White Dwarf: Issue #9

Needless to say, I love Christopher Perigo's cover to issue #9 of White Dwarf (October/November 1979), but then I am a fan of non-equine mounts in fantasy. Ian Livingstone begins the issue with an intriguing editorial. He broaches the subject of "realism" in fantasy roleplaying games in a somewhat negative fashion. He wonders whether this drive toward a "realistic game" serves any useful purpose and indeed whether it comes at the expense of fun and enjoyment. He then muses that "Taken to its logical conclusion, it would necessitate … rolling for the percentage chance of being stung by nettles whilst picking blackberries or bleeding gums whilst brushing teeth." In conclusion, Livingstone concedes, "If people want this, fine, but they should try to force their method of play down somebody else's throat, claiming that they are 'authorities'." As ever, I really have to wonder what was going on in the late 1970s UK gaming scene.

Complaints about the experience rules – or lack thereof – GDW's Traveller are commonplace and have been since the release of the game in 1977. Mike Ferguson's "The Experienced Traveller" introduces a system for in-game skill improvement, if one is so inclined. While I have never had a problem with this aspect of Traveller, I don't object to its introduction in campaigns where the referee deems it appropriate. However, Ferguson's system is odd in that it makes use of percentile dice to determine whether a skill improves after successful use. Traveller uses only six-sided dice, so the use of percentiles seems profoundly off to me, but I'm a purist about such matters.

"The Fiend Factory" gives us nine more monsters for use with Dungeons & Dragons. Most of these did not see publication in the Fiend Folio (unless my memory is poor – a distinct possibility!) and some of those that did saw changes (such as Svarts becoming Xvarts for some reason). I should also note that the feature's habit of using unique, hand-drawn typefaces for each monster's name is frustrating, as it's sometimes difficult to read the names. Part Two of Rowland Flynn's "The Valley of the Four Winds" story continues in this issue and I don't have much to say about it or, for that matter, the next installment of the "Kalgar" comic, which has completely failed to hold my attention.

On the other hand, Albie Fiore's "The Lichway" is well worth your time. It's an excellent trap-filled dungeon, intended to test the mettle of 1st-level characters. Most interesting to me is the presence of several groups of NPCs already present in the dungeon, including one made of man-beasts. The prospect of having to deal with so many mutually antagonistic factions sets this apart from many other introductory adventures, as does its general ambience of death and decay. It's not for nothing then that this is perhaps the most famous adventure ever published in the pages of White Dwarf. 

"Open Box" reviews Superhero 2044, Legions of the Petal Throne, the three Gygax-penned giants modules, and Citadel of Fire. All but the giants modules receive middling reviews (6 out of 10). Following it "Foresters" by Trevor Clarke and Ed Simbalist, which is in fact an extract from the Chivalry & Sorcery Sourcebook. The article deals with what are effectively Tolkien-style rangers for use with C&S. Meanwhile, this month's "Treasure Chest" offers up seven new "tricks & traps," along with an amusing percentile table of "useless items" (like an Albanian dictionary, a sack of stuffed voles, and a copy of "Greyhawk on 10 g.p. a Day"). There's also a handy chart for quickly generating the ability scores of monsters, should they be needed in play.  

This issue of White Dwarf feels a little thin to me. I certainly observed many pages devoted to advertising, a trend that's been building over the past few issues. I can't say for certain that there actually are more ads than before, but it certainly seems that way, a perception helped in no small part by the largely lackluster content of the issues ("The Lichway" being the primary standout). But, as I have said many times before, this has always been the nature of gaming periodicals. Perhaps next issue will be more impressive.

White Dwarf: Issue #7

Issue #7 of White Dwarf (June/July 1978) represents something of a milestone for the British gaming periodical. Firstly, it marks the start of the second year of its publication. Secondly, it's the first issue to feature a full-color cover (by the ever-amazing John Blanche). In his opening editorial, Ian Livingstone draws the reader's attention to both of these facts – facts he believes serve as "a reminder to traditional wargamers that we (i.e. roleplayers) are a serious part of the hobby and not just a weird, temporary deviation from it." As ever, I find such comments very strange, but then I was never a wargamer (take a drink), nor did I much care about their opinion of what seemed to me to be a related but wholly separate hobby. Mind you, I was a 10 year-old child when I discovered D&D rather than an adult like Livingstone, so I suppose I can be forgiven for not understanding his seemingly interminable concern about the reputation of roleplaying in wargaming circles. If nothing else, it's a reminder that the past truly is another country.

The issue begins with an article written by Ed Simbalist entitled "Feudal Economics in Chivalry & Sorcery." It's an interesting enough piece, especially for those who want to more "realistically" model the economics of the European Middle Ages in their campaign settings. More interesting than its content, though, is the fact that it's penned by one of the creators of C&S. If nothing else, Simbalist's appearance in WD's pages show that, after only a year of publication, it had already begun to attract significant attention on the other side of the Atlantic. "Fiend Factory" offers up nine new monsters for D&D, several of which would later appear in the Fiend Folio. None of those featured could be called "classics," even by the odd standards of the Fiend Folio, though a handful deserve comment. The first is the Rover, based on the bouncing ball from The Prisoner. The second is the Gluey, which was renamed the Adherer in its published FF form. Finally, there's the Squonk, based on the legendary monster of northern Pennsylvania, which the text calls "more of a pet than a monster; perhaps the female D&Ders would take more to this beast than the hard-headed males."

The "Letters" column is notable for one letter, commenting on Roger Musson's article in issue #6. I reproduce it here in its entirety.

One of these days, I'll need to collect together as many Gary Gygax quotes as I can find regarding the matters of "realism" and "heroism" in D&D to see how consistent his position on the matter remained over the years. For now, I'll simply say that, as he often does, Gygax speaks here in such an argumentative and disingenuous fashion that, even if one were inclined to agree with his points (which I mostly do), he makes it hard to do so, lest one be seen as similarly intemperate. I can't help but wonder how different the history of the hobby might have been if the younger Gygax had possessed even a small portion of the equanimity his older self possessed.

John T. Sapienza's "Carrying Capacity" offers a short and relatively simple new encumbrance system that uses a character's Strength to determine what percentage of his body weight he can carry in equipment and treasure. Meanwhile, Brian Asbury provides Part III of his "Asbury System" for experience. This time, he gives readers the means to determine the XP value of magic weapons and armor, based on their types (sword, mace, chain, plate, etc.), bonuses, and other abilities. I can see no obvious problem with his system as such, only that it seems like more trouble than it's worth, especially when the Dungeon Masters Guide already does the work for the referee (though, to be fair, at the time of publication of this issue, the DMG was still more than a year in the future).

"Molten Magic" provides photographs for eight different sets of miniature figures, including those by Ral Partha and Asgard. "Open Box," meanwhile, features reviews for The Warlord Game, The Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor, Bifrost Volume 1, Lords and Wizards, The Sorcerer's Cave, and Cosmic Encounter. There's also another installment of the "Kalgar" comic strip, which continues to do little for me. I find myself looking forward to the future, when other strips more familiar to me will appear, but those won't, I fear, appear for quite some time still.

Don Turnbull's "Lair of the Demon Queen" presents a "difficult but rewarding section" of his Greenlands Dungeon for the delectation of readers. The lair is a fairly small section of said dungeon but it's quite well thought out, with an elaborate trap that requires deciphering a poem (spoken by statues with magic mouths) to overcome. I simply adore rooms like this in dungeons and I'm ashamed when I consider how much more straightforward my own chambers tend to be these days. In my youth, I'd devote much thought to tricks and traps, not to mention riddles, rhymes, and other bits of fantasy nonsense intended to aid and befuddle the players. Reading this article reminded me of how far I've fallen in the years since. Perhaps I shall have to rectify this in my future work.

The issue ends with "Thoughts on the Proliferation of Magic Items in D&D" by none other than Gary Gygax. As one might expect, Gygax is very much opposed to what he calls "magic on the cheap," something he claims is quite common in "hobby publications" at the time. He suggests that, since D&D is "designed for a long period of active play," the referee would be wise to give out magic items sparingly and with an eye toward ensuring that the game remain challenging over time. He then offers many strategies for separating PCs from magic treasure so as to maintain the appropriate balance. Everything he says here comports with his writings on the subject elsewhere, but, as I commented earlier, his tone is condescendingly off-putting at times and I fear it might sometimes get in the way of what he intends to say (Physician, heal thyself).

Issue #7 of White Dwarf was, by and large, enjoyable to me. It's definitely step up in terms of presentation and quality over its immediate predecessors and it gives me hope that the upcoming issues will be equally enjoyable. 

Retrospective: Chivalry & Sorcery (1977)

Normally, when I speak of Chivalry & Sorcery, I'm talking about boxed second edition of the game, which was released in 1983. That's the version of the game I vividly recall from having seen its many advertisements in the pages of Dragon. That's also the version that secretly intrigued me, since it's the one I actually saw on hobby stores shelves. I say "secretly," because many of the older guys I knew, the ones who initiated me into this weird hobby, were really down on C&S, seeing it as unnecessarily complex and too concerned over "realism." So, it was generally best not to admit to having an interest in such a game in their presence -- and I didn't.

The thing is, even though no one admitted to playing C&S, at least no one with whom I had any regular contact, it still got talked about a great deal, much like the Arduin Grimoires. Despised or not (in my neck of the woods), it nevertheless had a big intellectual "footprint." What I didn't understand at the time was that the Chivalry & Sorcery the older guys were talking about wasn't the edition I instinctively associated with the name, but the original one, published in 1977 -- the so-called "Red Book" pictured above. Since I didn't play it and was discouraged from doing so, I never looked into the matter until recently and simply assumed that the version of the game advertised in Dragon was the only one.

The Red Book is a 128-page softcover book whose contents are presented in very small typeface in two columns. As FGU editor Scott Bizar says in his introduction:

The sheer mass of these new rules has made it necessary to print in small type rather than in our usual format, but this saving in pages will cause substantial savings in the purchase price of the book.

Bizar also goes on to call C&S "the most complete rule booklet ever published" and "the length of a novel" in terms of word count. He's certainly not kidding and I think Bizar reveals something very important about the game with his words. You see, lots of people criticize Chivalry & Sorcery for making a fetish of "realism," but I think, if one were to look at it with an unbiased eye, the game's real focus is on "completeness." C&S tries very hard to provide everything a referee might need in running

an all-encompassing campaign game in which dungeon and wilderness adventures were just a small part of the action.

That block quote above is from the first page of the game itself, under a heading titled "Chivalry & Sorcery: The Grand Campaign." There, the authors lay out the origins of C&S as well as their vision for it. My feeling is that it's here that one can really come to understand what this RPG was all about. That section also explains that

Chivalry & Sorcery began innocently enough with a discussion about the vacuum that our characters seemed to be living in between dungeon and wilderness campaigns. In the Fantasy Wargames Society of the University of Alberta a degree of dissatisfaction emerged over the limited goals that were available to our characters.

Thus, authors Ed Simbalist and Wilf Backhaus created a game that answered their own needs for an "all-encompassing campaign." C&S includes all the usual things you'd expect from a roleplaying game -- character generation, combat, etc. -- but it also has rules and discussions of social status and influence, costs of living, enfeoffment, castles, warfare, training, sieges, tournaments, and more. Whether it really qualifies as "the most complete rule booklet ever published" I leave to others to decide, but there's little question in my mind that Simbalist and Backhaus did create an extraordinarily broad and complete RPG, especially for the time period.

All that said, Chivalry & Sorcery is deserving of its reputation for complexity. Many of its rules, especially for combat, are quite complicated, moreso even, in my opinion, than Rolemaster, which is more "chart heavy" than complex. But I also think it's fair to say that the complexity of C&S reflects not only the mindset of its creators but the game's origins as well. Within a few years of the publication of OD&D, there were gamers who wanted more -- more realism, more complexity, more depth. And from those wants were born a wide variety of alternate approaches to fantasy roleplaying, some of which, I can't deny, I find very intriguing.  

C&S is one of those games.  God help me if the old guys I used to know ever find out.

Comments on this post can be made here.

More Space Opera Amusement

Before moving on to the point of this entry, let me clarify something about yesterday's "Strange Dream" entry. The skill system I recounted in that entry, the one I finally "understood" in my dream isn't the one from Space Opera nor is it a system I'm suggesting anyone use for playing Space Opera or any other game. I posted it only because it's so rare that I remember any mechanical details from game-related dreams that I wanted to preserve it for posterity. Now, if anyone found it helpful, great, but my intention was not to present a workable skill system, let alone an ideal one, for use with any RPG.

Anyway, one to the real point of this post.

In Space Opera, one your character's 14 randomly generated personal characteristics is Empathy, which is described thusly:

Empathy represents the unconscious and largely uncontrolled broadcast of a character's personality aura and its interaction on the auras of those around him. In this context, Empathy has little to do with one's intentions toward a particular being. Rather, it is a quantification of the character's 'openness' to contact and will be sensed by those he meets. Generally, the more a character is empathic, the more others will be prepared to reserve final judgment and 'hear him out.' The ability is especially valuable to Contacts personnel charged with opening new relations with new races, but virtually every type of character will find the ability useful, whatever their calling.

Note the part I italicized above, because it'll be important shortly.

There's a chart accompanying this description that divided Empathy scores into seven categories by its numerical value, with 1-6 being one category, 7-8 another, and 9-13, 14-16, 17, 18, and 19 rounding out the chart. Only the lowest and highest category say much of any value and, even then, what they say is mostly "fluff" with few game mechanics attached to it. The lowest category (1-6) is interesting, though, because it notes that such a character

is a 'loner' who keeps very much to himself. Players should regard such a character as ranging from 'anti-social' to outright psychopathic. The lower the score, the 'colder' and more 'withdrawn' the character should be in his impact upon others -- which influences the general role-play of such a personality by the player. An Empathy score of 01 to 02 means a character with psychopathic and anti-social tendencies, the man with the true 'killer instinct.' Such a character will never check morale and may prove to be a berserker in combat. He simply does not relate to anyone not 'useful' to him (comrades tend to be 'useful' and so come under his area of concern; his loyalties are based upon personal survival and a code of conduct uniquely his own.) In summation, he chooses his 'friends' very carefully, stands by them to the death because he takes threat to them as a personal affront, and could care less about everybody else. He is a man without a conscience in search of a personal, living 'god' to give his troubled life security and purpose, a sword looking for a strong hand to wield it.

That's actually a very evocative description, if one a bit rough around the edges. You'd think, given what it says here and in the previously quoted section, that it'd be a very bad thing to have a low Empathy score.

But you'd be wrong. As it turns out, a character who works for the Bureau of State Security (or BOSS), which is "a paramilitary organization which combines the duties of such services as MI5, the FBI, the KGB, and similar security institutions," doesn't need a low Empathy to join this service, but it sure helps with advancing within it. There are 15 ranks within BOSS, beginning with Agent/5 (Rank Grade 0) and going all the way up to Minister of Security (Rank Grade 14).

Ranks below grade/3 require a maximum Empathy of 13 to qualify. Ranks above grade/3 require -1 per Empathy per rank above grade/3, and also minimum Leadership/12. PCs with Empathy/1-6 obtain a +1 DM on promotion rolls.

Consider what this means. Each rank above grade/3 has a maximum Empathy associated with it, which is -1 per rank above grade/3. Therefore, to become Minister of Security, a character must have, at most, an Empathy of 2! This makes me wonder what the authors of Space Opera had against intelligence agencies.

I like quirkiness like this, even if there are lots of problems with it from both a game mechanical and meta-game standpoint. Still, there's something rather charming about a game where having a low score in a particular characteristic is actually a benefit rather than a drawback.

C&S-ian Naturalism?

Reading through The Chivalry & Sorcery Sourcebook, I came across a sub-section of "Designing C&S Monsters" entitled "Natural Law." Given my interest in Gygaxian naturalism, I was of course intrigued. The sub-section discusses the role natural laws should play in designing monsters and, by extension, campaign settings. Here are a couple of relevant paragraphs:

No matter how "fantastic" the setting, the basic laws of the universe should apply.

This fact about the nature of the universe -- any universe -- has been all too often lost on many game designers and players alike at one time or another. Part of the problem is that many players themselves are still acquiring a working knowledge of basic physics, chemistry, and biology -- as well as any other relevant science. There will be someone out there ready and eager to interject at this point that "it's only a game". I agree, but I will remind him that role games necessarily and inevitably simulate environments. Players have been too thoroughly conditioned by their own life experiences and have acquired enough knowledge about what happens in their own world to make setting it aside far too difficult. It is too much to expect of players to demand that they accept an arbitrary universe conceived by the Game Master which has natural laws too far removed from those of our real world. Water flows downhill, not up. Rocks do not suspend in midair (unless comprised of ferrous material and buoyed up by an electro-magnetic field). Living creatures can be damaged and killed by physical agencies. These are the facts of science. Why should it suddenly be different in a "fantasy" world?

A Game Master bent on violating natural laws should be required to present detailed explanations of the "laws" of his universe which conflict with those we know prior to playing in his world. Any surprises in this area are simply inexcusable.

Here, I think we very strongly see a difference between Gygaxian and C&S-ian naturalism. The Gygaxian variety is more concerned with verisimilitude than with simulation. C&S, on the other hand, is very much about simulation, as even the short passage above demonstrates. Throw in some high-handed rhetoric about players -- and other designers -- who don't know enough physics, chemistry, and biology and it's very easy to see why I had the impression of the game I did back in the day.

In this passage at least, Chivalry & Sorcery definitely comes across as the game of guys who take it a little too seriously and look down their nose at those who don't share their degree of obsessiveness. Of course, as with many things, that's not the whole story, as is evident even within the "Designing C&S Monsters" section from which I've quoted. Still, there's no question that C&S was one of those games that appealed primarily to those who'd already played D&D and found it unsatisfying, not because it was confusing or poorly written, but because it wasn't a good enough simulation. It's a game that was, in some sense, somewhat parasitic upon D&D, because it depended on dissatisfaction with D&D as an engine for generating its players.

That's nothing new by any means. Just as Benjamin Jowett was reputed to have said that all of Western philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato, so too one might argue that all of RPG design consists of a series of footnotes to Gygax and Arneson. C&S definitely feels that way to me, at least right now, but I reserve the right to change my opinion as I absorb more of these fascinating rulebooks.