DCC's Wizard Van

 

This is hilarious and awesome - full story here. Excellent work Goodman Games!

2020 RPG Contemplation - The Fantasy Options

 When I can I like to have two games going so beyond yesterday's Sci-Fi choices there would likely be some kind of fantasy option. There is always a D&D type game going with our group ... it's just part of the Way Things Are. 

Given that. I spent a ridiculous amount of time gong back through my options ... thinking out loud continues below ...

• 5th Edition D&D - Well sure, I have to think about this one. I was getting a little bored with it last year but simplicity has an upside too. Theros does give some nice options for that Mythic Greece game I've wanted to run for along time but I don't know... I'm just not that excited about running this system right now. Next year!

• D&D 0-4th/basic/Expert/Advanced/etc.- Lots of material sure but I kind of want to do something different, something I don't have a multi-year run in yet. I do have some old school dungeons and adventures I would like to run and it would most likely happen with Labyrinth Lord but I'm not sure this is the right moment.

• Pathfinder 2nd Edition - This is what I was planning on before the Great Shutdown. I had run several sessions and the party made it to 3rd level and liked the game so we were going to revamp the location, keep the characters, and get going for the long haul. Not getting to do that when i was all fired up about it ... well I still want to do that but as I said above I'd like to play something else first.

• Age of Sigmar RPG - This one is new and I do like the setting but I don't actually own it yet. A bit hesitant to pick it up when I have a bunch of other options I am interested in and might be shoring up with a new book or two. 

• Barebones Fantasy - I ran across this one on DTRPG, decided to look it over and really liked it. Its very similar to classic D&D at the core but it uses a percentile system for stats and a very interesting skill system - basically a D&D class is effectively a skill like "Cleric" or "Thief". There is a set of specific things each one lets you do and then some guidelines on letting players use it for other things in play as well. It hits a sweet spot for specific (as in "here's what this thing does") while still retaining tremendous flexibility so that we're not trying to look up some obscure rule about a specific ability in a specific situation that we all remember seeing but somehow cannot find in a 400 page rulebook as happens in some other games. It's been around for a few years and looks to be pretty well supported. This is a contender once I decide what I would want to do with it.

• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay - If I'm going to consider Sigmar I might as well consider the original - well 2nd Edition original anyway. I have almost all the books and have only tried to run it twice so they are very low-mileage despite my extreme like of the system. I know what I would like to run with this as well so it's a contender. 

• Forbidden Lands - it's an interesting mix of old school (hexcrawl! PC strongholds!) and new design (dice pools! narrative stuff!) that caught my attention a while back and given the opportunity to run a new campaign I went ahead and picked it up. I need to read the whole thing but it's a contender at the moment.

• Savage Worlds - This would probably be Beasts & Barbarians and it looks pretty awesome as it is very much Conan with the serial numbers very lightly filed off ... very lightly. It would be totally appropriate for a series of short adventures to kick things off again and we've been playing other Savage Worlds games for years so there is some system familiarity. I'm not sure it's the best option, but it's on the list.

• Dungeon Crawl Classics - This is the most likely solution for a kickoff. It's surprisingly fun because it always starts with a zero-level "funnel" that winnows out the weak peasants everyone starts as but turns the survivors into accomplished heroes by the end of  the adventure. So you don't need to know much mechanically to begin with because there are not a lot of mechanics for starting PCs! I've had it for years, run it once, but we didn't get to finish the whole adventure ... this time we will. Even funnier is that I absolutely loathed zero-level characters when they first showed up in AD&D. Your 1st level characters are already limited, unskilled, and die to any halfway decent hit and now you want to spend more time at this level ... and even weaker? it was a dumb idea and seemed like a tremendous waste of time. With DCC it works very differently and it works wonderfully. 

Honorable Mentions: Runequest, Middle Earth Adventures, GURPS, Fantasy Hero

So, after spending a lot of time reading through games old and new the contender list for right now is:

• DCC
• Forbidden Lands
• WFRP

More to come .. hopefully including some session reports.

Greatest Hits #14 - Which RPG has the most inspiring art?

A companion to the prior post, a little bit apart in time...

This is a little tougher because I don't usually distinguish between cover art and interior art - I tend to think a game looks good or it doesn't.

That said, my initial thought was the FFG Star Wars line because it is really well done, consistent across books and lines, and makes for some very pretty game books. I don't know that it's really "inspiring" though. The Star Wars movies and shows and books and comic books and video games are already pretty inspiring and so it's more reinforcing an existing thing than starting a fire on its own. Also, while the illustrations are both numerous and well done they do not generally show you things that your characters might be doing during a game - they're Star Wars pictures for sure, but they are not really Star Wars RPG-specific pictures:

• Here's a star destroyer flying near a planet
• Here's Han Solo sitting at a bar
• Here's a droid peering through some binoculars
• Here's a scout walker
• Here's a couple of characters standing still and looking "at the camera". 

So while they look good they are not really "inspiring" me to get a group together and roll some dice. They confirm the setting but do not really enhance it, in an RPG sense. 

So now that I've talked about what doesn't do it for me, here's one that does: Dungeon Crawl Classics. Why?

• It's all strong black and white art.
• It tends towards a "weird" vibe. You don't always know what you're looking at.
• It shows things that could easily (and maybe should, easily) happen during the game.

It does, for me anyway, build an interest in playing the game as I read through the rulebook or an adventure. Heck, even the maps are more evocative of some lost document than in most other games and yet they remain as usable if not moreso than most others. 

Yes, some of it is the old-school thing which does have a certain appeal to those of us who started in that earlier era. 

But the very unexplored/unexplainable/rough around the edges tone of much of the art enhances the atmosphere of the game. We don't know everything about the setting. We can;t instantly identify every monster that is shown. We don't know why that character looks that way and this other character looks completely different as far as dress, gear, and attitude, and in the game you aren't going to know everything either!

When it comes to art-matching-expected/designed-tone-of-game I can't think of a better example than this game.

One more for the road:

Something New for Monday - DCC/MCC Scratch Off Character Sheets

As some of you probably know, the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG is a D&D type game that starts characters out a zero level as a standard assumption. Specifically, it starts each player out with 4 or so zero-level characters and pushes them into zero-level adventures where it's assumed a winnowing process takes place and you emerge with some 1st level characters from the carnage.

Speaking as someone who hated zero level characters in AD&D, despite multiple attempts by TSR to push them on us and multiple attempts by me to enjoy them - it's FANTASTIC!

The characters are 100% random creation from ability scores to background to gear. It's up to the player to give them a name and personality but the mechanical details are rolled. It's the absolute epitome of "develop in play" over "pages and pages of written background" and the interaction of the players as the adventure progresses is just flat-out amazing. Who leads? Who cowers at the back? Who's just trying to collect loot? Just one or two sessions gives you a gold mine of character history, tendencies, and overall personality.

Even as a huge fan of this approach it can take a little time to put together 20 characters - enter the scratch-off zero level character sheet! Now if I'm feeling some time pressure I can hand these out and say "go" and in a few minutes we will have our party and be ready to go!

The same system is present in the new Mutant Crawl Classics and they created scratch offs for those as well:

These also help in another scenario even if you prefer to let everyone roll their zeroes the original way: replacement characters! Assuming reinforcements are needed or a new player joins in you may not want to slow down the session to supervise someone rolling up a new PC or three - instead, just hand them a card and in a minute or two they are ready to run!

I think it's a genius idea. No, it wouldn't work with every RPG out there it works really well with this one and is one more tool to reinforce the flavor of this game.

Day 27: What are your essential tools for good gaming?

I think I've covered this before so I'll keep it short:

• I need a good game. For me this is basically a game I like, one that starts the wheels turning just by flipping through it. It might be the setting, the concept, the mechanics, or even the art, but something about it has to inspire me.
• I need some players. Interest and availability are the two key elements here. Experience isn't super-important - I can teach you the game if you're interested and can show up regularly and I can provide dice, character sheets, and books for the game.
• I need time. This is often the hardest thing to come by. It's not really a tool but it is a necessity.

Anything else is gravy. You'll probably want some pencils and paper. You'll probably want some kind of character sheet. You'll probably want some kind of dice or cards or coins to flip. That said there are workarounds for all of these - a smartphone can replace all of them, and can probably keep a copy of the game rules available as well. A tablet or a laptop can do the same. 

Day 12: Which RPG has the most inspiring art?

This is a little tougher because I don't usually distinguish between cover art and interior art - I tend to think a game looks good or it doesn't.

That said, my initial thought was the FFG Star Wars line because it is really well done, consistent across books and lines, and makes for some very pretty game books. I don't know that it's really "inspiring" though. The Star Wars movies and shows and books and comic books and video games are already pretty inspiring and so it's more reinforcing an existing thing than starting a fire on its own. Also, while the illustrations are both numerous and well done they do not generally show you things that your characters might be doing during a game - they're Star Wars pictures for sure, but they are not really Star Wars RPG-specific pictures:

• Here's a star destroyer flying near a planet
• Here's Han Solo sitting at a bar
• Here's a droid peering through some binoculars
• Here's a scout walker
• Here's a couple of characters standing still and looking "at the camera". 

So while they look good they are not really "inspiring" me to get a group together and roll some dice. They confirm the setting but do not really enhance it, in an RPG sense. 

So now that I've talked about what doesn't do it for me, here's one that does: Dungeon Crawl Classics. Why?

• It's all strong black and white art.
• It tends towards a "weird" vibe. You don't always know what you're looking at.
• It shows things that could easily (and maybe should, easily) happen during the game.

It does, for me anyway, build an interest in playing the game as I read through the rulebook or an adventure. Heck, even the maps are more evocative of some lost document than in most other games and yet they remain as usable if not moreso than most others. 

Yes, some of it is the old-school thing which does have a certain appeal to those of us who started in that earlier era. 

But the very unexplored/unexplainable/rough around the edges tone of much of the art enhances the atmosphere of the game. We don't know everything about the setting. We can;t instantly identify every monster that is shown. We don't know why that character looks that way and this other character looks completely different as far as dress, gear, and attitude, and in the game you aren't going to know everything either!

When it comes to art-matching-expected/designed-tone-of-game I can't think of a better example than this game.

One more for the road:

The Fantasy Non-Option

Weirdly, the decision to go with Deadlands as the main game has me thinking about what kind of fantasy game I would want to run the next time it comes up. In between chapters of the main Reloaded book and The Flood I am flipping through a few others and making some notes. I'm mainly concerned with getting the new game pointed in the right direction but these other things are still leaking in.

My campaign notes and binders for 4E still feel like something I need to revisit. There is still a lot to explore there. One of these days we will. I don't think I need to make a bunch of new stuff, it's more that I'd like to "finish" what we started in them. As much as a relatively open campaign can be finished.

For 5E I do have some ideas, many of them revolving around playing through some of the older classic adventures that some of my players, mainly the Apprentices, have never experienced. It might be a way to finish out the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign outside of the 4E version I had worked up. The main open question here is setting - homebrew? In that case old or new? Greyhawk? It's been a long time. Forgotten Realms? I used it exclusively for 4E, don't know that I need to go there again for 5E but my players know it and seem to like it. I'd like to do something again with the Scarred Lands but I'm not sure 5th is the best fit for it. This one is still "TBD" for now.

Dungeon Crawl Classics - It's its own thing. If we keep playing it I plan to make it a world of its own. I'm having fun with the published adventures and I am pretty sure I can string those together into the beginnings of a campaign setting of my own. Maybe a variation of the whole Dragonport thing I used for my Basic games. The plan forward here is to finish our intro adventure, run through a level 1 adventure, and see what people want to do next.

This brings us to Runequest. Runequest of all things! I've never run it. I've never been a Glorantha-phile. I played it for a while 20 years ago and thought it was fun but it's never been in demand with my group of players. That RQ 2 Kickstarter material though has stirred up some things. I could run it, and I think I could make it quite a bit of fun. I've always thought of Glorantha as having more pre-existing lore than I would enjoy tangling with but the early books, this 2E stuff, is much more "here are some cool things" than the commandment-level scripture style that it comes across as in later stuff. I'm not afraid to bend lore in game worlds to better fit what I want to do with the game and this version of the stuff seems much more bendable.

For RQ I have two main ideas:

• Glorantha - my take on Glorantha. I have one player who played in that same long-ago game that I did and remembers enough of the setting that he could help the other players get familiar with things. I'd probably use Pavis/Big Rubble as the focus of the game. No metaplot, just RQ characters exploring a big ruined city.  I kind of have a thing for those, with Return to the Ruins of Adventure being the biggest example. I think trying it in this world with these mechanics would be a blast. Plus it's authentically retro, not a modern attempt to do a throwback, and that makes it that much cooler. 
• Mythic Greece - RQ supports magic everywhere, weird mythic beasts, and a generally lower level of tech than most D&D games nowadays. Why not take that somewhere besides Glorantha? Why not the age of the Greek myths? Gods, monsters, heroes, wars, cults - all of that fits really well here. Adapt some of the Goranthan cults and the rune stuff to the Olympian age and see where it goes. I had a campaign outline worked up for a 4E game that never went that far and it could be adapted here. I have some adventure ideas too. I think it's a solid fit between system and genre. the trick is convincing the players that it's a good idea. It's also a chance to run RQ without the Glorantha cultural baggage that sometimes bogs the players down. 

So there are a lot of options for the "someday" fantasy game. I'll keep making some notes and doodling some maps and then one day there will be a need and off we will go.