Chainmail: My First Engagement

  Last week I attended North Texas RPG Con, and it was a much-needed breath of freedom and return to gaming in person.  NT is a big family, and we all revel in the love of old-school games.  This year I got to play three games for the first time that I had never before tried: Champions 4th Edition, Gamma World 1st Edition, and Chainmail.  I thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of these games, but I felt like I needed to write my feelings on Chainmail as it is a foundational piece of the original 1974 D&D rules.

  Thanks to the debacle that was RPG Labs and the ill-fated video series I was involved with, I have played 1974 D&D using the Chainmail combat tables.  It was extremely illuminating to my understanding of where many of our terms and mechanics come from.  But I'd yet to actually throw down some miniatures and play out a battle using Chainmail.  Our referee was Paul Stormberg, who deftly explained the basics and gave us the choice of three armies - Europeans, Mongols, and... I can't remember because they didn't get chosen.  My was teamed with James and his daughter Neve, who we quickly named our General.  We grabbed the Mongol army.  Our opponents, the Europeans, were Robin, David, and Scott.

  Each team had 100 points with which to build our forces.  We chose two units of five archer figurines, a unit of five horse archers (an option not available to our European enemies), a unit of five medium cavalry, and a unit of heavy infantry.

Our opponents had two units not available to us: a pair of knights, much higher quality fighters than our infantry, and a 10-figure unit of crossbowmen.  These gave us beaucoup trouble, as you'll see here in a moment.  After unit selection  came terrain.  Paul had us draw four random terrain features from a deck for each side of the map, and drew the indicated features onto the battlemat with a wet-erase.  We ended up with a battlefield that had two hills facing one another on the eastern end, relatively flat terrain through the middle, and a hill opposing a marsh on the western end.  Center-right on our side was a ditch Paul ruled we could use to conceal troops- but they could only exit into the center of the map, northward.

General Neve listened to her advisors, and decided to conceal our horse archers in the arroyo, our medium horse behind the hill, and our archers just beneath the summit so they could deploy to the northern face of the hill and take advantage of the range bonus they would get from elevation.  Once we deployed (or didn't, as none of our troops were visible) the European team deployed.  The odd thing is, we were able to deploy hidden units, yet we were somehow the attacker...  Anyway...

The Europeans send their medium horse off to their right flank, but brought the bulk of their force face-to-face with our army holding the hill.  Their infantry charged, and we cut them to pieces with concentrated arrow fire.  That was the best result we got for the entire engagement, for it was at this juncture our opponents realized their crossbowmen outranged our archers by several inches.  They moved up and starting showering us with arrows.

At this point, we revealed our horse units, and charged with our infantry.  The idea was that the crossbowmen would have to split fire or choose one or the other threat to deal with.  They countercharged with their heavy horse, and our medium horse met them after some archery shenanigans.  Our infantry was reduced to two figures, who then refused to fail a morale check and fought to the death.  Our horse archers did respectable damage with their bows, but got in too close and were engaged in  melee by the European medium horse.  The force mismatch in both cavalry battles meant our cav didn't last too long.  Victory: Europeans.  But General Neve's forces did quite a bit of damage before accepting defeat.

So, now that I've played Chainmail, how do I feel about it?

This game is definitely an artifact of it's time.  There are many charts and tables, and different mechanics for different troop types and engagements.  This makes it difficult to get a hang of the game for a first-timer.  I imagine if I played it more often, I'd get the hang of it.  Sometimes the results were static, and sometimes random.  That was interesting, and made me want to look closer at the troop versus troop tables to see if there were combinations that offered a guaranteed disadvantage.  Medium Horse versus Heavy was brutal, as was Light Horse versus Medium.  Archery was suitably brutal, and the crossbows trading the ability to fire twice in a turn (once as a reaction and once on their fire phase) for range was certainly a compelling choice.

I found the amount of movement cavalry had to sacrifice to change direction extremely restrictive.  1/4 move for up to 45 degrees, 1/2 move for 46 to 90, and all movement for 180 degrees.  This seemed overly restrictive given the ranges of our cavalry on both sides, and had a major effect on the employment of the cavalry by the combatants.

So... would I play it again?  Sure.  Especially if I was playing with others who are exploring it for the historical context.  If I am going to play a miniatures game for its own sake, this would probably not be my first choice of rules set.  But it was enjoyable, and informed my feel for what people were playing as our hobby dawned.

Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes...

 Nothing remains quite the same.

  As I write this entry, I'm sitting in my game room.  Or, what was once my game room.  Over the last year this space has transformed into a home office, schoolhouse, and dumping ground for everything else in the house on its way to or from storage, or Home Depot or Ikea.  The Pandemic has done a number on this room, and I feel like my soul resembles this room quite a bit.  In the same way that Strahd von Zarovich is the land, I feel the state of the One-Eyed Ogre, as we call the game room, mirrors my mental and spiritual health.

  I, too, am cluttered.  I, too, and pulled in so many directions.  I'm serving as an educational paraprofessional to both kids- one of which is ADHD, the other in the throes of puberty and pre-teen angst, and both dyslexic.  I'm trying to keep my actual job duties rolling, which requires doing my work on evenings and weekends most weeks since my days are filled with keeping the kids awake (Zane) and on task (both, but especially Kaylee.)  We're doing some necessary remodeling after our 40-year-old guest shower tub cracked right through the bottom, and that project has experienced some mission creep.  We're just fortunate we have a friend who is a Master Plumber and he knew a great tile person.  On top of that, we're trying to refi the house to take advantage of the ridiculously low interest rates, and pull out some equity to refit the rest of the house, since moving in the Austin housing market is priced for people who make a lot more money than I do, or people willing to live a lot farther out than I am.  Add to that the insane amount of social and political turmoil that has wormed its way into the tabletop community just as it has every other facet of American life... 

So what does this have to do with gaming?  Quite a bit, on a personal level.  I find that I lack the capacity for the way I gamed before all of this set in.  And by all of it, I don't just mean the pandemic, I mean all the politics, all the associated stresses, me sitting here instead of my office on campus, all of it.

Before all of this, I'd run any game for any group.  As a founding member of the Royal Dragoon Guards, way back when we were the Caladan Highland Dragoons, I have run big games for big groups for 25 years now.  As the main GM all that time, it has been my duty to entertain the masses, and for the most part I loved it.  I still look back at those unwieldy games where we had 15, 20 players or more in massive MechWarrior RPG campaigns that had Battletech battles that took up an entire activity center floor at our apartment complex.  Our campaigns felt like the early novels, and we were like the Kell Hounds or the Gray Death Legion.  It was glorious.  Many Arby's 5-for-5s and Taco Bell 59/79/99 menu items died to bring us those days.

As we got older, our games got less ambitious, with the first RDG campaign under that name having only 17 players.  Then we broke into smaller groups, and branched out into games aside from MechWarrior.  This drew in more players, and somewhere along the line I ended up being the backstop GM.  Other GMs had a solid stable of players for their games, and I ran the games for whoever was left.  Which was more often than non a revolving door of casual players, who may or may not consistently attend.  This also meant it was very difficult to do things that weren't one-shots or at most West Marches-style games.  It started to erode my morale a bit, but I have always been a "The Show Must Go On" kind of GM, so we kept it going.

Everything shutting down had some unexpected effects.  With our technology, we should have been able to just transition to Zoom or Discord and keep rolling, and we tried that.  But the lack of in-person contact made meetings feel off somehow.  Individual groups kept gaming, but as a whole our group fractured a bit.  Pandemic fatigue set in, and it was hard to get enthusiasm for anything.  We offered several online options, and very few of them were put to use with any enthusiasm.  When we got to election time in January, the group decided to call 2020 a do-over and just let the 2020-2021 staff roll into 2021-22.

I tried running a 5e campaign.  It died.  I tried running a couple of other games, they never took off.  I got a Star Trek Adventures game going recently, and that's showing some promise as the pandemic thaws.  But for months, I was without a regular game, and in some cases even one-shots or anything, and I started to think about my role as the Game Master by default over the last 25 years.

I realized I'm tired.  I'm frustrated.  And the kind of gaming I was doing right before the pandemic happened wasn't really satisfying me then.  What I need is to get back to what drew me into gaming in the first place.  I need to get back to playing for the love of the game, with good friends, and an ongoing story.  Crafting a tale together that we will recount over drinks for years to come.

And it doesn't have to be anything fancy.  A scrappy group of mercenary MechWarriors, a bog-standard BX Dungeons & Dragons campaign.  Maybe a Traveller game with elements of Firefly and Cowboy Bebop.

Or maybe fancy would be cool.  Run Dragonlance, the original campaign.  Or Beyond The Mountains of Madness for Call of Cthulhu.  

Dig up old favorites, like Marvel Superheroes, Gangbusters, Star Frontiers.

New hotness like Against the Darkmaster, Dune, or Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea.

There's always Dungeon Crawl Classics and Mutant Crawl Classics.

But the bottom line is, no matter what I run, or play, I want to make sure of a few things.  The players have to be onboard with the genre and tone of the campaign.  I am so sick of dealing with players that create characters completely unsuitable for the game being pitched.  If a game isn't your cup of tea, play in or run a different game.  If the GM and five out of six players want to do The Hunt for Red October, don't do Down Persicope.  Run your own Down Periscope game, and make it the funniest, most irreverent game ever.

Gaming is a group activity, and it's time I ran games I want to run again, rather than selecting my game and players based on entertaining the maximum number of people with the lowest common denominator game.  That's part of the job as president of a big gaming club.  I know that, and I've done it for many years.  But for me, myself, I've got to get back to what I love about games and gaming.  I've got to pitch games I want to run, and run them for the players who are interested in that game, genre, and tone.  And if one or two individuals aren't interested, that's fine.  There will be other games, other GMs, and other players.  I have been of the mindset that I need to cater to the masses in the name of keeping the club as entertained as possible.  And I think that is still a worthy goal- but it should be a goal that is shared with other Game Masters and not on the shoulders of any one person.

And at this point, coming out the far side of a year-plus without sitting at a table and rolling dice?  It almost feels like rebuilding from scratch anyway.  So, maybe the silver lining of this dark cloud is that we rethink the way we do our games as an organization, and do them more like regular campaigns. 

Back to Basics - Old School Essentials

 

As my chronicle of experience with roleplaying records, I began gaming with the 1983 D&D Basic and Expert sets in 1986.  It was only later I got a copy of the 1981 versions of those sets, and for, oh, decades, when I played "Basic" D&D I was playing a version of BECMI (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortals) D&D.  The original boxed sets, the Rules Cyclopedia, or the Black Boxed Set from 1991.  It wasn't until I started to really look into the history of the game for its own sake that I began to look closely at the 1981 Tom Moldvay Basic and the 1977 Holmes Basic books as more than curiosities, as they'd predated my involvement with the hobby.

As a younger gamer, I enjoyed ever more complicated games.  Basic D&D took me to Advanced D&D, Palladium Fantasy, Rolemaster, and GURPS.  Palladium had a different fighting style for each fighting class (this was before the RIFTS-ification of their 2nd edition), Rolemaster had those amazing critical tables, and GURPS combat rounds were second by second, with an allegedly "realistic" approach.  I ate it up.  Loved every minute of it.  On the not-fantasy side, I loved crunch in other games.  I built many ships for Star Trek and Traveller, designed BattleMechs and Car Wars cars, and even tinkered together my own set of rules for the old Wheeled Warriors toys to give stats to all the interchangeable gear included with the toys.

At the pinnacle of this love of crunch in my rules, I had a spreadsheet for tracking maintenance hours for a BattleMech company, down to assigning individual techs to individual 'Mechs and prioritizing certain repairs.  I had a set of parts compatibility rules for BattleMech parts - need a knee for your Wasp?  Well, that Stinger knee is nearly identical, but the Locust knee will need a lot of modification.  I had a spreadsheet to calculate the prices of parts and ammo depending on location within the Inner Sphere - it took the table from MW 1e and expanded the variables to include Traveller-type planet classifications.  I even used The Robotech Reference Guide to engineer GURPS stats for Robotech weapons by mathing out explosive yield to mega-joules of energy and cross referencing that with GURPS existing stats for sci-fi weapons, and their rules for damage based on TNT.

I look back now, and I'm proud of about half of it, and horrified that I wasted time on the other half.  This brings me to where I am now in my head.

There is still a big part of me that wants to know if the players are carrying enough rations, water, arrows, etc. for their journey.  I played enough Oregon Trail as a kid and did enough backpacking in Scouts to feel like being prepared is an integral part of any adventure.  I like the need to plan an expedition, to give the situation some thought.  At the same time, though, my gaming time is extremely limited in comparison to my younger years.  Gotta get the bang for the buck, time-to-fun-ratio wise.

Enter my growing love affair with BX and derivatives thereof.  The Basic/Expert rules set is cleaner (arguably) than Holmes, is the bones upon which the BECMI edition was based, but only goes to Level 14 for humans, rather than the 36 of BECMI.  This has many effects, not the least of which is a less punishing (but still frustrating) Thief skill progression, less disparity between the Demihuman class level limits vs. humans, and less of a massive gulf between starting characters and max-levels.  Remember, Level 3 is more or less a fully trained professional if you take the level titles into account, like Priest, and level 4 is Hero according to the Fighter progression.

The more I read the editions before mine, the more I grew to respect their place in the D&D lineage, and understand more about the hobby as it was, and as it is now.  Now that I've played the original 1974 rules with Chainmail, and Holmes, and Moldvay, I find that there are things I enjoy quite a bit about all of them, but especially Moldvay's BX.  This has been cloned quite a bit - Labyrinth Lord, B/X RPG, and more.  But the version that has stolen my heart is Old School Essentials.

Now, I won't turn my nose up at the D&D Rules Cyclopedia as my "Desert Island" all-in-one-volume book.  But I find that I rarely use levels above 9 or 10, if that high, and that while I love The War Machine rules for mass battles, I don't use the weapons expertise rules as written in BECMI as they are sometimes quite overpowering to the campaign, especially at high levels.  This is where the current single-volume version of Old School Essentials comes in.  OSE takes the form of a smaller-than-standard book, A5 or Digest size, clocking in at 296 pages.  It's got some color plates, and sewn-in cloth bookmarks.  Swanky.

Why choose OSE over other implementations of BX, or BX itself?  Well, it's a one-volume hardcover that takes those rules and restates them with 100% fidelity where possible, and when there were contradictions between the Basic and Expert rulebooks, or between two entries in the same rulebook, a decision or correction was made.  The end result is an eminently easier volume in which to find things, with a full index and straightforward organization.  There is also a player's version of the rules, with the DM-specific information excluded.

This book gives me a solid foundation for a simple D&D game that lacks the arcane complexity other versions of D&D, even other vintage versions, include.  AD&D is something I also love, and OSE scratches that itch as well with their Advanced Fantasy books.  These take the BX core and add concepts from AD&D to it.  So, this isn't OSRIC, it's not a rules-faithful AD&D clone, it's a rules-faithful BX clone with AD&D concepts.  And that's... pretty cool, actually.  Like, if you want full-on AD&D, you can go with AD&D or OSRIC.  But if you want something where you can remember all the Ability Score modifiers in your head, go OSE with the Advanced Fantasy books.

There is a big part of me that wants to go back to the simplicity of a straightforward fantasy campaign like the ones we played in the 80s.  Like the pure joy we see in the Stranger Things crew or Michael's friends in E.T. gathered around a table and rolling dice.  I am those kids - I remember many carefree evenings and afternoons with close friends, tossing dice and slaying foul creatures.  Before I had to worry about bills, or pandemics, or diabetes.  Hell, all we worried about back then was nuclear annihilation.  No big.

I'd love to sit down with a band of chosen family, roll up characters, and save the world Old School.  I think the BX iteration of D&D strikes a pretty clean balance between enough rules to do stuff, and not so many rules as to get in the way.  I still love my BECMI, but 36 levels is just excessive in practice.  I say that, and still want to run a game where the players ascend to immortality.  Maybe I can make that happen at BX levels...  Hmmm...

Anyway, Old School Essentials hits a sweet spot with me.  A nice, well-organized hardcover that can supplement my Lulu one-volume prints of Moldvay Basic and Cook/Marsh Expert.  Thumbs up from me.

D&D And Me Volume 4: The 2nd Edition Stretch

 2nd Edition was around from 1989-2000, when 3.0 dropped.  An eleven year stretch, currently second only to 1e, 1977-89.  As I mentioned before, 2e was my jam in High School, seeing as it came out the year I started my Freshman year.  Fittingly, for my personality, I was the final class to be able to say they started High School in the 80s.  This was a very formative time for me as a gamer and as a person, my high school and first round of college years.  I got married during 2e's tenure, so one could say I literally grew up with 2nd Edition, and all these years later I still love it.  I have grown to appreciate other versions of D&D on their own merits, of course, but 2e is tied with Basic (BX or BECMI) as my favorite D&D.

  Now, 2nd Edition had a lot going for it.  Personally, I loved the original presentation of the Monstrous Compendium, in a big three-ringed binder full of monsters each of which had a full-page or more entry.  In practice, one needed a lot of those little hole reinforcement stickers to keep pages from coming out, but in theory one could add pages to their binder, like the Forgotten Realms and Kara-Tur packs I purchased.  Along with 2e came the brown leatherette splatbooks.  The Complete Fighter's Handbook, The Complete Wizard's Handbook, etc.  Books for Demi-Humans, books for setting-specific classes like Ninja and Shi'ar, books from the green historical line, like Rome, and Charlemagne's Paladins.

  THIS was 2e.  It went everywhere and did everything.  The Realms, Dragonlance, Al-Qadim, Maztica, Spelljammer, Planescape, even my favorite setting of all time, Mystara, got some 2e support.  And yeah, Ravenloft.  My other favorite setting.  It's no wonder we had such a blast with 2e, as there was so much of everything to inspire and inform our games.  Too much, from TSR's financial standpoint.  But that's not really what I wanted to talk about.

  To me, 2e was everything I had wanted in a Dungeons & Dragons game at the time.  The rules we often see as clunky in hindsight were fine for those of us who grew up with 1e and Basic.  In fact, they were a genuine improvement in many cases.  All the support materials were just icing on the cake- and a crap ton of icing it was.  But then something happened that really upset me, and to this day I'm only partially sure why.  2e got a facelift, and I hated it.

  The core books were reformatted and given a new trade dress in 1995.  Gone was the natural progression of cover design from the 1e redux to 2e, these new "black border" covers just felt... off.  And the interiors?  Ugh.  Gone was the iconic artwork of the original run of 2nd Edition, and the new layout went from the friendly blue and black to a more aggressive red and black.  The font styles changed to a less readable style, and on the whole made the entire corebook line look closer to what the later Ravenloft-themed stuff looked like.  It just felt... wrong.  Now, the art isn't bad, at all.  Both covers were done by the legendary Jeff Easley.  But the tone of the art was... different.

Now, I'll admit if someone jumped into AD&D at this point, they wouldn't have been so used to the previous presentation.  So this just might be my age and my prior D&D experiences predisposing me to dislike, nay, loathe the black-border redux.  But this wasn't all- the reprints of the splatbooks changed to a cheaper cover, no longer the faux leather of the original issues, the reprints felt less awesome and in hindsight, maybe a harbinger of TSR's financial woes.  To this day the only reason I own any of the black-border "2.5" books is because they have been given to me.  I have never bought one of my own accord, and at the time of this writing I feel I never will.

Why do these updates offend my sensibilities so?  You got me.  I mean, I have something I like in each and every edition of D&D.  Of this one I can say, well, it's 2e, and it includes any errata that had been compiled at that point.  But above and beyond that, I just really feel repelled by this incarnation of the game, and was doubly sad when the commemorative hardcovers were released using these versions of the book interiors.  Second Edition is blue and black, dammit, and if there's not the Elmore painting of the proud dragonslayers just inside the PHB, it's wrong.  Now that I'm looking at the covers and the interiors side-by-side for this article, I do see something I can put my finger on.  The first version looks bright, optimisitc, action-oriented.  The second looks dark, desperate, and gritty.  To be fair, Dungeons & Dragons can be both, sometimes in the same campaign, or the same adventure.  But flip to the interiors, and that theme persists.  The art and interior design of 2.5 is more subdued, and made harsher by the red chapter and section titles and borders.

So, even as 2nd Edition waned, and Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR, and I finished my AA and ended up unable to pursue my Army career due to Obstructive Sleep Apnea, I still clung to my high school version of AD&D 2e in what might have been my first expression of unreasonably hostile grognard-ism.  I can say that at age 45 I realize I am being unreasonably judgey about what is essentially a cleanup and re-release of one of my favorite versions of D&D.  There's nothing rules-wise wrong with it.  But the look?  The feel?  All kinds of wrong.  At least to me.

2nd Edition's tenure brought me so many things I love about D&D, though.  I read the 2e splatbooks for fun, they had so many great ideas that were executed with more or less effectiveness.  The Priest book even had some kits that were explicitly less powerful than the average Cleric, which I found neat.  I mean, not everyone is a hammer-wielding, heal-casting badass.  Kits allowed some great fluff and options to keep the base classes from feeling samey.  And the settings - holy crap the settings.  SO MANY SETTINGS.  My favorites to read were Ravenloft, Maztica, and Al-Qadim.  Sad thing is, I've only ever met one other hardcore Al-Qadim fan, and none who liked Maztica.  So Ravenloft is all I've ever gotten to really run.

Here's a problem with my burning out on 2e due to my prejudice against the 2.5-themed products.  I missed out on some truly cool stuff.  Decades later, in 2019, I discovered Jakandor.  This mini-setting flew under my radar as I was abstaining from buying stuff with that 2.5 look.  It was an attempt to turn some AD&D tropes on their head, and it succeeded.  I devoured it as part of a web project I was involved in (that crashed and burned) and discovered that I had really missed out on a cool bit of D&D history.  I've looked back to see if I missed anything else cool.

When I met my wife in 1997, we weren't playing AD&D, we introduced her to tabletop roleplaying with West End's Star Wars.  She wouldn't make a D&D character until 3.0 was a brand new thing in 2000.  So that sort of sums up the end of my 2nd Edition Stretch.  It was, and remains, a favorite of mine, though I am struggling with my blind spot for its closing years.

31 Character Challenge Part 31: Gangbusters B/X

Prohibition. It's one of my favorite periods of American history to study.  When we lost our collective minds and instituted a massive attempt to legislate morality and created of our law-abiding citizens a nation of scofflaws.  Flappers, G-men, bootleggers, bathtub gin and speakeasies.  Chicago typewriters, hits, smuggler's row, "I would advise yas ta keep dialin', Oxmyx."

I first played TSR's Gangbusters in High School.  I loved so much about the game.  First of all, it allowed players to be on the other side of the law.  Sure, you could play cops and G-Men, both of which were a lot of fun.  And you could play private dicks and reporters, both also with tons of potential for adventure.  But holy crap you could play the gangsters.  You could manufacture, transport, and sell illegal hooch.  Run a speakeasy. Set up a numbers game.  Build a criminal empire.  And I loved every minute of it.

Recently, my friend Glen "Ol' Man Grognard" Hallstrom told me there was an OSR version of Gangbusters in the works.  I love games built on the OSR engine, so I was intrigued.  This led me to Mark Hunt's Gangbusters B/X.  This is a rework of the original Gangbusters RPG based around the 1981 Moldvay version of the D&D engine.  You know, the one we all played back in The Day.

So, let's throw on a fedora and grab a tommy gun, and make a character for this new old game.

Character Creation

Like many games based on the Old School Renaissance, we start by rolling 3d6 in order for Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma.

• Strength: 11
• Intelligence: 9
• Wisdom: 11
• Dexterity: 11
• Constitution: 8
• Charisma: 9

 Pretty average.  The option exists to swap two points of Strength, Wisdom, or Intelligence for 1 point elsewhere, but our stats are so low already...  Let's move on.

Our class is going to be Street Smart.  As a Street Smart character, this PC will have a bonus to striking from behind, and the Nimble Fingers, Move Silently, Hide, and Word on The Street skills. A d4 for Hit Dice, I roll a 1, and modify it by the -1 for low Constitution.  So... 1 measly Hit Point.  Now I'm thinking of a dozen Basic D&D characters I've played.  Gotta play it smart to stay alive.

We choose an alignment, the choices are Law Abiding, Neutrality, and Dishonest.  Since we're going to probably work as a gangster, we'll go with Dishonest.  We roll 3d6x10 for starting money, and end up with $130.  Random rolls say we speak French in addition to English, and our nickname is "Lucky."

For equipment, we'll buy some typical clothes (AC5), a hip flask, a revolver, a blackjack, and we'll keep the rest of the money ($65.50) for future uses.

The Character

Frank Leroux never used his given name, Francois.  The Boys thought it was "too French."  The day that G-man's bullet was stopped by a half inch wide strip of metal in a car door was when they forgot all about "Francois" and started calling him "Lucky."

Lucky wasn't strong, like the boss' enforcers.  He wasn't as smart as the idea men and the accountants.  But what he was, was Lucky.  He was sneaky, he could find things out. He had informants that could get him the word on the street.  And when it came to taking people out- sometimes you didn't need to be tough.

Today, Lucky spends his days at the boss' most profitable speak.  He listens, he finds things out, and he helps the boss in ways the other folks can't.

My Thoughts

Gangbusters B/X has a couple of advantages over the original.  The OSR engine means the mechanics of the game are automatically intuitive to many players.  It also means tons of material for other games using the engine can be borrowed and plugged straight in.  Want to do supernatural roaring 20s?  Borrow spells, undead, and ghosts from any number of products based on the early D&D engine.  I dig that quite a bit.  Want to do your own version of A Piece of The Action? Grab Starships & Spacemen 2nd Edition to roll up Koik and Spocko and Gangbusters for Oxmyx and Krako.

The only thing missing from Gangbusters B/X are the many subsystems in the original Gangbusters that I love so much.  So I asked the author about that- and it's coming in the Expert set, due out soon.  So Gangbusters B/X will mimic the original Basic and Expert Dungeons & Dragons by having two rulebooks, one basic, and one with more advanced information and rules.  I'm looking quite forward to the release.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

31 Character Challenge Part 30: Behind Enemy Lines

 

World War II.  Possibly the most studied conflict in the history of mankind.  I remember when The History Channel was nothing but wall-to-wall WWII documentaries.  The Hitler Channel: All Hitler, All The Time.  So it's only natural that there are a few roleplaying games out there that cover good old WWII.  Many of them add non-historical elements, like Weird War II with Nazi "Wehrwolves" and Gear Krieg with dieselpunk mecha.  But FASA's Behind Enemy Lines is not one of those.  This game intends to be a "straight" WWII roleplaying game, by default from the point of view of an American US Army soldier.

The game has a sort of lifepath character generation, and with its 2D6 task resolution it's hard not to see a bit of Traveller influence in the game.  It has some very wargame-y elements, but that's to be expected of a game where the main setting is the conflict in Europe.

I have to admit that I have rolled up characters for this game many times, but I have yet to actually run it.  I've owned it for decades, but never found a group that was interested in playing WWII "straight."  No supernatural elements, no mecha, no nothing.  Most players I've talked to felt it was far too grim, too easy for characters to catch a stray bullet and die horribly.

I think this game is in a genre where I'd stick to playing the dice as they fall, rather than my more modern mode of saving character deaths for dramatically appropriate moments.  No, in a WWII game the grim brutality my players have always feared is probably pretty appropriate.

Without further adieu, lets' see who got drafted.

Character Creation

 We begin by determining our physical characteristics.  They are Strength, Endurance, Weapons Handling, Agility, and Stamina.  All but Stamina are rolled on 1D6+4.  Stamina is then the average of Strength and Endurance.

• Strength: 10
• Endurance: 10
• Weapons Handling: 7
• Agility: 5
• Stamina: 10

Well, Agility crapped out, but the two sixes right off the bad help. Rolling on the 2D6 table tells us our character's weight is 170-180 pounds.

Now we roll for background skills, but we have to figure out if our character came from the city, or the country. 4, our character is rural.  So we'll roll to see if he (these characters are universally male) picked up useful skills before basic training.

We now have a level 1 Rifle skill, a level 3 Pistol skill, Drive at level 1, and a level 2 Swim skill.

Now, for basic training.  Our Rifle skill comes out to 4, First Aid at the maximum of 3, level 2 Hand-to-Hand skill, and level 1 skill in Bayonet, Rifle Grenade, BAR, Bazooka, .30 machine gun, 60mm mortar, and submachine gun.

Now we determine how experienced this character is.  We roll an 8 and are a Private First Class.  Our character has seen action only at Normandy. He has 1 Combat Experience point, and 5 acquired skill points.  We'll spend 3 on a level of Rifle, and 2 on another level of First Aid, qualifying our character to be a medic.

Jot down gear, and this character is ready to play.

The Character

Charlie Carlisle grew up in the small town of Taylor, Texas, son of a farmer and one of six children.  Charlie and each of his siblings worked hard helping keep the farm afloat, with Charlie being the only member of his family to have graduated High School, with Charlie spending late nights trying to help his younger siblings do the same, then waking at dawn to help his father with the chores.  That was the way things were until Sunday, December 7th, 1941.  News from outside Texas didn't travel terribly fast most days, but by Sunday night even the sleepy little farm town was abuzz with news of the Japanese attack.

Charlie had a talk with his father, a veteran of The Great War, and set off for Austin the next day, to enlist in the US Army.

Basic Training was educational, but not too tough for a boy whose body had been conditioned to hard work.  Like most boys in the country, he already knew his way around firearms, and knew how to drive the family's Ford pickup.  These skills came in handy, and he was made a PFC aboard the ship taking him across the Atlantic for the invasion of Europe.  Then the waiting started.  Training, training, training.  Practice and more practice.  Some units invaded Sicily, Italy. And still Charlie waited with his unit.  Drills, field problems, waiting.  Waiting.  Then one day, the paymasters paid the men in francs.

D-Day.  Charlie had never seen so much vomit, and hours later he had never seen so much blood.  The whole thing was a blur of sound and motion, blood and water, men and machines.  When the whole thing was finally over, God knows how long later, and he and his company caught their breath- there were just over half of them left.  Charlie's own squad had lost their squad leader and both BAR men.  He wondered why he'd ever wanted to hurry up and invade.  But here he was - in Europe.  He joined the Corporal who now led his squad in pissing on a burned out pillbox.  So much for Fortress Europa.

Now begins the long road to Berlin.

My Thoughts

I'm currently watching Band of Brothers with my son.  We've also watched Saving Private Ryan together.  I wonder if I could use Behind Enemy Lines as a teaching tool, to pick up some WWII history by walking students through some of the scenarios soldiers lived through.  I doubt I could do a better job than Spielberg or Hanks, but the idea that the students could choose their own paths and see the outcome might be worth looking into.  I'm reasonably familiar with both US and German squad-level tactics and unit compositions, and could bone up on specifics without much trouble.  I mean, I spent way too much on a graduate degree in military history, I might as well put some of it to use.

This could also be interesting to play D-Day in the same "character funnel" style as Dungeon Crawl Classics, rolling up, say, four characters per player and seeing who survives hitting the beach.  Rather than an irreverent kill-fest, the point would be to show the players just how horrifying the real thing was, again, make it an educational experience.  Role playing games have a potential to allow us to step into the shoes of people we are not, and in some small way place ourselves in situations we have never experienced.  Perhaps this would be a worthy goal at some point.

31 Character Challenge Part 29: Twilight: 2000

 

Ah, Twilight:2000.  See, kids, when I was your age, we were sure there would be another World War, and it would be with the Soviets.  So sure, in fact, that when we were doing our schedules for sophomore year I decided to sign up for our pilot program by which we would take Russian via satellite.  I thought it would be a useful skill in a military career.

I had read and owned some books for the first edition of Twilight:2000, but we played the 2nd Edition throughout High School.  The original 2e came out in 1990, which was my sophomore year coincidentally, but the original had been around since 1984.  The Steve Venters artwork for the vehicles in the first edition vehicle guides alone was worth the price of admission. I can skill see the Cadillac Gage Stingray tank with "Pink Cadillac" painted on the side.  Also, the M1A3 "Giraffe" style tank, and the LAV-75 that never was.

Being in Marine Corps JROTC at the time, myself and most of my game group were keenly interested in games with military themes.  Robotech was a favorite, Battletech of course, and even our Star Trek games had a distinctly Nicholas Meyer feel to them, more Navy than most Trek films or episodes.  Twilight: 2000 was a shoe-in when the revised edition arrived at King's Hobby Shop.  We were all in.  At this point in time, GDW was developing their own house system, which eventually appeared in Traveller: The New Era, Dark Conspiracy, Cadillacs And Dinosaurs, and of course, Twilight:2000.

It's kinda fun that in the Version 2.2 explanation sheet, GDW refers to the revamp of their house system as the D20-system.  GRIN.  But this version we played quite a bit of that summer, and into the mid-90s.  So this is the version for which I'll make a character.

A neat thing about T2K is it uses a very Traveller-esque system of lifepath in 4-year terms, and skills that are picked up along the way.  Go too old, and age starts to take its toll.  Unlike Traveller, you can't die before the game starts, but you can accrue radiation and combat experience.  If you choose to create a civilian character, every tour there is a die roll to see if war breaks out, and when it does, you're drafted.  This occurs so all the characters can be in Kalisz for the start of the campaign.  So that's what we're going to do.  I'm going to make the character I was when I joined the State Guard, an academic working in higher education and then the balloon goes up.  Let's see how that works out.

Character Creation

First, we choose a background and native language.  American, and English.  Rolling a d10 to see if I speak any other languages, I end up being fluent in only English.  Now we roll for attributes.  There is a point-allocation option, but you guys know the drill.  If it can be random in this series, it will be.  The attributes are Strength, Agility, Constitution, Intelligence, Education and Charisma- very Traveller-esque.  Rolling is 2D6-2 for each, re-rolling any snake-eyes results.

• Strength: 8
  
• Agility: 5
  
• Constitution: 1
  
• Intelligence: 10 (Wow.  I rolled a 3 and a 12 back-to-back)
  
• Education: 3
  
• Charisma: 4
  

 Now, we select four background skills.

• Spanish: 2
• Computer: 2
• Ground Vehicle (Wheeled): 2
• Unarmed Martial Arts: 2

Well.  We hit my first problem.  We can't go to undergrad college, because we rolled an Education of 3.  So... I guess we're enlisting.

In Basic we pick up the following skills:

• Armed Martial Arts: 0
• Autogun: 0
• Grenade Launcher: 0
• Ground Vehicle: Wheeled 1 (up to 3)
• Small Arms (Rifle): 2
• Swimming: 1
• Tac Missile: 0
• Thrown Weapon: 0
• Unarmed Martial Arts: 1 (up to 2)

We go to Armor AIT and pick up the following skills:

• Autogun: 1
• Ground Vehicle (Tracked): 2
• Heavy Gun: 2

Promotion: Yes!  With the INT bonus and 10 on the die,  we move up to Specialist-4.  Yeah, when this was written, it was still SP4 rather than SPC.  I used to get shit when I'd write my own rank as SP4 decades after it was changed.  Anyway, we get one contact, and I rolled to see if it was foreign, and it was not.  For secondary activity, we take CON+1.  The war does not break out this term.

Term 2: Sticking with the Army, and taking night classes. Term 2 gets 5 skills.

• Heavy Gun: +1=3
  
• Autogun: +1=2
  
• Ground Vehicle (Tracked): +1=3
  
• Mechanic: 1
  
• Observation: 1
  

Promoted to Sergeant!  Huzzah.  That means we pick up a level of Leadership, Instruction, and Persuasion from NCO school. Another military contact.  +1 EDU as Secondary Activity. War does not break out.

Term 3: One more Army term and we can go to college! 4 skills for Term 3.

• Autogun: +1=3
  
• Mechanic: +1=2
• Observation: +1=2
• Small Arms (Rifle): +1=3
  

Promoted to Staff Sergeant.  One more military contact.  +1 EDU as Secondary Activity.  Our soldier is now 29 years old, and wants to get out to go back to college- but a die roll of 2 means war breaks out.  So much for that.

Term 4: War breaks out.  Automatic promotion to Sergeant First Class (the book calls it Platoon Sergeant, but it hasn't been called that since the 50s.  Platoon sergeant is a billet now, rather than a rank and a billet.) 3 Skills.

• Observation: +1=3
  
• Navigation: 1
  
• Small Arms (Rifle): +1=4
  

 Roll for promotion: nope.  Contact: US military. Secondary Activity +1 CON.

Now we finish things up. 1D6 for Initiative yields a 5. 5D6 for Rads = 15.  The character is now 33 years old, so must roll to avoid losing a point of Agility.  Roll 1D10, if it's less than the current attribute, lose one point.  5 rolled, 5 Agility, it stays where it is.

We calculate the derived attributes, like throw range, load weight, personal weight, and how many hits we can take to the various parts of our body.  We get the US Military basic load- and would have a vehicle if we were making a group of characters.  But as a solo character, no vehicle for us.  So I guess we are a tanker without a tank.  We get $5,000 worth of scavenged equipment per term in the military, so that's $20,000 worth of stuff. It just so happens that the game values a HMMWV at $20,000 exactly, so we just stole one from somewhere.  Finding fuel?  That's a problem for the day after... erm... The Day After.

The Character

TC's Log.  Stardate- Today.

 

  This will be the final entry, since there's not a single chance we're getting the parts we need to get the turbine running again.  Not that there's fuel if we did.  We're taking everything we can salvage, and the engineers are going make sure the rest isn't useful to anybody.  The few tanks that are running will pick our track over for spares before that.  But it's a damn shame.

 

  I'm feeling all Charlton Heston when he saw the Statue of Liberty.  We saw some of the flashes, some of the mushroom clouds, way off in the distance.  Had our company been where they were supposed to be, we'd probably be glowing in the dark right now.  For one glorious moment, our lack of fuel worked in our favor.  The Green Weenie blew right by us this time like the Angel on Passover.  But yeah, they did it.  The sons of bitches pushed the button, and here we are.

 

  The front... is gone.  The Colonel has no idea what the hell we all do now.  He said he's not throwing good troops in after bad and rolling us into a radiation zone with no clear idea of the objective, now that the objective is a glassed-over crater you can use to make Hot Pockets. He's got less than half a battalion left, and of those we're mostly running on empty tanks.  In empty tanks.  With empty tanks.  It's that kinda situation.

 

  They're talking about taking those of us who are suddenly dismounted and folding us into the mech infantry, we've even been handed some scrounged rifles and carbines and one guy as a Kalashnikov he picked up somewhere along the way from an Ivan who won't be needing it anymore.  We've got food for about a week, two if we're careful.  Water's plentiful, but we gotta make sure it doesn't make the Geiger counter go clicketty clack.  We just need to-

 

  OK, just finished a quick and dirty talk with Top.  Our illustrious First Shirt wants me to take a Humvee and see if I can link up with 2nd Battalion, who were behind is about 20 miles last we checked.  So I guess it's me, my crew, and a Humvee.  Fuck it, we're totally snagging our Ma Deuce before someone else does and bolting it to this Humvee somehow.  Division said we're on our own.  So here we go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

31 Character Challenge Part 28: Mighty Protectors

 

Villains and Vigilantes was like Champions in my 80s gaming group- we'd all heard about it, but none of us had played it.  Despite both being popular games beloved by the grognard community, for some strange reason neither ever caught on with any of us, so I didn't try either until I was much, much older.  As of this writing, I've played one extremely shaky and uncertain game of Fantasy Hero, and five extremely awesome games of Mighty Protectors - which is the title of Villains and Vigilantes 3.0.  What was the difference?  Well, for starters, all my Mighty Protectors games have been run by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman, the original creators.  That attempt at Hero was me not knowing any of the rules.

Mighty Protectors has a very interesting history getting to market.  To sum things up, authors Dee and Herman had to fight for the rights to their own game, which were being squatted by the former publisher.  A long legal battle ensued, with our intrepid writers at long last emerging victorious.  I missed out on the initial Kickstarter, but jumped in as a late backer.  After all, this was RPG history, a classic game coming back from its original authors.  But I needed to get some experience with the game, and how better to do that than with those same authors?  So, at North Texas RPG Con, I jumped into games run by each of the two, and had a great time.

Mighty Protectors has some really interesting mechanics, if I had to pick one to call out as the most awesome, it's the ability to use Power to reduce injury.  This just seems so appropriate to a comic book game.  So, Power represents the juice many heroes use to power their abilities, but it also represents a pool of resilience and will even for those heroes without Power-consuming abilities.  That means when an attack hits, a hero can reduce that damage a certain amount determined by current Power in exchange for spending an amount of current Power.  This makes heroes able to take the kind of punishment we see in comic books before they start taking severe or debilitating injuries.  I really liked that this was an elective ability for all heroes, regardless of their power portfolio.  It just made things feel suitably super-powered.

My very first game of MP I played Shutterbug, a young hero very much in the vein of Spider-Man.  I had a blast.  We were playing what I now know to be a classic adventure module for the original V&V, Crisis at Crusader Citadel.  Come to find out, once I got the book in my hands, there's an amazing comic book reality decades in the making for Mighty Protectors.  It has its own history and cosmology, its own aliens and races, its own pantheon of heroes and villains.  And a rippin' good one.  I had such a great time on this game, that I selected Shutterbug from the pregens the next time I played, too.  I also had the opportunity to help shape another group's Mighty Protectors campaign.  Jeff Dee had a situation where he needed to determine what occurred "off screen" to his group's game, so he dropped by a Royal Dragoon Guards meeting (He and Manda are part of our Home Guard) and let us play the offscreen characters.  It was really bitchin' to get to play such an epic battle against a powerful monster, but even cooler to know that our exploits would have a direct effect on other characters in the campaign world.

So far, I've only played pregens, all of which are iconic characters in the Mighty Protectors universe.  So let's dig in and make a new character.

Character Creation

You folks know how I have a nostalgic love of random things.  Random lifepaths, random events, random ability scores.  Mighty Protectors has a robust system for generating random characters as well as a point-buy system for building custom characters to order.  My dice are itching to go, to I'm going to go completely random and see what sort of character comes out the other end.  Power Level is our next choice, we'll go with Standard.

Birthplace: Local.  So the character is from wherever the campaign introduces them, in this case, somewhere in the US on Earth.  We'll go with Austin, TX, because... Austin.

Species: Human

 

Culture: Modern

 

Age: 12 (I rolled double 1s.)

 

Gender: Man

Biological Sex: Cisgender

Attraction: Straight

(I love that they have separated gender and biological sex, I have several players for whom this is a very affirming thing, which it is in general.)

 

The Basic Characteristics in Mighty Protectors are Strength (ST), Endurance (EN), Agility (AG), Intelligence (IN), and Cool (CL).  Each Power Level of campaign has an array of scores set for it, and a random die roll places that array of scores.  Sour 18 goes in- IN.  16 in CL, 14 in ST, 12 in AG, leaving 10 for EN.

Now that these are set, the wonderful Excel character sheet (available HERE) does the work of calculating the stats that are based on the Basic Characteristics.  Carrying capacity, Base HTH damage, Save numbers, etc.  Rolling for weight, we get 80lbs (12-year-old kid) and that yields a mass of d3.

Now, we roll for Background.  Roll three times, and keep two.  Let's see what we get.  Accounting/Finance, Commercial Art, Psychology.  Hmmm.  For a 12-year-old, let's say a parent was an accountant, and the character himself did fan art and sold it online and at conventions.

 

Now we roll for Motivation -  Glory Hound.  Sounds about right fort a 12-year-old.  Wealth starts at d4, Luck roll at 10-, and then we roll for Origin.  Mystical Training.  This just got even more interesting.

Now we roll two Offensive Abilities, two Defensive Abilities, and two Miscellaneous Abilities.  Here we go:

Natural Weaponry

Force Field

Non-Corporealness

Density Change

Mental Ability

Telepathy

Out of this six, we pick four Core Abilities.  Since we're training in the Mystic Arts, we'll take Force Field, Non-Corporealness, Mental Ability, and Telepathy.  Each of these receives 20 CP.  Now to roll two random Weaknesses.

Phobia, and Low Self-Control.  Both sound appropriate.  Let's take Low Self Control at -10, allowing us to put 10CP into Density Change.

 

We're ready to rock and roll.

 

The Character

Jimmy Malcolm was a twelve-year-old geek for all seasons.  Stunningly intelligent, and a voracious reader, he avoided the trap of focusing all his time on academic pursuits.  He loved the outdoors in addition to his books, and loved to camp with his family.  One weekend on a trip to the lake, he came across an old leather backpack lying near the shore in a stand of trees.  Opening the pack to check for any indication of who its owner was, Jimmy found nothing but a large hardbound book that reminded him of his older brother's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons manuals.  He kept the book, and took it home.

 

Within days, Jimmy had taken to devouring the old book with every waking hour he could.  After school he eschewed his Atari and comic books to read more of the strange contents of the volume.  And as he read, he began to understand - everything.  The world was surrounded by an arcane fabric that could be manipulated by those who knew how.  And Jimmy knew now.  He could visualize every single word of the book he had read, every book he had ever read,  and his first attempts at weaving spells showed real promise.  He could protect himself with a shield, he could throw bolts of force, he could walk through walls and read people's thoughts.  Though this last wasn't always pleasant.

Just weeks short of his 13th Birthday, Jimmy had mastered the contents of the book.  He knew he had powers now- and he'd been a fan of superheroes all his life.  The time had come to be one.  He took on the name Kid Kinetic, for his ability to wield force fields and force bolts.  He applied for a superhero license, and watches the mailbox each and every day.

My Thoughts

OK, so, I loved the random creation process, but it did leave out one concept in Mighty Protectors that is incredibly awesome.  Vehicles.

The Super Vehicles in Mighty Protectors are built on points, with an integration of modular spaces called "system spaces", each space having a function and filling a spot on a floorplan of the vehicle.  The end result is each super-vehicle ends up with a deckplan of sorts, helping players imagine the layout and size of their vehicles.

 

You can do pretty much anything with this system from motorcycles to jets to flying carriers.  It's fun to read through the list of things possible with vehicles, and wondering why the designers of the USS Enterprise didn't splurge the 5 CP for "Won't Explode" on all the bridge consoles.

I will say that I found the complexity level of Mighty Protectors to be far less to my eye than most supers games that use a point system.  I also found that combat runs more smoothly in MP than in a couple of other supers games I've tried.  Again, I love being able to trade Power points for absorbing damage, it just seems like a neat way to wear down a hero slowly, allow them to take heroic amounts if damage if they are willing to trade away the juice with which their powers operate.  Risk/Reward in a game is always fun.

This is a game I'd like to explore more, and try my hand at running.  It's going on my (admittedly long, thanks to the pandemic) list of games to run when I can get at a table with folks again, or at least through Zoom or Discord.  This game is quite a bit of fun to read, and the universe created by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman is a pretty cool place to visit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

31 Character Challenge Part 27: The Lone Wolf Adventure Game

 

Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for 1989.  There I was, sitting in Algebra class at Round Rock High School.  Mr. Sikes class.  He was a good teacher, but a little too trusting.  He'd let us grade each other's homework, and as he called role we'd call out our grades.  OF COURSE we all made somewhere in the 90s, with an 88 or so in there for veracity.  But then again, maybe he knew the test scores would tell.  And they did.

Why do I bring up Algebra?  Because I largely got through that class due to Joe Dever's Lone Wolf adventure books. Mr. Sikes was very patient, and would explain things multiple times to the folks in the class who just didn't get it.  I usually had it after the second go-round, and was bored out of my mind for the rest of class.  Enter Lone Wolf.

The Lone Wolf books were an analog version of a text adventure game.  More than just a choose-your-own-adventure, they had a simple game system in them relying on a random number generator going 0-9 and some boolean variables.  Like "Do you have the Kai discipline of Tracking?  Go to 200.  If not go to 195." Or "Pick a random number from the table.  On 0-4 go to 200.  On 5-9 go to 195."  In the back of each novel there was a random number table - close your eyes and drop the eraser end of your pencil to choose.  Or use a d10.  Or use the RND function on your calculator.  I still have both the d10 and the calculator.  There was a character sheet in the back of the book for recording stats, equipment, and combats.  It was just what I needed to get me through. And- when you finished a book in the series, your character got to add a new discipline for the next book.

Years later, Mongoose Publishing dropped a Lone Wolf RPG in two flavors, one used basically the same system the old books did.  The second used the d20 system, as this was the early 2000s and the OGL/d20 phenomenon was going strong.  I own both versions, but never got to play them.  A decade later, I came across an absolutely gorgeous boxed set at Ettin Games in Humble, TX- The Lone Wolf Adventure Game.  This offering from Cubicle Seven is beautiful.  The art is extremely evocative of Joe Dever's Kai Lords and world of Magnamund.  The contents of the box smack of quality, and the system, I was gratified to find, was nearly identical to the books and the earlier Mongoose version.

So what is a Kai Lord?  It's important to know, since the boxed set assumes all your characters are going to be one.  Kai Lords are... Jedi Rangers.  Sort of.  They are a monastic order of men and women who learn powerful disciplines that are part skill, part psionic or magical ability.  Weaponskill and Tracking on the mundane side, Mind Over Matter and Mindblast on the magical side.  So, warrior-monks of a sort, identifiable by their distinctive green cloaks.

So, what does it take to make a Kai Lord for The Lone Wolf Adventure Game?  Let's find out.

Character Creation

Creating a Kai Lord is very straightforward, no more complex than it was in the game books, really.  The first thing we do is determine Combat Skill and Endurance.  The box includes a random number table you can flip a coin into, or you can just roll a d10.  I'll be rolling a d10 since I'm working from the PDF at the moment.

 

Great.  A zero.  That means our Combat Skill is the bare minimum of 10.  And a 2 for Endurance, giving us a total of 12.  Not the beefiest Kai Lord ever.

 

Next, we choose our five Kai Disciplines.  This character is not a fighty type,  so we're going to concentrate on choices that play to our strengths.  Camouflage, Sixth Sense, Animal Kinship, Mind Over Matter and Mindblast.

Starting Equipment is next - Green tunic and cloak, check.  Backpack, belt, and leather pouch.  Check.  Rolling for Gold Crowns... zero again.  10 Gold Crowns to start with.  One map of the Lastlands.  Now we pick five items from the item list.  Let's see... Chainmail Waistcoat, Helmet, and a Shield to help keep from getting killed, and a Dagger for utility, and a Meal to keep fed.  Five items.  Done.

Ooh!  We get to roll randomly for a name.  This is optional, but since we love random stuff in this challenge... Silent Dancer.  OK, that kind of fits the skill set, and the lack of focus on combat.

And that, dear readers, is that.  It's absurdly simple to create a Kai Lord for this game, which makes it a great game for a one-shot, or for new players.

The Character

As a young child, her name had been Marren, but she entered the Kai Monastery as a refugee, orphaned after a savage attack of Mountain Giaks had killed most of the adults of her village.  A small group of Kai Lords had arrived and saved those who had survived that long, leading them back to the Monastery after burying the dead.  Some children went to live with relatives, but Marren had no such family.  She was alone, and elected to stay with her rescuers and learn the ways of the Kai.

The training was hard, and it was obvious she had no real aptitude to become a great warrior.  She could hold her own, but many of the other initiates were so much more capable with a weapon.  One day during practice, a tall boy with a sure sword disarmed her and backed her into a corner.  In desperation, she reflexively lashed out with her mind and knocked the boy unconscious.  Her Kai Master knew immediately that she should be trained in the mental arts, and save the martial for later.

She learned how to disappear into the forest, how to calm and communicate with the animals, and her mental acuity developed at a prodigious rate.  By the time of her initiation, she was known for her prescience, her stealth, and her ability to move things and shock opponents with her mind alone.  She was given the name Silent Dancer, and assigned to the patrol and protection of her old home province.  She has been taught that revenge is not the Kai way, but should she see any Giaks mucking about where they do not belong...

My Thoughts

It is extremely cool to rediscover this world from my youth.  I had many of the Lone Wolf books, and even Joe Dever's first Freeway Warrior book, which had similar mechanics but a Mad Max vibe.  There's a phone app with the original Lone Wolf books that saves your information and progress.  Which is cool.  I've been playing it with my daughter as part of her reading time.

So, this game is awesome.  It's fast, easy, and the setting is pretty neat.  It also has a built-in reason for the PCs to work together- they're all, by definition, Kai Lords.  Now, there is a sourcebook with lots of other options - my favorite are the Dwarven Gunners of Bor.  Black Powder Dwarves are always cool.  Right?

The possible issue is long legs in the campaign. Leveling up means learning new Kai Discipline, which will eventually lead to the variation and differences in PCs becoming thinner as everyone masters every discipline.  Once a Kai Lord has mastered all 10 disciplines, they become a Master, and may go toward learning the MagnaKai Disciplines.  But in the meantime, the characters all move slowly toward having the same talents.

As I said earlier, this is a great product for introducing roleplaying to new folks.  Even kids.  It's simple, only uses one kind of die (if any!) and is quite narrative.  I also find the artwork extremely nice, and inspirational to the source material. 

31 Character Challenge Part 26: Boot Hill

 

Boot Hill, 3rd Edition.  This came out when I was in High School, and while westerns weren't a genre we played at all at the time, there was a catalyst to suddenly sparking our interest in six-guns.  It was a film called Young Guns II.  We'd all seen and loved the original Young Guns from 1988, and the sequel hit my sophomore year, along with a new edition of what I later learned was a TSR classic.  So we scored a copy of Boot Hill and did some cowboy shit.  It didn't last as long as our Ranger-heavy Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition campaign that followed the Kevin Costner Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves film, but hey, it was fun.

The original set of Boot Hill rules, much like early D&D, was sort of like a wargame with the seeds of a roleplaying game hiding out in there.  Almost any time you reduce a wargame unit to a single person, you invite roleplaying.  Hell, I've even imagined roleplaying scenarios in my head while playing Galaga or Choplifter! at the arcade, so it's not hard to see how Boot Hill followed the footsteps of D&D and became an RPG by its second edition, which came in 1979.  The bulk of the rules were on movement and combat. The third edition was the first time it actually called itself a roleplaying game on the cover, though people were playing it as one for years.  One interesting artifact of this period is the first edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide had conversion rules for Boot Hill characters into AD&D.  Anyway, Steve Winter took over with the 3rd Edition and turned it into a full RPG, and that's the edition I played.

Character Creation

Characters in Boot Hill have five attributes- Strength, Coordination, Observation, Stature, and Luck.  Coordination is basically Dexterity, Observation is for alertness and perception, and Stature is sort of a fame stat. 2 is wretched and 10 is average, 20 is the highest possible.

Scores are generated by rolling 2d10 and looking up a modifier. Like Gangbusters, the table is weighted to avoid truly crappy results, with a natural 2 being modified up to a 7.  There are three methods for generating the stats, roll in order, roll and arrange, and roll 8 keep any 5- in order.  I'll go with the first method, roll in order.  My rolls are: 10, 12, 3, 11, and 13.  Looking up the modifiers, that comes out as follows:

• Strength: 13
• Coordination: 14
• Observation: 8
• Stature: 13
• Luck: 8 (Luck is divided by two and rounded up, so 15/2=7.5, up to 8)

I really don't like that Observation, but the Luck score might help make up for it?

Now, here's something interesting.  Skills.  The beginning number of skills a character has is based on their total attribute points.  Add them all up, and reference a chart.  Characters with low attributes get more skills to help balance them out, and characters with high attributes get fewer.  Weapon skills are rated upward from 1, and work/craft skills are rolled in the same way as attributes.  This character's total is 56, right in the middle of the chart, starting the game with 7 skills.

Our character was a telegrapher in the Union Army during the Civil War, so we're going to take Telegraph, Surveying/Mapmaking, Stealth, Orienteering, Riding, Scouting, Pistol, and Brawling. 

• Brawling: 1
• Orienteering: 11
• Pistol: 1
  
• Riding: 14
• Scouting: 12
  
• Stealth: 16
  
• Surveying/Mapmaking: 12
  
• Telegraph: 14
  

On a natural 20, our character is ambidextrous.  8, nope.

Starting funds and equipment?  On page 98 it says:

For example, the Judge should provide each player with an inventory of his character's cash on hand, equipment, animals, possessions, hirelings/associates/friends/ and so on.

So... I guess it's up to the Judge, Boot Hill's term for Game Master.  This character is complete, then.

The Character

Scar Andrews was just happy nobody was shooting at him anymore.  At least, not on a daily basis.  Formerly Corporal Wilbur Andrews, Military Telegraph Corps, Scar was content to head West and find himself an occupation that involved a lot less gunpowder and a lot more cash.  Scar found himself following the expanding telegraph lines and getting a job with Western Union and a roaming troubleshooter.

Unfortunately, the "shoot" part was more common than Scar would like.  Not as bad as the war, but having grown up back East in a city, the frontier was decidedly less civilized.  A one-eyed telegraph man was the last person anyone would expect to be taking up his shooting irons in defense of a town, but that's exactly what happened.  A gaggle of former Confederate soldiers descended on the town he was visiting and proceeded to take what they wanted.  They took money, they took booze- when they tried to take a woman unlucky enough to catch their attention, he stepped in with his service revolver and killed two, driving the other three away as they had no idea how many "law men" they were facing.  This earned Scar the thanks of the town, and the ire of the bandits when they heard they'd been chased off by a single ex-bluebelly with the element of surprise.

 

The town being between Marshalls, at it were,  Scar Andrews decided he couldn't stomach leaving the townsfolk to the tender mercies of the raiders should they return.

My Thoughts:

We had a torrid love affair with Boot Hill 3e, and then moved on.  I didn't do much Wild West gaming after that for a decade and a half.  Then I discovered Deadlands.  Played a bit of that.  Like Shadowrun but in the Old West.  Magic, steampunk-ish elements.  As for pure Western action, it's just been Boot Hill and a little GURPS for me.

Now that I've gone back and re-familiarized myself with Boot Hill, it makes me wanna rewatch the Young Guns movies and Unforgiven and run a Western one-shot.  I have several Boot Hill modules.  Hell, I should have run the Ballots & Bullets module back during election season!

Seriously, though, this isn't a genre I have played a lot of over the years, but it is one that many people enjoy, and I'd gladly play in or run Boot Hill if a group were interested.  I have happy memories of the games of this I did play, which were vastly outnumbered by D&D, MechWarrior, Shadowrun, etc.

31 Character Challenge Part 25: MechWarrior

 

Well, here we are.  Dungeons & Dragons brought me to roleplaying as a hobby, but MechWarrior has had an incredible effect on me and my life.  As I type this, I have been a member of The Royal Dragoon Guards since it founded in 1995 as a club dedicated to roleplaying in the MechWarrior universe.  The RDG has branched out into all gaming since then, and has, at times, been a part of larger fandom organizations- but at its heart has always been the kind of roleplaying we did in this universe.  MechWarrior.  Even our Dragooniverse setting for Stars Without Number is heavily influenced by some of the tropes of the MechWarrior/Battletech universe.  I was married in the uniform of our Regiment, and the best men and ushers were likewise in our custom-designed dress uniforms.  I used to read Technical Readout: 3025 to my son at nap time.

So, what is it about this game and universe that captivates me so?  That could be a blog series all its own.  MechWarrior is Dune with giant robots.  Or, for the younger crowd, Game of Thrones with giant robots.  Great Houses of a fallen Star League squabbling over the scraps of a once great empire.  Civilization and technology have degraded during centuries of warfare, so that the implements of war themselves are artifacts of a bygone age.  It is not uncommon to war over spare parts caches.  The MechWarriors themselves are less like modern soldiers and more like medieval knights, with their towering BattleMechs stand-ins for steed and armor.  Neo-feudalism is the norm, and many planets can only muster a defense of the one or two things worth a damn on the entire world.

Damn.  Just thinking about the original setting, in the early years of the 31st Century, gets my imagination running like a finely tuned fusion engine.  At any given time I've got half a dozen campaign ideas prepped for this game universe.  Scrappy mercenaries is an old classic, the MechWarrior equivalent of the D&D adventuring party.  Then there's the espionage campaigns, the scavenging for "LosTech" campaigns, the socio-political campaigns, and the ever popular 'Mech gladiator on Solaris VII campaigns.  And more.

Like many RPGs, MechWarrior has had several editions.  We're looking at the original edition from 1986, even though most of my play time was with Mechwarrior Second Edition from 1991.  The Dragoons even playtested on MechWarrior Third Edition (1999), and we have played both the current game, A Time of War, and several conversions such as GURPs and Savage Worlds.  We even made our own Strands of FATE conversion that was pretty good.  And I've tinkered with d20 Modern (bad idea) and Cepheus Engine (great idea) conversions.  Now there's a new fast-play, rule-light option, MechWarrior: Destiny.  I own it, but we have yet to play it.  Time will tell.

Back to the first edition.  This game has a fair amount of Traveller in its bones.  It uses a 2d6 resolution system, and some of the feel of the setting has an air of Traveller meets Dune with big, stompy robots thrown in.  The system is a point-build affair, though there are some random elements to 'Mech assignment and starting resources.  There's even a system (which we'll use) for generating the unit in which the PCs serve.  To me, peak first edition MechWarrior makes use of both The Mercenary's Handbook and Battletechnology Magazine.  There's a great article in Issue 0101 that allows further detail in character creation, and the good old Merc book has more detail in the care and feeding of a unit.  But we're going to use the core book only, to rock it like we did when I first discovered the universe.

There are some interesting quirks in this game.  Like Bow/Blade being one skill.  If you're good with one, you're good with the other.  Natural Aptitudes are random, you might blow the points on one and end up being naturally good at something your character will never do.  Some skills include subskills, but they are treated differently depending on the skill.  It's definitely an 80s game design.  Let's dive in, and see what kind of MechWarrior we'll create.

Character Creation

In MechWarrior, every character is allotted 150 Character Points (CP) to purchase all of the things involved- attributes, skills, etc.  A BattleMech is assigned randomly, but CP may be used to add to that roll, or CP may be gained by subtracting from it, but be careful, it is possible to roll no 'Mech at all if that is done.  Teams may also pool all their allotments of 150 CP into one big pool, and then split it up as they see fit, giving some characters more and some less.  But we're creating a single MechWarrior, here, so let's check it out.

There are four attributes, Body (BOD), Dexterity (DEX), Learning Ability (LRN), and Charisma (CHA).  Body encompasses what D&D would call Strength and Constitution, it's a general rating of toughness and physical fitness.  Dexterity is what it says on the tin, and governs most combat skills.  Learning Ability is the Intelligence/Wisdom attribute, and also limits the total number of skill levels and individual skills the character can have at any one time, similar to Traveller. Charisma is much as it is in D&D, an amalgam of personality and appearance.  Minimum score is 2, maximum is 12, average is 6.  Characters begin with a 6 in each for zero CP cost.  Going up costs CP, and down gains CP, but each attribute has differing costs with LRN being the most expensive to raise, and Body/Charisma the least.

Skills rolls are based on a target determined by the associated attribute, minus one for each Skill Level.  So, a DEX-based skill will start at 8+ on 2d6 with a DEX of 7 per the table lookup.  Level 1 in that skill would reduce the target number to 7+, Level 2 to 6+, etc.  Skills are purchased separately by default.  A character may have no more than four times LRN in total skill levels overall, and may have levels in no more than LRN skills.  So, a character with a LRN of 6 could have levels in 6 different skills, and no more than 24 total skill levels.

Skills are normally purchased individually, but there are packages available that provide the skills at a reduced cost, however any skill granted in a package cannot be further raised by spending additional CP.  Anyone can take an Academy package, but the University package represents something like the New Avalon Institute of Science and requires an 11+ roll to even enroll.  It also costs 100 CP, compared to the 75 CP of the Academy package.  The University package is also available only to House Steiner and House Davion- which is interesting, because a random roll later determines unit affiliation by the book (I don't know anyone who didn't have the players and GM determine this, or make the roll until something suitable came up.)

There are also a few Inborn Abilities that can be purchased, some are negative and grant CP, like Glass Jaw, and some positive and costing CP, like Natural Aptitude.  A character can also choose their handedness, with full Ambidexterity allowing a John Woo 2-pistols fighting style.

The other factor is the 'Mech Assignment Table.  A 2d6 roll on this non-linear table yields a result from 15-90.  Thus, any character rolling a 15 starts with no 'Mech, unless one pulls the ultralight 'Mechs from Battletechnology.  Also- no character can start with an Atlas, as 100 tons is not an option on the chart.

Now, I am tempted to take the maximum -6 on the 'Mech assignment roll to get +90CP.  But I won't. Because that would not yield a good example, being extreme.

So, first things first, I will try to get into the University Program.  That requires we determine attributes first, and for every attribute with a 9 or better, we'll get +1 on the enrollment roll.  So, we'll lock in DEX and LRN at 9, costing 110 points.  So now we roll 2d6 and get... 7.  Even with the +2, not happening.  So here we are with 40 CP to our name.  We need 35 more to get the standard Academy package.  So to get that, we'll take Family Feud (-15) and two negative mods on the BattleMech Assignment Table.

Now armed with 85 CP, we get the Academy package for 75, and with the remaining 10, raise CHA to 7.  Now we have BOD 6, DEX 9, LRN 9, CHA 7.  Skills are added to the 1 free level in Piloting/'Mech and Gunnery/'Mech that MechWarrior characters receive.  There are no real classes, but free skill levels come to characters designated as MechWarriors, Scouts, Aerspace Pilots, etc.  Our PC has the skills from the Academy, for a total of Piloting/'Mech 3, Gunnery/'Mech 3, Technician 2, Pistol 1, Leadership 1, Survival 1.

Now, roll for BattleMech.  We're at -2 because we needed those 30 points.  I roll 7, -2 is 5.  The table gives us 35 tons.  Our 3025 options are Panther, Ostscout, and Firestarter.  Rolling randomly, we end up with the Firestarter.

Now, for shit and giggles, we'll roll up a unit.  Rolling for unit size, we get 11 - company.  A company is a unit of 12 BattleMechs.  We roll to see if we have a pair of aerospace fighters to give us air cover- 5, we have an Air Lance.  Do we have a DropShip?  8, yes, we have a Union-class DropShip.  These vessels are capable of sublight travel only, do we have a JumpShip to take us from star to star?  6, yes, we have an Invader-class JumpShip.  So far, this is awesome.

An 8 on 2d6 means we're a House unit, in service to some government.  Now we roll a d66 roll (two six-sided dice read as if they were percentage dice) and get a 34, House Steiner.  Cool.  The dice know I love the Lyran Commonwealth of House Steiner.

We have a Tech assigned to our 'Mech, and there's a roll to see how sharp our Tech is.  Adding our Pilot and Gunner skills is 6, then we roll 2d6 and get a 5, my tech has a Level 2 skill.  Our DropShip pilot has a skill of 3, our JumpShip pilot a skill of 3, and our Aerospace pilots skills of 1 and 3.  Guess we have a very green wingman, there.  As a Company, we roll for recon personnel.  8, we have one scout.  That scout has 2 levels in Rogue, 2 levels in Diplomacy, and 3 levels in Streetwise.

Now, unit assets.  We have a total of (70+70+70+25+25+30+10=300) credits thanks to having three full lances of BattleMechs, and Air Lance, a DropShip, a JumpShip, and a Scout.  This is modified by +10% for being a Steiner regular unit, so 330.

We immediately spend 150 of this on a package of 'Mech Repair Stores.  This is a set of parts and armor for repairing 'Mechs after a battle.  We'll also get a Long Tom Howitzer, a Myomer Implantation Device for the medics to use for sever muscle damage, a Skimmer, and the remaining 70 points converts to 70,000 C-Bills for a (tiny) Unit Coffers.  This sounds like a chunk of change, but it won't go very far.  Interestingly, this nest egg seems to be where a character's cash for starting equipment comes.  I could not find a single reference to other starting cash.  Odd, that.

Last but not least, we determine Personal Initiative Bonus (PIB) and Hits to Kill (HTK) by looking at the Combat chapter.  PIB is +1 thanks to high DEX.  HTK is 60, or ten times BOD.  A chart shows us where the body has a certain number of HTK in limbs, torso, and head.

The Character

The icy cold of Graduation Day at The Naglering was full of all the martial pageantry the Lyran Commonwealth could muster- and that was quite a bit.  Speeches by portly generals longer on credit rating than combat experience, flyovers by Aerospace fighters, and a parade of BattleMechs.  Finally, Kadet Hauptmann Eva Holdermann could tie on her Naglering school sash and replace her Academy shoulder boards with a Leutnant's shoulder patch.  She and her family's rare and ancient FS-9M Mirage, a variant on the spindly Firestarter, were assigned to 10th Panzerkompanie, and independent command heading to the Draconis Combine border.

Leutnant Holdermann had spent four years at The Naglering, the academy from which her father and mother had graduated, and two of her grandparents.  It had been an interesting experience, with a focus she had not expected on social graces, formal dance, and oratory just as much as combat tactics and BattleMech operations.  It was so odd to be up to her elbows in actuator grease in the afternoon and being in full dress for etiquette lessons just hours later. The Lyran Commonwealth prided itself on a professional officer corps, but so many of her superiors were from families of wealth and privilege, but lacking the martial traditions of her own.  She had expected her classmates to all be from MechWarrior families, yet a good portion of them were the sons and daughters of megacorporations like Defiance Industries, Nashan Diversified, or Baker Pharmaceuticals.  

Her entire life had been leading up to this moment, from the first time her mother had put her in the Mirage's cockpit at age 10 to get a feel for the command couch.  Here she was, a MechWarrior, carrying on the family's tradition of service.  And the family would be paid a stipend for the Commonwealth's use of their 'Mech.  She was serving her family as well as her nation.  Soon she would meet the three enlisted MechWarriors who would make up her Lance, and the Hauptmann who would command the entire company.  And then their DropShip would boost, and they'd be off to fight the Dracs. A grand adventure, her father had called it.

My Thoughts

MechWarrior had some interesting ideas.  Experience points were awarded for all sorts of things, skill rolls, saving throws, defeating opponents, etc.  One could use those points to modify dice, or save them and convert them into Character Points to raise skills and attributes.  In addition to this, at certain xp totals, your character's experience class increases from Green, to Regular, to Veteran, etc.  When this happens, two skills and one attribute advance for "free."  In practice, this got pretty fiddly.  Like Rolemaster's xp system where you got xp for damage, criticals, killing monsters, being killed, traveling, and if it's the first time you did that thing, it's x2 and if it's become routine it's x1/2 and AAARRRGGGHH.  So, like Rolemaster, the xp system in MechWarrior is awesome on paper, but a bit awkward in practice.

I love the way this book is written, though.  Reading about the entourage of a noble household and I hit planetologist.  Hell yes, we have planetologists.  Reading about the important people in the universe from Hanse Davion to Subhash Indrahar to Pavel Ridzik and everyone in between.  The sweet color plates (of which I own four originals) by Dave Deitrick, with the 'Mechs and gear by Steve Venters and Dana Knutson.  The illustrations of the gear, and things that just drip setting like the blazer, and the neural whip.

This game is my jam in a way no other game, even D&D, is.  Military sci-fi is my primary gaming MOS, and this game is the pinnacle of that genre for me.  The MechWarrior Universe from the tabletop games, novels, and video games is "home" for me.  Specifically, in the late Succession Wars era before the coming of the Clans in the late 3040s.  Just rolling up Leutnant Holdermann reminded me of the glorious days we filled with this universe.  Not just big robot combat, oh, no.  We spent far more time outside our cockpits dealing with the beans and bullets, personal relationships, political machinations... This universe had it all for me, which is why I am so jazzed about it as a place to play now.  It just hits all the right buttons. All my sweet spots.  Sure, the system is a bit clunky, and each edition just changed the clunk around.  For my money, the most playable version thus far has been Mechwarrior, Second Edition with the third edition being the most ambitious, but having problems in character generation.

This game is definitely worth a look, mechanically as a product of its time, and for content as a great game world in which to play.  Will I dig MechWarrior: Destiny?  I'll certainly give it a fair try.  Maybe it will be my go-to version.  As readers know by now I kinda trend old-school, but who knows, this one might be a rare situation in which I enjoy a newer edition as much or more as the old one.