Monday, February 10, 2025

How Big Was Your Gaming Group?

My post over the weekend generated a lot of comments and discussions, for which I'm grateful. I'm always very interested in learning more about readers' experiences gaming over the years. One topic that came up several times was the size of one's gaming group and how that influenced whether or not one player, one character was employed. Quite a few commenters noted that, when they first started roleplaying, they didn't have a large gaming group and so it was often necessary for players to take on the role of more than one character. 

That makes sense to me, but I hadn't really considered it, since my earliest gaming group was relatively large – seven of us, including myself. We were occasionally joined by others, so our numbers would occasionally creep up closer to ten. In the circles in which I traveled, groups this large weren't uncommon, though I wouldn't go so far as to say they were the norm. In my experience, four to six players (including the referee) was more typical. Even so, I can't recall ever coming across anyone whose group consisted of only two or three people. That's completely outside my own experience.

With that in mind, I thought I'd create a little poll to gather some data about this question. Please take a moment to answer the question below, bearing in mind that it's about your earliest gaming group, which is to say, the one with whom you first played after entering the hobby. At the moment, I'm not interested in data about your current gaming group, so please keep this in mind when answering. Feel free to include any additional details you think relevant in the comments to this post.
How many people – players + referee(s) – were there in your gaming group at the time you first started roleplaying?







Note: It's possible I screwed up the poll script, because I'm not very savvy about these things. If so, just bear with me as I try to correct it. With luck, though, I got everything right the first time (fingers crossed).

Saturday, February 8, 2025

One Player, One Character

Though I'm pretty sure that almost no roleplaying game actually states this in its text, it's nevertheless a fairly common idea that each player has only one character. On the surface, it makes sense. If playing a RPG is about, on some level, experiencing an imaginary world through the eyes of an equally imaginary persona, then I can see the argument that allowing a player to have more than one character at the same time would hamper or at least dilute that experience. In general, this seems to have been the default approach – one character per player – I've encountered while playing roleplaying games over the years. It's not universal, mind you, but it's very common.

There are probably a number of explanations for the prevalence of this approach. A significant one, I believe, is the way that, as the hobby expanded to include more players who'd never previously been involved in wargaming like myself, the frame of reference changed. Roleplaying was no longer viewed by reference to military campaigning but instead became analogized to novel series or television series, with the player characters being its protagonists. I'm sure others can find even earlier examples, but I always recall that, in his foreword to his 1981 revision of Dungeons & Dragons, Tom Moldvay states, "Sometimes I forget that D&D® Fantasy Adventure Game is a game and not a novel I'm reading or a movie I'm watching."

We can argue about whether this approach is the "right" one or not – honestly, I don't really care one way or the other. However, as I said, I think it's a pretty widespread approach and has been for a long time. In some of the campaigns of my youth, this was the assumption, while in others, it was not. For example, I've never run or played in a Traveller campaign where any player had multiple characters. Meanwhile, it's been quite common in the D&D campaigns in which I participated. In my old Emaindor campagn, nearly every player had at least two characters, one high-level and one mid or low-level. This practice grew out of necessity rather than any principle. Sometimes, a character would die and be replaced or sometimes players wouldn't show up as often to sessions and, therefore, their characters would lag in experience. To deal with this, we had "multi-level" campaigns. They all took place within the same setting, but there were different parties or groupings of PCs, all adventuring and sometimes crossing paths with one another.

Because my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign has been ongoing for just shy of a decade now, it has a very expansive cast of characters. The main group all belong to the House of Worms clan, but, as the years have worn on, additional characters have come into their orbit, becoming new player characters in the process. During their many years governing the Tsolyáni colony of Linyaró, some of the characters remained in the colony to handle administrative matters while the others explored the wilds of the Achgé Peninsula. During that time, new characters were created to replace those who stayed behind. Likewise, the wives, retainers, and slaves of certain characters were added into the mix as secondary characters. What was happening in the campaign determined which characters were played.

In the Barrett's Raiders Twilight: 2000 campaign, the group of characters was initially small – only seven, one for each player. In time, though, the group picked up a stable of secondary characters, too. The largest group of them joined while the PCs were in Kraków. Because of the overabundance of sergeants, we decided as a group that we needed to introduce some enlisted personnel to fill out the roster. That's how Aquaman, Bedford, Oddball, Rocket Man, and others entered the campaign. Later, Dumont, Landry, and Walker of the 8th Canadian Hussars and Walker of the US 3rd Cavalry entered as NPCs but served as occasional secondary characters, when needed. 

I could probably go on with other examples, but I think I've made my point. In thinking about this, I'm starting to think that secondary (or "back up") characters are more common, though not exclusive, to long campaigns, those that last more than a couple of years. They make much more sense in the context of a large, freewheeling campaign that's gone to a lot of places and done a lot of things. Shorter, more focused campaigns tend to be much more like Tom Moldvay's analogy of a novel or TV show. That's because long campaigns eventually start to be about the campaign itself rather than about the characters. The setting and its events looms large and, while it may not take the spotlight completely away from the "main" characters, it does diminish their importance somewhat. If my past and recent experiences are any indication, it can be a lot of fun.

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Regrets

I've been writing a lot more about my Barrett's Raiders Twilight: 2000 campaign lately – partly because the campaign is, after three years of play, on the verge of seeing the characters return to the USA and partly because I now know that readers actually enjoy periodic updates about the games I'm currently refereeing. I'd already been intending to spend more time writing about games other than Dungeons & Dragons, so this is good. There's quite a lot to talk about when it comes to both Twilight: 2000 more generally and my campaign in particular. 

As Barrett's Raiders prepares to enter a new phase, I found myself reflecting back on what's happened so far. By and large, I'm pretty happy with the result. There have been plenty of ups and downs over the years – what campaign doesn't have those? – but, taken as a whole, I feel as if this has been an enjoyable campaign with lots of memorable moments. It's still a long way from House of Worms in terms of longevity, of course. However, according to my usual metric of judging a campaign's success, namely, whether or not players keep showing up week after week, Barrett's Raiders is a winner. 

That said, I do have one significant regret: I didn't have a Session Zero. 

I've never been a big fan of the whole Session Zero concept. My preferred approach, when starting a new campaign, is simply to do a short write-up for all involved, outlining the kind of campaign I hope to run, as well as its framing, and then let the players go off into their separate corners to generate their characters. If they have questions, I'm happy to answer them, but I don't like to guide the process too much, nor do I want the other players to interfere in each others' character creation process (whatever that might be). 

In the case of Barrett's Raiders, I laid out for the players the basic scenario: the characters were all survivors of the US 5th Mechanized Infantry after the disastrous Battle of Kalisz in July 2000. Their ragtag band's initial mission is simply to survive. If they succeed in doing that, they should attempt to make it back to NATO lines and, theoretically, safety. Beyond that, I didn't say much else, leaving everything up to the players' judgment. As I said, I answered any questions the players asked, like "Is it OK if I player a Russian POW?" Otherwise, though, I was pretty hands-off.

My laissez-faire attitude had a couple of unintended consequences. First, the characters consisted of too many sergeants. Aside from Lt. Col. Orlowski, all the other military characters were sergeants of one grade or another. There were no corporals, privates, or specialists. Neither were there any other officers, not even a lieutenant. While it's true that the characters' unit was a haphazard one made up solely of survivors of the 5th, the odds that so many would be sergeants strains credibility. Consequently, the early days of the campaign saw Orlowski musing aloud, "What I wouldn't give for some privates or even a corporal!" Eventually, this weird imbalance was fixed somewhat, with the introduction of secondary characters (more on that in a future post), but it bedeviled the campaign for a while.

The second unintended consequences concerned the expectations of the players. Some of the players had already played an earlier edition of Twilight: 2000. Others were merely familiar with it. Others still were complete neophytes. Furthermore, my own take on the game, though generally in line with GDW's original vision for it, was somewhat idiosyncratic. For me, T2K is a game about both survival and, more importantly, rebuilding. I wasn't interested in refereeing a campaign about nihilistic carnage in post-apocalyptic Europe (or America). No, I wanted the campaign to be about picking up the pieces after the nukes had already fallen. In a weird way, I was interested in a very idealistic campaign in which people came together to put the world back together after madness had shattered it.

Not everyone in the campaign fully understood this and it took time to get that point across. Despite being a game about playing soldiers, I don't bog sessions down with combat. Combat occurs, of course, but it's not the focus of the campaign. I'm fascinated by more human topics, like dealing with other survivors, navigating the politics of post-war Poland, and the toll all of this takes on everyone involved. Because I didn't make this clear enough early on, there have been some sessions where things didn't go as well as I (or the players) might have liked. Fortunately, we're now all on the same page and these misunderstandings rarely occur anymore.

Could these unintended consequences have been avoided with a Session Zero beforehand? Maybe. I don't know. As I said, I've never been a huge fan of Session Zero as a concept. Some of it is just curmudgeonliness on part, but some of it comes from a deeply held belief that good campaigns aren't planned – they just happen. I don't like to put my fingers on the scale, so to speak, preferring to let things evolve naturally. That doesn't always work and perhaps that speaks to the utility of Session Zero. In the case of Barrett's Raiders, I do think the early months of campaign might have gone more smoothly if I'd been clearer about my intentions. Likewise, if the players had generated their characters together, they might have been a more cohesive unit from the start. 

Live and learn!

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Aliens, Human and Non-human

Writing about the Solomani and the existence of different human races within Traveller's official Third Imperium setting reminded me of the approach I opted for when creating Thousand Suns. One of my cardinal principles was that alien species would, for the most part, never be humanoid in appearance. I'd try, whenever possible, to make my alien species alien, both in mind and body. That's why, for example, one of the main antagonistic species of the game's meta-setting are cephalopods – I wanted them to be as far from human in appearance as possible, while still being somewhat relatable. 

Science fiction roleplaying games have an unlimited "budget" when it comes to imagining non-human species, so there was no reason to restrain my imagination. At the same time, Thousand Suns is still very much a space opera in the vein of most popular SF. Even if my goal was to be a bit more grounded than other space operas, I'm still including stuff like faster-than-light travel that are almost certainly within the realm of fantasy. Consequently, I make no claims that my non-human aliens are necessarily plausible from a xeno-biological perspective. I simply wanted them to look and think differently than human beings when possible. I believe that makes them more compelling allies and adversaries within the game.

Even so, I retain an affection for human "aliens," which is to say, humans whose cultures or societies are so different that they think or act in ways that are unlike what we typically encounter on Earth. The Zhodani of the Third Imperium setting are the kind of thing I mean. In Thousand Suns, I naturally included Terran humans as a baseline species, but I also introduced the idea of clades or sub-species of Terrans, who'd been genetically engineered in the past for a specific purpose and have since developed their own unique societies and cultures.

For instance, there are the Myrmidons, who are a bit like the Dorsai of Gordon R. Dickson – born and bred for war and having a society driven by Social Darwinism. They're my answer to the Klingons or the Jem'Hadar of Star Trek, an attempt to include the "proud warrior race" archetype that's not quite as lazy as it's usually portrayed. Whether I succeeded or not is a separate question, but that was my goal. By making the Myrmidons a sub-species of human rather than a non-human race, I hoped I could focus more on their harsh society than one their biology, since that's (for me anyway) the real draw of this archetype. 

There are other clades besides the Myrmidons, like the rationalist Delphic. They're also a baseline option for play and fill the role of Star Trek's Vulcans and similar space opera species. Since the Thousand Suns rulebook includes an alien creation system, I assumed referees would use it to create their own clades. My plan was to provide more examples of my own, too, in later supplements to the game, but, as I've said, I never quite got round to that. As I've found myself focusing more on science fiction these past few weeks, it's possible I might return to that project. Time will tell.

Retrospective: Alien Module 6: Solomani

I was thinking about the next installment in my Traveller Distinctives series and thought I'd hit upon a good topic – until I realized that the topic in question was actually an aspect of GDW's official Third Imperium setting and not Traveller more broadly. However, I still thought it was a good topic, so I decided I'd discuss it in the context of Alien Module 6: Solomani, first published in 1986, which is quite late in the era of classic Traveller (Its successor, MegaTraveller, would come out the next year).

The Third Imperium setting does something I find quite interesting: it postulates that, at some point in the distant past, about 300,000 years ago, an advanced alien species known colloquially as "the Ancients," visited Earth (or Terra) and took from it small populations of its native species, which they then experimented upon and used as servitors. Among these were early homo sapiens. After the Ancients seemingly destroyed themselves in a war amongst themselves, many of the humans whom they brought to the stars were left to their own devices to adapt and evolve without further interference. Some of these lost children of Earth survived and prospered, while others did not.

The psionic Zhodani, rivals of the Third Imperium, are one group of transplanted humans who rose to greatness in the absence of the Ancients. Another group – perhaps even more significant to the history of the Third Imperium – were the Vilani, whose "Grand Empire of the Stars" once ruled more than 15,000 worlds at its height before coming into contact with the humans the Ancients left behind on their original homeworld. These humans, the Terrans, had just discovered jump drive and were expanding out into the galaxy, when they discovered, much to their surprise, that the Vilani had already laid claim to most of them. Undeterred, they launched a series of Interstellar Wars that, over the course of a couple of centuries, brought the Vilani empire crashing down. 

Like the Macedonians' conquest of the Persian Empire, the Terrans quickly established themselves at the head of a new hybrid regime, the Rule of Man, which laid claim to all of the Vilani's territory and more. To distinguish themselves from the humans of Vland (the Vilani), the Terrans began to refer to themselves as the Solomani, the men of Sol. The term Solomani thus refers to the descendants of those humans whom the Ancients did not take with them to the stars hundreds of millennia ago. Instead, they remained on Terra, to develop on their own, free from the meddling of other species.

I've always liked this aspect of the Third Imperium setting. Many science fiction settings include innumerable near-human species – Star Trek is notorious for this – that make little sense from an evolutionary perspective. By postulating that there are dozens of human species scattered throughout the galaxy by the Ancients, the setting sidesteps the need for such implausible aliens. Instead, we get three major human races (Vilani, Zhodani, Solomani), all of whom discovered jump drive independently, and a multiplicity of minor human races, who did not, but who might nevertheless have unique and interesting histories and cultures of their own.

Now, if you detect a hint of superiority in the major/minor human race distinction, you're not wrong. The question of what constitutes a major race is a contentious one within the Third Imperium setting and tinged with dark political overtones. This is especially true in the case of the Solomani, who, as the centuries wore on, came to see themselves as the "true" humans. Had they not, after all, been born on Terra herself, the mother world of all humans? Had they not achieved interstellar flight on their own and then, in short order, overthrown the Vilani imperium to found an even greater one? These attitudes eventually hardened into claims of outright supremacy over not just other humans but non-humans too.

Not all Solomani hold to these views, of course. However, a political movement, known as the Solomani Party, espouses them, even to the point of feeling that the Third Imperium – successor to both the Vilani Grand Empire of the Stars and the Solomani Rule of Man – is an illegitimate government and thus unworthy of ruling over Terra and its people. The result was the Solomani Rim War and the secession of a large portion of the rimward territory of the Imperium (though not Terra, which remained in imperial hands). Since then, the Solomani Confederation, with its human supremacist ideas, has been a thorn in the side of the Imperium, with irredentist groups on Earth engaging in terrorism and fomenting unrest.

Like all previous Alien Modules, this one provides everything needed to play and use Solomani characters in the Third Imperium setting. There's history, politics, technology, character generation, and even an adventure. Particular attention is given to the Solomani Party and its sinister enforcement arm, Solomani Security (or SolSec). Like the Gestapo or KGB, SolSec serves as both a secret police force and as a hedge against members of the Party failing to toe the official line. The Solomani government is thus set up as antagonistic both to the Imperium and any Solomani within the Confederation who hope to see it reform by moving away from its ideology. 

As enemies, I'm a big fan of the Solomani. I find them much more relatable than the Zhodani, who, despite being human, are quite alien in their thought processes and, therefore, society. By contrast, the Solomani are us – our descendants, twisted by an abhorrent ideology and seething at how far they've fallen from the glory days of their ancestors, who toppled the Vilani empire. It's a great basis for villains with intelligible motivations. They also show how to make use of the history of the Third Imperium setting to create fun adventures and campaigns – the true mark of a good setting element.

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

The Dead Need No Chairs

Reader Marc Sonnenberger pointed me toward this terrific claymation fantasy/horror movie on Youtube. Entitled The Dead Need No Chairs, it's nearly an hour long, so make sure you have the time before you start watching it. It's well worth it.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: The Inner Planes

I've commented before that, while I'm no fan of Unearthed Arcana as eventually published, I was conversely a big fan of much of the material Gygax was creating in preparation for his never-written second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This material appeared in the pages of Dragon over the course of several years, presenting new classes (like the barbarian, cavalier, and thief-acrobat), weapons and armor, spells, and monsters, along with expanded conceptions of other aspects of the game. At the time, I liked these articles simply because they provided me with more stuff to use in my AD&D campaign (and use them I did). Now, though, what I like about them is the way they seem to represent a maturing of Gygax's fantasy conceptions, the fruit of years of thought and play, not to mention the need for AD&D to find new frontiers of adventure.

His article, "The Inner Planes," which appeared in issue #73 of Dragon (May 1983), demonstrates this maturation process quite clearly, I think. In it, Gygax offers "a new way to look at the AD&D world." This new way was necessary because, as the game's cosmology evolved, there was a need to reconcile new conceptions to earlier presentations. The para-elemental planes, for example, arose out of wondering about what happens at the point where two elemental planes met. Gygax obviously liked the idea, but soon realized that the thought process that led to them was incomplete. After all, there were other Inner Planes, like the Positive and Negative Material Planes, the Ethereal Plane, and the Plane of Shadow (the latter itself a recent addition to the cosmology). How did they interact with the Elemental Planes and what was the effect of all this interaction?

The result is a cubic representation of the Inner Planes, as depicted in this cut-out included on page 13 of this issue:

"What a mess!" you might reasonably say and it is a mess – an ugly, convoluted, and probably unnecessary one at that, but I love it all the same. There are a couple of things I like about this, starting with the fact that it's clearly an attempt by Gygax to think about AD&D's cosmology in rational way. If para-elemental planes arise due to the meeting of two elemental planes, what happens when an elemental plane meets the Positive or Negative Material Plane? What about a para-elemental plane? The result is baroque, almost to the point of absurdity, but it makes sense. One might argue that this is little different than debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and I'm somewhat sympathetic to that point of view. At the same time, given what Gygax had already established about the game's metaphysics and the interactions of those metaphysical forces, this oddly colored cube is a natural, even inevitable, evolution of it all.

That's the second thing I like about this new presentation of the Inner Planes: it's evolutionary. What I mean by that is that it demonstrates that AD&D and the fantasy world it presented was growing and changing, not in a way that, strictly speaking, repudiated anything about its earlier self but rather in a way that added to and expanded upon what had come before. None of this was needed by players or referees solely interested in dungeon crawls or wilderness exploration or all the usual activities of fantasy roleplaying. However, players and referees interested in going beyond that would find it invaluable. Gygax was taking a lot more interest in the other planes of existence, seeing them as the next logical step in exploring the possibilities implied by AD&D's setting. To do that properly, he'd need to think about them more carefully, teasing out the implications and taking stock of all they could offer. Whether one likes the direction he was headed or not, I hope one can nevertheless appreciate the effort.

Monday, February 3, 2025

The Perils of Verisimilitude

Twilight: 2000, especially in its current Free League version, is very much a game of hexcrawling. The characters spend a great deal of time traveling across the war-torn Poland of an alternate year 2000, trying to survive, avoid Warsaw Pact forces, and, with luck, find their way back to friendly territory. The map above – apologies for its small size – is from the Foundry virtual tabletop we use to play the game. Its hexes are all 10 kilometers across for ease of calculating overland movement. Even at this size, you can see that the map is very stylized, focusing only on very large terrain features, like cities, forests, rivers, roads, etc.

For the most part, this isn't a problem. Despite its subject matter, Free League's Twilight: 2000 doesn't get bogged down in minutiae, preferring instead to keep things relatively streamlined. Thus, the degree of resolution in its travel maps is low. High-level features are visible, while more localized ones don't make an appearance at all. For example, the roads on the map are all (mostly) major highways. They're obviously not the only roads in Poland, but the maps don't bother with showing backroads. Putting details like that on the map would only make them harder to read, so they're left to the referee to include as he sees fit.

The situation is made a little more complicated by several other factors, though. Remember that the original Twilight: 2000 was published in 1984 by an American game company. Its knowledge of the geography of Communist Poland was probably not wholly accurate, not due to a lack of industry on the part of the game's designers but because it wasn't easy to get up-to-date information of that sort from behind the Iron Curtain. This was before the commercial Internet, too, so you'd have to consult physical map books if you wanted to know anything about, say, the roads of Poland at the time. But of course Twilight: 2000 wasn't even set at the time. It was set sixteen years in the future, so whatever information GDW had access to in '84 would probably have been out of date by the time in which the game was set anyway.

Free League is in a slightly better position. Since this version of the game was published in 2021, it has the benefit of hindsight. Its designers could look back at maps of Poland from the 1990s and use those to produce a more "accurate" version of the terrain, right? Not necessarily. Even in their version of Twilight: 2000, which uses a slightly different history than did GDW's version – I'm using my own history, which is closer but not identical to GDW's – the USSR continued to exist into the year 2000. That means looking at maps of the real world from the '90s might not reflect what happened in this alternate reality – or they might; it's hard to say.

I mention this, because, during the course of the Barrett's Raiders campaign, the characters would often find themselves in some hex or other. The players would inevitably have questions about the specific terrain in what looked, on the map, to be a largely empty hex. What was the elevation like? Where there any farmhouses or buildings? What about dirt roads? Etc., etc. Usually, I'd make something up on the spot and that would be that. However, players would sometimes think they could be helpful to me by making use of Google Earth to show us an image of what an area "really" looks like. For example, here's an image of the area above from Google Earth:
There are innumerable differences, big and small, between this image and the travel map from the Foundry. If you look carefully, you can see that not only does the Google Earth image include features that aren't visible on the travel map, but that the travel map is, in fact, wrong in a lot of places. That is, the Foundry travel map suggests that many areas are, for example, forested when, in reality, they're farmland. That's not a big deal, I suppose, but it demonstrates a way in which modern tools, like Google Earth, can make the referee's job harder rather than easier.

Harder? Yes. When a player finds information like this and offers it up, thinking he's being helpful, the referee now has to decide, "Which do I use: the game map or the real world map?" The real world map offers many advantages, often including extra detail that can be timesaving. No longer would the referee need to make up details on the fly. Instead, he just needs to zoom in on Google Earth and look (assuming that area has that level of detail – not all places do). Furthermore, such online tools are readily accessible nowadays; there's no need to go fumbling through a book or books. It's all right there.

Acknowledging all that to be true, I ultimately decided against using Google Earth or similar things, opting instead to use the often-inaccurate travel maps. They were, to my mind, both simpler and less likely to lead us down an endless path of checking ever more specific sources of detailed information. Every time the characters crossed a river, how wide is it? What's its depth? What kind of fish can be found in it? Etc., etc. I don't deny that such stuff can be useful and, for many people, perhaps that's exactly what they're looking for. More power to them! For me, I'd prefer to keep the details entirely within my own control. Will I get many wrong? Absolutely – but that's OK, because, in the grand scheme of things, it probably won't matter.

Obviously, everyone will draw their lines in different places. There may be some details they absolutely want to get right, while there are others that won't matter. As everyone reading this knows, I care a lot about, say, language and so, for instance, I care about the various dialects of Polish but not so much about where bridges across the Vistula River are actually located. Another referee may reverse these concerns or care about both or neither. At the end of the day, it's your game; do what you want with it. For me, I decided against relying on real world maps for my alternate universe version of Poland at the dawn of the 21st century. You may feel differently.

Terror Was Never This Much Fun

From issue #86 (June 1984) of Dragon comes one of the first advertisements for Pacesetter's horror RPG, Chill, that I ever saw. The accompanying artwork, by the late, great Jim Holloway, is quite effective, though it's a bit unclear where the mutton-chopped fellow is standing. Is he standing in an open grave? If so, where's that sinister hand coming from? If he's not, where are the gentleman's legs? So many questions!

Campaign Updates: T2K and EPT

As promised, I'm going to start writing short posts in which I update you about what's going on in the various campaigns I'm refereeing (the ones in which I'm playing are another matter). I say "short," because it's been my experience that even people who genuinely want to hear about your RPG campaign aren't all that interested in a blow-by-blow discussion of everything that transpires. I suspect that's one of the reasons – but not the only one – that my old House of Worms session recaps weren't all that well received: they were too detailed. Tékumel is a pretty alien setting as it is; getting down into the weeds of our latest session only made things worse. Lessons learned!

Barrett's Raiders

My Twilight: 2000 campaign has been going for just a little over three years now, having started in December 2021, shortly after the release of Free League's edition of the game. The characters began the campaign shortly after the disastrous Battle of Kalisz in July 2000, their unit of the US 5th Mechanized Infantry cut off NATO lines and fleeing pursuit by Polish and Soviet forces of the Warsaw Pact. To escape, they fled south before heading southeast in the direction of the ruined city of Częstochowa. By mid-September of the same year, they'd successfully evaded capture and, after many adventures, were headed back west, with the intention of hooking back up with friendly forces.

In the course of their travels, they ambushed a Soviet truck that was carrying a very unusual cargo: a medium atomic demolition munition or MADM, colloquially known as a nuclear landmine. The MADM was obviously of US manufacture. How the Soviets had come into possession of it or why it was on the back of a GAZ-66 truck traveling the backroads of central Poland the characters have yet to discover. All they know is that the MADM is the rightful property of the US government (whichever one you prefer) and that it ought not to be in Soviet hands. So, for the last little while, there's been added urgency to not being captured, lest a nuclear device fall into the hands of the enemy.

Presently, the characters are just south of the city of Stargard, which, if rumors are to be believed, is not far NATO-controlled territory in northwest Poland. However, while making their way there, they discovered that they were being followed. Rather than allow events to overtake them, Lt. Col. Orlowski, their commander, decided to take the initiative. The unit made use of the terrain to fortify themselves and their vehicles, as well as sending out a reconnaissance team to scout the area. They soon learned that their pursuers were a Spetsnaz GRU hunter-killer team of maybe a dozen or so men and a BMP-1 fighting vehicle.

The Spetsnaz were obviously intent on reclaiming the MADM. This hampered their ability to attack with full effect, as they did not wish to damage the device. The characters took full advantage of this and, after a few minutes of intense fighting, won the day. However, Lt. Col. Orlowski was uncertain if they'd successfully taken out all of the Spetsnaz and so will likely order the unit to leave the area quickly, hoping to reach safety before reinforcements arrive. Given the high value of what they're carrying, he expects they'll be pursued for some time to come yet.

House of Worms

The announcement of the death of emperor Hirkáne Tlakotáni has started the clock on the next Kólumejàlim, the "choosing of the emperor" by which his successor will be chosen from amongst his heirs, both known and hidden. There is a one-month period of mourning throughout Tsolyánu, but especially in the capital of Béy Sü. This period also gives all Hirkáne's heirs the time needed to travel to Béy Sü to present themselves to the Omnipotent Azure Legion as possible candidates for the many trials that make up the Kólumejàlim

Of course, to do that, an heir must present to the OAL an inscribed golden disc that was given to their guardians at the time of their birth. In the case of public heirs – those whose identities are already known – this is usually a simple matter. In the case of hidden heirs, intrigue is possible. Sometimes, the clan or temple to whom an heir was entrusted may decide, for whatever reason, not to advance the heir for consideration. In other cases, they may choose to substitute a different candidate, using the disc as "proof" of the new candidate's identity. Since there is no way to know for certain – most heirs are given to their guardians as infants – this is an accepted part of the Tsolyáni succession system.

One of the player characters, Kirktá, is a hidden heir to the Petal Throne. Though he will probably not present himself as a candidate for the Kólumejàlim, the other characters don't want to waste this opportunity. An heir who "renounces the gold," which is to say, publicly withdraws himself from consideration after announcing himself, can nevertheless reap great rewards. He will typically be given some sort of imperial sinecure and perhaps more, especially if he wisely throws his support behind the heir who ultimately becomes emperor. 

Unfortunately, the circumstances of Kirktá's early life are filled with strange and indeed suspicious events, one of the most important being that he does not know the location of his golden disc. Therefore, he can't present himself as an heir when the time comes. Presently, the characters are busy investigating the matter, trying to locate it. They suspect the disc is held either by someone in his former Red Sword clan or someone in the Temple of Belkhánu, to which he once belonged. Until the disc is located, though, Kirktá's status – and any hope of gain stemming from it – are very much up in the air.

Friday, January 31, 2025

42nd-Level Demigod

When I was in the seventh grade, I won first prize at my school's science fair and so was sent, along with a classmate, who'd won second prize, to compete in the state science fair. I was understandably very excited about this, but also a bit nervous, too. I thought my project – a Newton car – good. However, I didn't think it stood much of a chance of winning an award at the state level. I wasn't completely right about that. I won an honorable mention, which is only a couple of steps up from a participation trophy, or so I thought at the time. Meanwhile, my classmate, who was also my best friend, won an actual award. I was happy for him, of course, but also a bit jealous. 

During the state science fair, my classmate and I spent most of our time in a large auditorium, waiting with our projects so that we could talk to the judges that roamed the place throughout the day. For reasons I've never understood, he and I were not placed near one another, so we couldn't talk. Fortunately, I'd brought some books to read while I waited, one of them being the AD&D Monster Manual. I spent much of my time perusing its pages to pass the time, as there were often large gaps between when I spoke to one judge and when I'd speak to the next one.

The kid whose science project was next to mine – it had something to do with plants and photosynthesis, the details of which elude me – took notice of my Monster Manual and recognized it. Turns out he was also a Dungeons & Dragons player. This perked me up quite a bit, since, if I couldn't talk to my friend and classmate about D&D, at least I could talk to someone about my favorite pastime. I sometimes look back with envy with how easily my younger self could carry on enthusiastic conversations with total strangers simply on the thin basis of a shared interest. Nowadays, I can scarcely imagine doing such a thing.

During the course of the conversation, this kid let slip that his current character was "a 42nd-level demigod." I asked him to explain what he meant by that. He then launched into a lengthy accounting of the events of his campaign, in which his character had done all manner of over-the-top things, including slaying a significant number of the deities in Deities & Demigods. His character, as a consequence, had risen not only rise to the lofty level of 42, but had also stolen a portion of his vanquished foes' divine power and ascended to the level of demigod, gaining the standard divine abilities listed in that book (among other things, like many of the artifacts and relics in the Dungeon Masters Guide).

I did my best not to be rude or roll my eyes at this, but it was difficult. I asked lots of probing questions about his campaign and why his Dungeon Master had allowed this. I suppose it's good that the kid had zero self-awareness. He didn't pick up on my concealed tone of disdain. Instead, he answered all my questions and recounted, in some detail, not just the epic battles in which his demigod character had fought, but also the fact that his DM had been restrained in rewarding him, since, despite all his victories, his character "still only a demigod." How does on respond to that?

I was reminded of this memory yesterday, when I read some of the comments to my post about Dolmenwood. I was genuinely pleased – and a little surprised – that people enjoy reading about the characters and events of the various campaigns I'm refereeing. "Let me tell you about my character" has long been a phrase to send shivers down one's spine. I recall that, at the one and only GenCon I attended, the employees of a game company (White Wolf?) were all wearing shirts mocking this, for example. Consequently, I've long been somewhat reluctant to post too much about what I'm doing in my games. As fun as RPG campaigns are for the people actually involved in them, they're frequently both impenetrable and a little boring for those on the outside.

However, now that I've seen that people are, in fact, interested in them, I plan to talk about them a bit more. I probably won't go on about them at any length – I don't want to overwhelm you like the kid with the 42nd-level demigod – but I will make a more concerted effort to write posts about them. I might do a weekly or biweekly "campaign update" in which I keep everyone appraised about how things are unfolding. If there's a character or event deserving of more detail, they might warrant a separate post, especially if I think doing so has a wider applicability. I've done this in the past on a couple of occasions in recent years, so it's probably a worthy consideration for the future.

So, look forward to more discussions of House of Worms, Barrett's Raiders, and Dolmenwood in the weeks and months to come.

Thursday, January 30, 2025

Thoughts on Dolmenwood

Recently, a couple of readers took note of the fact that, under the header "What I'm Refereeing" on the lefthand column of this blog, I've included Dolmenwood, published by Necrotic Gnome. However, unlike my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne and Barrett's Raiders Twilight: 2000 campaigns, I've never posted about this. This is absolutely true, though the omission was not intentional – far from it, in fact, as I have nothing but praise to offer about Dolmenwood, both as a fantasy setting and as a game. Indeed, I'm really enjoying Dolmenwood and consider it one of the best "new" fantasy roleplaying games I've played in some time.

I put "new" in quotation marks, because, rules-wise, Dolmenwood's not really new. It's a very close descendant of Old School Essentials, which is itself a very close restatement of the 1981 Moldvay/Cook version of Dungeons & Dragons (or B/X, as many people call it). How does it differ from B/X, I'm sure some of you will ask? Most obviously, it has its own classes and races, some of them unique to the setting. Likewise, it uses the dreaded ascending armor class and has its own saving throw categories. There are few other small differences, mostly in terms of presentation, but, for the most part, the rules of Dolmenwood are so close to B/X (or OSE) that I don't think anyone already familiar with those – or, for that matter, almost any version of old school D&D – will have much trouble picking it up.

Where Dolmenwood shines, though, is its setting, the titular Dolmenwood, a large, tangled forest at the edge of civilization that's filled with intrigued, secrets, magic, and lots of fungi. If I were to sum up the setting in a simple phrase, it would be "fairytale fantasy," even if that doesn't quite do Dolmenwood justice. It's like a weird cross between Jack Vance's Lyonesse, Machen's The White People, and Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter, with touches from Twin Peaks and The Wicker Man, among many other influences. As a place, Dolmenwood is weird and eccentric, filled equally with whimsy and terror.

A big part of what makes Dolmenwood such a dichotomous place is the lurking presence of Fairy, which is to say, the otherworldly realm of the elves and other supernatural beings, the most powerful of which were long ago cut off from the mortal world by a coalition consisting of the Duchy of Brackenwold (who rules the wood), the Pluritine Church (who serves the One True God), and the secretive people known as the Drune (who have their own agenda). Elves and fairies are no longer as common as they were in the past, but their machinations can still be felt. In particular, the Cold Prince, the lord of winter eternal, seeks ways to regain his dominion over Dolmenwood.

Of course, there are lots of contending factions within Dolmenwood – the Duchy, the Church, the fairies and their nobles, witches, the Drune, and the wicked Nag-Lord, a trickster figure who serves as a literal agent of Chaos, corrupting the land and its peoples. These factions all play roles, large and small, in ensuring that Dolmenwood is never a dull place. One of the things I've found in refereeing this campaign is that I'm never at a loss for adventure ideas, because there's so much going on in the setting. Once the characters started doing what characters do, they soon found themselves enmeshed in all sorts of plots and schemes, gaining allies and enemies in equal measure. 

Speaking of characters, there are presently four in the campaign:

  • Squire (soon to be Sir) Clement of Middleditch: The big-hearted but small-brained of a minor noble sent out into the world to make something of himself (or die trying). He's presently attempting to be knighted by a fairy princess, an idea that appeals to his romantic soul, even if doing so brings with it more than a little risk.
  • Alvie Sapping: A teenaged thief with a quick mind and quicker tongue. He's attached himself to Clement's retinue as a way to travel and, he hopes, make money. Alvie has an intense dislike of bards and other musicians, on account of his no-good father's having been one, which has occasionally been a source of trouble for him (and amusement for everyone else).
  • Waldra Dogoode: A hunter and woodswoman, who's more comfortable in the wild spaces of Dolmenwood than in its more settled ones. She's an expert tracker and an amateur student of the many mushrooms and other fungi in the region. Her ambition is to one day produce a complete and accurate map of the entire Wood.
  • Falin Cronkshaw: A breggle (goat-man) cleric, who was exiled to a small parish because of her insistence that there were in fact breggle saints whom the Church has suppressed. She now travels with her companions hoping to find evidence vindicating her theories. 
The characters are an interesting bunch and their interactions with one another and the people they meet have been among the highlights of the campaign. Thus far, they've helped a ghost reunite with his love, explored a weird series of caverns, traveled to a remote village overrun with fungus, helped an exiled elf reclaim his home, and journeyed into Fairy as part of Clement's quest for a liege. Along the way, they've seen strange sights and met many unusual people, some of whom would later become important to the unfolding events of the campaign.

Unfortunately, Dolmenwood is not yet available for sale, though it should be soon. Having supported Necrotic Gnome's crowdfunding of the game, I have access to advance copies of its three rulebooks (Player's Book, Campaign Book, and Monster Book) and several adventures. They're all very well done, beautifully laid out and illustrated, filled with ideas to spark your imagination. The Campaign Book is especially nice. In addition to discussing at length the various factions I've already mentioned, it also includes a hex-by-hex gazetteer of Dolmenwood. This makes refereeing the game quite easy, as all you need to do is find the hex where the characters currently reside (or through which they're traveling) and read the entry, which usually contains multiple places of interest, major NPCs, and adventure seeds. Truly, this book alone has made refereeing the campaign quite easy. It's a model for what a campaign book should be in my opinion.

There you have it: my brief thoughts on Dolmenwood the RPG and Dolmenwood the setting. If you have any more specific questions, ask me in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them. 

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Deluxe Traveller

From issue #52 of Dragon (August 1981):

Retrospective: Invasion: Earth

By now, I scarcely need to remind people that roleplaying games are an outgrowth of wargaming, specifically miniatures wargaming. More than a half-century after the appearance of Dungeons & Dragons, this is a well-known and indisputable fact. Nevertheless, it's a fact worth mentioning from time to time, if only to provide context for how many early and influential RPGs were created and designed. It's also a reminder that, even though roleplaying games would eventually eclipse their predecessors, wargames remained an important component of the wider hobby for many years (and arguably still are, though I'm far from the best person to make that claim).

Game Designers' Workshop, best known nowadays as the original publisher of Traveller, began its existence in 1973 as a publisher of hex-and-chit wargames. Its first foray into what might be called roleplaying was in 1975 with En Garde!, though the game is closer to a dueling simulator with light character-driven elements than a "true" RPG (similar, in some ways, to Boot Hill in this respect). But, by and large, GDW's output during the first few years of its existence was tabletop wargames – nearly twenty by the release of Traveller in 1977.

Marc Miller, one of the founders of GDW, had long been a science fiction fan and among his first designs at the company (along with John Harshman) was Triplanetary, whose vector-based movement system inspired Traveller's own (and that of Mayday, itself an offshoot of Traveller). He also designed Imperium, a simulation of a series of interstellar wars between the vast, alien Imperium and the plucky, upstart Terran Confederation. Devotees of the Third Imperium setting may recognize this scenario as part of its historical background, but, at the time of its release, Imperium had no connection to Traveller – which hadn't yet been published and, when it was, later the same year, it was devoid of any kind of example setting. 

I bring all this up to emphasize that, at GDW, there was a great deal of interplay between its wargames and the roleplaying games it would eventually publish, with one influencing the other and then in turn influencing other games (or even the same ones in later editions). Thus, for example, Traveller incorporates into its official setting the scenario of Imperium, whose second edition in 1990 would then add details from Traveller. I consider this sort of cross-pollination a hallmark of Games Designers' Workshop, a company that, until the very end, was marked by fervid creativity.

1981 is a good example of what I mean. Traveller had, by that point, already been out for four years and had established itself as the hobby's premier science fiction roleplaying game (sorry, Space Opera!). GDW sought to support the game on multiple fronts, revising and clarifying the rulebooks, as well as releasing new ways to play the game, whether large scale interstellar naval battles (Trillion Credit Squadron), miniatures wargaming (Striker), or strategic wargames, like Fifth Frontier War and Invasion: Earth. GDW clearly had big plans for Traveller and its releases that year demonstrate that, I believe.

Unlike Fifth Frontier War, whose scope covers several subsectors of the Spinward Marches during a "current" war within the timeline of the Third Imperium, Invasion: Earth is both much smaller and "historical," which is to say, taking place in the past of the setting. Set about a century before the "present day," Invasion: Earth focuses on the final stages of the Solomani Rim War (or the War for Solomani Liberation, if your sympathies lie in that direction), as Imperial forces attempt to conquer Terra, a major bastion of the Solomani Cause. As the homeworld of humanity (or humaniti, according to Traveller's unique orthography), Terra holds great symbolic importance to the Solomani, who see themselves as its true children, in contrast to the Imperium, whose culture and very blood have been corrupted by contact with non-Terran aliens. 

Invasion: Earth, as its title suggests, is very narrowly focused on the attack and defense of the solar system, culminating in the planetary invasion of Terra. There's thus both space combat and ground combat, each reflecting a different theater of the ongoing Imperial invasion and Solomani counterattack. Rules-wise, it's fairly similar, both in terms of its specifics and its overall complexity, to Fifth Frontier War, which is ti say, it's a proper wargame for hex-and-chit aficionados, not something simplified for casual players like myself. Consequently, I never played Invasion: Earth, even as I admired the copy I saw in the collection of my friend's father – a common theme in my early encounters with wargames.

As I said above, GDW clearly had big plans for Traveller at the time of this game's release. Though intended primarily as a historical game, which, in the setting's timeline, the Solomani lost, there are notes in the back of the rules about how to use the game to simulate invasions of other planets within the Traveller universe. There are also suggestions on how to use the events of the war as fodder for adventures, either in the past or in the present of the Third Imperium setting. I wonder whether anyone ever took up these options for their own Traveller campaigns.

Invasion: Earth, like Fifth Frontier War, has long fascinated me. I love the idea of wargames or simulations intended to flesh out or expand upon some aspect of a roleplaying game's setting, but I've rarely had the opportunity to make use of it myself. For instance, I long wanted to find a way to play out a war in my House of Worms campaign, but I never had the opportunity to do so – or indeed a clear sense of how I'd make it work, but I keep thinking about it nonetheless.

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

The Articles of Dragon: "A New Name? It's Elementary!"

Since I was just writing about the use of foreign languages in roleplaying games, it seems only right that this week's installment of "The Articles of Dragon" should be Jay Treat's "A New Name? It's Elementary," which originally appeared in issue #72 (April 1983). Though it's a comparatively short article – just three pages and none of them are full pages – it's one of those articles that nevertheless had a profound influence on me. 

Treat begins by noting that "an appropriate and authentic name can add flair to any character's persona." He explains what he means by this by way of illustration. The Old English language has, to the ears of speakers of modern English, "the air of the exotic and archaic." Despite this, most of its sounds are familiar to us even now, making it relatively easy to pronounce. For that reason, Treat recommends using Old English names for fantasy RPG characters, since such names will sound plausibly foreign, while still being something the average gamer can say without much difficulty.

Even more than that, Old English names were typically made up of two or three elements, each of which had its own meaning. Provided one knows the meaning of these elements, one can construct a name that itself conveys something about the character so named. For example, he suggests that the name Windbearn, meaning "child of the wind," might make a suitable name for the King of Good Dragons, Bahamut, while traveling the Material Plane in human form. Windbearn is fine as a name in its own right, but it also reveals something – in this case a secret – about the person who bears the name. 

The article includes two random tables of elements, so you can easily create new names with the roll of some dice. Here's part of one of them to give you an idea of what they were like:
When I first read this article, I was thirteen years old and in the eighth grade. Though I, of course, already knew that all names had meaning, this was perhaps the first time I'd ever seen that fact made clear to me. To call it "revelatory" is perhaps too strong a word, but I can think of no other. In the months that followed, I took the lessons of this article to heart. As I began to lay the foundations for the Emaindor setting, for example, I specifically created a kingdom – Rathwynn – that took inspiration from pre-Norman England and I used this article and other sources to help me come up with appropriate names for the people and places there. This would eventually lead to my doing similar things for the other cultures of the setting.

That's why, even though "A New Name? That's Elementary!" is a very brief, probably forgotten article in the annals of Dragon, it's always been special to me. It's an article that further reinforced my growing feeling that language and names are important topics worthy of consideration in roleplaying, not mere afterthoughts. (It's also the forerunner of a series of other languages articles that appeared later this year in the magazine, many of which also captivated me as a kid, about which I'll have more to say in the coming weeks.)

Monday, January 27, 2025

What's in a Name?

Since I was a child, foreign languages (and foreign alphabets) have fascinated me. I'm almost certain that my fascination was a direct result of my having spent untold hours staring at the endpapers and appendices of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language that detailed the evolution of various writing systems and the relationships between Indo-European languages. Though I've never mastered any language other than English, I've formally studied a bunch of them, which has only strengthened my interest in tongues other than my own. Reading The Lord of the Rings probably played a role, too.

My fascination with languages inevitably carried over into my roleplaying games. Almost from the moment I discovered Dungeons & Dragons, I started creating riddles, puzzles, ciphers, and codes that depended on obscure, esoteric, and/or foreign words. I thought I was being clever, though, judging from the reactions of my friends, they weren't nearly as pleased with my brilliance as I was. Undeterred, I moved on to creating my own languages, complete with their own grammars and vocabularies, hoping that my players would want to make use of them in our games. Alas, outside of coming up with appropriate sounding names for characters and locations for my campaign setting, this rarely happened.

I think names are important. Having good, evocative names helps to lend a sense of place to an adventure or campaign, especially if they're meant to be something other than a generic fantasyland or galactic empire. One of my problems with a lot of RPG settings is that the frequently don't have good names, quite the opposite, in fact. Bad names – or even unimaginative names – take me out of a setting or adventure, which can lessen my enjoyment of them. I realize that not every roleplayer cares about such things, but, for me, they're important. A big part of my enjoyment of roleplaying comes from exploring an imaginary world and, in my opinion, good worlds have good names.

As a setting, Tékumel is well known for its use of constructed languages, most notably Tsolyáni, the language of the titular Empire of the Petal Throne. Everything in the setting, from monsters to gods to even coinage and units of measurement have unique names derived from Tsolyáni or another imaginary language. For someone like myself, that's a huge boon to immersion. However, I know plenty of gamers who are actually put off by it. They don't like having to wrestle with words like Ngóro or Dlamélish or Mu'ugalavyá when playing an RPG. Sure, words like these are more suggestive of a real world with a real culture of its own, but, if they get in the way of actually playing, then what's the point of including them?

This is something I think about a lot. Since I've lately been writing a bit more about Thousand Suns, I'm reminded of the fact that, in that game, I make use of the constructed international auxiliary language Esperanto. I did that for a number of reasons, though one of the main ones was that a number of sci-fi books that inspired me, like Harry Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat" series, for example, used Esperanto as the universal language of mankind. So, in Thousand Suns, I use Esperanto words and names in place of more common English ones as a way to add flavor to the game's meta-setting. I don't expect anyone to actually speak Esperanto while playing any more than anyone is expected to speak Tsolyáni while playing Empire of the Petal Throne. Even so, I've occasionally got complaints about the use Esperanto and its peculiar orthography (e.g. ĉ instead of ch or ĝ instead of j).

I've been pretty upfront about the fact that Tékumel was a big influence on me as I developed the setting of Secrets of sha-Arthan. One way that Tékumel has definitely influenced me is the use of unfamiliar, non-English words for people, places, and creatures within the setting. I really like the way these words have helped me to get a stronger handle on the various cultures that exist in sha-Arthan and how they relate to one another, but, as with Tékumel, I can easily imagine that someone not as keen on the use of odd words might find them an impediment rather than an aid to their enjoyment of Secrets of sha-Arthan.

It's a tough line to walk. My own interests and inclinations are to indulge my own love of exotic words, even if it's discouraging to some potential players. At the same time, one of my goals with both Thousand Suns and Secrets of sha-Arthan is to present something that were more easily accessible than the games and books that inspired them. Consequently, I'm constantly second guessing myself when it comes to how hard to lean into idiosyncratic nomenclature. I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts about this topic, especially if you can point to your experiences with games/books that either succeeded or failed to make use of peculiar names and words to help build a unique setting.

Thursday, January 23, 2025

What is Thousand Suns?

I've rather surprisingly received several comments and emails about Thousand Suns and how it relates to Traveller. In retrospect, I suppose it's not really all that surprising, since I briefly touched on the game last week, in my post "Traveller and I." So, in the interests of answering some of the more basic questions people might have about Thousand Suns, I'm presenting this post. Because my goal here is to be as complete but succinct as possible, I won't be able to answer every possible question here. If you have any other questions, feel free to leave them in the comments to this post or drop me a line at the address found in the "About Me" tab above. 

Thousand Suns is a science fiction roleplaying game I wrote in 2007 and then first released in 2008. The current version of the game (the one available at the link above or the sidebar to the left) came out in 2011. It's not really a new edition so much as a revision of that original version. In addition to having a much better layout and graphic design, it's also better organized and (I hope) clearer, with lots more art. The 2011 edition has its flaws, but none of them have yet convinced me that it's time to do another revision of the game. 

I wrote Thousand Suns as an homage both to the imperial science fiction I've loved since my youth and to Traveller. By "imperial science fiction," I mean primarily literary SF from the '50s, '60s, and '70s that features mighty galactic empires and whose plots take inspiration from the 19th and early 20th century Age of Imperialism. Think authors like Anderson, Asimov, Piper, Pournelle, and the so forth and you'll have a pretty good idea what I'm talking about. These are the authors and stories that captivated me as a child and with whom I still strongly associate science fiction. Thousand Suns was thus, from the very beginning, a self-indulgent project intended to make a science fiction RPG whose primary audience was me. 

Previously, Traveller had filled that role. Back in 2007, though, I had pretty burnt out on Traveller. I'd been playing it since the early 1980s and had thoroughly immersed myself in both its rules and its official Third Imperium setting. I'd also written professionally for the game, during both its Traveller: The New Era and GURPS Traveller incarnations. At that point, I thought I'd learned enough about Traveller that I could improve upon it, creating a better game – or at least one that better suited me and my personal preferences as both a referee and a player. I did say this was a self-indulgent project, did I not? 

Specifically, I wanted to create a generic science fiction rules set, which is to say, one without an official setting. Rather than being a game about any one setting, I wanted to present a toolbox that allowed the referee to create his own imperial science fiction setting. In this, I was inspired by Traveller itself, which, in its original 1977 release, was a game just like this. Over time, though, the Third Imperium increasingly came to dominate Traveller, so much so that, in my opinion, the game became about roleplaying within that setting rather than being a toolbox for creating one's own setting. 

Now, I love the Third Imperium and consider it my favorite fictional setting of all time. But, after almost fifty years of development, the Third Imperium isn't the most welcoming to newcomers to the game. That's why I intentionally designed Thousand Suns without a setting of its own. Instead, it has a "meta-setting" – a flexible outline of a setting, in which some details have been provided, along with lots of "blank spaces" for the referee to fill in himself according to the kind of setting he wishes for his campaign. For example, I don't specify whether the main human interstellar state is a federation or an empire. I simply call it "the Terran State" and provide lots of options on how to portray it, from an idealistic and democratic alliance to an ironfisted tyranny and everything in between. My goal, above all, was to make something that was both adaptable and accessible.

Rules-wise, Thousand Suns is pretty straightforward. Character generation is either by lifepath or point buy, depending on the wishes of the player. Characters are defined by five abilities ranked from 1 to 12 and skills similarly ranked. Skill tests use a 2D12 roll under a target number based on a combination of the relevant skill rank and an appropriate ability. The amount by which the roll is under that target number is important, because, in many cases it helps to determine the effect, like damage in combat. Rolls of 2 are dramatic successes, while rolls of 24 are dramatic failures, with each having its own effects. All in all, it's a pretty simple system, though, like all system, there are wrinkles here and there, once you get into the weeds of modifiers and edges cases. 

The rulebook (also available in Spanish) contains everything you'd ever need to play – character generation, sample aliens, combat rules, equipment, psi powers, starships, trade, world generation, etc. I tried very hard to make good use of all 272 pages of this 6"×9" book. I like to think I succeeded, though there is a companion book called Starships that expands upon the rules for space vehicles, including the starship construction system. There's also Five Stars, which presents another sample sector (one is included in the rulebook), a new alien race, and an adventure that involves both. I once had plans to produce a few other books to support the game, but a combination of factors, including my focus on this blog, distracted me from doing so.

Compared to Traveller, Thousand Suns is, I think, a bit simpler rules-wise, but not hugely so. It's also a bit more "modern" in its approach to science fiction, though, again, not hugely so. For example, there are cybernetics and robots in the rulebook, things Traveller has never really made much space for. I also included lots more advice on designing an imperial SF setting than Traveller ever did, because, as I said at the beginning of this post, I wanted Thousand Suns to be accessible to newcomers who'd never played this kind of science fiction roleplaying game before.

That said, I still call Thousand Suns "a love letter to Traveller," because it's very much informed by my decades of playing that game, which I still adore and consider one of the best RPGs ever designed. Thousand Suns is not a replacement for Traveller so much as another take on the same subject matter, one with slightly different emphases and esthetics reflective of my own idiosyncratic preferences. If you're a fan of Traveller, you might find Thousand Suns useful as a source of ideas, but its rules are sufficiently different that none of its content can be used without modification. 

This turned out to be a lot longer of a post than I intended and I'm not certain I said everything I wanted to say. If you have any questions I didn't answer about Thousand Suns, go ahead and leave a comment below or send me an email. I'll do my best to answer them. 

Retrospective: Monster Manuscript

The very first AD&D book I bought was the Monster Manual, which I acquired through a Sears catalog store using money my grandmother had given me for Christmas. This would have been in early 1980, probably January or February, not long after I was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons. I absolutely adored that book and spent untold hours poring over its pages. Even now, I still consider the original Monster Manual one of the best books ever published for the game, if only for the way it expanded the implicit setting of AD&D, never mind the range of opponents available to the referee.

A big part of the genius of D&D is that it's built from modular elements, like character classes, spells, magic items, and, yes, monsters. Simply adding a new one here or there can change the game in all sorts of ways, keeping it fresh and opening up new avenues for exploration and development. As a kid, I was especially fond of seeing new monsters in the pages of Dragon, in adventure modules, and in expansion books such as the Fiend Folio and Monster Manual II. My motto then was "you can never have too many monsters."

Consequently, I was always on the lookout for sources of new monsters to add to my AD&D campaign – and I wasn't very picky. Recently, a comment on my post about piercer miniatures unintentionally reminded me that Grenadier Models published a 32-page monster book in 1986, called the Monster Manuscript. According to multiple online sources, the book was given away for free to purchasers of a particular set of miniature figures produced by Grenadier. However, I'm fairly certain I got my copy in the mail simply because I was on the mailing list for the Grenadier Bulletin newsletter. On the other hand, this was nearly forty years ago, so it's quite possible I'm mistaken about that. 

Regardless, I owned a copy of the Monster Manuscript, which features a striking cover by Ray Rubin, depicting a night hag riding a helsteed, two of the monsters included in the book (more on that shortly). Rubin was the cofounder of Grenadier, along with Andrew Chernak, but he's probably best known for having painted most of the color box covers for Grenadier figures, going all the way back to its licensed AD&D sets, if not before. The Manuscript's text is attributed to Don Wellman, who was apparently a sculptor at the company, much like John Dennett, who did all the interior black and white art. 

Grenadier, you may recall, once held the license to produce official AD&D miniatures, a license they lost in 1982. In the aftermath of that loss, Grenadier rebranded their fantasy figures under the name Dragon Lords, many of which were identical to their old AD&D sculpts under new names. However, after a few years, the company wanted to create new sculpts of their monsters and, to promote that endeavor, they released the Monster Manuscript, which also became the name of the Dragon Lords sub-line devoted to fantasy creatures. All of the monsters included in the book thus had corresponding figures released for them over the course of 1986 and '87.

The introduction to the book (by Wellman) is mostly self-promotion about the game line, but it does include a section that I think is interesting from a historical point of view:

The creature descriptions and gaming stats included in the MONSTER MANUSCRIPT are my perspectives. They are provided as merely food for thought. If you like them the way I've presented them – great! If not, feel free to change them however you see fit; adapt them to your own fantasy world. I tend to believe that the word, "Official", is one which has been used too much in the gaming industry over the years. Imagination is what fantasy is a li about, so why place unnecessary restrictions on it? Fantasy and science fiction fans have to be some of the most creative and intelligent people anywhere, so utilize your abilities, don't be afraid to try something a little different just because it's not labeled "Official". If you've got a yearning for Lawful Good troll warriors, go for it!

It's hard not to look at this section as a dig at Gary Gygax/TSR and their emphasis on only using "official" products at the gaming table. Grenadier had probably suffered financially as a result of their having the AD&D license pulled, so I can hardly blame Wellman for a little bit of snark on the subject in his introduction.

Judging by their stats, the monsters included in the Monster Manuscript are clearly intended for use with Dungeons & Dragons, specifically AD&D. Here's an example of one of the entries. It's for a floating eye, a beholder knock-off:

As you can see, the entry is similar to what you'd find in the Monster Manual, but abbreviated in such a way as to avoid being too similar. To the best of my knowledge, TSR never objected to the content of the Monster Manuscript, so I assume Grenadier's change to the format was sufficient to avoid legal challenges. 

There are over 100 monsters in the book, many of them being what you'd expect – creatures from folklore and mythology. Others are, like the floating eye, non-union equivalents to AD&D monsters, often with names that are surprisingly close to their predecessors, like the "blinc dog," "ruster beast," and "owlbeast," to name a few. Likewise, Dennett's accompanying illustrations are frequently reminiscent of those found in the Monster Manual and elsewhere, leaving no question of what they're supposed to be in the minds of knowledgeable gamers. 

Where the Monster Manuscript differed, though, was in its descriptions. Many included little details that gave the monster an origin or context that I found imaginative or that included bits of world building. For example, many weird or hybrid animals are noted as having been tainted by Chaos, while others reference other planes and dimensions. None of it is exceptional stuff, but some of it's flavorful enough that I can still remember it. That's more than I can say of many other monster books I've read over the years and why I think back fondly on the Monster Manuscript even now.