Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Retrospective: War of Wizards

Reading issue #8 of White Dwarf in preparation for this week's post, I was reminded of the existence of War of Wizards, published by TSR in 1975. Appearing in May 1975, the game is fascinating on a number of levels, starting with the fact that, because of its publication date, it's the first appearance of the world of Tékumel in print. Remember that Empire of the Petal Throne, which is usually taken to be the world's introduction to the setting, wouldn't appear for another few months and understandably so. EPT is a full-fledged roleplaying game, featuring a 114-page rulebook and multiple maps, while War of Wizards is simply a "game of fantastic duels between mighty sorcerers." In terms of content, depth, and presentation, there's not much commonality between the two – and, yet, it's precisely for that reason that I think War of Wizards is worthy of discussion.

Before getting into the specifics of the game itself, I want to devote a little time to its presentation of Tékumel. As most readers probably already know, M.A.R. Barker first began work on the earliest version of Tékumel when he was still a child. Upon that foundation, he then further developed the setting in multiple phases, from the 1940s till the time when was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. I say "versions," because, during each phase of development, Barker's conception of Tékumel changed, sometimes in small ways and sometimes in big ones. An example of a big change, for example, is the use of the terms "good" and "evil" to describe deities who would later be associated with "stability" and "change," respectively. In War of Wizards, though, we see neither of these formulations. Instead, Barker calls the gods the "Lords of Glory" and the "Rulers of Shadow." Purely from a historical perspective, this is interesting to me, as it suggests the degree to which the setting was still in flux within Barker's mind. Rather than emerging fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus, Tékumel grew over time and through play (as all good RPG settings do).

War of Wizards is a two-player game that models a trial by combat between two spellcasters, whether as part of a match in one of the Hirilákte arenas found in most large Tsolyáni cities or as part of a more personal duel. Regardless of the ostensible reason, each player can choose to play either a priest or a sorcerer. The former may wear armor, while the latter have access to a wider array of offensive spells. These combatants are characters each possessing three ability scores rated from 2–200 (achieved by rolling percentile dice twice). The first of these, Physical Strength, functions primarily like hit points. The other two, Attack and Defense Strength, represent pools of points that can be used to power spells. Each spell in the game has a cost and characters can continue to cast spells so long as they have enough points in the appropriate ability score. In a pinch, it's possible to shift points from Physical Strength to the other two scores, but doing so weakens the character, making it easier for his opponent to defeat him.

The game was released in two versions: the first was unboxed and the second boxed. The boxed version included four metal miniatures, supplementing the cardboard counters that are included in both versions. Integral to play is a "board" consisting of 20 spaces that abstractly handle the distance between the two combatants and their spell effects. The board is quite attractive, since it features artwork by Barker along its edges. Here's an example of one section of the board:

I only acquired a copy of War of Wizards fairly recently, so I've never had the chance to play it. Reading through the rules, it doesn't seem like it would be difficult to learn, though there does seem to be a lot of bookkeeping involved. Keeping track of all the points spent and lost, for example, might well be tedious – a common problem in "spell point" magic systems in my opinion – though, with time and practice, it might become less so. Even so, I find this game very intriguing, if only for its presentation of another version of Tékumel, one that's a little simpler and less exotic than that in later versions and yet still much more flavorful and different than the commonplace "vanilla" settings that dominated the hobby then and now. 

25 comments:

  1. wow, you managed to score a copy. Congrats, I know how rare it is.

    and it does feel like MtG, right? ;)

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    1. Never having played MtG, I can't rightfully say, but your comment might be the first time someone has made that analogy.

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    2. wow, no Magic in your toolbox? that surprises me, cause it swept through my RPG groups like a virus. I still own some cards. Like guns, you can always find someone who wants to play.

      EVERYONE I knew played it. if you didn't, there was nothing to do, sadly. now, I feel bad. we should have keep going into undermountain...

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    3. Haha — I also remember when suddenly EVERYONE played Magic in fhe early ‘90s. However, I was lucky enough to always still have some folks to play RPGs with I did play a few games with borrowed decks, but I could never get into something that was collectibles-based and required so much $$$

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    4. Magic was actually quite economical in the first six months or so while demand was still ramping up. It wasn't until price guides started appearing in magazine and the early, stunted internet of the era that it suddenly became stupidly expensive. If the game had somehow immediately triggered the collector/speculator/imitator rush that came to dominate the 90s it never would have gained enough traction in the first place to become the juggernaut it is even today.

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  2. More than Magic, it makes me think of Warlock by Games Workshop (though I never played it).
    I think at some point Richard Garfield said MtG was inspired by Wham's King of the tabletop.

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    1. yep, the magic tweak is the collectible cards, not the dueling.

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    2. I've played Warlock, and Magic. Neither really feel much like WotW to me, except in terms of the overall duleing wizards theme. Iron Wind Metals makes a game unimaginatively called Spellcaster that is much more similar to WotW mechanically, with spell effects moving across the board to reach an enemy and interfering with each other on the way - but it uses a grid rather than a purely linear board.

      I can absolutely see where KotT might have inspired Magic.
      The game revolved around taking control of different types of terrain so that you could summon troops associated with each type - owning a desert gave you access to camels, sphinxes, nomad tribes, where mountains let you recruit Dwarves and giants, etc. IIRC swamps were even associated with undead, among other things, much like they power black magic in MtG. One of Wham's best efforts IMO, and I think the original Dragon version was superior to WEG's later sequel game Kings & Things.

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  3. Was this Tékumel’s first appearance? I was under the impression that some short fiction (e.g., “The Petal Throne”) had been published in fanzines long before.

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    1. I could be mistaken, but I do not believe that any of Barker's early Tékumel fiction efforts were published prior to the appearance of Man of Gold in 1984. I am happy to be corrected, though.

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    2. From https://www.tekumel.com/tektalesTPT.html

      “ A Word from the Typesetter: The following short story is probably the oldest existing written piece of Tékumelani history. This is not the first short story written by Professor Barker about Tékumel. There were several others being published in a small fanzine, but this may be the oldest survivor. The story line was known earlier, but it was finally put to paper towards the end of high school or at the beginning of the professor’s college career, making up part of his correspondence with writer and editor Lin Carter. Professor Barker notes that even at this time Tékumel was fairly advanced – all the major nations and important personages were in place. Of course a great deal of additional material and details came later.

      Please note that this is official Tékumel. These events did transpire as set down. Note, however, that this account, like the events in Man of Gold, are not recorded anywhere, and are unknown to any on Tékumel. As he says. "It is among my earliest visualizations of Tékumel. Maybe not chronologically the earliest – that was really early, when I was a kid in high school."

      The typesetter would like to express his extreme gratitude to the Professor for sharing this valuable and rare glimpse behind the scenes. Mítlandàlidàlisayal warán ssíya tlatúsmi! J. Pizzirusso Oct. 18, 2001”

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    3. As I said, I'm happy to be corrected, but it's not clear from the link where or when linked story was first published. If it appeared in a fanzine, I'd love to know which one.

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    4. I agree that my post lacked scholarly rigour. I focused on the line, “There were several others being published in a small fanzine, but this may be the oldest survivor.” A bibliographic citation would have been nice. I will have to dig further.

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    5. If you find anything more, I'd be grateful.

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    6. I doubt I can contribute anything you don’t already know. The Tékumel Collecting site discusses known fanzine publications but those at best hint at Tékumel. (https://tekumelcollecting.com/2017/04/08/growing-up-with-tekumel-early-writings-of-m-a-r-barker/) Some of these are independently corroborated at The Internet Speculative Fiction Database, although it lists M.A.R., Philip, and Phillip as three separate Barkers.

      More intriguing is the site’s discussion of Barker’s correspondence with Lin Carter from 1949 to 1950, in which are mentioned three additional pieces of fiction (one titled “Captive of the Ssu”!), though whether they were published is not mentioned. Among many fascinating things are the descriptions of Baron Ald and Fu Hsi. Hopefully these letters will see publication some day.

      https://tekumelcollecting.com/2021/05/11/phil-barkers-letters-to-lin-carter/

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  4. I can say from experience that it's playable and not hard to learn, but also not terribly well balanced. Your stat rolls at teh start of the game can really leave one side in a hopeless position before things even begin.

    The game that most reminds me of WotW in terms of mechanics is Iron Wind Metals' obscure Spellcaster game (which despite appearances doesn't really need minis to play).

    https://www.ironwindmetals.com/index.php/categories/cat-iwm/cat-spellcaster

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  5. I have the Tita’s House of Games printing but also haven’t played it yet. SR#6 has official errata and a perhaps unofficial solitaire version (though Barker was the EPT editor for the issue). The Tékumel parts of SR#6 are available here:

    https://www.tekumel.com/gaming_advadvice.html

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  6. Perhaps "War of Wizards" is more like 1975's "Sorcerer" by SPI? I played Sorcerer once and it (from what my old brain can remember) involved a magic-user v. magic-user duel.

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    1. Sorcerer was more of a typical-for-the-era hex & counter wargame, with one or more sorcerers on each side conjuring up units of supernatural creatures (demons, dragons, trolls, etc) to do the bulk of the fighting. It had a LOT of scenarios, only of few of which were "duels" between two wizards and even then the fight raged across a pretty big area - I forget the ground scale but the map had multiple cities on it, each in their own hex.

      Noteworthy mostly for the fact that it had an incredibly eye-watering map due to every hex being one of six or eight different "colors of magic" and all the units being associated with one of them. The summoners could only conjure things associated with the particular color or colors they knew, and each color trumped one other while being weak to a third. So, bit more like inspiration for Magic than WotW.

      Had some fun scenarios and played fast, but not exactly sophisticated mechanically.

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  7. All very cool; I never knew about this game or Sorcerer or Warlock. I wonder how much these games influenced Steve Jackson when he wrote Wizard. I suspect the latter is by far the superior game, but he may have been looking over their shoulders when he came up with the basic idea.

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    1. There are loads of "spellcasters fight each other" games out there in varying "scales" for lack of a better descriptor. Wizard, WotW and Fat Messiah's Shapeshifter were very personal things, fought in a small area with only a few combatants involved (some summoned). Sorcerer, Task Force Games' Spellbinder, and the magazine game Demonwand from 1984's issue 5 of The Fantasy Gamer were all much grander, with the casters summoning up whole armies of minions and casting spells that could alter the landscape of a large area or annihilate armies of soldiers.

      It's a very popular trope in both game design and other fantasy media. There are examples of it in folklore and mythology dating way, way back, although you have to squint a bit to see them sometimes. The Scandinavian myths about the contest between the giants and the Aesir where Thor can't lift a cat (the Midgard serpent) off the ground, drain a drinking horn (filled with all the oceasn in teh world), or wrestle an old woman (Death, or Time, or Old Age as you like) to submission fit the model INO, even if the giants are the only ones using (illusion) magic and that only subtly. The Arabian Nights have some great shapeshifters' duels, as do some Asian myths.

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  8. I think MAR Barker saw indeed the potential of exploring imaginary worlds through roleplaying, but I think he was too early. WHen Tekeumel was published, I think the roleplaying community was not ready yet to leave the business of dungeon crawling ;-) Tekumel might have been a hit several years later (mid 80s).

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  9. I always quite liked the City of Sorcerors boardgame from Standard Games (1982). It was a two part boardgame, with the first having you spend three years at Academy learning the art of sorcery (and making tools and potions that will help you to graduate), and then fighting it out in an arena to see who amongst your class actually manages to graduate (and the test is pass/fail with potential maiming). Lots of summoning creatures and terrain modification from your secret tower hidden in the arena somewhere. All from well before MtG or Harry Potter.

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    1. Interesting, I never saw that one back in the day - and I was a big fan of their other games like Cry Havoc, Dark Blades, Outremer, etc. Guess the FLGS just never got it or I'm sure it would have been on the list too. I never saw Starship Captain until 2009 either.

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  10. Professor Barker in Tekumel costume at 1950 WorldCon:
    https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/538672805406364379/

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