The FASA Gun

 

Yo, Joe! My Initial thoughts on the GI Joe RPG.

 

I grew up in the 80s, and like almost every 80s kid I know, I loved GI Joe. My parents bought me the giant-sized GI Joe #1 comic. My first Joe was straight-arm Short-Fuze. When the first 5-part series, which we to this day still call "The M.A.S.S. Device" even though the official title was "A Real American Hero." IMDB tells me it's since been re-titled to include both those phrases. Kind of like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" now has "Indiana Jones and the" added to it. Everything about GI Joe captivated me as a kid. The initial years of the toy line and comics were firmly rooted in a modern military aesthetic and technology level- except for the one or two things that were meant to be cutting edge, like Flash's XMLR-1A laser rifle. Heck, a couple of the vehicles, namely the Dragonfly and Sky Striker, were barely modified real-world vehicles over ten years old at the time the franchise re-launched. Others, like the VAMP. and MOBAT, were based on prototypes or designs not adopted by the US Military. The VAMP was based on the Lamborghini Cheetah, and the MOBAT on the MBT-70. Heck, even some of the small arms were old hat by the time the figures came out, like Grunt's Vietnam-era M-16, Gung-Ho's oddly pump-action M-79 derivative, Short-Fuze's mortar, and Zap's bazooka. This was peak GI Joe for me. 

Now, I have always thought it was a damn shame that TSR didn't release both a GI Joe and Transformers RPG back in the 80s. Why TSR? Because TSR had a working relationship with Marvel thanks to the Dungeons & Dragons Saturday morning cartoon, and that agreement allowed the classic Marvel Superheroes RPG to be produced. The same animation studio working on D&D was also working on GI Joe and Transformers. All the comics were produced by Marvel. The tie-in was there. And I wasn't alone in thinking this- I wrote, for my own use, and others have written and posted online conversions of the characters from GI Joe and Transformers using Marvel FASERIP stats. And if you think about it, it's sort of a perfect fit. Marvel has just enough resolution at the low end to make modern military action work, and has high-end enough stats to handle giant transforming robots who can create holograms, teleport, cause earthquakes, and other things we might otherwise classify as superpowers. In the intervening years I have also done GI Joe with Spycraft, Top Secret/S.I., and Ninjas & Superspies. When Everyday Heroes dropped, I immediately statted the original 13 Joes in that system. There had never been an official GI Joe RPG. Until now.

 Renegade Game Studio was not a name I was particularly familiar with when I heard the announcements about GI Joe and Transformers. That was quickly remedied. Along with the RPGs, Renegade has released some damn good card games with those IPs, and some GI Joe miniature and board games that look great. I'm very much intrigued by their "Powered by Axis & Allies" board game. Something that initially gave me pause, however, was that these games were advertised along with the new My Little Pony RPG, and the Power Rangers RPG. 

OK, so, I missed the bus on both those IPs the first time around. MLP wasn't on my radar other than commercials that ran in my childhood until my daughter got into it. We even picked up the previous RPG, Tails of Equestria, when Kaylee spotted it on store shelves. Power Rangers debuted shortly after I graduated, so it was in that terrible blackout spot where a teenager tries to grow up, and I never got into MMPR. Again, my kids changed that. My son loved Power Rangers, and so did my daughter. They were both rangers for Halloween one year. I watched some of both the MLP and MMPR shows with them. I still think the Yellow SPD Ranger is winking at me during the intro. So I have no hate, on the contrary I have quite a bit of respect for both those IPs. They missed me as a kid, but as an adult and a parent I appreciate the shows, and the messages they convey, especially MLP. Oh, and as an aside, Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse, is also worth a watch as an adult. The in-jokes are funnier than hell. 

What alarmed me wasn't the subject matter of the MLP and MMPR games being rolled into GI Joe and Transformers per se. It was the tonal shift. I couldn't wrap my head around a game session in which Apple Jack teams up with Dr. Kat Manx to defeat Megatron and Golobulus. OK, it sounds cool when I say it now, but... anyway.

It goes without saying that I snatched up the GI Joe RPG when it arrived on game store shelves. I gave it a cursory flip-through. And then it went on my shelf. I only recently picked it back up, after listening to some YouTube videos about how the system worked, and playing a LOT of the GI Joe Deckbuilding Game. I figured I'd give it another look. I am glad I did.

Two main things had made me bounce off the GI Joe RPG. First was I didn't get the Essence20 system at first. For some reason it just didn't click. The second was more about the realities of creating a game that would encompass every version of an IP that goes back 40 years. To me, GI Joe would always be a period piece set during the Cold War. So many of the original two years worth of Joe characters backstories depended on them being Vietnam veterans. Stalker, Snake-Eyes, Wild Bill, Duke, etc. The tech was 80s contemporary with the occasional bit of superscience, like the MASS Device or Weather Dominator. But mostly, a tank was a tank, and at least in the original 5-parter, a gun was a gun. Snow Job uses an actual firearm in the battle at the crystal caves. There are more firearm sounds throughout the miniseries.

This version of GI Joe encompasses technologies that just don't fit in the GI Joe of my youth. One of the character roles gets a freaking energy shield as part of the role. All Joes have satellite uplink tablets. Cool stuff, to be sure, but outside the realm of what Joe was to me. Thing is, there have been a couple of generations since 10-year-old me sat down to watch GI Joe. And the game needs to either serve up their Joe as well, or go against the current presentation of the IP and call itself a period piece. Of course the former is the more lucrative option.

So I sat down with my fellow GM and frequent co-conspirator Ed, and we each made two characters for the GI Joe RPG one afternoon- and damned if the game didn't just "click" in a way it hadn't before. As we stepped through character creation, we started to see that under the hood of Essence20 are common concepts from d20-derived games, mixed with some new or borrowed mechanics. Origin replaced race/species/ancestry. Role replaced class. Skill proficiency was expressed a a die type, sort of like Pathfinder 2e had a lovechild with Savage Worlds. Essences were Ability Scores with the raw number eliminated to just reflect the modifier. It all suddenly made sense. 

I created Inkwell, a Marine Combat Correspondent, who used her journalistic and interpersonal skills for the Joe team but becomes a bit distracted when she's attempting to observe and record things. This "hangup" comes from the option available to choose more than one Influence, for Inkwell I chose Artisan with a focus in writing, and Professional with a focus in journalism. One influence is free, you may select up to two more, but they come with hangups. I like this, it gives the character an interesting weak spot. Inkwell was created with the Officer role, even though she's an E-4. Officer is a catch-all role for leadership, and enlisted/NCO characters can have the Officer role without being officers. As a focus I chose battlefield psychology. This gives Inkwell some pretty bard-like abilities to bolster her allies. We got to equipment, and find that it's done in a very innovative way, Equipment in which a character is proficient can be used without penalty, just like in any other d20 game. If a character has a "Qualification" however, not only can they use the equipment, they can automatically bring it on any mission without requesting it. Requests are handled by the requisition mechanic, and some roles, notably the Officer, can have an effect on the requisition process.

By the end of character creation, I felt like I had a much better grasp on the underpinnings of the Essence20 engine. We also created a character with random elements. Instead of allocating 12 points to the 4 Essences, we rolled 12d4 to see where the points landed. If given a choice for things like influences, origin, and role, we rolled randomly to select them. I ended up with an ex-COBRA Commando with a focus in infiltration called Overthrow. Thanks to an influence from The Cobra Codex, I found that Overthrow was unhappy with the way the system worked in his home nation, and joined COBRA to try to change things. He left COBRA, and joined GI Joe hoping to fix the system from the inside.

In closing- I've overcome one of my two speedbumps to enjoying this game. The system now makes sense to me, and I very much enjoy the character creation process. My issue with the modernization of GI Joe still nags me a bit. There's enough equipment and vehicles from the classic era where this isn't a problem in those areas. The integration of energy shields with the Vanguard role still sticks in my craw. I dunno if I can just handwave it as plot immunity, but we'll see.

"My Trek" for RPGs.

 I've been a Star Trek fan as long as I can remember. It's one of the earliest TV shows I can remember watching, along with Battle of the Planets and the old Fantastic Four and Hulk cartoons. When I was in Kindergarten, I had both a Spock uniform t-shirt, and the amazing (for the time) modular TMP Enterprise toy from South Bend. I raced home after school so I could catch the afternoon re-runs of Star Trek. This was, of course, the late 70s and early 80s. There was no TNG yet, no bloody A, B, C, or D. And when I started playing roleplaying games, one of the very first I got my hands on after D&D was Star Trek from FASA.

FASA's Trek was more martial than the original TV show, but not so much that it felt off. At that time, deep roleplay wasn't the default mode it can be today with some games. There are games out there with absolutely no combat allowed. FASA Trek was created in an era where conflict of some sort was assumed in an RPG as something that was going to happen. While Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a thoughtful sci-fi epic without a single phaser firing, and the only torpedoes fired weren't at other ships, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was another story entirely. This is where I begin my specific love for "Nick Meyer" Star Trek. Nicholas Meyer directed Wrath of Khan, and under his influence we got the two Star Trek feature films that felt the most Naval. Wrath of Khan, and The Undiscovered Country. From the far more martial uniforms with a distinct look to differentiate officers and enlisted to details like inspections, the Excelsior crew sleeping in racks, and even corrugated metal floors, boatswain's whistles, and ship's china and blankets, Nick Meyer's Star Trek was, by a quote from Meyer himself, "Horatio Hornblower in space." The naval feel was quite intentional. And it seems to have been popular. Despite the difficulty in making the Monster Maroon uniforms from this era, they were a staple of conventions and fan clubs. Wrath of Khan was upheld as the best of the Trek films, even when Search for Spock and The Voyage Home came out, with Voyage Home returning to a less bellicose and more sci-fi-with-a-message format.

This is the Trek into which the RPG was born. Many of the sourcebooks detailed conflicts - a favorite of

mine being the Return to Axanar/The Four Years War combo. For those who don't know, The Four Years War was FASA's (and fandom's) explanation for the state of things between the Klingon Empire and the Federation in the original series. It's taken as read that there has been a "hot" war at some point in the not-too-distant past, and that it's now boiled down into an analog of the Cold War. Before Klingons were biker Viking samurai, they were basically Cold War-era Soviets. The Tactical Starship Simulator and the ship recognition guides written to support it obviously focused on combat between vessels- that was sort of the point of the game. Starfleet was, in this version of Star Trek, written to be a military organization that did exploration and science as part of their mandate. There were enlisted crew, even a mention of *gasp* Marines. The image on the right by the great David Deitrick. It was to be the cover for the Star Fleet Ground Forces Manual, which was, according to Deitrick's blog, given the kybosh by Roddenberry himself, who by that time was deep into downplaying the naval or martial influences in Star Trek. 

All of this is to say, my Star Trek is much more Nick Meyer than Gene Roddenberry. And if you look at Star Trek the some way some folks cherry pick their favorite parts of various holy books, you can see that my Trek has always been a part of Trek. For instance, some folks insist there were no enlisted crew aboard the Enterprise, each member was at least an Ensign. Thing is, a bridge character in The Cage was Chief Petty Officer Garison, Crewman Green in The Man Trap was a crewman, and in Charlie X Tina Lawton is introduced as a Yeoman 3rd Class. When I got to High School, I became a cadet in the Marine Corps JROTC- so I learned a lot about the traditions and histories of the naval services. Of course I used the Marines that were listed in the Starfleet org chart in FASA Trek. The Mandela Effect ensured that I saw that entry on the org charts in the classic Franz Josef Star Fleet Technical Manual, but alas. 

Since FASA Trek has a lifepath-type character generation, and the enlisted generation method in Trader Captains and Merchant Princes was... not optimal, I wrote my own process for training enlisted crew, and I gave them Navy-style ratings since I'd heard Tina Lawton called a Yeoman Third Class. So my game had Science Technicians, Warp Technicians, Torpedomen, Quartermasters, Operations Specialists, etc. Even Culinary Specialists and Starfleet Counselors. Every ship had a "Chief of the Boat" who served as senior enlisted to the Captain. My Starfleet was decidedly Naval, as presented in Wrath of Khan and the FASA books. Most of my games dealt with the Cold War between the Federation, Klingons and Romulans. FASA lost the Star Trek license shortly after producing their only two Next Generation books, and there was no new Trek RPG in print, until...

The year I graduated, Task Force Games/Amarillo Design Bureau released Prime Directive, and if Roddenberry felt FASA Trek was too martial, it might be a blessing that he passed away before the release of Prime Directive. Set in the alternate Trek universe that was created to support the game Star Fleet Battles, Prime Directive was concerned with a neat concept - Prime Teams. Why beam down your Captain, XO, and next four senior people into an unknown situation when you could have a purpose-trained "Novel Contact Team" to beam down for you. Purpose-trained, possessed of multiple skill sets, and oh, yeah, more expendable than your Captain and the next five most senior personnel. Character creation had players choosing between Naval and Marine personnel, and it was possible to be an officer or enlisted member of either service. The setting, as it was created to support the outright wargame that was Star Fleet Battles, was heavily militaristic in nature. The sample fiction in the rulebooks mentions saluting, bracing to attention for an officer, and other formalities rarely or never seen in Star Trek. Needless to say, my Prime Directive games were right at home in the kind of Trek universe in my head. Prime Directive was a shift in some elements of my games, as it was set during the TOS era due to specifics of the sub-license that allowed it to be created. I had run most of my games in what we used to call the "Movie Era" - Star Trek II up to, say, Star Trek VI. Or the current film if you rewind to my earliest days as a gamer. Also- Prime Directive had a completely different set of species in play. Rigellians and Alpha Centaurans were absent in FASA Trek, so, too, most of the Klingon servitor species. Hydrans, Lyrans, Wyn, Kzinti, all new options for NPCs and, rarely, players. This game became sort of Star Fleet Navy SEALS. Ish. And we dug it.

You might ask what I did with The Next Generation? Well, I started with the TNG First Year

Sourcebook, and then got my hands on the TNG Officer's Manual, the aforementioned two books FASA got out before their license was terminated. These books are definitely early efforts, before much of TNG's lore was established. There were some gems of concepts in here, though. The Bridge Command Specialist was pure gold. A character cross-trained in several bridge functions, so they could make a credible effort at any station. This mirrored perfectly how Geordi and Worf tended to bounce around with various duties, and why Geordi, as a Lieutenant (j.g.) is given command of the Enterprise twice in the first season when more senior officers are clearly available. A BCS is a line officer in training, and being given temporary command is part of that training.

The Officer's Manual had a lot of things that would be retconned by later TNG. Pay for Starfleet members, some apocryphal starships including the Ambassador Class that looked like neither Doug Drexler's nor the Enterprise-C's versions. Data having some sort of reactor core. The shipboard position of  "Crewmaster" who was responsible for the civilians onboard. Oh, and the rank of Ensign, Junior Grade. I used most of it, because we didn't yet know any better. But oy, did some of those ship designs look janky. 

By the time Last Unicorn Games released their Star Trek offerings, we were ready for a different take on Star Trek. But we always seemed to come back to FASA Trek and Prime Directive. Only with the recent move to Modiphius and their 2d20 system have my players and I found a Trek we like as much as these older iterations. And still, I just finished running FASA Trek at North Texas RPG Con. I toned down the hyper-naval feel of my game, but many elements we used to use were still there. Half the pregen characters I created were not officers. The ship was a Larson-class destroyer, assigned to Military Operations Command (as opposed to Galaxy Exploration Command.) The players said they had a lot of fun. I plan on running again next year. The takeaway is, my TNG games tended to be less martial in nature than my TOS-era and Movie-era games, and those tended to be The Navy in Space. Just as Nick Meyer intended, and Gene Roddenberry resented. 

Chupacabracon! A great con and a less than great weekend.

 

So, I know I had said I'd try to post on 1st and 15th, but I held off this post so I could give a review of my weekend at Chupacrabracon, one of the three cons I try to make it to every year. Chupa used to be in biking distance from my house, or a rather lengthy walk. It moved to San Marcos, TX, which is theoretically 52 minutes from my house by car. Theoretically. Traffic on IH-35 is legendary for being an absolute mess, and this weekend was no exception. Still, I was jazzed. I was scheduled to run Shadowrun on Friday, play Battletech/Alpha Strike all day Saturday, and run Robotech Sunday. At Chupa, there is a nice little perq that if you run at least 8 hours of games, you get in free. Score. But things started to change the day after I submitted my games. My wife, Mary, has been suffering with early-onset arthritis in her knee, it was basically bone-to-bone. We suddenly got a surgery date- a week and a half before the con. Recovery for this surgery is said to be 6-8 weeks. As I type this, she's got her home care physical therapy nurse coming to work that new CyberKnee. OK, so, I'll be on nurse duty the same as Mary was when I had my heart surgery, no problem, we'll find family or a friend to assist Mary for the weekend, and I'll hit Chupa. And to be clear, there were more reasons to go than just gaming. Chupa has a lot of industry folks in attendance, from Battlefield Press, for whom I am coordinating the Robotech sub-license effort for Savage Worlds, to Pinnacle Entertainment, and more. And this year, Catalyst Game Labs. I love Battletech and Shadowrun, and Philip Lee, the editor of Shrapnel, was there to talk to about what they look for in submissions. So, cons have become business as well - Retro Arcana needs to get our name out there.

So I was pumped. Ready to go. And the week Chupa was going to happen, we got a call from my wife's surgeon - post-op appointment, Friday at 11. So I had to cancel my Friday game as I'd be in a completely different city. So we did our appointment, and I resolved to go to Chupa Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, traffic more than doubled the time necessary to get to San Marcos, so I missed my scheduled Battletech game. Then my phone rang. My BFF was in the hospital. Stroke. Needed help. My battle buddy Ed and I dropped what we were doing and went to the rescue. Like Ed said, if we don't help our friends what good are we? So, we missed most of Saturday. Made it just in time to be 40 minutes late to the next Battletech game. The awesome Catalyst staffers who were running the game held my spot open, and I was able to play some Alpha Strike. My partner and I were matched up with Rusty Zimmerman, author, and apparently dirty clanner. It was a GREAT game, we barely - BARELY - pulled out a win. The cool thing about this game? We were playing con attendees versus editor Philip Lee, author Rusty Zimmerman, and community manager Rem Alternis. And at the end of the game, each player got to take home a lance of painted 'Mechs. My partner took home our Lyran Guards 'Mechs, and I got our opponents, pictured below.

So, this was amazing. I really dig Alpha Strike- though I'm still a die hard fan of good old Battletech. Great game, close fight, and the MVP on the OPFOR side was the Mad Cat (Timber Wolf for you Clanners) which was the last OPFOR mech to drop, and killed three of our Mechs, leaving only our Stalker standing.

I had to did home after that, to make sure my wife was being taken care of and had to deal with my kiddos for being in Teenager Mode and failing to keep up with Mom Duty. I really dreaded driving back the next day, and wasn't sure I should given the difficulties Saturday caused at home. But we made arrangement for a friend to come over and hang out on nurse duty, and I returned on Sunday to run my game. I had planned on running Savage Robotech, but I didn't have the time I needed to translate Cyclones and Invid into SWADE stats with Sci-Fi Companion data. And I only have 2/3 of the backer draft at that. So I fell back to Palladium- but realized creating last-minute pregens for Palladium would take all night. I did, however, have pregens already made for the Strange Machine Games version of Robotech. So I grabbed my SMG stuff, and crammed well into the wee hours.

Sunday, I explained to the players that we just didn't get the mecha portion of the SWADE Sci-Fi Companion in time for me to have gotten what I wanted done finished, so I was going to run the SMG version of Robotech. We jumped in, and had a GREAT time. Some Expeditionary Force personnel crashed on Invid-held Earth, joined up with a Southern Cross survivor and his Myrmidon tank, recruited some of the locals for a resistance cell, and fought a few Invid and some collaborators. We all had a good time, poked and prodded the AD6 System that SMG used in Robotech, and pronounced it fun. One of my players was even an old shipmate from my time in Starfleet, and it was wonderful to see her and her family. Also - WOW, she played the Medical Corpsman and just happened to have the Medical Cyclone, which sports medical equipment and a pair of vibroblades to cut survivors out of wrecks for medical treatment. Turns out they also cut through Invid. And collaborators made into cyborgs by the Invid. Damn, Doc.

So, it was a rough weekend, but there were a couple of bright spots, courtesy of Chupacabracon, Catalyst Game Labs, and the tag team of Strange Machine Games (Robotech with the AD6 system) and Battlefield Press International (Robotech for Savage Worlds.) Chupa has been a great con since Chupacabracon I. Chupa is one of the three Texas cons I try to hit every year- Chupacabracon, The Long Con, and North Texas RPG Con. Next up: NTRPGCON in June.

Gaming the Game - Subsystems For Their Own Sake

 I have to admit, I'm a sucker for a thematic subsystem. A conceit within a game's rules that is there to model a certain part of the genre addressed by the game. Sometimes, especially in older games, these subsystems can feel clunky, tacked-on, even arbitrary if the reader doesn't see the setting or genre the same way the game author does. But just as with the core rules of a game, there are threads of the intended world coded into these rules and subsystems. These modules themselves both tell you something about the world, and give your players some actual rules to grasp onto to interact with the intended world. So, what the hell am I yammering about? Let's take a look at some of the subsystems that I love to this day.

First, what do I mean about the rules telling us something about the game world? Let's take a look at the good old "wandering monster" mechanics from D&D and many other games. These mechanics usually have dice being thrown at regular intervals of in-game time or distance travelled, and if the result indicates an encounter, another table or set of tables inform the GM what specific people or monsters are encountered. This can also tell you how common or uncommon certain encounters are intended to be in the world in which you're playing - in Traveller, the table of spacecraft encounters gives you an idea of what ships are the most commonly encountered. In D&D, a look at the table for the terrain in which your party travels tells you what creatures are the most likely to be encountered in that area. Taking into account the frequency of a given encounter on the table, and the frequency of encounters happening at all can give you a good idea of what an area is like, how hazardous it is to travel, how friendly others along the route are likely to be. Remember, not every encounter is with someone who will want to fight you.

One could argue that random encounters are probably a core rule of a given game. What I want to talk about are subsystems that do what I outlined above, but a bit more explicitly.

Starships & Spacemen 2e

So, this game is totally not Star Trek. It uses a variation on the B/X D&D engine to do exploration in the Final Frontier. It has a couple of subsystems that I think really add to the genre emulation of the game.

First is the ship's computer. A given character can only ask a certain number of questions per day of the computer upon making a successful check. This may seem strange, arbitrary, and unrealistic. But think about the show upon which the game is based- how often does the computer solve the entire crux of an episode? It gives information, sure, but never simply spits out the entire solution to the conundrum of the week. This mechanic allows the computer to be useful, but not overwhelming to the plot.

Second, and much more detailed, is the resource management system for the character's starships. Each vessel produces an amount of power per game day. This power must be allocated to various functions of the ship, from raising the screens to maneuvering at sublight or FTL, to using the teleporters. There is both resource allocation and risk/reward to be considered, as a ship that uses all its power early on might not have enough left in case an emergency arrives. It can be fun to decide when and how much power to use- or as GM have the Zangid attack the ship after a landing party teleports down, causing the ship to use much of the power it might need to teleport the landing party back up!

Gangbusters 

This TSR classic has some fun subsystems in place to help model the Roaring 20s Prohibition time period. My favorites among them are the criminal ones. Want to run a numbers game? Rules are in place for running one - and for running one that's rigged. Want to set up your own brewing or distilling operation to sell bootleg hooch? Subsystem exists to allow you to do so. Want to run the speakeasy where the illicit booze is sold? Rules are here for how many patrons you serve, how much alcohol they drink, and how many dollars you rake in from your scofflaw practices.

This is really what I'm talking about - each of these subsystems might appeal to a different player, and give them each an activity they can do as part of an adventure, or between adventures. Maybe your players form a syndicate, and one player specializes in the production, and another in the distribution, while a third handles the games of chance that just happen to be run inside the speak while people are drinking their fill. 

Pendragon

This game just drips with genre emulation, but one thing that jumps out to me as a neat subsystem is the Winter Phase. Each adventure is assumed to take place during the summer, or adventuring season, with the knights returning to their manors for the winter. During the Winter Phase, a series of die rolls are made to see what happens. Does your knight find love? If already married, is a child born? Are the horses healthy? How much income do the lands bring in? Was it a good harvest?

The Winter Phase tells a story that adds to the knight's adventures, and perhaps creates impetus for further adventures. It's both extremely pertinent to the intended feel and tone of a Pendragon campaign, and something players can look forward to and attempt to manipulate to greater fortune.

Virtual Realities for Shadowrun

This book might contain the single subsystem I've spent the most real-world time crunching my way through. In fact, I've even created an Excel spreadsheet to help me with it. I'm talking about, of course, the cyberdeck construction rules. They're detailed, they're complex, and they're not something every player will want to deal with. In fact, they may be the very opposite of what some people want in their hobby games.

So why do I include it here? Because for the right kind of player, something like this is pure gold. As a nerd of a certain age, of course I have constructed my own computer- more than once. In the spirit of those first pioneers sending away for the Altair 8800 kit, I built a couple of systems that would have been considered badass in their day. Predictably, I have enjoyed playing Deckers in Shadowrun, Netrunners in Cyberpunk, and various types of hacker in other games.

When I saw the rules for creating my own cyberdeck as a young Shadowrun player in 1990 or 91, I knew that had to be my character's mission. I didn't wanna be the Decker stuck with an off-the-shelf rig built by a megacorp. I wanted my own badass deck. And to do so, I had to start by buying the proper tools. Chip encoder, electronics toolkit, followed by an electronics shop in the basement. I raised my character's skills in the Build/Repair areas, and started making rolls at the end of our sessions. I was constantly tweaking my designs, and rolling for the construction process, and demanding more money from my teammates because I had spent it all on parts and needed to spend more. 

This gave me as a player something to think about and plan for between game sessions. It gave my character something to set their sights on - a reason to go through the dangers of being a Shadowrunner. It wasn't just about money, it was about a computer nerd's bragging rights, and those are worth getting shot at over. Gotta be the best. L33t, as we used to say in the 90s.

So there we go - some examples (without going into specific detail) of the kinds of subsystems I love in my games. Shadowrun was great at having them for several character types - Shaman could build out their medicine lodge, Mages their Hermetic libraries, both could seek Initiation, and form magical societies. Riggers could customize vehicles and drones. Things that can give characters goals, and something to do between sessions. Others are used during game, like Starships & Spacemen's computer and starship rules. In BECMI D&D, there's domain management, and the War Machine mass battle system. Add in the Republic of Darokin Gazetteer, you can build a mercantile empire. Hey, the trading rules from Traveller have led some of my players to create their own cargo shipping lines and dealing with the growing pains of a fledgling line, and piracy, and customs agents. The best kinds of subsystems support the feel the game is going for, and feel like FUN to the players, and add to the narrative.

Let's Try This Again.

Good Lord am I bad at this blogging thing. Or maybe I'm just bad at the whole Life thing.

Since my heart surgery, it's been hard for me to get back to where I used to be mentally. What I found I really wasn't prepared for was the brain fog, the loss of words mid-conversation, the inability to really focus and stay on-task. It was extremely hard for me to finish my part of the Dominions of Steel manuscript in the fall of '22, as I was still in recovery from the surgery and in no real shape to "brain." Apparently, being on a heart-lung machine while my actual heart was physically outside my body caused a condition referred to as "pump head" by folks who have had Open-Heart Surgery. It's caused me to be fairly scatterbrained.

I'd love to stoically plant the haft of my polearm in the dirt and say "That stops now." But I can't, I really don't have any control over the ongoing effects of pump head. But I am learning I can try to power through the fog and get stuff done. Stuff like starting a YouTube channel that I hope to make a companion to this revivified blog to put out my thoughts and feelings on tabletop gaming. To that end, I've used the Tasks reminders so thoughtfully provided by our Google overlords to set goals of posting here on the 1st and 15th of every month, as a bare minimum. 

So, here we go. I'm going to post this little letter, then write a game-related post to get the reboot started.

Where have you been, Old Dragoon?

 Well, the health update earlier this year was only part of the story.

  On 28 JUN 22 I had open-heart surgery. Turns out, I needed a 5x bypass. I'm back on my feet, but I'm still in recovery. My body is bouncing back, but I had no idea that heart surgery had a potential for cognitive impairment, emotional issues, and traumatic stress. That part caught me by surprise, and I'm still trying to recover/adapt to my "new normal" in a mental sense.

  I've never been as regular at blogging as I'd like - but I've basically been granted a "second chance" since without the heart surgery, I was a goner. The phrase "walking time bomb" was used by my cardiologist. Talk about words that make your blood run cold.

  My first published RPG is coming out in 2023, the manuscript has been submitted, edited, resubmitted, and is now in the hands of the layout and art folks. I am a partner in a new game publisher, Retro Arcana Games, and we will be launching a web site and podcast in December of 2022. I will be writing content for the Retro Arcana site, and dual-posting it here. With any luck, there will be some more content here for folks to read. I want to make the most of the bonus time I've been granted.

Health Update - Holy Crap.

 Well, yesterday was 4/20, and the only thing 420 about me was my blood sugar.  OK, it wasn't 420, but it was between 200 and 280.  I've never been good at blogging regularly, as the spotty nature of this blog will show, but this year I've had issues with focus, and extreme fatigue, and now I know why.

  When I was diagnosed diabetic, my doctor basically said "Well, you're diabetic.  Avoid carbs." That was it.  No diabetes education, no instructions on how to take my glucose, no instructions TO take my glucose.  Nothing.  So I did what I was told, watched my carbs, took my Metformin, and took my Ozympic.  Eventually, we got my A1c down from the initial 13 (!!!) to 7.2, almost where we wanted it.  But by this point I was really frustrated.  For my A1c to be 13, I would have had to have been diabetic for a while.  I had mentioned things to my doc that in hindsight, now that I know my condition, should have been big red flags.  My office mate and co-author Bobby even called it because of all the tea and water I drank while we were in office.  So, I changed doctors, and got a CGM (constant glucose monitor) and learned about my condition.

  The CGM was wildly inaccurate for me.  But we got my A1c down to 5.5 and later 6.5, and it seemed my diabetes was well-controlled.  Due to my frustration with my inaccurate CGM, I did something stupid and stopped taking my glucose.  I figured with my A1c between 5.5 and 6.5, I was in the zone.  Well, I didn't account for the effect of getting off my weekly Ozympic shot.  Then I got so involved with taking care of all those things in life we take care of, I missed a 3-month checkup.  I started to feel really tired, all the time.  I lost my ability to focus, I could barely complete my work, barely work on my game design, barely get all those parent and adult things done that were necessary to keep the household running.  It got so bad I couldn't make it through a day without taking a nap, or at the very least nodding off here at my desk.

  My A1c had jumped back to the double-digits.  It's no wonder I had no focus, no energy.  So my new doc, wonderful as she is, prescribed me a new CGM, one that we have verified against finger sticks and put me back on Ozympic.  I got a CT scan to make sure my high triglycerides and blood sugar haven't messed with my heart.  I'm back on a strict diet, not that I was eating tons of carbs before, and drinking water and decaf tea.  The thing that has been frustrating, is that my first time around I wasn't taking my glucose, so I had no idea it would take weeks to get my blood sugar back under control.  I kinda thought a couple of days of water and salads and my glucose would be back in the pocket.  Naïve, I know, but... 

 Anyway, that's where I've been.  But I'm really missing being involved in games and gaming.  I'm going see if I can't crank out an article or two to get back into the groove.

My D&D - Classy

 So, here is the part that gets ridiculous.  Classes.  There are so many neat classes beyond the classic seven in BX, and they come from many different sources.  OSE Advanced adds the AD&D classes, like Paladin, Ranger, etc.  Rules Cyclopedia lets me add the missing Monk with the Mystic class.  The Class Compendium by Barrel Rider Games has some classes well worth looking into - like the Commander, the Undead Slayer, and the Metaphysician.  But how many is too many?

The Baseline

• Cleric
• Fighter
• Magic-User
• Thief
• Dwarf
• Elf
• Halfling

So, we start with the classic seven from B/X.  I love race as class, but I also love race-class combinations.  So what's a DM to do?  Use both.  OSE Advanced suggests allowing both side-by-side if you can't decide.  So, one player can be the archetypical Elf, splitting arcane magic and fighting, or be an Elven Fighter, or Elven Magic-User, having the benefits of the full class and Elf race, but not the dual classes or the crippling XP requirements.  So, with that in mind, we'll look at the OSE Advanced class listing and add it to the list.

• Acrobat
• Assassin
• Barbarian
• Bard
• Drow (but possibly Shadow Elf?)
• Druid
• Duergar
• Gnome
• Half-Elf
• Half-Orc
• Illusionist
• Knight
• Magic-User
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Svirfleblin

OK, so, maybe I won't import ALL of them.  The "dark" versions of various races aren't something I'm interested in having as a PC in my Mystara games.  Shadow Elves are an interesting conundrum.  They aren't coded "evil" as much as "different."  They are the lost clans, not necessarily Anti-Elves, though they do have some very different experiences and are connected to some things that would be spoilers to include here, in case my future players are reading.  So, no Drow, but maybe Shadow Elf PCs, once they have been introduced.

From The Rules Cyclopedia

OSE Advanced already handles the "prestige classes" of D&D, as far as the Druid, Paladin, and arguably Knight.  So all that remains to take from the RC is the Mystic, to fill the gap left by the omission of the Monk from OSE.  The Mystic will have to be adjusted so that the class ends at 14th Level to match the rest of the human classes, as it goes to 16 in RC.

From the Gazetteers

There is some cool stuff in the GAZ series, and since my D&D is rooted in Mystara, I want to accommodate some of the flavor classes.  

• Dervish - A desert Cleric of Ylaruam.  Appears in GAZ2.
• Wizard stuff from Glantri, in GAZ3?  Maybe?
• Elven Wizard from Alfheim froM GAZ5.  Is this already covered by Class/Race split?  We'll have to look.
• Dwarf-Cleric from GAZ6.  Same as above, might be covered by Race/Class, as I recall the Dwarf Cleric has some restrictions.  Of course, given the Cleric bonuses/penalties from Wrath of the Immortals, it might get even more muddy.
• Master from GAZ8.  Kind of a Halfling prestige class.  Will it still work with the removal of the whole concept of "Reach Level X in Class Y, change to Class Z?"
• Merchant Prince from GAZ 9.  I love the idea of a Class that isn't for killing monsters and taking treasure.
• Monster classes from GAZ10, plus the Wokan and Shaman classes.  Again, we'll have to figure out how to merge all the stuff into one clean D&D Voltron, or just accept lots of exception-based rules.  
• Merchant from GAZ11. Compare to GAZ 9, see how they look side-by side.
• Shadow Elf and Shadow Elf Shaman from GAZ13- but only if the campaign "goes there."
• Shamani from GAZ 14.  I like the idea of the Atruaghin Clans, but it's not the strongest of the series, and I'd want to make clear that, like all the pseudo-European pastiches, the Clans are not meant to represent historical First Nations cultures, just inspired by them.
• Rake and Forester from Dawn of the Emperors.  Rake being a non-Theify Rogue, and the Forester being a human trained by Elves, so has the Fighter/Magic-User thing going on.  But- is this just a Ranger?  Is it a dual class?  Do I even want to allow dual classes or split classes?  OSE Advanced optionally allows them.  Will that be too much crunch?

From the Class Compendium

  OK, so we already have a metric shitload of classes- and only one of them is not already a part of Mystara, the Mystic, but then again, thanks to Voyage of the Princess Ark maybe it is Mystara canon.  Class Compendium is written for use with Labyrinth Lord as well, so the classes do go above the 14 level cap in some cases.  So there will be some tinkering and conversion involved.  Also- some of the classes I'm just not feeling, either because I don't really like the concepts, or I don't like the concepts in my version of Mystara.  In the Class Compendium, James M. Spahn provides some really cool stuff.  And not just classes, equipment, spells, a take on weapon mastery, and a take on firearms.  But what we're looking at here is classes.  Spahn organizes his classes by themes, and I'll look at each and note if I think it will work in my Mystara game.

  Arcane Allies

• Alienist.  This is an arcane class that goes slowly insane as it grows in knowledge and power.  Very appropriate to some settings, but not, I think, for Mystara.  At least, not the way in which I would run it.  So, interesting, but no.
• Familiar.  HELL YES.  This is a fun idea, the ability for a player to be the familiar for another player's spellcaster.  Caps at 8th Level like a Halfling, but has some neat ideas, and would be a fun roleplay opportunity.
• Thopian Gnome.  Nah.  Again, I kinda dislike the "dark" versions of PC races, I'm just not feeling it.
• Wild Wizard.  Maybe.  I kinda like the idea of undisciplined magic, and there's plenty of room for it.  Say, a barely trained magically active individual from somewhere like Thyatis where arcane magic is de-emphasized, or maybe some crazy new style of magic being invented by a Glantrian researcher.

Doughty Dwarves

• Raging Slayer.  Maybe- is this different enough from just doing a Dwarf Barbarian?  There's some cool specific abilities here.
• Rune-Smith. Definitely.  In Mystara, Dwarves are unable to use arcane magic as a form of protection granted them by the Immortal Kagyar.  But they do smith magic weapons and the like.  This class allows a PC to do such things.  There are rules in Dwarves of Rockhome, so I have to read both and compare them.
• Warchanter.  Maybe- is this different enough from a Dwarf Bard?  Again, some good Dwarf flavor here.

Enchanting Elves

• Dark Elf.  Negative, for reasons already stated.
• Greensinger.  Maybe.  See Warchanter, above.  This is an Elf Bard.  More reading necessary.
• Half-Elf.  Negative, already handled by OSE Advanced.
• Sylvan Elf. Maybe. And Elf that uses Druid spells and has a couple of different abilities.  This might be a really cool way to show Clan differences.  Need to look at Alfheim and Karameikos and see if this fits.

Heroic Halflings

• Burglar.  Again, possibly redundant by Halfling Thief, but will read it over further.
• Feast Master. THIS is a damn cool idea.  A Halfling that can impart bonuses to their allies by cooking and brewing.  Very flavorful. Pun intended.
• Huckster.  An interesting idea, sort of Professor Harold Hill crossed with a Ferengi and given Halfling form.  A fast-talking charismatic merchant style Halfling.  I think I like this one.  Strong maybe.
• Lucky Fool. Maybe.  Just what it sounds like- a character that is more lucky than skilled.  Could be fun. Maybe.
• Tavern Singer.  Halfling Bard?  I do like the drinking-related abilities.

Holy Rollers

• Angel.  Great class, doesn't fit the setting.
• Friar.  Could be a great class to represent the non-fighting Clerical orders.
• Inquisitor.  I can see this sort of character belonging to some of the Immortal's faiths.
• Undead Slayer.  Yes.  Hell yes.  Why?  Because my Mystara is the origin of Barovia, it was somewhere in the mountains of northwestern Karameikos.  Also- I love Castlevania.

In Shining Armor

• Commander. Absolutely.  I loved the Warlord in 4e, and the 5e Fighters with Mastery Dice, whether through subclass or Feat.  This kind of warrior needs to exist the way my Mystara runs.
• Dragon Slayer.  Strong maybe.  If I've got an Undead Slayer, maybe I should have a Dragon Slayer.
• Knight. Already handled in OSE Advanced.

Martial Masters

• Barbarian.  Already handled in OSE Advanced.
• Berserker.  Already covered in some other classes.
• Gladiator.  Maybe.  Need to look at Thyatis and Dawn of the Emperors.
• Samurai.  Soft Maybe?  I love me some Samurai, but I need to re-read the Princess Ark stuff that includes the Japanese-inspired culture.  I seem to recall it was Rakastas.
• Sword Master.  This would be awesome for Darokin and a couple other places.  I like the idea of a finesse-based Fighter.  The Mastery Points are a cool idea.  What do we say to the God of Death?

Monstrous Marauders

• Dragon. Probably not.  Just not sure it fits.  Maybe if a specific storyline is being used?
• Goblin.  Covered in Orcs of Thar.
• Half-Ogre.  Mmmm... more or less covered in Orcs of Thar.
• Half-Orc. Already covered by OSE Advanced.
• Treant.  Kinda like Dragon, for me.  I'll allow it, but only if the story calls for it.

Second Star to the  Right

• The Fairy and Lost Boy are there to emulate the Peter Pan stories.  Not really in keeping with Mystara.
• The Pirate is a possibility, I'll need to take another look at the seagoing Gazetteers to see if this is covered better by, say, Ierendi or Minrothad.

Traveling Trouble Makers

• Acrobat. Covered by OSE Advanced.
• Explorer.   Sure. I like the concept behind this one.
• Fortune Teller.  Maybe?  I don't want to step in the current row over Vistani, but if I am linking the Traldar people to the ancient Vistani/Barovians, this might work.
• Wanderer.  This could be an interesting class.  Maybe.

Unhallowed Heroes

• Cultist.  No, not in this setting.  They exist, but not as PCs.
• Damphir. Maybe.  If I'm doing a Ravenloft tie-in, or a story about the Vampire of Korizegy Keep, I might allow this one.
• Death Knight.  See Cultist.  They exist, but not as PCs.
• Eidolon.  Again, they exist, but not as PCs.

Urban Adventurers

• Bandit.  This might be an interesting class, especially in places like Darokin, where the roads are fat with trade.  Maybe.
• Bard.  Covered by OSE Advanced.
• Bounty Hunter.  Hmmm.  I like the abilities the author has given this class.  Strong maybe.
• Watchman.  Possibilities here, especially with the Rumor Mill ability.

Virtuous Victorians

• Automation.  Probably not- unless I decide to allow it in adventures involving Blackmoor or cultures touched by it.  Or the Gnomes- but I really never use the Gnomes much.  I find quite a bit of their stuff sort of silly.
• Investigator.  Could exist in highly urbanized areas.  I can see this class being very useful for The Veiled Society.
• Metaphysician.  This is the Van Helsing class.  I love it, and I'll include it in any Ravenloft-heavy Mystaran campaigns.
• Shootist.  This is the one Victorian class I can't see reskinning.  I'm not sure I want to do anything with firearms in my Mystara.

Final Thoughts

That's a LOT more classes than I'd initially wanted.  Even editing out the doubles, the classes that don't fit, and the ones that I just don't care for personally, that's still a ton of classes.  Maybe I'll just go back to OSE Advanced only.  Or OSE Advanced and the GAZ series.  Or just OSE and the GAZ series.  But I do like so many of the Advanced and Class Compendium classes, and I can see them as fun options for PCs that offer some interesting opportunities for the DM.  I'll cogitate, re-read some material, and start cribbing out the versions of the classes that aren't already in OSE or OSE Advanced that I want to use.

My D&D - The Medium's Staff

 

The Medium's Staff

An Attempt To Help Out The Poor 1st Level Magic-User

Here's an idea I've been playing with that I may or may not actually use.  I want to write it down to see if anyone else thinks it's kind of cool.

The idea behind The Medium's Staff is that it improves the utility of the low-level Magic-User, but does not provide such utility as to change game balance past the low levels.

So, the Medium's Staff is a magic item often crafted by an apprentice and their mentor as the apprentice nears the end of their long training period.  It is a sign of the esteem of their mentor to be coached through and assisted with the enchantment of one of these staves, and it is intended to see the apprentice through the early years of adventuring on their own.  Any Magic-User who apprenticed in a civilized land like Karameikos, or especially Glantri, has a good chance of having one of these upon reaching 1st Level.

The staff is permanently enchanted, and will radiate magic to a Detect Magic spell, but in order to have an actual effect the Magic-User must empower the staff daily by expending their highest-level spell slot available.  Doing so empowers the staff to use the following powers:

• The staff becomes a weapon in which the Magic-User is considered to be proficient, doing 1d4+INT Bonus damage, but striking as a silver, not magic, weapon with no To-Hit bonus.
• The staff can cast a number of 1st Level spells per day equal to the Magic-User's INT bonus.
• The staff can be "programmed" with a number of 1st Level spells equal to the Magic-User's INT bonus that may be cast as long as the staff or Magic-User has any spell slots remaining for the day.  These spells may be ones the Magic-User knows, or ones programmed into the staff by their mentor.

So, obviously the staff isn't very useful to Magic-Users of average Intelligence.  But for those with an INT of 16 or higher, it's a great trade- sacrifice the single spell slot of a starting Magic-User for 2 or 3 spells cast through the staff.  But upon reaching 3rd Level, the Magic-User would have to sacrifice their 2nd Level slot for 1st Level spells.  Upon reaching 5th Level, they must sacrifice a 3rd Level slot, and so forth.  Thus, the staff is GREAT at low levels, but less and less effective at higher levels.

This might be exactly what a starting Magic-User needs to get through those first couple of levels.

My D&D - A Game Design Thought Experiment

 Jeez.  Over half a year since my last post.  Thanks, pandemic depression.  I was bad before the plague, but not this bad.  But hey, I'm here, I'm writing, so here we go.

My D&D

  So, I've been playing for 36 years this year.  I've played every published edition of D&D, plus more retroclones than I can shake a stick at.  So many talented folks are publishing their favorite versions of D&D, or not-D&D clones that reflect their own loves and preferences.  Jeff Talanian and Hyperborea pop to mind, along with all the great stuff from Bloat Games, all the wicked Swords & Wizardry stuff, and a universe of other stuff.  I am fond of my good friend James Spahn's work, and there's so much coming out that's based on the old school D&D engine but covering other genres- like the Night Owl Workshop games, Mark Hunt's BX stuff including Gangbusters BX, there's too much to mention one game at a time.

  At one point in my life, I'd have immediately said the 1983 BECMI game was my go-to D&D.  Hand me a Rules Cyclopedia and I'm good to go.  But over the years I've realized I don't want or need 36 levels.  It's just excessive.  I know it was a directive from on high that Frank Mentzer had to deal with, but I feel that the assumed 14th Level cap of B/X is just about perfect given that the Demihuman level limits are 8, 10, and 12.  What's my current ideal D&D then?  Let's talk about it.

Standards and Assumptions

  My D&D would have the solid base of Necrotic Gnome's Old School Essentials Advanced Edition.  OSE is an incredibly well-done restatement of the 1981 Moldvay-Cook-Marsh edition of D&D, often known as BX, for Basic and Expert.  This version of D&D is almost identical to the BECMI edition that followed it with a few minor differences, the most notable of which is an expansion from 14th Level to 36th Level, and the addition of Immortal rules.  OSE Advanced Edition leaves the core rules more or less at the BX level, but adds the option of race/class split, and additional classes like Ranger, Paladin, etc.

  OK, so we're starting with OSE Advanced.  What do I want to tinker with?

• Adapt the rules and table from The Black Hack to avoid instant death at zero HP. Yes, in the Old Days, we ran through characters like my son runs through sports drinks.  It was a major accomplishment to live to see levels above 1.  3d6 straight down, baby.  But- it's 2022, and we've learned that story and character means a lot to the modern player.  Even a player like myself, who cut their teeth on the Old Ways of Our People.  I don't want characters to be as hard to kill as 5e, but harder to kill than BX would be advantageous.
• Add Equipment from BECMI. Add scale mail, banded mail, bastard swords, etc.
• Take a hard look at the Magic-User.  I like Cantrips in 5e, but so many things that were 1st Level Spells became Cantrips to port them over whole cloth would require a lot of rewrites.  Rather, I  want to see about giving Magic-Users some class abilities to mimic things like the Prestidigitation or Thaumaturgy Cantrips, or maybe a small damage roll-to-hit at-will magic attack.
• Take a look at the Fighter.  I'm interested in giving the bog standard Fighter some flavor abilities.  Several old school rules sets from TSR and clones give Fighters additional attacks versus 1HD creatures.  Carrion Crawler issue 1 has a list of possible Fighter abilities.  I think I'll do something similar, if not identical.
• Use the Mystara Setting.  This includes the Immortals, and the bonuses to Cleric abilities listed in Wrath of the Immortals.  Use some cool stuff from the GAZ series.  This includes the skills/proficiencies/etc. that are available to add some depth to the PCs.  Also, the rolls for social level and background, if applicable.
• Adapt Immortal Rules- Adapt the paths to Immortality to the 14-level paradigm.

What else will I do?  Not sure.  But here's where I'm going to start.  Let's see where it goes.

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.