Fantasy Lives!

I've written about Powers & Perils before, so I won't repeat myself here. I will, however, share this advertisement for it that I remember seeing in several gaming magazines in the mid-80s.

Different Worlds: Issue #14

Issue #14 of Different Worlds (September 1981) opens with "Judges Guild and D&D" by Patrick Amory. This is an unusual article, in that it offers an overview of all the Judges Guild D&D/AD&D products, with an eye toward drawing attention to the best ones. This is necessary, in the opinion of the author, because "the Guild has always sacrificed quality for quantity." He hopes to save the reader the need "to wade through masses of rubbish, poor art, and typoes [sic]" before finding a genuinely useful product. That's harsh but fair. The full article is five pages long and singles out those Amory considers especially worth, such as City-State of the Invincible Overlord, City-State of the World Emperor, Tegel Manor, Caverns of Thracia, and First Fantasy Campaign, among a few others. 

"Character Personality Profile" by Mark Lukens presents a system for rating the personality, attitudes, and interests of a character, whether player or non-player. The system is usable with multiple RPGs, since Lukens provides multiple rating scales (2d6, 3d6, d20, d100). The system reminds me a bit of the opposed personality traits system presented in Pendragon, albeit in a less developed form. It's not bad for what it is and I imagine many referees would find some utility in it.

Richard L. Snider offers a preview to the second edition of Adventures in Fantasy. The article is mostly interesting as a historical curiosity, since, unless I am mistaken, this second edition was never published. "Painting Miniature Figures" by Robin Wood is a lengthy but fascinating article, complete with photographs, about the process of painting figurines for use with roleplaying games. Lewis Pulsipher's "Taverns and Inns" provides a system for randomly rolling up drinking establishments – everything from their size to proprietors to patrons. "Familiars" by David F. Nalle provides a handful of short tables for generating familiars, including unique ones. 

"Plausible Geography for Role-Playing Games" by George Hersh is a surprisingly short article, consisting mostly of a recommendation to acquire copies of United States Geological Survey topographical maps to use as the basis for adventure maps. "Come, Clash with the Titans" by Larry DiTillio provides AD&D and RuneQuest stats for the monsters and opponents from the 1981 movie, Clash of the Titans, along with magic items and scenarios employing them. The issue also includes reviews of the Traveller double adventure Argon Gambit/Death Station and Grimtooth's Traps. 

Gigi D'Arn's gossip column includes quite a few tidbits this issue, starting with rumors that "SPI is losing money rapidly," which is why it is trimming its staff. Gigi also mentions Avalon Hill and Heritage had supposedly made bids on the company. There's also this story:

This is a reference to the module, Palace of the Silver Princess, about which Jean Wells talked a bit in my interview with her some years ago. I find this fascinating, since, at the time, I had absolutely no idea there was any controversy regarding the module. It was only sometime this century that I became aware of and I still sometimes can't believe it actually happened.

Issue #14 is an improvement, in my opinion, over issue #13. There's a great deal more immediately useful gaming material and not a single "theory" article, which is a welcome change. It's worth mentioning that editor Tadashi Ehara began the issue asking readers to send him letters indicating what games they play and which articles they have found most enjoyable. This suggests that Ehara was well aware of the need to better balance in the magazine's content. It will be interesting to see how things unfold in the next few issues.

Retrospective: Thieves' World

I've long had a fondness for Chaosium's boxed sets, starting with Call of Cthulhu, the first RPG from the company I ever owned. From there, it was all downhill: with the exception of RuneQuest, I soon became a dedicated collector of Chaosium's boxed sets. Among those I treasured the most was Thieves' World, based on the fantasy anthology series of the same name edited by Robert Lynn Asprin. 

The boxed set, first published in 1981, consisted of three books and a collection of maps depicting the city of Sanctuary. The first book, Players' Guide to Sanctuary, serves as an introduction to not just the whole set but also its setting. Kicking off the book are two essays by contributors to the literary anthology, starting with Asprin's "Full Circle," which was simultaneously published in issue #12 of Different Worlds. Following it is "Thud and Blunder," Poul Anderson's essay skewering the excesses of sword-and-sorcery literature and a call to produce better entries in the genre. Rounding out the first book are discussions of the city, its inhabitants, history, and gods, as well as an extensive glossary of names and terms unique to Sanctuary.

The Game Master's Guide to Sanctuary presents a variety of articles on how to use the boxed set in one's campaign. These articles discuss bribery and graft, law and order, and the gods (in greater detail). More immediately useful are the extensive encounter tables, each tied to one of the city's districts. Each district gets its own article, including a map that describes the most important locales. In some cases, there are also maps of individual buildings. Wrapping up this book is a map of the city's sewers.

Personalities of Sanctuary is the third and perhaps most interesting book in the set. Each of its chapters describes the most important inhabitants of Sanctuary in terms of a different roleplaying game's rules – Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (by Lawrence Schick), Adventures in Fantasy (by Dave Arneson and Richard Snider), Chivalry & Sorcery (by Wes Ives), DragonQuest (by Eric Goldberg), Dungeons & Dragons (by Steve Marsh), The Fantasy Trip (by Rudy Kraft), RuneQuest (by Steve Perrin), Tunnels & Trolls (by Ken St. Andre), and Traveller (by Marc Miller). The last one is notable, as Miller offers three different ways to integrate Thieves' World into Traveller's science fiction setting. The most interesting of these options is one that postulates that Sanctuary is a computer simulation created for entertainment – a kind of MMORPG for the citizens of the Third Imperium. Concluding the third book is a collection of scenario ideas.

There are three large maps included in Thieves' World: one depicting the whole city, another the Maze district, and the last one the underground areas of the same district. The maps are lovely, as is typical for Chaosium products from this era. 

Thieves' World is an impressive boxed set and I deeply regret that I long ago got rid of mine in a moment of stupidity. I absolutely adore the idea of fantasy cities, particularly those of a shady, crime-ridden sort like Lankhmar or Sanctuary. That said, I can't deny that the set nevertheless has flaws, chief among them being the amount of space devoted to describing all the characters in so many different RPG systems. I'd much rather that the book had provided statistics for only two or three rules sets – D&D, RQ, and T&T maybe? – and then used the freed space to flesh out the city further or expand the scenario ideas instead. Of course, I'd have been even happier if this product had been a complete Thieves' World fantasy roleplaying game using Basic Role-Playing, but I can't really complain in the end. If  only I'd kept my copy … 

Different Worlds: Issue #5

Retrospective: Star Empires

Star Empires, subtitled "The Game of Galactic Conquest," is the 1977 sequel to Star Probe. Like its predecessor, John M. Snider is credited as the designer, though it's my understanding that several others, most notably Brian Blume, contributed to the published version of the game. Also like it's predecessor, Star Empires "is an open-ended game that, in the words of Mike Carr's foreword, is not a game which is simply set up and played in a single setting. It is, above all, a game campaign system which can be most effectively run by a referee and numerous players who may be exploring and acting independently of each other. Depending upon the referee and his methods of moderating the game, the play can unfold in many ways and along many avenues."

As I regularly mention on this blog, I have only very limited experience with wargames (though I've begun to correct this). Consequently, I have no experience whatsoever with a refereed wargame, though it's a form in which I have come to have a great deal of interest. In fact, I've been toying with a design of my own that takes this form (for those interested, it's an adjunct to my Thousand Suns RPG). Reading Star Empires then was an eye-opening, even thrilling, experience for me and, while there's no question that, as a game, its reach exceeds its grasp, it's nevertheless an inspiring design. 

Star Empires differs from Star Probe in that it actually presents a setting of its own. The game begins with a timeline that stretches all the way back to 10,000 BC and into the future almost as far. This setting references several historical empires that rose and fell, the last of which collapsed, ushering in an interstellar dark age. This re-contextualizes the game play of Star Probe, which serves as the "basic" version of Star Empires. That is, Star Empires isn't merely a sequel to Star Probe but more or less requires that you have played it and will be building upon the results of that game play. (It's true you can play Star Empires alone – there are simple rules that cover most of what is elaborated upon in Star Probe – but that's clearly not the intention)

I don't think I can do justice to the scope and complexity of Star Empires without having the chance to play it. There are rules (and tables) for adjudicating colonization, mining, relations between empires (including NPC empires), income, and, of course, combat. There are even rules for social and historical events, which is something in which I'm very interested. It's an impressive rules set, since it covers nearly everything one might wish in a game like this. Nearly. That's why a referee is recommended, since there will necessarily be many instances when the rules do not cover every possible contingency. Further, even in the case of instances for which there are rules, determining how to apply them might require some judgment calls. Take a look, for example, at this chart:

That's simultaneously wondrous and ridiculous. It's a Gamma World-style flow chart, with random roll results and arrows to aid in determining the flow of social development. I adore the ambition of it, but I wonder how well it actually works in play. Star Empires abounds in these things, packing quite a lot of options into a 72-page rulebook. My feeling is that, despite all the charts and tables, it's still more of a sketch toward a game rather than a complete conflict simulation in its own right. Of course, that was very much in keeping with the ethos of the era, the one out of which roleplaying games grew. I think that's why reading Star Empires was so revelatory to me: it exemplifies even more clearly the nimble, flexible, and downright unbounded nature of "experimental" wargaming. This is where our hobby was born and why I plan to spend more time with Star Empires in the week's to come.

Let me end with an indulgent aside. Star Empires includes numerous pieces of art by David C. Sutherland III, many of which are really good. Take this one, for example:

Clearly, this appeals to my spacesuit fetish. More than that, though, it's further evidence that Sutherland could do more than fantasy artwork. I absolutely love this particular piece and wish DCS had been given the chance to do more SF illustrations during his time at TSR.

Retrospective: Star Probe

Because of the world-historical success and influence of Dungeons & Dragons, it's very easy to forget that, from the very start, TSR published other games – and not just other roleplaying games. One of the less well known ones is 1975's Star Probe by John M. Snider and illustrated by his brother, Paul G. Snider. 

Snider, you may recall, was a player in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign. A game of space exploration, Star Probe arose out of a science fiction wargames campaign conducted within the auspices of the Midwest Military Simulations Society. Though only 36 pages in length, its rules cover a wide range of topics, from starship outfitting to hyperspace jumps to battles and more. Given its scope, the rules are reasonably complete, though Snider repeatedly indicates that they can and should be altered or augmented to cover unexpected situations. In this respect, Star Probe is very much in keeping with the general philosophy of games from this era.

Play is based around the assumption that each player controls a starship from a particular planet traveling throughout the galaxy exploring new star systems, with an eye toward colonizing their worlds. Of course, many worlds are already inhabited, which can complicate the goal of acquiring data about these new worlds. In extreme cases, the inhabitants may take umbrage at the presence of a players' survey or first-in teams and attack, thereby delaying or even preventing learning anything useful about the star system in question. Victory in the game is based on the player who can bring the most "megarons" of data back to their home base before the conclusion of the game's time limit. A basic game is supposed to last five years, with each turn representing a single month, but the rulebook notes that this length of time can be expanded or contracted, depending on the desires of the players.

Star Probe plays a bit like a game of competitive Star Trek, with each player in command of his own personal Enterprise. Players must not only compete against one another, but must also marshal their resources so as to acquire the most data before they return home for re-supply. Once home, their actions are subject to a Board of Review that decides whether or not they are fit to engage in exploration again or whether they should be beached, resulting in certain penalties to further activity. The game's mechanics are filled with trade-offs, as players must weigh certain costs against unknown rewards, as the nature of star systems is randomly generated, using several tables.

Star Probe includes at least one genuine innovation that makes it stand out from both its contemporaries and many of its successors. Included with the game is a map that shows the locations of over 2000 star systems. That's an impressively large number in itself, but even more impressive is that these systems are placed in three dimensions. Each system has a notation indicating whether it is located above, on, or below the galactic plane. That's something that Traveller, produced two years later, did not do and that is still uncommon in science fiction games of any kind.

In his "forward" [sic] to the game, Gary Gygax includes a couple of comments about it that are of interest. First, he notes that Star Probe is the first in a trilogy of games that build upon one another. The second game in the trilogy, Star Empires, was eventually published (and shall form the subject of next week's Retrospective post), while the third, so far as I am aware, was never made. More fascinating still is Gygax's mention of 

"one lost vessel from an avian race having had the misfortune of somehow arriving at the world "Blackmoor" (and promptly losing all to an angry wizard whom they foolishly disturbed)!

For years, I'd heard stories that Blackmoor's planet was included on the maps of Snider's science fiction games, but this is the first time I'd found any evidence that these tales contained a kernel of truth. This makes me wonder about the connection, if any, between Snider's early sci-fi wargames campaigns and Blackmoor's Temple of the Frog and City of the Gods, both of which show evidence of SF high technology. In any case, it's further food for thought on the topic of genre bending within the early hobby, a perennial matter of discussion on this blog.

Retrospective: Powers & Perils

As has been discussed here previously, Gary Gygax originally approached The Avalon Hill Game Company about publishing Dungeons & Dragons. Avalon Hill declined the offer and would later (at least according to legend) regret having done so, especially as RPGs came to rival and eventually surpass the popularity and sales of wargames. It's against this background that I recall Avalon Hill's late entry into the roleplaying field with games like James Bond 007, Lords of Creation, and the third edition of RuneQuest, all of which were fine RPGs that had to overcome their publisher's seemingly monumental ignorance of the new market they were entering.

There's probably no better Exhibit A of Avalon Hill's misunderstanding of the state of RPGs than their release, in 1984, of Powers & Perils. Designed by Richard Snider, who'd been a player in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, Powers & Perils reads very much like an expanded version of his earlier Adventures in Fantasy. Whereas Adventures in Fantasy feels (to me anyway) like an idiosyncratic house rules document to OD&D, Powers & Perils feels far more sterile, as if it were an exercise in "Ivory Tower" game design divorced from actual play. I don't know that that was the case with P&P, but, as presented, the game is complex, poorly organized, and largely lacking in charm. I can forgive the first two flaws, as they're commonplace in the hobby, but it's hard to become enthusiastic about a game when its designer's writing conveys as little enthusiasm as this one does.

P&P came in a large bookcase box, like those of many Avalon Hill games, and included five rulebooks of between 24 and 60 pages each. The first book dealt with character generation, which was largely determined by random rolls and modified by both race and gender. Characters could be humans, elves, dwarves, or "faerries." There are a large number of derived scores as well, which contribute greatly to both the complexity of the overall game system and the length of time it takes to create a character. P&P has a skill system that covers both non-combat and combat skills. Of course, calling it a "system" is a bit of a misnomer, since there are few common mechanics to these skills, most of which have individual resolution and experience systems. And when I say "individualized," I mean it: some skills, for example, have a simple rating/level, while others have a percentile score.

The second book covers combat and magic. Surprisingly, it's not as complex or convoluted as one might expect. Combatants have an offensive and a defensive combat value based on their skills, abilities, and weapon. Comparing the two results in either a positive or negative number that's then cross-referenced on a combat chart. Percentile dice are rolled to determine if the attacker hit and, if so, how hard. Armor decreases damage taken. There are a number of other wrinkles to the system that are confusingly presented in the text, but, overall, the system is strangely straightforward if "heavier" than I like. Magic is powered by mana and the system for using it seems to have been modeled on that of melee and missile combat. Spells are divided into several categories (law, chaos, sidhe, etc.) and cover most of the usual effects one expects in a fantasy RPG.

The third book presents over seventy creatures, divided according to the plane of existence from which they hail, as Powers & Perils has an interesting cosmology that divides reality into an Upper World, a Middle World, and Lower World. Many of the monsters are mundane or fantasy staples, but others are either wholly original or intriguing variations on old standbys. The third book also provides lots of random encounter tables for different terrain types. The fourth book treats human encounters, which is intended to help the referee in creating NPCs. The fourth book also presents treasure and magic items. What's interesting is that P&P places a greater emphasis on the variety of non-magical treasures than does, say, D&D, with plenty of options for works of art, furnishings, etc. Equally interesting are the large number of "natural" magic items, such as herbs and minerals that have magic effects. The fifth book presents a sample setting, the County Mordara, including a sample adventure set within it.

Looking at Powers & Perils now, I am struck by the same feeling that I had when I first read it back in the mid-80s: it's a poorly organized and unnecessarily complex design given that it contains so little that's genuinely new or imaginative. Had the game come out in 1977 or thereabouts, it might have made some sense, when it could have appealed to the growing legion of gamers disappointed with some aspects of hobby leader Dungeons & Dragons. But in 1984, that wasn't enough. Despite flashes of brilliance here and there, Powers & Perils is no RuneQuest or Chivalry & Sorcery. It has neither a compelling setting nor a complex rules system that pays dividends in terms of (pseudo-)historical realism.

I find myself wondering if the game was ever played even by its designer or whether it was purely an intellectual enterprise, because it certainly feels more like the latter than the fruit of design informed by actual play. Powers & Perils isn't a bad game so much as a needless one. There's very little to recommend it over almost any other significant fantasy RPG of its era (or before), because it brings almost nothing unique to the table. Given that it didn't get much support, I suspect I wasn't the only one who felt that way.

Retrospective: Adventures in Fantasy

Although his name will forever be linked with that of Gary Gygax as one of the co-creators of Dungeons & Dragons, one must not forget that Dave Arneson had game design credits both before and after teaming up with his more well-known collaborator. True, Dave was nowhere near as prolific as Gary, nor indeed did his designs reach as wide an audience. Nevertheless, I think it's important, for both historical and sentimental reasons, to remember that there was more to Dave Arneson than the little brown books and Supplement II, such as 1979's Adventures in Fantasy, a set of fantasy roleplaying rules he wrote with Richard Snider, who played the Flying Monk in the original Blackmoor campaign (and who also died last year).

So far as I know, there are two versions of Adventures in Fantasy, both released in 1979, the first by Excalibur Games and the second by Adventure Games. If there are any differences between the two, I cannot say, as I only have the Excalibur version. The game consists of three books -- Book of Adventure, Book of Faerry and Magic, and Book of Creatures and Treasure. The Book of Adventure, despite its name, is largely a character generation volume, although it also includes combat and related rules, as well as information about designing a campaign world. As in D&D, there are six stats -- here called Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Charisma, Stamina, and Health -- all of which are generated randomly through percentile rolls (or 2D20, as presented, using old school D100). Social status and age are also determined randomly, with appropriate in-game effects, like starting funds and bonuses/penalties to stats. Interestingly, rules are also provided for natural death: a percentage chance rolled each year based on a character's age bracket to see if they might die from non-adventuring causes.

Adventures in Fantasy is class-based but possesses only two classes: warrior and magic-user. The main difference between the classes, besides the obvious fact that magic-users have Magic Points and are able to cast spells, is how they gain experience and improve their abilities. Warriors gain experience through martial combat and improve their skills at arms, whereas magic-users gain experience by casting spells and improve their arcane repertoire and potency. There is no skill system in the game as such, but there is an extensive set of rules pertaining to "education," from learning to read and write to learning to ride a horse or wield a particular kind of weapon. These various "courses of instruction" are non-experienced based means of improving a character, taking time and money to complete. They also take time and money to maintain, as the game provides rules for the deterioration of talents learned that characters do not practice regularly.

Book of Adventures includes an overview of "setting up the campaign," as well as a sample campaign setting called "Bleakwood," complete with maps and descriptions. What's interesting to me is how much space is given to timekeeping, something Gygax famously noted as being "of utmost importance," adding -- in all caps, no less -- "YOU CANNOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT." Arneson and Snider obviously agreed, if perhaps a bit less emphatically. "Underworlds," that is dungeons, are given some discussion, but it's wilderness design and outdoor encounters that take up even more space in this book. Combat rules round out the book and you can clearly see material from Supplement II in these pages, most notably hit location. Combat's a fair bit more complicated than in D&D, involving more number-crunching but it's probably no more complex than in, say, RuneQuest or other second and third generation RPGs from the late 70s.

Adventures in Fantasy's Book of Faerry and Magic -- proof that "clever" new spellings of common words didn't begin with White Wolf in the 90s -- details its magic system. Although it uses Magic Points, the system is surprisingly loose, with most spells requiring referee adjudication to use in play. There's very little information, for example, on range, duration, and area of effect. Sorcerous combat is a duel of power between magic-users, reminiscent of D&D's psionic combat, complete with attack and defense modes. The second rulebook also includes information on the various Faerry races and their magic. No provisions are made for allowing these as PCs, making Adventures in Fantasy, at least in its original form, a strongly humanocentric RPG.

Book of Creatures and Treasure begins by a lengthy discussion of dragons, which are a great deal more varied and individualistic than D&D's schematized and color-coded draconic beings. Otherwise, the selection of creatures is more or less what you'd expect, albeit with a stronger mythological tinge. That is, most of the creatures presented are closely associated with a real world mythology, whether Greek, Norse, or Japanese, and their characteristics more closely map to those described in those myths rather than D&D's approach of stealing a mythological name for a creature that bears little resemblance to its antecedent. Much space is devoted to rules for generating treasure hoards and the powers of magical items, as well as powerful artifacts. Again, this is all familiar territory to gamers and offers little that's genuinely surprising.

By most accounts, Adventures in Fantasy didn't make much of a splash on its release, in part due to continued legal wrangling between TSR and Arneson over D&D. There are four "upcoming" supplements listed in the Book of Adventures but none ever saw the light of day. As it is, Adventures in Fantasy feels more like someone's heavily house ruled version of D&D, which "fixes" or emphasizes certain elements according to its creators' interests. On some level, that's not an inaccurate feeling, although I suspect that many of the game's differences from D&D don't so much fix D&D as precede them, which is to say, they're reflective of the idiosyncrasies of Arneson's own approach, much of which either didn't make it into OD&D or was filtered through Gygax's own ideas.

Consequently, Adventures in Fantasy is fascinating as a historical document, providing both insight into Arneson's mind and more fodder for hashing out just what is meant by "old school." I doubt I'd ever want to play Adventures in Fantasy, but it definitely gave me a lot of food for thought. It also served to remind me of just how much Dave Arneson bequeathed to all of us who participate in this hobby and how underappreciated that legacy continues to be. Here's hoping that, as the years wear on, he won't be forgotten and his role as a founder of roleplaying is more widely recognized.