RPGaDAY - Day 11 - Weirdest RPG: Lords of Creation

What is Lords of Creation? It's an early take on the multi-dimensional RPG published by Avalon Hill in 1984 and written by Tom Moldvay. It's cool to me, but it is pretty strange. The assumption is a group of characters that start of in modern times but in short order are encountering magic, alien technology, other dimensions, and time travel and taking it head-on. There are different skills and powers that characters can learn along the way, equipment from bronze age to Star Trek type weaponry. This is "weird" in the sense of "what kinds of RPG's get published" rather than in having a really abstract concept or setting.

 I've run LOC all of about three times over the years. I've never made it to a 3rd session.Back when I think the concept was just too weird for most players to really get into it, and maybe I didn't do a good job of presenting it , I don't know. Nowadays I suspect it might get a better reception although I wonder if "cooler" settings and mechanics might have passed it by. Despite this disappointing reception I can never bring myself to get rid of it as it just has so much potential.

I really need to write up a full rundown of this game but I can share some high points here. 

Character stats are Muscle, Speed, Stamina, Mental, and Luck. Players roll 2d10 for each. The modifier for each stat is the score /10 rounded up, so most will be a +1 or +2. There are no classes or races - the assumption is that everyone starts off as a human from modern times.

There are 21 sets of skills, sort of like a skill tree as each is ranked from 1-5 and each rank covers a specific area of that skill. For example, "Mechanic" is 1 - land vehicle, 2 - water vehicles, 3 - air vehicles, 4- futuristic/magical*, and 5- special ships*. That 5th one covers thing like fixing the TARDIS - dimensional/time traveling ships. The "*" means they require special circumstances to learn, like being in an environment where such vehicles are present. Among the skills are some interesting choices like Commando, Stage Magician, and Theatrical. There is a Futuristic and a Magical set to allow characters to pick up some useful abilities in those kinds of settings. There are also skills for particular weapons, but only half of a character's starting skill points can be spent on them. Quite a few of the level 4-5 skills are futuristic/magical and so would not be an option for starting characters, but most PC's could get to levels 2-3 in an area or two and pick up a weapon skill as well.

Skill adjudication takes two approaches. First the recommendation is to assume that skill level indicates general competence and that many tasks should be assumed to succeed if they make sense compared to the description of the skill. If there is doubt, the base chance for success is 20% per level. It's a far more modern approach than most of the percentile systems of the day where the general tendency was to roll for everything. Here it's explicitly stated that the assumed success approach saves a lot of time and die rolling and puts it on the GM to make the call on when to use each approach.

Combat is similar to D&D. Roll a d20, add and subtract modifiers for skill, armor, and conditions like range or darkness. It's a roll low system, so a 20 is an automatic miss here.

There is a sort of experience table. Experience adds to "Personal Force" and as it increases, characters gain certain set powers like Dimensional Sight and Dimensional Travel, and can also choose from a list of powers such as Sorcerer, Clairvoyant, or Cyborg. These are set up with a 1-5 progression like skills. The set powers basically facilitate further adventures as it's much easier to set these things up if the players can see ghosts - or talk to ghosts with Dimensional Language! The selectable powers give another layer of customization and while not quite super powers do give the characters options that normal people would not have.

One other interesting item: The final preset power is "Construction" which allows the character to create a pocket dimension or other location which they can shape according to whatever physical laws they desire. This could be any thing - a new elemental plane, the death star, a layer of hell, or a Lego universe. The idea, which is even stated with the power, is to guide players into becoming GM's as they begin creating their own settings and adventures for other players. I don't know how well it would work in practice, but it's a very cool idea and I think it's the only time I have seen a mechanical approach to this in a game.

The "Book of Foes" includes all kinds of things, from goblins to griffons to "HG's", the tripods from war of the worlds.Many entries for races (rather than unique monsters) include multiple entries like with the goblins above. There are stats for "average", "soldier", "leader", and then "Render", who is a unique individual with some different abilities and a sentence or two of background or motivation. With touches like that it feels very much like it's built to be used, not just as a work to be admired.

There are also a few pages covering historical/fictional heroes like Hercules, Lancelot, Sinbad, Doc Holliday, and Cyrano DeBergerac. Why not? With this kind of game there's a  pretty good chance they could turn up in play.

The game also covers (in a few pages each) several different settings with maps and notes. It's at least enough for a visit, maybe even an entire campaign for a motivated DM.

Most are entire worlds but some are a little smaller scale.

Some are a little larger.

Priddo is the first steampunk world I can recall seeing in a gaming product. It's described with a fairly detailed history and as having a 19th century level of technology where "scientific magic" is used, e.g. trains are pulled by steam engines but the engine is powered by a fire elemental instead of coal. Remember, this book is from 1984. I'm sure this was my first exposure to the concept, even if it is almost a cliche today.

Handouts from the first adventure

 I haven't discussed the three published adventures for it but they are excellent showcases of just how wild a campaign could get. The first one begins with a murder mystery at a game convention, and ends up with characters running for their lives from killer robots on an island in the Bermuda Triangle. There are also sailing ships, dinosaurs, and some mythological figures involved as well.

 With Tom Moldvay's involvement I'm surprised we don't see more about it in the OSR discussion universe, but it ranges pretty far from Basic D&D in concept and some mechanics, so there's not a ton of crossover utility. If you're at all interested in the branch of old school that mixes technology into its fantasy then you might like this game.

Wrapping up this introductory post, Lords of Creation is mechanically simple game with a concept that fans of Sliders, John Carter, Dr. Who, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court could all find common ground. It's not a universal game, and it's not totally a kitchen-sink game. It has a fairly specific beginning premise (people from the modern world become aware of a larger universe)but is almost wide open after that. A particular campaign could focus on magical elements, sci-fi, dimensional wandering, or time travel in particular, or jump between them all. It is "weird" compared to most RPG campaigns I see being played, but at the least it could make a fun diversion from the ongoing D&D campaign.

Motivational Monday

RPGaDAY - Day 10 - Favorite Game Fiction

This one is a little tougher - I've read quite a bit of it and a lot of it is not that great.

I'm going to pick an author who wrote two different series of books that now have RPG's: William King. He wrote the first set of Gotrek and Felix books set in the Old World of Warhammer Fantasy, and the original set of Space Wolf novels in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. To me they felt a cut above most of what's out there in gaming-fiction-land. They have a very old school, pulp feel, more like the Conan or Fafhrd/Grey Mouser books than the newer style of setting novels. They are far more gritty than they are sweeping epic of high fantasy or space opera.

RPGaDAY - Day 9 - Favorite Dice

OK, this one is on the easier end of the scale. I have a few ...

This is my most recent big pile of dice:

That's ten sets of Chessex opaque dice, one of each color available last year or year before when I got them. I wanted a new set in bright colors for MWP's new Marvel game (instead of the old black and red dice I had been using for D&D for years) so I ordered about half of what you see above. Once we started playing I realized I needed even more dice so I ordered the rest. It worked out nicely because that game uses everything but the D20 and Mutants and Masterminds uses only the d20, so I have a big pile of dice for both games.

That big feller there in the middle is the "D20 of Judgment". I used to use it on particularly important rolls in my D&D 3E games. It's been in semi-retirement but I'm thinking if Omega ever shows up in an M&M game it's going to be his die.

Honorable Mention goes to the Star Fleet Battles dice I picked up years ago. They have actually been getting some action lately with Federation Commander. In that game rolling low is usually good so seeing these icons come up - they replace the "1" - is a good thing.


Dishonorable Mention goes to the Chaos Dice I acquired somewhere years ago thinking it would be thematic to use them with my Chaos Army for 40K and Fantasy. They have spent the last 2 years failing me repeatedly and as a result I will not share their picture on the internet. Fame is for WINNERS! Try rolling some sixes for a change and then we'll see about getting you a moment of glory. I know this is contrary to the principles of dice shaming but I'm going to try it and if it works I will let you know.    

RPGaDAY - Day 8 - Favorite Character

I'm going to bend the rules here - I have multiples on this one, and fortunately I've already written about most of them. I'll limit it to three:

• The AD&D ranger I ran up to high level is discussed here
• My favorite Gamma World character is here
• My favorite Mechwarrior character is here

A somewhat sad note is that no, I haven't played any of them since I wrote those posts. I don't really expect to, since they are mostly from older editions of games, but it could happen someday. Also, I haven't played much at all in the last 15 years or so as I've been almost 100% on the DM side of the table. I have managed to play a few sessions of D&D 4E and I'm playing a cavalier in a friend's Pathfinder campaign right now and that's been fun but it's a rare thing for me. 

40K, er, "Science Fiction Game" Friday - Attack Wing at the Lake

So while on our last short vacation of the summer we did get in a little game time. Normally I try to travel light and focused but between what the kids asked for and what I thought we might play I ended up dragging along a pretty big bag of game stuff. I knew were getting to the ridiculous level when I stuffed the cowboy hat we use for fate chip draws in Deadlands into the bag but I did it anyway. Of course, we ended up playing very little of it which I hope I will remember the next time this comes up. On that note, some good travel games:

• ICONS - short rules, random character generation, short adventures, plays with just a pair of d6's apiece, this is a great RPG on the road.
• Mini-Games like the pocket-box editions of Ogre etc. Kind of obvious but occasionally forgotten after years of looking at them on the shelf
• Card games like Munchkin that everyone can play - we taught the grandparents to play Munchkin on this trip - though too many expansions can make transportation a little tricky
• Prepainted plastic miniature games played in a limited space like X-Wing and Attack Wing. Mini's and cards in a box, rolled up mat, and you're ready to go.

40K is not so travel-compatible so I have nothing to report there this week but we did get in some Attack Wing. We even got to use the new mat which is much easier on the eyes than the old Paisley Nebula battlefield we had before.

We settled on 100 points each with Blaster taking the Romulans and myself taking the Federation. Originally we were thinking it would be 3 ships each but by the time we loaded them up with captains and upgrades we ended up with two each. Taking more but weaker ships is something to explore in the next game I think. I ended up with the Defiant under Sisko and the Enterprise under Picard (shocking, I know). He ended up with the named D'Deridex and the Valdore.

The Defiant ends up with Transwarp Drive instead of a cloak here

 I had a vague strategy of pulling him into a position where both of my ships could fire on one of his but he could not fire on mine via the Enterprise's 360 firing option and some of the maneuvering options I put on both ships and the handiness of rear-firing torpedos since the Romulans are a forward-firing-only fleet in this game. It ... sort of worked.
 

 Due to my split deployment the Defiant spent the first couple of turns running for its life and failing to fire rear photons because I kept making stupid mistakes like forgetting that I could not order a target lock  after executing a red maneuver. The running part was part of the plan, the lack of damage to the enemy was not. With some careful positioning I could have knocked down the shields on the Dex while staying out of range of the Valdore, setting up the Enterprise to come in (form the left there) and finish off the Dex. Then we would combine on the Valdore.

We did manage to take down the shields on the Dex (finally) but mistakes caught up with me and the Defiant blew up. 

 A turn or two later the photons locked on and blew the D'Deridex away. See, it sort of worked.

Unfortunately this left a shieldless Enterprise running from an undamaged Valdore while trying to rearm photons and establish a lock on to the enemy warbird. Red maneuvers really hurt the Enterprise as you lose your normal action AND you lose the bonus action from Picard. Especially after you get the critical that reduces your captain skill to a "1" I had to use a few to try and get away from the 'bird and the edge of the map but no longer had the initiative and was not able to shoot back while doing it and the Enterprise went down to the vicious roll you see above .

It was a lot of fun and hopefully shook the rust off. Yeah the edge of the map thing is kind of dumb in a space game that is not specifically about defending a fixed point like a planet or space station, but it's part of the rules. I flew like I had never played before and even Blaster said he thought I had the ships geared correctly, I just didn't make it happen. So, A for planning, F for execution. Ah well, there's always next time.
 

RPGaDAY - Day 7 - Most Intellectual RPG Owned?

I'm not even sure what that means. System-wise or setting-wise? Concept-wise? Time spent thinking about it -wise? I don't own any of the more popular games that I suspect are meant to be identified here like Dogs in the Vineyard, Monsters and Other Childish Things, or Microscope, but I do have some possible candidates:

• For time spent noodling over the mechanics and how to make characters while liking the system, Champions is probably up there. Mutants and Masterminds is not too far behind.

• For time spent trying to envision the mechanics and how it all works together Marvel Heroic, or Cortex Plus as the mechanics are now known, was a fairly recent mind expander. 

• For time spent in my head trying to make a coherent set of rules out of it, hands down it is Rifts, the unsolvable problem of RPG's.

• For time spent building worlds and equipment, some form of Traveller - Original, Mega, maybe even New Era - as it had some construction rules down to where you could design your own guns down to bore in mm and type of propellant. I did. 

• Concept-wise I think Reign is a level beyond the "normal" view of most RPG's. I don't know that I'll ever get to run or play it but just reading it made me think differently about some aspects of all of my games.  

• I'll also throw Dawn of Worlds in there - it's a world-building game that's even more different than most RPG's. It's definitely on the edge of what should even be called an RPG, but there it is. More on it here.

Gaming Gadgets - Cast of Cards for Savage Worlds

I ran across these on DTRPG last week and didn't think they made much sense as a PDF, then I realized they could be ordered as physical cards and got more interested.

There are 17 cards to a deck. They are normal playing-card sized. The set above is the "Dread Pirates" deck. Each one represents an NPC (or a vehicle in the case of the pirate ship here).

The barkeep is from the "Typical Tavern" deck. The cards are also double-sided, with stats on one side (above) and background details and some names on the reverse.

Now NPC cards alone might not be revolutionary - although these do look very nice - but these are also printed on a sort of plastic or with a plastic coating that means dry erase markers work on them just like they do on a whiteboard. This ups the utility considerably. Besides the obvious uses for combat, it is also handy for noting things like reactions, modifiers, magic effects, or just monkeying with the stats.  Maybe there are two "ladies of the night" in the bar - use two different colors of marker to keep notes on both of them on one card!

I'm a big believer that when you're actually running games you can never have too many NPC's at the ready. Going back to 3E D&D I printed out a set of monster stats on index cards and kept that little card file on the table for my entire run with that system. Savage Worlds is easier to run than a lot of games, but it is definitely a "GM Enhancer" to have complete stats for a pirate ship and crew, or a tavern and all of its patrons, or a set of fire cultists right there, ready to go with no work on the GM's part. This is very much a "zero-prep" kind of product.

I picked up the pirates (for our eventual Pirates or 50 Fathoms game), the tavern set (for a lot of potential games), and the wild west archetypes set (for Deadlands). They are each an interesting mix of "standards" and some unusual types, like the character in the wild west set that dual-wields cavalry sabers. I like a sprinkling of the unusual and these hit the mark really well.

There are a lot of different sets - here's the link to their list on DTRPG.

Here's the company site too though there's not a lot there.

A few final thoughts:

• It would be really nice if they could work out some kind of licensing deal with Pinnacle and create campaign-specific sets. What if you could get a pack that covered every NPC in 50 Fathoms or Slipstream? I'd pay for that.
• Vehicle cards would be nice too, say for a Weird Wars campaign. Tanks, jeeps, aircraft can come up quite a bit in that kind of game.
• How about some other games? I'm pretty sure ICONS characters would fit on a card like this ... maybe. Traveller characters could (and vehicles! and spacecraft!). Heck GURPS characters might be able to fit on here. Old school D&D monsters certainly would. There is a lot of potential here.

RPGaDAY - Day 6 - Favorite RPG that you never get to play

A few weeks ago I might have said "Savage Worlds" but I'm fixing that particular problem so I'll say it's this:

The Original

I've owned this game since 1982, picked up every version except the latest, have a ton of supplements for it, and haven't run or played it in at least ten years. Why?

• It's a fairly complex game that rewards "system mastery" but not many people want to take the time to "master" it nowadays.
• Combat is complicated, though I don;t think it's much more complicated than most 3E/4E/Pathfinder D&D games and like those it smooths out a bunch with experience
• Champions books were everywhere in the 90's during 4th edition. Most RPG'ers knew about Champions/Hero System. Then the company that published it hit some hard times and it took a few years to get the game back on track with a new publisher. I think this put it behind the curve of the 3E boom when a lot of people came to/came back to RPG's circa 2000 and it never really caught up in "mindshare". Now it's on a 6th edition and it still almost non-existent in game stores as the company again has had some rough times the last few years. 
• It covers a lot of genres but it was always best known for Superheroes, and in the last 10-15 years a bunch of superhero RPG's have come along, from Mutants and Masterminds to ICONS. Not all of them have survived, but going from 3 or so popular superhero games to half a dozen or more really segmented up what was already a niche genre.

The Peak

It's big advantage though is that it models anything you can dream up with a system that is pretty crunchy and uses a point system that has 30+ years of actual play behind it so when they say "balance" it's not just a bullet on a list of design goals. It's also pretty fun to play (and run) based on my more-distant-than-I-would-like memories. There is also quite a bit of supporting material developed over the years and even more from hardcore fans on the internet.

The Current
(and wow that is not my favorite cover)

I really need to find a way to work this game in to the rotation.

Gaming Gadgets - The Savage Worlds GM Screen

I use screens less now than I used to. Actually there have been peaks and valleys over the years. I used to think of them as a cool extra thing, then I got to considering them essential, then I backed off a bit, then they started making those cool hardcover-stock landscape format screens (Star Wars Saga Edition had the first one I believe) and I was addicted for a few years. I've gotten better, and I run a lot of games "screenless" now because it gives me more flexibility with the setup of the playing area, lets the players know I'm rolling straight, and it's one less thing to keep up with. I run Pathfinder, ICONS, and Marvel screenless though I admit I did use one for 4E D&D. The last screen I paid anything for was the one that was part of the Werid Wars: Rome kickstarter and that was because it kind of came in the set.

That's changed as of last week. I finally picked up one of Pinnacle's customizable DM screens and I am pretty happy with it.

Now these things have been around for probably ten years in one form or another. I know they came along pretty early in the Savage Worlds run - because it makes sense to have a flexible screen setup for a game that covers as much territory as it does -  and I always thought they were cool but I was never running it enough to justify getting one. Necessary Evil came close but it ended before I pulled the trigger.

Think of the nicest, heaviest, 3-ring binder you have ever seen, one with the see-thru plastic pocket/cover on the outside. It's like that, only it's a tri-fold landscape design (and doesn't have the rings) and has the cover/pocket on both sides.

There are of course PDF's customized for various Savage Worlds campaigns available for a few bucks. More generic ones are free. It is completely possible to make your own too, and they don't even have to be Savage Worlds - you could use it with any campaign and any RPG. It's a great idea made even better by the total portability of PDFs.

Heck just being able to customize the player side with things like maps of the current campaign area, notes on NPC's, or pictures of the PC's is a pretty cool option.

I don't know that I will start using it for ICONS or Marvel or even Pathfinder, but I am going to try it out with Savage Worlds and see what I can do with it. If the 4E game ever gets rolling again I may do up some custom inserts for it too. It's another tool in the toolkit and I'm looking forward to trying it out.