Why D&D?

Dungeons & Dragons has never been my game of choice.  This goes all the way back to receiving my very first RPG, the D&D Basic Box with the Moldvay cover.  I liked the game a lot, but what I'd really been wanting was that boxed set of Traveller with the Free Trader Beowulf mayday signal written on the front.

It wasn't even my favorite fantasy RPG for long.  I was an early convert to both RuneQuest and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay as fantasy alternatives.  I even preferred the Rolemaster derived Middle-Earth Roleplay.  Yet, today I have somehow managed to accumulate nine different core rules sets for D&D and its direct descendants.

This got me to thinking as to why that's the case.  The original reason is that D&D is what people play.  Whatever other games may be going on in a given gaming scene, there's inevitably at least one game of D&D being run.  Today that game might go by the name of "Pathfinder," but it's still D&D at heart.

Going back to college, which was my first period of regular gaming, every other game we played was D&D.  We played some Shadowrun, TORG, DC Heroes, and Star Wars D6 among others, but we always came back to AD&D because it was the one game you could always get a majority of our group to go along with.

Of course, that doesn't explain why I still have so much D&D in my collection today.  Now that I play with groups that have far more interest in other games I could easily do without D&D.  I could claim that it was all leftover from my college days, but that would be a lie.  I actually got rid of most of that stuff during my great gaming "drought" in the years after college.

The main reason I have for having D&D today is that for all its flaws, it works.  The classic six stats with level based advancement, hit points, and Vancian magic is something that most gamers seem to instinctively grasp.  When stripped to these essential elements the game plays fast and fun in ways that many other systems ultimately fail to do.

I find this less true of more recent iterations of D&D (3.5, Pathfinder and 4th), where I find the emphasis is more on character "builds" than building characters, but that was a discovery I made only slowly and that eventually brought me around to the games of the Old School Renaissance (OSR), my favorite example of which is Swords & Wizardry.

I'm even planning on running a game of Stars Without Number soon, a sci-fi game that uses the OSR rules as a base.

So, while D&D might not be the best simulation, or have the most evocative setting, or the best set of rules to encourage roleplay, it's still a good game.  Something that only took me a couple of decades to fully acknowledge.

The DarkStryder Campaign

The DarkStryder Campaign is a series of products that are now over 15 years old, created for the West End Games Star Wars RPG.  It is an attempt to create an extended campaign for the system spread over one boxed set and three modules.  It provides some great adventure ideas and character concepts, but as a playable campaign out of the box it's a failure.  I'm reviewing it now because I only recently had the chance to read through the whole line while preparing for a Star Wars game I'm running.

I'll be including some possible spoilers in this review, so on the off chance that you expect to actually play in a DarkStryder Campaign I'll summarize here and suggest that you not read the rest:  don't do it, unless the GM is simply using the published material as inspiration.  If they are actually going to try to run it as published, then expect to be both frustrated and disappointed.

First, the good stuff.  Much of the setup is great.  The New Republic is stretched thin trying to mop up the Imperial remnants following the Battle of Endor.  They have just liberated the capital of the Kathol Sector, decisively defeating Moff Sarne, although the Moff himself got away.  Kathol Sector is a backwater sector on the edge of what was once the Empire, and now that the Moff has been defeated, the New Republic fleet must move on to more important matters, leaving only a token force to track down the defeated Moff.

The players are that force.  They are given the FarStar, an aging Corellian Corvette formerly under the control of Moff Sarne.  The ship had been undergoing a complete refit and conversion under the Moff, being retrofitted with a docking bay for carrying fighters, along with some other upgrades.  Getting it spaceworthy in time to be useful requires a great deal of effort and jury-rigging.

The crew is a mixed bag with a handful of elites along with unwanted castoffs from the rest of the fleet, and a large number of volunteers recruited from the newly liberated world.  The latter includes a volatile mix of both victims and servants of the former regime (most of the latter attempting to keep their pasts a secret).  Many of the pre-generated characters have interconnected backgrounds that could provide fodder for great roleplaying.

The result is a crowded ship with every spare corner filled with supplies, cables and conduits running everywhere, and a crew that is sometimes suspicious of each other and often irritable due to the conditions.  It reminds me a bit of the atmosphere of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.

Several of the adventures that are scripted for the FarStar to go through have good ideas, and the nature of the situation they are in provides a lot of inspiration for other ideas.

Now for the bad stuff.  The situation provides some good ideas for carrots and sticks to keep the players on track, but the campaign as written doesn't use them.  Instead, it sets the FarStar solidly on a set of rails and gives it a solid push to get it going.  This is possibly the most railroaded campaign I've ever seen.

If the player characters include the command crew, as is suggested, then they will often find major decisions taken out of their hands and instead decided by GM fiat.  If they don't include the command crew, then they will simply be spectators as the major events of the campaign go on around them.

In addition, many events over the course of the campaign are fated to happen in a specific way, including some characters leaving the campaign through death or desertion (remember, these are likely to be player characters, not NPCs), as well as major plot points both good and bad for the players.  In some cases deus ex machina appears to have been the first resort of the designers rather than the last.  This applies from the first scene where two of the main characters are removed from the story no matter what the players do (remember, these are likely PCs) to the climactic battle where multiple fleets inexplicably appear to join in the battle, somehow managing to navigate through an incredibly dangerous area of space that the FarStar itself only managed to get through because they had the only navigator known to be able to do it!

There are also a lot of plot holes in the story when it's looked at too closely.  The DarkStryder technology that is supposed to be the reason why the New Republic can't just let the Moff get away doesn't really seem to be that powerful.  It consists of ultra-rare, one-use items that only have a limited effect on a small scale.  A far bigger threat is the Moff's fleet, which includes multiple Star Destroyers.  The reasons why the Moff doesn't use this fleet to retake the capital after the New Republic fleet moves on are flimsy.  The reasons why the FarStar doesn't immediately fall back and call for reinforcements after learning the Moff has Star Destroyers are non-existent.

In fact, there's very little explanation as to what the FarStar is supposed to do once they find the Moff.  There's talk about them calling for reinforcements, but it takes months for the FarStar to get to its destination, and yet they expect reinforcements to arrive almost instantly?  Admittedly part of the time involved is because they have to find star charts along the way, but it would still be a lengthy trip for anyone following them, especially due to the navigational difficulties mentioned earlier.

The final book in the series includes some designers' notes that shed some light on how these problems likely came about.  A lot of the adventures in the series were written on a very short schedule that would have left little time for review of the finished work before publication, let alone any playtesting.  Also, external factors sometimes altered the original intent, such as when the choice to use cover artwork that included a Star Destroyer forced the last minute inclusion of a Star Destroyer into an adventure that hadn't previously included one.

Overall, the DarkStryder Campaign is worth mining for inspiration, but appears to have been created with little regard to how gaming groups actually operate at the table.  Something that may have been excusable had it been written back in 1985, but which designers in 1995 and 1996 should have been better able to take into account.

Dungeon World

We had our first session of Dungeon World using the Red Book, and had a blast!  I'm not sure I was doing everything exactly right, but it worked.

My original plan was to convert over Keep on the Borderlands, boiling it down to its essential elements for the Dungeon World tri-fold adventure format, but I ran out of time.  Instead, I went with the The Bloodstone Idol from the book.  Probably for the best given that we're all new to the game, but I still hope to get back to my original idea at some point.

We had three players who played the following characters:  Marlow the good human Thief, Thelian the neutral elf Fighter, and Father Wesley the evil human Cleric.  Father Wesley had heard of Grundloch's plan to learn the secrets of the idol, and had convinced the other two to come along and help him put a stop to it.  Not because Wesley thought that Grundloch would do harm if he wasn't thwarted, but because he had grown up with Grundloch, and held a grudge over some long ago slight.  Father Wesley isn't a very nice person.

We made characters last week, so this week we got right into the adventure, which went as follows:

While standing at the entrance to the Bloodstone Caverns, the group is surprised by a lizardman hunting party exiting the caverns.  The party kills three of them while the remaining two flee back inside.  They follow to find goblins and lizardmen facing off against each other.  Grabbing the three lizardman corpses, they approach the goblins and ask for information, showing that they have helped their cause.  This parley attempt by Father Wesley achieves a partial success and the goblins say that the party must first kill more lizardmen.

Wesley and Thelian charge across the hall and attack the lizardmen, killing three of them with help from Marlow's shooting.  More lizardmen arrive as reinforcements, and the group retreats back to the goblins.  The three lizardman heads they recovered are enough to cause the goblins to answer their questions and let them pass.

In the next room they face off against yet more lizardmen, but the magic of the room prevents the use of weapons, and the group ends up moving across to the exit that the lizardmen aren't blocking.  This leads them to a hallway that eventually opens out at the top of the large cavern that contains the Bloodstone Idol.  The floor of the cavern being about a hundred feet below, the group looks for a way down.

They see the web of ropes created by the goblins and cut the ones they can reach to keep the goblins from getting close, and to drop a bunch of them to the ground.  They then use their own ropes to climb down.  Only making a partial success, Father Wesley faces the tough choice of letting himself fall part of the way, or grabbing Marlow to steady himself, likely causing her to lose her balance.  He chooses to grab Marlow, even though she had been helping him up to this point.  Marlow falls to the ground.  Thelian, having taken a separate rope, finds himself drawing near to some surviving goblins in the ropes.  He can try to climb past them while they attack him, but he instead chooses to jump and take one with him to the ground, which is not that far below.  

Marlow and Thelian find themselves once again in the middle of a battle between goblins and lizardmen.  As Wesley joins them a cloud of noxious gas rolls towards the party.  They manage to flee from it, but are split up with Marlow and Thelian on one side and Wesley on the other.  Marlow spots a hidden door and leads Thelian to it.

Wesley attempts to cross the battlefield in the middle of a major attack by the goblins on the lizardmen positions.  He finds himself in a trench with some goblins whom he helps fight some counter-attacking lizardmen until only he and a wounded lizardman remain.  He parlays with the lizardman, converting him to his faith, at least temporarily.  Wesley worships a god of healing and restoration, but one that also values suffering and sacrifice.  Guess which elements Wesley emphasizes?  The lizardman and Wesley part ways, and Wesley meets back up with the rest of the party.

The party ends the session by entering the hidden room and making camp.

For those unfamiliar with Dungeon World, it takes the system from Apocalypse World and changes it so that it can be used to recreate the classic dungeon crawl feel.  It's a very narrative system that builds off a set of principles and moves.  The gamemaster never rolls dice in Dungeon World.  The players roll dice when they make a move, and how well or poorly they roll helps define what kind of move the GM can make in response.

For example, in the above adventure, the lizardmen being reinforced was a monster move I made in response to a poor roll by the Thief when she attempted a Volley move to shoot the lizardmen.  I could have just done damage to the Thief as a move, but that wasn't as interesting, or really appropriate since she wasn't in melee.

The system of alternating moves between players and GMs seems very structured when reading it, but in play it cam across a lot more smoothly and naturally than I feared it would.  Most moves came without my really thinking about them, and the moves list became a crutch to fall back on rather than the straightjacket I feared it might be.

For those already familiar with the system, here's some more detail on how the mechanics worked out.  The most common move used by the players was Hack and Slash (and Volley), followed by Defy Danger.  Defend, Parley, and Discern Realities were used a few times each.  Spout Lore and Aid were used a couple times each.  I never had them Make A Saving Throw, although I probably should have a couple of times.

The Fighter used Bend Bars Lift Gates to cut the ropes the goblins were using.  The Cleric cast many spells, often drawing attention to himself with partial successes.  The Thief never used any special moves, but did use a stolen item to help another to gain XP (the rope she used to help them climb down with was stolen).  I should probably work on giving that player some opportunities to use more of her special moves next time, and/or make sure she knows to look for those opportunities.

I think I did a good job on two of the three agendas, I filled the characters' lives with adventure, and I played to find out what happened, but I probably could have made the world a little more fantastic.  I think I did OK on making things fantastic, but only by drawing on what was in the adventure already.

I was a bit more hit and miss on the principles, but the thing that needs the most work is addressing the characters and not the players.  This is something I've been trying to do in other games as well, but I keep slipping up.

Everyone seemed very interested in continuing this adventure next week, especially since they all got enough experience this week to go up to second level!

Trail of Cthulhu: First Adventure

We wrapped up our first Armitage Files adventure last night, and I think the game is going well so far, with a few hiccups.  The investigative style of game is a bit different from the largely action based games that we've been playing lately, and I think there may be a little adjustment going on with the players, but most of the feedback I've been getting has been positive.

I'm still getting used to running the point based mechanics of the system.  It feels as if I'm not giving them enough opportunities to spend points, but that may just be me.  It's not something they've brought up, so it may not be a problem.

The more I play with how the investigative skills work, the more I realize how effective a tool they can be to keep players on track.  Core clues, the ones the players have to have to solve the mystery, don't require point spends to get.  Clues that aren't key to solving the mystery do require point spends.  This means that if a player is chasing down a lead and they don't get any information without spending points, then they know that they're off on a tangent.

I'm fine with this, because I sometimes get frustrated when players are off chasing down inconsequential stuff at the expense of the main plot, but I don't want them to feel as if the point spend system is railroading them towards the inevitable outcome of the investigation.  In the long run, I think their attitude towards this mechanic is what is going to determine the viability of a campaign using this system.  As long as they don't feel railroaded by it, then it should hold up.  So far, the players haven't expressed any concerns over this, but it's something I'm keeping an eye on.

If anything, they seem to want me to provide more immediate direction when they try to decide what to do next, rather than letting them spend too much time going over what they know and trying to pick a next course of action.  I'm going to continue to work on the balance between letting them control the direction of the investigation and keeping the story moving.

If you are curious about how the adventure itself played out, you can check out the Adventure Log for the campaign on Obsidian Portal.

Now that the first adventure is over, we're going to take a short break to try out Dungeon World before continuing with the Armitage Files.

Less Magpie in Magpie Night

This past Monday marked the beginning of a turning point for our Magpie Night RPG sessions.  The night was originally designed to try out a variety of game systems using one or two shot adventures.  We did that for a while bi-weekly, then added a Pathfinder Kingmaker campaign on the off weeks.

This was working quite well for some time, but lately things have changed.  First, we lost one of our founding members when she moved away, and the Kingmaker campaign has been dragging a bit since then.  With another of our players now taking a (hopefully) temporary leave of absence, I made the decision to put Kingmaker on hiatus.

Meanwhile, I have been getting some push-back on the core Magpie concept of bouncing from system to system fairly rapidly.  A couple of the players are either frustrated at constantly having to come up with character ideas, or else have a desire to explore their character concepts more deeply than a single adventure allowed for.

Also, I want to explore some games that require more than a single adventure to get into, so while I do want to still do some more one-shot adventures in the future, I am abandoning them for now and doing short campaigns instead.

With this in mind I created a spreadsheet of all the games I am willing to run, along with ratings as to how great my desire to run them is, my preparedness in terms of understanding the rules, and some other factors.  At the top of that list is Ashen Stars, but Trail of Cthulhu is right below it, and two of my three current players are more interested in it than in Ashen Stars.

Thus, we have started a Trail of Cthulhu campaign, while possibly doing some Ashen Stars adventures whenever I need a break from running Trail of Cthulhu.  Since they are both based on the Gumshoe system, there shouldn't be much difficulty in switching between games.  More on this in my next post.

I'm a little sad to see the format change, but we got through a lot of games over the past year or so, which has been a lot of fun, and which I think really helped some of my skills when it comes to roleplaying.  I'm now looking forward to running some longer games.

Mouse Guard RPG Unboxing

I've had a few people asking about the Mouse Guard RPG Boxed Set, so this post is going to be something I can point people to when they ask. It's been a while since I read or played Mouse Guard, so this is going to be mostly an evaluation of the physical components.

To start with, the box itself is nice. Solid, with nice artwork. Inside is a clear plastic insert to keep the contents from bouncing around too much. Roughly from top to bottom, I'll now go through those contents.

First are the dice. Ten solid six sided dice with engraved symbols, black on off-white. Three sides have a snake eating its tail for the cowards, two sides with crossed daggers for the regular successes, and one side with the Black Axe for the "6" side that can be exploded using fate points. While certainly not necessary, these look very nice.

There are five "mouse pawns" in different colors. These are oversized soft plastic chess pawns with mouse heads on top them. They resemble the pawns Gwendolyn uses in the comic to mark Guard patrols on the map. They don't really have any game function, but could make for a nice prop.

Next up are the cards. Three Action Decks, one deck of Conditions, and one of Weapons. Every card has an illustration and rules summary. The Action Decks have three each of the four different actions. The Conditions Deck has three each of the different conditions. The Weapons Deck has two each of ten different weapons, and one card for the mace introduced in the New Rules New Missions booklet. These cards seem to be the most useful things in the box, and I can see them coming in very handy when playing the game, especially with people new to the game.

Next is the rulebook. This is a softcover version of the rules, but otherwise identical to the hardcover book available separately.

Next is the "New Rules New Missions" booklet. The new rules introduce a variety of specialized "weapons" (really tactics and gear in most cases) for different types of activities, from giving speeches to fighting larger animals. There's also three new towns, a Combat Matrix revised for clarity, and rules for using mounts.

The bulk of the booklet is taken up with three new missions, each with new character templates. I've deliberately not looked too closely at these, but they are comparable in length to the sample missions in the rulebook.

The end of the booklet consists of a description of the other components which can be found in the boxed set. One thing I noticed here is that it mentions the presence of "other cards" beyond the decks I mentioned above, specifically cards with conflict disposition, conflict skills/action, and action mechanics on them. I can find no such cards in the box, and they aren't mentioned on the back of the box. I don't know if they're missing from my box or simply were dropped from production, but I suspect the latter given that they aren't mentioned on the box.

Next up are two pads of sheets. One pad of character sheets, and one of GM sheets. The former are what you'd expect from a character sheet. The latter has one side for summarizing the player characters, and the other is a rules summary.

Below the pads is a 3 panel cardstock GM's screen. It looks like it contains useful information, but I'd have to use it in play before I could fully evaluate whether it's well designed or not. The outer side consists of two panels of artwork, and one of information for the players, which is nice.

Finally, there's a map of the Mouse Territories in 1150. This is the same map found on the inside covers of the hardback rules, but with a little more color.

Overall, this is a nice set. Should you get it if you already own the rules? That's a tough call. If you're only interested in "crunch" then $70 is an awful lot for 44 pages of new rules and missions. It becomes a better deal if you're also interested in the play aids, like the cards and GM screen. If you were considering getting a second copy of the rules anyway, just to make things easier at the table, then definitely consider getting this set instead.

If you don't already own the rules, then I'd find this set an easier recommendation. You're still paying $35 above the cost of the hardcover for all the extras, but they are nice extras, and should make playing the game easier.

Diana Jones Award 2011

I still haven't gotten around to doing my own analysis of what would make for a good gaming award, but I almost don't have to, because I can point to the Diana Jones Award.

Instead of being a popularity contest, the Diana Jones Award is chosen by a panel of professionals. As a result, both the list of nominations and the final winner are consistently deserving of the attention given, and this year is no exception.

The nominees were:

Catacombs, a board game

The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game

Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space, a board game

Fiasco, a roleplaying game

Freemarket, a roleplaying game

These were all worthy nominations. I've played the three RPGs, and am familiar with the board games by reputation. While not all the nominees are my personal favorites, I can easily recognize the merits of them all.

The winner was Fiasco, and I think this was well deserved. It's been one of the most successful games I've played in terms of providing a consistently fun experience.

Congratulations to Jason Morningstar!

Technoir 1.0

Technoir looks very interesting. This cyberpunk roleplaying game by Jeremy Keller is one of the projects I chose to back on Kickstarter, largely due to my like of his earlier game Chronica Feudalis. The book has yet to go to press, but Jeremy recently made the pdf available to the backers of the Kickstarter project and put it up for sale online.

While I don't normally read entire rulebooks in pdf form, I made an exception for Technoir. There were two reasons for this. The first is that, when reading a pdf, books laid out in a digest format are easier for me to read than those laid out in the more standard 8.5x11 size. As long as the font isn't too small I can read it on my Kindle, and if I'm at the computer I can read it two-up on the screen, just like I would if I had the print book in hand.

The second reason that I read the whole book in pdf form is that it's a very interesting read. The most interesting part is the combination of Transmissions and plot maps. A transmission is a setting outline that consists of a very brief description of the technology, environment and society of the setting followed by six each of contacts, events, factions, locations, objects, and threats. Astute gamers will note that six each of six different items makes for an array of items that can be randomly selected by rolling 2d6, and that's exactly what the GM does to generate a plot.

As the players create their characters, the GM randomly rolls for three items to make up the starting plot map. They then associate the three items to each other, noting the reasons for the connections. Meanwhile, the players will reach a point where they give their characters connections. They then have the ability to call on those connections for favors prior to the start of the game. If they do so, those connections are added to the plot map. By the time all of this is done, the GM should have a starting situation for the players to find themselves in just as soon as they've finished their characters, or shortly thereafter.

As play progresses, the plot map will grow as either the players bring in elements through their actions, or the GM adds additional elements to keep the story going, either rolling to bring in new ones, or choosing appropriate ones as the situation warrants. Eventually, the GM may even bring in elements from an entirely different Transmission if the story moves beyond the bounds of the beginning one.

I'm so interested in this concept that I started building my own Transmission even before I finished reading the rules. I'm not sure yet whether I'll try using it when running the game for our group, but it's certainly a possibility.

The rest of the game is interesting as well, but is going to take some getting used to. It's all about applying "adjectives" to other characters. In the case of mooks you can apply the adjectives of "unconscious" or even "dead", but that's not allowed when it comes to more important characters, which looks like it might takes some getting used to.

Normally conflict scenes in RPGs have a well-defined end-point: when one side runs out of hit points the conflict is over. This applies even in many newer games which feature social conflict, as they often feature what is essentially a pool of social hit-points. Since this doesn't happen in Technoir, it's going to be up to the GM and players to decide when conflicts end.

Players are going to have to decide for themselves when to give up since they can't just keep going until they run out of hit points. If their character gets "bloody" in pursuit of a goal they have to decide if it's still worth it. Mechanically they can continue on, but does it make sense in terms of story if the character doesn't value the goal that much?

GMs need to make the same decisions for the major NPCs. The following questions have to be asked during conflicts:

• What are my character's goals for this conflict?
• Have those goals been met?
• Is it still worth pursuing those goals in light of the damage taken?

Of course, it is still possible for characters to die as a result of conflict, it just won't happen until the conflict is over. At that point characters roll a d6 for every physical injury adjective they've taken. One "6" means they are dying, and two means they are dead. This means that a determined character can continue to pursue their goal no matter what damage they take, but in the end could find they've expended everything they had to do so.

In this game though, dead doesn't necessarily mean dead dead. A "dead" character can still be saved, but if the attempt fails, then the character is permanently dead.

The basic mechanics of the game interest me as well. It uses three types of d6: action dice, push dice and hurt dice. When you perform an action you take a number of action dice equal to the value of the "verb" that you are using (verbs being stats), plus you can add a push die for every adjective you have that helps you, as long as you have enough push dice in your pool, and finally you add one hurt dice for every adjective you have that hurts you.

When you roll the dice any dice that match a hurt die are removed. You then look at the highest value of what's left. If there are more than one of the highest value then that value X becomes X.1. You compare the value to the target number, and if it's higher the action succeeds, and an adjective is applied to the target. The target number is the value of one of the target's verbs which the target can raise by using their own push dice.

Any adjectives applied this way are "fleeting" and are easy to remove. If the player or GM wants to make an adjective last longer, then they must spend push dice to do so. One die makes the adjective "sticky" and two makes it "locked". These dice are then given to the controller of the character affected.

This last bit adds in a nice pacing element to the game in that players start out with all the push dice. The GM can't do anything permanent to the players until they start doing serious stuff to the NPCs. This should allow for the game to accelerate at a pace influenced by the players.

Overall, I'm looking forward to getting this game to the table, and hope to follow up with my observations after we've done so.

My Take on the Origins Awards

If you won an award at Origins 2011, then you should probably just move along, because I'm likely going to offend you and that's not my intention. This is meant as a criticism of the awards themselves and not those that won them.

I don't think there was a bad product among the winners, I just think that many either weren't the best, or weren't properly classified.

It's been about three weeks now, and I've had some time to digest the results of the 2011 Origins Awards. Listening to episode 215 of the Dice Tower helped both confirm and solidify my initial impressions: the Origins Awards are a joke.

I don't want to minimize the accomplishments of some of the winners, particularly the folks at Evil Hat for their wins with the Dresden Files RPG, but in most cases the best of those nominated did not win, and in several cases it was the worst that did.

Let's look at the winners, starting with the single most egregious in my mind: Best Historical Board Game. The winner of that category was Catan Histories: Settlers of America Trails to Rails. This game shouldn't have even been nominated to this category. Just because a game has a lightly pasted on historical theme does not make it a historical game.

Moving on, we see Zombie Dice winning the best Family, Children's, or Party game. First, the category itself has issues. A family game is different from a children's game which is different from a party game. Mashing them all together makes little sense. I suppose they are going for best "casual" game, but they need to rethink the definitions of the board game categories if that's what they are going for.

Zombie Dice is not a terrible game, but every other nominee in the category is better. If you tell someone "you can only have X number of games for the rest of your life" no one is going to choose Zombie Dice. At least a couple of its competitors in the category could conceivably end up on such a list.

The same could be said of the winner of the Best Traditional Card Game category. Back to the Future is not a game I've played, but it's pretty obvious that the only reason it won was due to the theme. I've not actually played any of the games in the category, but I've heard really good things about some of them. I've heard no one praising Back to the Future in a similar manner.

For Best Board Game, the apparent top tier of the board game categories, at least the winner is a good game. Unfortunately it's also the weakest of the nominees. Every game in the category is better, but Castle Ravenloft apparently wins because it's Dungeons & Dragons.

Moving on now to roleplaying. While I think Dresden Files is a great game, and a serious contender for best roleplaying game, I would have chosen Fiasco. Everyone I know who has tried it has made it one of their go-to games. It's simple and innovative, and consistently produces good gaming sessions.

Best Roleplaying supplement is a close one. Having run both Dresden Files and Pathfinder games I have found the Advanced Players Guide more generally useful than Our World, but am willing to admit this is probably the most subjective call out of a lot of subjective calls in this article. As such, this is the one category where I don't really have an issue with the winner.

Moving on once more, we come to Best Hobby Game Accessory. Our nominees include such wonderful choices as Color Primer: Dragon Red... really? People couldn't find better nominees for this category than a color of paint? At least it didn't win, but the winner was almost as bad: a Cthulhu dice bag. A dice bag won the Best Hobby Game Accessory. I guess the Crown Royal bag wasn't eligible. Unless the bag actually opens into an extradimensional space, I think a better candidate could have been found. In fact, I have one, actually an entire category: everything else nominated was a better choice, except maybe the paint.

Most of the problem here is the over-broadness of the category. Everything else was specific to miniatures painters or players of a specific game, whereas the dice bag is more generic. Never mind that it doesn't even look very practical: it's cute and has broader appeal, so it wins.

I would have given Best Gaming Publication to Hamlet's Hit Points, but I haven't read Shadowrun: Spells and Chrome, so I can't say it didn't deserve to win. I can say that a category that includes both gaming fiction and non-fiction is a poorly designed category.

Best Miniature Rules: Heroclix won this. I know a lot of people like Heroclix, but were the rules included in the Blackest Night Starter Kit significantly different enough from previous editions to warrant inclusion in this category? Also, a BattleTech technical readout counts as rules? This category needs to be tightened up.

I can't really comment on the Best Play by Mail or Play by Email game, except to point out that the very existence of this category really calls into question the thinking process of those behind these awards. It's 2011, you have ten categories to cover products in a vastly diverse hobby, and you dedicate one of them to Play by Mail games.

I do have to give them credit for the Hall of Fame entries, which was the one area of the awards that I could agree with 100%. Although, paired with the Play by Mail category, I think this just goes to show that the Origins Awards has a much better grasp of the past of gaming than it has of the present.

Of course, anyone can whine about the poor quality of gaming awards, but what would make for a more useful system? I have some ideas, but I'll save them for a later post.

My Changing Preferences in Gaming

I'm going to muse a bit about how my hobby time has changed over the past few years. I'm not sure how interesting this is going to be to anyone else, but it was interesting to me, so here it is.

A while ago I discussed why I'm not playing many miniatures games anymore, and mentioned that my current "preference hierarchy" when it comes to games has changed. It used to be that miniatures games were near the top of my hierarchy, but they're now below board games and RPGs. I thought I'd go over some of the reasons why that's the case.

One reason is prep time. Miniatures games suck up time outside of actually playing the game. Assembling and painting models take me forever. RPGs also take a certain amount of prep time, especially when running them, which is one reason they're behind board games which take minimal prep time, but it's minimal when compared to miniatures games, at least for me.

Prep time wasn't really a factor when I was single. In fact, it was a bit of a bonus as if I didn't have anything to do I could work on miniatures. At this point in my life there's rarely a time where I "don't have anything to do," even though I technically have more "free time" right now then at many points earlier in my life.

Another reason is community. There's a couple factors involved here, and I want to start off by saying I don't mean to offend anyone in the local gaming community. They're mostly a great bunch of people, and I know at least a couple of them read the blog. The thing is that they're not the community I'm used to.

I first got talked into playing Warhammer Fantasy and 40K by a couple of my best friends from college. We had played RPGs and Battletech back then, and when years later I moved out to California they roped me into playing Fantasy and later I roped them into playing 40K. Our games were infrequent, but when we had them I was always playing with at least one guy I'd known for years. The games had their share of trash talk, but overall it was an extremely casual environment.

After the Warhammer group ceased being able to get together, I got into Flames of War mainly just to try painting the models. It was only later that I got the chance to play it. The guys I played it with weren't guys I'd known for years, but they were still very casual in their play.

When I say casual, I mean that we had no interest in tournaments. We played to win, but we didn't spend hours trying to put together the ultimate list. We played with armies we thought would be fun to play with. Although they were largely strangers when we first started playing, I count some of those guys among my best friends now.

The community here is different. Even though some complain about the lack of turnout at tournaments, it's actually incredibly tournament focused. The vast majority of the players around here play in tournaments. A higher percentage than I've seen anywhere else I've played (which admittedly hasn't been that many places).

I've never been interested in tournaments, and even if I was I couldn't do them because of my schedule. That leaves me with a community that I don't really fit into all that well.

Without an active community, there's a lot less incentive to keep up the level of work it takes to stay involved with a miniatures game.

The final reason is money. This isn't a huge reason for me. I still spend a lot of money on hobbies, just not on miniatures. Still, it is a factor. When I was single, if I wanted to spend a little extra on miniatures I could choose to not go out to eat for a while. For some reason my wife doesn't seem pleased when I tell her we're not going out to eat tonight because I bought some miniatures earlier in the week...

So, that's why miniatures have fallen back behind RPGs and board games. They have less prep time, I have a small but active community that plays them, and they cost less money (for the most part).

RPG Musings: Power Level

At the heart of most, if not all, RPGs is the power level of beginning characters. For example, early editions of D&D all assumed that level 1 characters, while better than the average peasant, were pretty weak compared to the world around them. Other games, like Traveller, assumed that characters were generally experienced and competent in their fields. They might not be movers and shakers in their world, but they could hold their own in their chosen fields of endeavor. Yet other games, like Amber, assume that characters are some of the most powerful beings in their world or universe.

My past preference as a GM has been for systems that start players off as relative neophytes and allow them to grow into competent and powerful characters. This kind of game, in theory, allows for the most character development over the course of a game. In practice, I've come to realize that systems that allow characters to at least begin the game as competent, if not downright powerful, seem to lead to the most player satisfaction.

There are a few reasons for this, some of which are probably obvious, but some of which might not be. The first is the instant gratification factor. If players start out with characters that are already heroes, they get to do heroic things from the beginning. Otherwise, they have to "level up" first doing relatively menial tasks.

Now, in an extended campaign it can be argued that the players will get more satisfaction out of becoming a hero than they will out of starting as one. The problem here is that if the players don't get something up front there's likely to never be an extended campaign, as the players lose interest and drop out.

That's not to say that a game where players start out as peons can't work, but I think it's better to have such games as the exceptions rather than the rule. An experienced group that's used to playing together, and that knows what they are getting in to, can have a good time playing a campaign that focuses on the characters becoming heroes. Most other groups are probably better off starting with the characters being heroes from the beginning.

Going back and looking at my past experiences, I think this was a reason that my Shadowrun campaign was the most successful one that I ran back in college. Unlike pretty much any other game I ran back then, Shadowrun characters started out as competent characters. There was room for growth (and it was too much of that growth that eventually helped derail the campaign, but that's another story), but from the very beginning the characters were capable of holding their own against decent opponents.

Giving the players what they want is an important part of RPG design, both at the level of the game designer, and the level of the GM. The starting power level is a big part of that.

BattleTech

BattleTech was the first miniatures game I ever played, although I didn't realize it at the time. BattleTech is one of those rare hybrids between miniatures and board games (and at times even RPGs), and I always thought of it as more of a board game, even when I was using miniatures to play it.

The thing about BattleTech is that while it's a decent game, it was never the game itself that really attracted me to it, it was the background. The background of the Succession Wars that pitfive houses in a free for all fight to claim control over humanity had a level of realism and detail that the actual game seemed to sometimes lack, at least for a young history and politics nut.

I was hooked on the universe from the time I first bought the game (I think probably around 1986) right up until the appearance of the Clans in 1990. The appearance of the Clans (which I was not a fan of at the time), combined with my eventual graduation from college, led me to abandon BattleTech for a period of over 15 years, but then Catalyst Games took over.

I was impressed by the production value they put into the new starter box in 2006, although not enough to actually buy it at the time. I was equally impressed by the introduction of the Sword and Dragon Starterbook that went back to the roots of the game by bringing McKinnon's Raiders and Sorenson's Sabres back into the lore of BattleTech. These were units covered in two of the original three sourcebooks for the game, and personal favorites of mine.

This is all a long-winded lead-in to how I've been totally diving into the current line of products being put out by Catalyst Games. Their take on the rules has been impressive. The core system is the same as it was back in the eighties, but with more polish. The first book, Total Warfare, was originally published by Fanpro and contains the core rules for 'mechs, aerospace, vehicles, and the various forms of infantry available in the BattleTech universe. This book is designed as a reference manual, not a tutorial. It says right on the back cover to get the starter box if you're new to the game. This let them put out a solid reference manual that contains just the core, 'tournament legal', rules.

The second volume in the series of rulebooks is the TechManual. This book is slightly larger than Total Warfare, and is all about constructing the units that have rules in Total Warfare. This book is a gearheads dream. Battletech has always had solid unit construction rules, and this tradition continues with the TechManual. Together with Total Warfare this book makes up the core rules of the system. Everything else is advanced/optional rules.

There are three volumes in the advanced rules series, two of which have been released. The first is Tactical Operations, which covers advanced optional rules for ground combat. There are a lot of good ideas here presented in a modular format so that you can just add in what you want to, without having to take the whole batch.

The second is Strategic Operations, which does for aerospace combat what Tactical Operations did for ground combat. It also does a few other things. It introduces repair and salvage rules for use in multi-battle campaigns. It also provides the BattleForce rules for fighting larger conflicts where each unit is roughly four to five times the size of a unit in standard BattleTech. Finally, it provides rules for playing BattleTech without the hex grid, turning it into a more typical miniatures game.

The third volume, yet to be released, is Interstellar Operations. This is proposed to include rules for all the other scales above Strategic Operations, up to complete interstellar wars.

There's one more hardcover volume: A Time of War. This is the BattleTech RPG. As an RPG its mechanics are rather dated, but it does expand the coverage of scale in the BattleTech universe down to man-to-man combat. It also provides additional options for players who want to play a BattleTech campaign that tracks the development of their MechWarriors.

I was pleased to see that some of the advanced abilities available to MechWarrior characters allow them to duplicate feats performed in the BattleTech fiction that otherwise aren't modeled in the rules. This was always a big issue for me back when we were playing in college.

Finally, since I first rediscovered the line, Catalyst has put out a new version of the starter box that is an improvement over the old one. It includes enough cheap plastic miniatures to get you playing out of the box, as well as a couple of better quality plastic kits. It also includes the core rules you need to play along with a couple of mounted maps to play on.

While I will probably never get back into this game in the way I once was, it's nice to see that it now exists in a form that more or less like what I always wanted. Now I just need to invent a time machine and send it back to my college self.

RPG Game Mechanics That Seemed Like A Good Idea at the Time

Sometimes a game will introduce a mechanic that I really like at first, but that later I find to be flawed in practice. I'm going to discuss two of these mechanics. The first is the concept of character flaws that give the character build points at character generation, but are purely negatives for the rest of the game. The second is the concept of experience in the form of a resource that you can choose to either spend in game to give you a bonus, or spend between games to improve your character, but not both.

When I was first introduced to the concept of advantages and disadvantages they seemed like a great idea. Take a flaw for your character and get points to improve their strengths. The problem is that this method practically requires min-maxing your character, trying to get flaws that will never actually affect you in game in exchange for benefits that you can use often. I much prefer the newer systems where flaws continue to benefit the players during the game. Usually this is done by providing some sort of credit they can use to help themselves in the future whenever a flaw is used in the present.

This second method turns flaws into what they were originally meant to be: something that defines your character, not something to be avoided in play at all cost. It's such a big deal to me that when I run across a system that treats flaws in the old way, I might avoid it even if I'd be interested in it otherwise.

I wasn't as enthusiastic about the second concept as I was about character flaws, but people that I played with thought it was a great idea at the time, and I was OK with it at first. That concept is experience that serves a dual purpose, either being burned up during a game to provide immediate benefits or else saved up until between sessions to improve a character. There seemed to be a lot of games that experimented with this idea back when I was in college. Torg and Shadowrun were two big ones. I can only speculate as to what the designers were going for with this concept. I assume they were trying to add more interesting choices to the game.

I suppose it probably works as long as all the players are spending their experience (XP) in a similar manner. The problems come when they don't. In my experience, some gamers will simply refuse to spend the experience in game unless it is truly a matter of life and death for their characters. If that means the mission fails, so be it. At least they get decent XP to build their characters with.

In a party where some players are willing to spend XP in game and others aren't, there will soon be an imbalance between those characters who spend all the XP they earn on character improvement and those who don't. This can eventually lead to a negative feedback loop for those who spend XP on temporary bonuses as threats designed to challenge their more capable companions can only be dealt with by spending even more XP on temporary bonuses.

Like character flaws with no in-game benefit, this is another one of those mechanics that causes me to reconsider playing a game that includes it, even if it's an otherwise interesting game.

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who prefers these mechanics and their reasons for doing so. Perhaps I've missed some advantage that they have.

The Majestic Wilderlands

The Majestic Wilderlands by Robert S. Conley is a supplement compatible with Swords & Wizardry. Swords & Wizardry is a set of rules based on the original Dungeons & Dragons (or as they say on the products for copyright reasons: "the original 1974 roleplaying game").

I'm going to mix things up a bit from my usual review format and describe the good bits first. There's a lot in this book. It's digest size and only 140 pages, but packs a lot into that format. Well over a dozen new character classes, including several types of rogues. Over a dozen races, including the ones from basic S&W, but with changes for the setting. Several other crunchy bits including a basic skill system, NPC classes, optional combat rules, and magic rituals. This all takes up a little less than two thirds of the book, and includes a lot of background detail concerning the setting, but not in a way that interferes with referencing the crunch.

The rest of the book is pure background for the setting of the Majestic Wilderlands. This setting is a take on the setting developed around the City State of the Invincible Overlord created by the Judges Guild over 30 years ago. There's a general geographical overview of the world as well as descriptions of the major cultures and religions. There's nothing terribly innovative about the world, but it's not meant to be. It's meant to provide a standard fantasy RPG setting, and does a pretty good job of doing just that with a rather interesting mix of Tolkien and Howard.

Now for the bad. The only major complaint I had with the crunch is that the skill system seems a bit harsh. For example, per the rules, the average character using Athletics is going to fail to clear a 2' obstacle 75% of the time. An unencumbered first level fighter with a strength bonus is still going to fail over half his tries to clear that same 2' obstacle. it's easy enough to adjust this by adjusting the base target number, but I felt it was worth mentioning.

A bigger issue for me is that the book is a case study for not relying on a spell-checker to do your editing. There are countless instances of poorly constructed sentences and incorrect words throughout the text. It doesn't make the book unreadable, and it's understandable from what is essentially a one man show, but it's unfortunate.

It should have only taken a single read through to fix a lot of this, and there are three people credited as editors on the book, so I have to wonder if maybe the author accidentally used the wrong draft when creating the PDF. The product is purely PDF and print on demand, so I would hope that the author will some day make a corrected edition available.

Even with these issues, I'd highly recommend it to anyone running a Swords & Wizardry game as it should provide a great deal of solid inspiration for tweaking the rules to fit your campaign.

Freeport

Take one part Lankhmar, one part Sanctuary, and one part Port Royal, mix in some Dungeons & Dragons and season with some Cthulhu Mythos and you end up with Freeport. I'm a relative newcomer to Freeport, a setting originally created for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. In fact, Death In Freeport was one of only two d20 books released on the same day as the 3rd Edition Player's Handbook back in 2000 (that's according to Green Ronin, the company that publishes Freeport).

The setting developed over the years with a number of adventures and sourcebooks until the approaching 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, with the accompanying changes in licensing, caused the folks at Green Ronin to divorce the system from D&D and make it a systemless setting designed to either be used on its own or dropped into another world at the choice of the people using it.

As a result they produced The Pirate's Guide to Freeport, a system neutral setting book describing the city, and to a lesser extent its immediate surroundings as well as the overall world it exists in. Since then they have released a number of Companion books that provide rules to adapt the setting to different systems, including True 20, D&D 3.5, Savage Worlds, Castles & Crusades, Pathfinder, and D&D 4th Edition (although this last is from another publisher, apparently for legal reasons).

I have the Pathfinder Freeport Companion, but haven't really looked at it much yet, and I'm not sure I'll ever use it. I'm not really sure it's that necessary, although it does offer rules for gunpowder weapons and other things that aren't in the Pathfinder Core Rules, so it would probably be nice to have if running Freeport in Pathfinder.

The reason I don't think the Companion is all that necessary is that the setting stands on its own even without detailed stats, and should be useable in any D&D inspired game system with little work, and any Fantasy RPG with just a bit more creativity. The city is predominantly human, but has representatives of all the other standard fantasy RPG races: dwarves, elves, gnomes, and halflings as well as goblins, orcs and hobgoblins. It also has one or two unique races that could be easily statted up, or simply left out.

The fantasy elements are really well done in that they offer flavor without being so specific as to make it difficult to insert them into a different world. For example, there's Bloodsalt. Bloodsalt is the goblinoid ghetto where all the orcs, goblins and hobgoblins have been forced to relocate. There's a plot hook involving the animosity between hobgoblins and orcs, but if you don't have hobgoblins in your world it could be two rival orc tribes instead. If you don't have goblinoids at all it could be some other sort of ghetto. The point is that in most places where the setting involves racial distinctions, it should't be too difficult to tweak things if those races aren't in your world, or they behave differently. Part of what makes this easy is the very lack of system specific details.

In fact, the ease with which one element can be dropped out of the mix without messing up the rest of the picture is probably the setting's biggest strength. Everything works together, but most elements can be taken out or ignored without causing gaping holes in the logic of the rest of the setting.

The biggest problem I have is the pantheon of gods in Freeport, and it's because they took this idea of interchangeability a bit too far. At some point they decided to leave the gods unnamed. They just say "god of war" or "god of the sea" and let you fill it in with the most appropriate god from the setting you're dropping Freeport into. There are two problems with this. The first is that if you're not dropping it into a setting at all, but using the default Freeport setting, then you have to come up with names and other details on your own. The second is when the details of the pantheon for the setting you're dropping it into doesn't match up with what is needed for Freeport.

There are only four major gods worshiped in Freeport: knowledge, war, the sea, and pirates. The first problem is that out of several established fantasy pantheons I've gone through only one has a god of pirates. The second problem is related to the fact that there are at least another eleven gods mentioned in parts of the text (not counting silly gods, like the god of hinges). That's fifteen gods total. Most fantasy pantheons I'm familiar with simply don't have that many gods.

It would have been more useful if they had gone ahead and named the gods. Those gods could still be replaced with ones more appropriate to the setting you're dropping it into, while providing details for any gods that don't appear in that setting.

Still, it's a minor point in an otherwise excellent setting. I'm unlikely to ever use it as it stands in my own games, but I've already been inspired by it to create a short Burning Wheel adventure featuring pirate characters based out of a similar setting. If you like reading about original fantasy settings then you should check out The Pirate's Guide to Freeport.

Canon Tricks

Now that I've discussed my feelings on canon in RPGs, I thought I'd discuss a specific case in a bit more detail: Star Wars canon. As I mentioned before, my personal Star Wars canon is the original trilogy. One thing I'd consider doing when running a Star Wars campaign is establishing beforehand that one or all three of those movies were canon, but that nothing else was.

There are an amazing amount of things you can do when you only accept what appears on the screen as canon. For example, what if I say that only Star Wars is canon? Suddenly Vader may really have killed Anakin, and Luke and Leia might not be brother and sister

One of my earliest Star Wars RPG scenarios that I created had my players as the ones that delivered the Death Star plans to Princess Leia. This was back when West End Games had the license, and the only thing we knew officially about the Bothans was that a lot of them died. That's all that the movies tell us, and even that could have been misinformation, or misdirection. After all, in a Galactic Rebellion chances are the lines of communication aren't perfect. Mon Mothma could have been wrong about all the Bothans dying, or maybe all those Bothans died as part of a distraction to allow someone else to actually deliver the information. That someone being the PCs.

Let's go back to that first idea though, that only the first movie is canon. Now, let's rewind the timeline back to the prequels. Now we can tell stories of Anakin and Ben that are wide open. Either as a PC or NPC, the players can never be sure if Anakin is going to become Vader, or if Vader is going to kill him. We can play with Ben Kenobi as well. There's an old fan theory that predates the prequels that says that Obi-Wan Kenobi was actually OB-1 Kenobi, a clone of Ben Kenobi. This suddenly puts the fate of Ben Kenobi up for grabs. Was Obi-Wan Ben, or a clone? Play the game and find out!

These are the kinds of things that you can't do if you slavishly follow canon, and I think they're incredibly interesting stories to explore.

Canon Should Be Shot From A Cannon

I love canon. Whether it's for a game, movie, book or TV show, exploring the official canon involved in the product is usually great fun. When it comes to RPGs though, I hate it.

Rather, I hate the straitjacket it often seems to create for GMs, players and even game designers. For an example, let's take something from the Dresden Files RPG. In the entry for Harry Dresden in Our World, there's a section called "A World Without Harry?" that warns that removing Harry from the Dresdenverse would surely have led to many bad thing happening. OK, if that's the only change made, then yeah, things would suck. Why would I have that be the only thing I changed?

This seems to be a problem encountered in a lot of situations where people start talking about messing with canon. In a Star Wars game, if you talk about dropping Luke you inevitably get an argument about how then the Death Star would have blown up Yavin, wiping out the Rebellion. As if you can only make that one change, and not decide to make a number of other changes as well.

When I run an RPG in a licensed setting I prefer to play fast and loose with canon. If the canon provides an easy answer to a problem, then fine, I go with it, but if it gets in the way, then it gets tossed out. This is doubly true if canon provides insider information that the characters in the game should never have access to. If I run a Battlestar Galactica game, then the person least likely to be a Cylon is Boomer, and everything else if up for grabs as well. Maybe Kobol is still inhabited when the Galactica gets there. Maybe human looking Cylons are a myth that merely serves to generate paranoia. There are so many ways that the story could have gone that it would be a shame to just repeat the one presented in the show when playing in an RPG.

This is true for other settings as well, even when there isn't as much mystery as there is in BSG. Star Wars is a good example. For me the original trilogy is the only thing that is in my personal canon, but if I'm running a Star Wars RPG, why even stick to that? Maybe Kenobi told the truth and Vader really did kill Anakin Skywalker. Maybe the person he tells it to isn't Luke Skywalker, but Luke Starkiller, a PC who then goes off on a grand adventure that ends with the destruction of the Death Star... at the hand of the PCs!

There are two impediments to disregarding canon like this: game designers and players. The lesser of the two are the game designers. Most licensed games seem to assume that you are going to stick to the canon. Rarely do they offer any sort of discussion as to how to deviate from canon, and if they do it's minimal. My discussion of the Dresden Files above is an example of this. It can be argued that if you buy a game with a license then people will want to play in that world, but this ignores the fact that most properties worth licensing offer rich settings where a single different choice could have produced a completely different, yet just as compelling, story than what was presented in the original property.

I think one of the better licensed games in this regard that I've seen lately is DC Adventures. They made one very important decision that I think makes a huge difference: they decided to present the characters as iconic representations rather than current canon. So, the Aquaman you find in the book is a clean shaven man with two normal hands in a yellow and green costume, because that's the iconic image of Aquaman. There's a sidebar discussing a couple of the more modern alternate versions if that's what you want to use, but the iconic version is the default. This makes the DC Universe as presented in the RPG into less of a straitjacket and more of a toolkit for creating the GM's own version of the DC Universe.

The bigger impediment is the players. If you have players that are knowledgeable about the canon, then they often expect it to be canon in the game. I'm willing to work with my players on this. If there are elements of canon that the players are particularly fond of and want to be in a game they play in, then I'll work with them to keep those bits in. If the players in a game of BSG really want to serve aboard the Galactica under Adama, then I'll try to structure my game to include those bits of canon, but those might be the only bits that I keep.

Even if the players want to play with a majority of the established canon that they know and love, I will still refuse to stick to it completely. It's too limiting to have to stick to the canon, and both in terms of options within the game, and in terms of how much work it can take to keep everything straight when there's a large body of canon to deal with.

Of course, there's one thing that will always be canon in any Star Wars game I run: if there's a Han Solo in the universe, then he shot first.

The Nature of Self in Science Fiction Roleplaying

This is going to be an incredibly nerdy discussion of some deep philosophical issues... as they relate to gaming. Specifically, what exactly defines a unique individual as opposed to a copy of an individual, when examining consciousness and soul.

The reason I'm thinking of this is because of a reaction one of my friends had when I described the problem I had with trans-humanism as presented in the Eclipse Phase RPG. He pointed out that the idea of moving a consciousness from one body to another in Eclipse Phase was essentially the same as reincarnation in a fantasy world, and that I had no problems with that concept.

At the time, I wasn't fully able to explain why I felt there was a difference (especially since I'd never realized the contradiction before), but I think I can now. In the typical fantasy world the existence of a soul is not a matter of theological debate, it's provable fact. Not only do people have souls, but they form the core of individuality, and when you take a soul from one body and put it into another, the "self" is obviously attached to the soul and not the body. Characters in such a world can prove this by actually communicating with, or even visiting, the afterlife.

Leaving aside my personal religious beliefs, the idea of a personal soul that forms the core of "self" is NOT a given in a science fiction setting, and even if there is a soul, there's no way of showing that it remains attached to a copied consciousness. Basically, I have the same misgivings expressed by Dr. McCoy in Star Trek when it comes to transporters. If it basically destroys the body in one location and then creates a duplicate in the other, is it really the same person? Didn't the original person actually die while a completely new, yet identical, person came into existence on the other end?

This seems especially problematical when it's possible to make more than one copy of a person. If there's a soul in that case, what happens to it? Does it multiply? Is it divided? Does it only go with one copy while any others remain "souless" (there's an idea for a sci-fi/horror story, if it hasn't already been done)?

This all assumes there's a soul. If there is no soul then it presents a different set of problems. If atheists are right, and our consciousness simply comes to an end when we die, then wouldn't a consciousness "wiped" from a body after being copied into another body simply cease to be? Isn't the copy simply a new consciousness that thinks it had those prior experiences? Has not the original "self" perished?

These are the kinds of issues that bother me about transferring consciousness when applied to science fiction instead of fantasy. I haven't even gone into some of the other tricky areas, like "backup" consciousnesses that are used when the original is lost completely (a common concept in Eclipse Phase).

I thought there might be a way around this using the concept that the body completely replaces the cells within it several times over the average person's lifetime, only that's not entirely true. A big exception is neurons, which you get when you're born, and never get replaced. If our consciousness essentially resides in those neurons, then that actually supports my misgivings rather than providing a way out from them.

So, why does this cause me problems when gaming? After all, I'm not really trying to transfer my own consciousness. The problem is that I nearly always identify somehow with the characters I play. Even if I'm playing a bad guy, I can usually link some darker part of my self to the character and magnify it in order to get that identification. I can play a character that I have no identification with, but it isn't as fun. I can't identify with characters from Eclipse Phase because one of the core concepts of the game is something that I could never accept personally. Voluntarily transferring bodies without physically transferring the brain would be equivalent to suicide in my mind.

I'm curious to know if anyone else thinks along these lines, or if I'm alone in my being uncomfortable with this concept. I'm also curious to know if anyone thinks I've missed some obvious logical alternative to the conclusions I've come to regarding all of this.

Third Time's the Charm

HeroQuest has had a bit of a rocky history. The name goes back to 1979 when it was first mentioned as an upcoming product in the original RuneQuest rules. That product never came out, and ten years later the name was taken by Milton Bradley for the board game they published in cooperation with Games Workshop. Another decade passed and a set of RPG rules was created that the designers finally felt was worthy of the HeroQuest name. Unfortunately, Hasbro still held the rights to the name having bought out Milton Bradley, so they called it Hero Wars instead. Finally, when the second edition came out a few years later, Hasbro had let the rights to the name lapse, so it was snatched up and the first HeroQuest RPG was published (although it was actually the second edition of the game).

HeroQuest and I have also had a rocky history. I have never read the Hero Wars book, although I do own some of the supplements for it. I have read the second edition. I read it about five years ago, before I had any experience with narrative style RPGs. I read the whole book, but really didn't "get" the system. The only reason it didn't get sold off prior to my marriage was because of the information in it about Glorantha.

In brief, Glorantha is a fantasy world that is distinctly different from most other such worlds in gaming. It is a world where magic is commonplace and where mythology accurately portrays the world around you. It's a setting that I've always had an interest in, and is the reason I became interested in HeroQuest in the first place.

Two years ago I decided to give the book a second look. Largely this was because I was starting to become more acquainted with narrative style games and remembered enough of what I'd read to recognize that HeroQuest fell into this category. Before starting in for a second read, I checked online for any errata that was out there, and I discovered that a new edition of HeroQuest had just come out. I decided not to re-read the second edition and ordered a copy of the third edition instead.

Once I had a copy of the third edition I started reading it, but only got a few pages in before giving up. This new third edition was still something I didn't quite "get" and the fact that the rules had been stripped out of the Gloranthan setting and made into a generic rules set meant that I had less interest in it.

Finally, about a month ago I decided to give the book one more try. This time I made it all the way through, and have come out rather impressed by the game. I attribute my success in making my way through the book to my better understanding of narrative games in general, specifically Fate and Burning Wheel, and to my increased familiarity with the author's "voice."

The author is Robin D. Laws, and my increased familiarity with him is due to a combination of following him on Twitter and reading Hamlet's Hit Points. There were only a few points in HeroQuest where being familiar with his voice was really helpful, but it did make it easier to get through those concepts. I wish I could give some specific examples of this, but I didn't think to take notes at the time, and can't find the specific points now.

As for Hamlet's Hit Points, you can definitely see some of the concepts from that book in the chapter on Playing Stories. He uses some different terminology, but the concepts are the same.

Mechanically, characters in HeroQuest consist solely of abilities that are defined by the player and GM. There are no fixed attributes or skill lists in the game. This was one of the concepts I used to have difficulty with, but having played Fate I now recognize them as being similar to aspects from that game. The main differences in HeroQuest are that characters consist solely of these player defined abilities, and they are given numerical ratings.

Each ability is assigned a rating from 1 to 20, but 20 is not the highest level an ability can have. Instead, when you raise an ability to 21 it wraps around and becomes a level 1 ability with one level of Mastery (the game uses a special character to show levels of Mastery, but I can't duplicate that shorthand with the character sets I have available in this blog).

Every roll in the game is an opposed roll. The GM sets a difficulty from 1 to 20 (possibly with levels of Mastery), then the player rolls against his ability while the GM rolls against the difficulty. Equal to or under the number being rolled against is a success, over it is a failure, a natural 1 is a critical success, and a natural 20 is a fumble. The two results are compared against each other which results in a range from complete victory (critical vs. fumble) to complete defeat (fumble vs. critical). Ties are resolved with the lowest roll winning a marginal victory.

Two things can alter this result, levels of Mastery and Hero Points. If one side of a contest has a greater level of Mastery than the other, then that side can shift his result a number of times equal to the difference in his levels of mastery. So if that side rolled a failure, but has one more mastery level than the other side, then they can shift the result to a success. Hero Points work the same way, with each point spent shifting the result one level. In both cases, if one side is already at critical success, then they can use additional shifts to lower the result of the opposing side.

Unfortunately, Hero Points are the one system that I really dislike in HeroQuest. The reason I dislike them is that they use one of my most hated game mechanics: combining experience points with some other form of expendable resource. I despise this mechanic, and could write a separate piece as to why (something I thought I'd already done, but as I can't find it in the archives here, I will probably write one shortly). For now I'll simply say that I don't find it to be an interesting choice as to whether or not to use experience for temporary gain within play or to hold on to it to improve the character permanently later.

I dislike this mechanic so much, that it would normally be a deal breaker for me as to whether or not I'd be willing to play a particular game that includes it, but I'm liking the rest of the system enough that I still want to run it anyway.

That's all there is to the basics of the game. The rest of the rules help clarify edge cases and special circumstances. The book finishes with a chapter on applying all of this to a game set in Glorantha, but is aimed towards those already familiar with the setting. It appears to be more of a stopgap measure until they can get further books published (there are a couple out now, but I have not yet read them).

One of the most interesting aspects of the game is character creation. Since a character consists solely of abilities, it is possible to just create a character by listing the abilities you want and then assigning points to them, but that's not the only way you can do it. The most interesting way of doing it is to write a description of your character that fills 100 words or less.

For example, if I were to create a character for a Star Wars game using HeroQuest, I might write the following:

Han Solo is a smuggler who made the Kessel run in twelve parsecs. He is always accompanied by his co-pilot, Chewbacca. He is an excellent pilot of their ship, the Millenium Falcon, which he keeps flying by jury-rigging repairs. He claims to be in it for the money, but he also has a heart of gold. He tends to shoot first when threatened, and is a crack shot with his Blastech-44. He’s also an Imperial Academy graduate, and a competent starship gunner. He owes money to Jabba the Hutt. He tends to dress like a scruffy-looking nerf herder.

Out of this I can get the following abilities:

smuggler

made the Kessel run in twelve parsecs

Chewbacca (a sidekick)

pilot

Millenium Falcon (tech)

jury-rigging

in it for the money

heart of gold

shoot first when threatened

crack shot

Blastech-44 (tech)

Imperial Academy graduate

starship gunner

Jabba the Hutt (enemy)

scruffy-looking nerf herder

Some of these abilities are obvious, like pilot or crack shot, but others may require some defining on the part of the player or GM, either before or during play.

Next I assign a value of 17 to one ability, 13 to the rest, and then assign 20 more points wherever I want to.

One of the great things about this system is that it's hard to think of a fictional character that I couldn't recreate using it, which also means that it's hard to think of a fictional genre that can't be run with a little creativity.

The simplicity of the system might make long term campaigns problematical, but certainly for short runs or one shots this should work pretty well. I'm looking forward to giving it a try.