it.

Screw purity. Screw the fear that piles and piles of junk might obscure the great tidbits. Put it out there and imagine the hell out of D&D again.

Middle School Principles

In the same vein as the Old School Primer available for free over on Lulu, here are, as I see them, some of the principles behind Middle School gaming (i.e., those of us stuck somewhere between grognard and newbie status). This isn't definitive or anything like that as I make no pretenses to know what the hell I'm talking about: this is, after all, only opinion.

1)Rulings, Not Rules: There is no difference here between Old and Middle schools. It is vital that what a player/character can do is not pre-defined for them. Extensive and expansive rule sets only give the illusion of more variety of action; instead, they tend to limit action by constraining it into a set of pre-programmed options.

2)Challenge the Player AND the Character: Intelligent and skilled play are crucial to the game and character survival. Players must do much more than merely roll dice to survive. However, certain challenges are designed for the character and not the player. A character with an 18 intelligence played by a player with a 13 intelligence has to be taken into account in some way. The same goes for instances where a character would have knowledge that a player does not (for instance, a cultural oddity that the player is unaware of) that has an effect on game play. One should never expect, though, to simply dice their way through anything. This leads me into point #3 . . .

3)Playing as Character: This is not an advocation of method acting, or support of role playing as amateur theater hour. This is the acknowledgement that each player assumes the part of the character that they create and run. Players should make some effort to "play the part" rather than treating the character as nothing more than a construct of numbers and a game piece. They should be speaking as their character rather than saying "my character says . . ." and they should have the character act appropriately. A character who is a physical coward should be played as such.

4)Story, Not Plot: We all of us like a good, tight plot in a book or movie. It's essential there. But an RPG adventure or, even worse, an entire campaign should not belabour under any kind of plot. The substance of an adventure or campaign should never depend upon the PC's going directly from point A to B to C with no deviation. However, creating an adventure or campaign around a story, or potential story is fine. For example, the story of how the characters confronted the evil wizard lord of the tower might make a great adventure, but the minute that "scripted events" start appearing, something has gone wrong.

These are just preliminary items. There are more that are lurking about that just haven't been explicated yet.

The Cord is Cut

The news is out all over the web. I'm not even going to bother linking to the actual news reports since, if you're actually reading this blog, you already know all about it, but I can't resist linking toJeff's Visceral Reaction to the whole thing. Johnny Cash says it well with only a gesture.

That said, I have to ask if anybody here actually doubted such an event would come to pass eventually? At some point, a beancounter at Hasbro and WOTC would have to look out and notice that people were still buying copies of older editions and not trying out the newest flavor and they would come to the conclusion that anybody not buying the newest version of D&D would be bad for business.

Of course, we can all rant and rave about how horrible a decision this is, how WOTC is, basically, throwing out money and locking out people who were willing to throw them a few bucks now and then for some products in favor of grabbing the teens and tweens with mommy's credit card and getting X% new subscriptions the DDI (or whatever they call that trash now) and Hasbro's latest vaporware product (I refuse, now, to pay for something that I cannot hold in my hands). We'd be right, at least in part, that WOTC is trying to drown out the presence of people who play a game that is not beholden to the corporate masters in Washington state and try to present 4ed as the only D&D, at least right up until 5th edition comes out, and then 4ed players will be dropped like a great big pile of stink (at which point I will have myself a great big laugh again at the wailing and the gnashing of teeth that goes on).

Or, we could look at this as an opportunity. This is the point where those who have in the past and will continue to resist "upgrading" to 4ed will look for new material in their particular idiom. Those who are looking for AD&D material, or BECMI and 0e material, are going to start looking around and eventually, those who didn't already know about them, will find Labyrinth Lord and Swords and Wizardry and OSRIC and they're going to realize that they aren't left completely high and dry anymore.

This is the chance for this OSR to take the reigns and become more than just a bunch of neckbeards grumbling across the internet at each other and growling at the whipper snappers to get off their lawn. Now's the chance for this old school revival or rennaisance or whatever it is to actually take back control of their hobby, or at least their corner of it, and start inviting people in rather than mumbling about how those young kids "aren't doing it right" and mumbling about what should be "orthodox old school" or even if there should be an orthodox.

Old School gaming now should be about inclusiveness, not exclusiveness. The movement should be extending the hand often and repeatedly to those who are becoming dissillusioned with the corporate model of D&D and show them that there's another way.

Grognard on Grognard Action!

As Noisms put it, "the wailing and gnashing of teeth" has begun at, among other places, LotFP and Lord of the Green Dragons.

Whatever the hell about, it's honestly hard to tell, but it looks like an Old School internecine edition war. So now, not only do we have "Grognards," "3Etards," and "4rons," we must further divide up that first group into whomever sucks at the teat of which clone or even those who refuse the concept of clones in and of themselves and adhere to their moldering copies of Whitebox edition or BECMI or whatever.

And all I can do is laugh.

In all honesty, who the fuck cares whether an old school product says "compatible with D&D" or "compatible with [insert clone of choice here]" or "compatible with whatever the hell game you play"? In the first place, Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry are only a hop, skip, and a fart away from each other. Osric is just round the corner. Hackmaster ain't far behind, and whatever else game you play probably doesn't need a whole lot of effort before that module or supplement or whatever it is works for you, or at least gives you enough ideas to run off and do it yourself, which would be the point in the first place right?

The Old School movement is not system specific. If anything, it has been largely defined, in my view, by what it is not, and what it is not is "not New School." Not about super powers in the Middle Ages. Not about story driven "campaigns." Not about feats, skill points, or daily/per-battle/at-will powers. Not about WOTC's new thrust. That was the greatest strength of the Old School: the realization that whatever system you use was, for the most part, wildly unimportant, it's what you did with it. It was about not settling for pre-processed mass produced pap! And so now we're starting arguments about what should be the standardized system of publishing for the OSR?

Or is this little tempest in the teapot just an argument for the sake of argument?

Oh, and as an aside, "I play D&D" means just what it did 30 years ago. Those of the Old School should recognize more than most that the "common baseline" is largely illusory as the differences between one table and the next are vast enough to make "I play D&D" largely meaningless. It has little to do with what flavor is current today, though yes, most often it will be interpreted as referring to the most recent supported edition excreted by the coastal wizards.

With all due respect to the Old School: stick your shibboleths where your pride goes and remember what's important about this game and this Renaissance.

And you probably won't see a 2ed clone. We don't need one since pretty much every other edition hates us on principle.

Why I Tolerate the Proficiency System

A lot of people rag on the proficiency system for a whole lot of reasons. The Old School takes swings at it because, seemingly, it's that first step on the Path of Doom that leads directly to TETSNBN( The Edition That Shall Not Be Named) and all that idiocy. "We don't need no stinkin' skill system!" they argue, and quite rightly in most respects.

On the other hand, the system catches flak from the D20 and Hackmaster crew for being "half-assed" and not at all sufficient for their needs. Their needs are better served by D20's . . . I'll be nice and call it "complicated" system or Kenzer's positively Byzantine, but still enjoyable system of percentile rolls. I'll be honest, though, and say that both systems feel to me like having the rules of Cricket explained and the net result is the same: the sudden and overwhelming urge to whallop somebody with a bat. They're honestly more trouble than they're worth, and on top of that they betray a myopic and modern viewpoint: specifically that people are, by nature, cosmopolitan and multi-skilled by default.

I was, not too long ago when I still had pretensions at being "Old School," a fan of completely skill-less systems and verged on the point of excising proficiencies entirely from my game. I even started the task of building lists of what could be considered general character knowledge based on class to forestall the inevitable argument about how such and such a character would be expected to know all about The Nameless and Unknown Horror. They usually read something like this: "You're a fighter, and know which end of the spear/sword to hold without hurting yourself . . . you know enough not to eat the red berries unless the trail boss tells you to and not to pitch your tent in the dry stream bed at night." In the end, though, they turned into multi-page documents that nobody would even want to read except, possibly, as a bad joke.

It's at that point that I realized what I really liked about proficiencies. They're a way of inserting a skill system into the game without actually inserting a skill system. The non-proficiency system is not about what a character can do. After all, any boob can ride a horse from point A to point B without falling into the ditch every 10 feet just as all but the densest morons are able to light a fire and cook their supper at the end of a long day's march. And yet we have the Riding, Cooking, and Fire Building proficiencies that make it seem like they confer these very abilities. But in actuallity, they do not. Riding specifically starting with being able to fight from horseback (or unicorn back, or giant lizard back, or whatever) without falling or injuring either yourself or the mount and ranging all the way to performing stunts and tricks that would make the best show stallions in the world jealous. The proficiency description is very explicit in that it does not cover basic riding under average circumstances and, at the rist of sounding like a jackass, anybody who forces PC's to succeed at riding checks in order to mount their horse in the morning and not break their necks at noon are DOING IT WRONG! At the same time, fire building is the ability to build fires in very adverse conditions (rain storms, blizzards, wet fuel, etc.) and cooking is the ability to create gourmet and lavish meals rather than simple home or trail cooking.

In the end, I view the proficiency system as exactly that: a system for determining what your character is proficient in beyond what the average schlub is capable of. Literally, a list of things in which your character is good enough to earn a living through. Thus, somebody with the carpentry proficiency is not just a guy who can fix their front door (any moron can do that) but a true master carpenter who could sell that skill in exchange for money or other recompense. Yes yes, I know that "fire building" isn't a valid career option, even in the pseudo medieval world of most D&D settings, but that's why I said "tolerate" rather than "love." For all its wrinkles, I think the non-weapon proficiency system is the best solution for the issue at hand that's something other than "common sense." In my experience, there isn't a single player out there that has enough common sense to know better than to plunge their hands into the mysterious pool of "water" in order to grab at the copper coins they see on the bottom.

Of course, I've never been entirely sure what to do with things like Omen Reading and Astronomy. On the one hand, I feel like I should be putting in opportunities for said proficiencies to come up in play if the player ever remembers that they have it, but at the same time I feel that the best answer might be to smack the player upside the head and ask him just what it was he was smoking if he thought that they would be useful. I am not in the business of creating situations where the PC's can shine like some sort of convoluted and demented Eigen Plot, but at the same time, I have to be sure not to shut down the players entirely because their choices should mean something in the end, even if it's an NPC mocking them for having useless skills. After all, I am routinely mocked for having the world's only degree that officially qualifies me to say "Would you like fries with that?" and I've learned to live with it. So should the omen readers and astronomers.

This musing and rant has been brought to you by the disturbed workings of a delusional mind. If you're still reading this, then I'm truly sorry for you.

Birthright: A Cornerstone of Changing Sensibilities

I can't say that I don't like the Birthright setting. It's definitely interesting, both in its implied plot (and believe me, there really is a strong hand at work here) and in the ways that it breaks the rules of AD&D 2e to create a unique little experience. The world itself - if you can get past the nigh unpronounceable pseudo-Celtic names that the developers seem so fond of - is quite a nifty little place where dragons are dying out and the mortal races walk the world today infused with the diluted stuff of gods in their veins. It looks like it could be a good deal of fun.

But I will probably never touch it, and not just because I won't find many people in New Jersey who are interested in pulling a campaign together. It's because Birthright, in all its innovative new rules and its shiny boxed intent, represents a betrayal of the core of D&D as I see it, and the enshrinement of all the negative tendencies of storytelling DM's everywhere. It is, more than DragonLance I think, a real symbol of what D&D was to become over the subsequent years.

Ok, that's a bit of a strong statement. It's not like Birthright was the deathknell of tabletop role playing games as we had all grown to love, but it's clear that the assumptions behind the setting were vastly different than those that went into Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. It was clear that The Grey Mouser had no place in Cerilia as that world was, quite literally, all about the stories of kings and great lords. Handing what was a reward for long and good play 30 years ago to a first level character changed the dynamics of everything. Characters very often have what amount to nothing less than super powers in the form of divine heritage. Such powers range from access to genetic memories at the discretion of the DM (not entirely a bad idea I suppose) to a persistent protection from evil effect all the way up to (and I wish I were joking) shooting laser beams out of their eyeballs. This does not, of course, include the 1st level characters that enter play as literal kings of the realm. Of course, some effort is thrown in to balance things out. It is possible to play a character who is not super, but in order to balance them against those who are, all non-powered individuals are granted a flat +10%XP bonus. Even Joe-Average has special benefits.

It's not so much the fact that the characters are intended to be super powered that bothers me. After all, in Dark Sun - a setting of which I am particularly fond - the characters have ability scores ranging all the way up to 24 and everybody has psionic powers free of charge. It's the mentality that seems to fuel it. In Dark Sun, PC's need those little extra boosts in order to make it through an average day of shopping at the market. In Birthright, it's simply that heroes have powers: end of story. In fact, it's explicitly stated that characters who make due with a mere 10% bonus in XP should be made subordinate to a PC who does have powers and is the ruler of a province/kingdom, or if none of the PC's have such powers, than they become subservient to and NPC of such type as a controling patron. The concept of a patron doesn't bother me overly. They've been a wrench in the DM's toolbox forever, after all. The issue here, though, is that the patron is not so much a gentle nudge from the DM or a usefull tool in guiding the PC's down "the right road," it's an actual superior who gives orders and dictates actions; something that, in my mind, defeats the purpose of adventurers in the first place.

All of that is, in the end, forgivable. After all, who among us hasn't wanted to play a character with special abilities under their sleeves? To play a king or high priest? We're gamers, it's kind of what we do at least some of the time.

However, the big issue is that all of this orbits what we are assured is the core of the setting. Not the exploration of the unknown by rougues with hearts of gold, or the confrontation of evil by relative unknowns, but the game of kings and thrones to borrow a phrase from Mr. GRR Martin. It's a game of political maneuvering, treaties and alliances, and espionage and outright war. It's supposedly AD&D on the macro scale rather than the micro, but in the end, I find that, either by intent or anything else, it becomes dominated by heavy handed plot of the rise and fall of nations more than the individual characters. Even the few modules published for the setting - uniquely bad in their own right - are focused on how to fit them into whatever plot the DM has concocted for the players to follow and that track is, for the most part, laid out clearly from day 0.

This really isn't, in my mind, D&D. It is exactly what it says in the introduction to the source books inside the box: a failed novel by an overeager man graduating with his degree in English Lit.

Old School Renaissance Picking Up Steam?

Over at Grognardia*, it seems that the possibilities of the Old School movement are opening up a bit in some ways. James is laying another foundation stone in the Old School toolkit. How's that for mixed metaphores?

I think this is a great idea. I'd love to see this kind of work come out and be cross compatible with Osric and Labyrinth Lord as well (though I imagine it would be less than a nothing to make it so). This is a great tool to add to the kit!

My only concern, here, is that while James is talking about seeing D&D move into completely new realms, he seems to be settling for cloning yet more of the old rules via the facilitation of the SRD/OGL. It's not a bad thing, by any means, to see renewals of what has come before. It's important that these things be refreshed and, since we cannot republish them as is, bringing them out again in renewed format is the best option. However, why are we stopping there?

Instead of settling for another version of Supplement III's psionics rules, I think a better option might be the release of a new set of psionic rules, different than what has gone before. It'd be nice to see, in addition to the recapitulated Supplement III rules, a second section with a completely new take on powers of the mind. Something to get that foundation stone rolling rather than settling for rebuilding Illium.

I know: it's easy to talk about what should be when somebody else is doing the work of putting pen to paper. James isn't really a standard bearer for the movement, or the spiritual leader of the renaissance handing down papal bulls, or neccessarily the guy who even wants to be the one to push this particular stone down the ramp. But in the end, I agree with Geoffrey McKinney. I'm eager to see Supplement VI, VII, and VIII put out, whether in paper copy or PDF. I'm eager to see those new vistas opened up and explored by more creative minds than mine (after all, I came to D&D when the theme was changing from "Imagine the Hell out of it" to "Yeah, we can make a rule/option to support that.").

And say what you will about Carcosa - it's taste, tact, or presumption and I won't even dip my little toe into that debate - it is, I think, exactly what the Old School movement is looking for more of.

Maybe I'm out of line on this, in which case I'll step back and leave it to better minds, but where's Supplement VI that details a world overrun by out of control plant growth with sentient vines and carnivorous fruit? Where's Supplement VII that introduces us to Rune Magic and the fall of the Kthoi? Why is the Old School Renaissance cloning old material and printing occasional modules?



*It might seem like I talk about James a lot and, well, I do. It's not just because I'm a fan of his work, but because he's intelligent and cogent in a way that few are, even when I tend to disagree with him at certain junctures. For whatever reason, and whether intentionally or not, the man has become one of the prime standard bearers for the Old School revolution and as such, when talking about it, it's hard not to talk about, or to, James. What can I say? I admire the guy.

Leery of the Whole Mega-Dungeon . . . Thing

It's a staple of the old school revival, supposedly, the 'tent-pole mega-dungeon' around which the entire campaign is based. As a player, it's a great deal of fun to remember "the hobgoblins on the 3rd level" and how you tricked them into the lair of the dragon on the 4th, thus eliminating two problems in one fell swoop. And I suppose that it's a lot of fun on the part of the GM to showcase everything he has in one easily accessible location, complete with convenient adventuring town no more than a day's journey away. From all this perspective, I like the idea of a mega-dungeon.

However, the mega-dungeon has always cramped my style so to speak. It's always impinged upon my sensibilities of how things "should" go. There's nothing wrong with a large "dungeon" per se, but I'm always plagued by the questions of what function the dungeon originally had before it was inhabited by goblins, kobolds, orcs, and etc. What did it do? Why was it built? In a way, I'm always a bit like Gollum, always worrying at the roots of things, looking for the beginnings of things. In the end, I look at the dungeons, crypts, and caverns in my own campaigns as all having functions, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that from a strictly functional standpoint, smaller is better.

From the point of view of "normal fantasy" why, if you were going to build a prison would you build a monstrously huge structure twelve levels deep with the possibility of unexpected entrances all over when, in fact, a small shell keep with a few dozen iron barred cells in the center would do immeasurably better? What in the world would posses somebody, or several somebodies, to dig out a massive twelve level complex the size of a metropolis and just as densely populated? It would be a massive waste of resources when something a tenth that size would do. Even the Tower of London, one of the most infamous prisons of the Middle Ages and sometimes residence of the royal family, is remarkably small. Even Château d'If wasn't particularly massive (something on the order of three or four main levels and a tower or two).

Why are we so eager to fall into the mantra of more is better when, from my perspective, more is too often simply that: more.

Don't get me wrong, I believe there's nothing wrong with large dungeons, as long as there's a believable rational behind them. History has its fair share of them including the sewers and catacombs of Paris, the Underground system of London, and any number of such places that, if I were either brave or stupid . . . or both . . . I might love to explore. I have the germinating seed of an ancient dwarven city, decimated by a plauge centuries ago, through which the last few undead wander performing whatever task they did in life endlessly, crowding out other, more important things in my head: like the password to the database at work.

But in the end, I'm a great believer that there's more bang for the buck in smaller, more meaningful locations. Places that are more than just "the dungeon" and I as the GM don't have to make excuses for the players to go to but they naturally, if reluctantly at times, head for. That castle on the hill that they've been skirting around now for almost a year (of actual play!) that they know they will eventually have to enter and they're sure that whatever they find in there they're not going to like. One of the greatest "dungeons" of all time, I think, was straight out of Beowulf, the Dragon's Barrow in which the treasure of a long lost people rested and the eponymous wyrm brooded over the loss of a single cup from its discovered hoard. Beowulf didn't run off to slay the dragon because here was another chance at adventure and glory. I've always been able to hear quietly in the background the great king mumbling "awe crap, here's yet another thing I have to go kill because some idiot thief couldn't keep his fingers in his pockets when I'd rather be enjoying a good cup of strong wine, idiot peasants never had it so good. . ."

"Adventurer" should never be a legitimate career choice. At best, to the world around them, these persons are little better than wandering vagabonds. They're obviously dangerous, carry large numbers of weapons, meddle readily with the forces of darkness and break the laws of nature on a whim. Nothing sticks in my craw more than reading published modules that have as their hook the idiotic premise that the local king or lord is seeking to actually locate and hire these idiots who are followed by danger and misfortune like a stray puppy. The most common phrase an adventurer should know is "We thank you for killing Thorbald the Dark, Unleasher of Plagues, but would you kindly now get the hell out? You're frightening the townfolk."

By the same token, I as the GM (and often as a player) have some overriding urge to see things make sense. Why are there kobolds, orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, a red dragon, 13 carrion crawlers, two rust monsters, and 37 rot grubs all living in such close proximity to each other without there being an all out furball conflict between them all? Why in the world aren't they all seeking the seclusion of their own? For that matter, why in the world would they be moving into a large dungeon complex filled to the brim with clever tricks and traps of the ancients when a nice, quiet, untrapped location could be theirs for the taking?

In the end, I think that a mega-dungeon raises more questions than I, as a GM, am prepared to answer. It feels too much like laying all my cards out on the table in one giant pile rather than carefully playing them in a slow game, one corner at a time so that the players aren't sure if they're looking at the corner of a seven of clubs, or a nine.