It's Not the Konami Code

I have just finished Ian Livingstone's 2022 Fighting Fantasy gamebook Shadow of the Giants. It's not too bad! The main issue is that for the most part there's only an illusion of meaningful choice; decisions either loop back to the point where the choice was made so you can get back on the correct path, or they don't matter because either option has a roughly equivalent effect on later events. As a result things do feel a bit basic and linear, but also more gentle than the Sir Ian of old, who would not hesitate to punish incorrect choices with a gleeful "Your adventure ends here."

(There is one very arbitrary choice towards the end that feels like 1980's Ian, but it's the only occurrence I found.)

So the "game" part is a bit easy and flat, but the "book" part is quite strong. There are some interesting ideas and a few evocative sequences, and there are a handful of compelling characters met along the way. The quest is an interesting one, local in scale but still with real stakes, and I appreciate the twist (revealed early on) about the cause of the calamity. I give it three Yaztromos out of five.

I finished it on my second try. The first attempt was scuppered by one puzzle towards the end. See if you can solve it:

"You see a three-by-three boxed grid carved into the rock wall with each box containing a number."

2	7	6
9	5	1
4	3	8

The book gives us a clue:
"Up down
Left right
Say the number
See the light"

You're then supposed to turn to the paragraph number that matches the solution to progress further. Or, you know, give up and start again. If you want.

After a bit of searching I found the solution online, but I can't work out how you're supposed to get to that solution. These books are aimed at children so I should be able to grok it, but it's gone right over my head! Perhaps my brain is fried after my incident.

I have worked out one way to get to the correct answer -- I'll put it in the comments -- but it feels wonky and I'm not convinced it's the intended solution.

What do you reckon? What am I missing?

SAINT SEVURDAPOY'S ARROW

This is an arrow made of some sort of lightweight but strong metal. The name "Saint Sevurdapoy" is carved along the shaft.

• Feels icy cold -- almost painful -- to the touch.
• Counts as enchanted for purposes of immunity to normal weapons.
• Bursts into cold black and blue flame when fired.
• Flames do not start fires, but do provide dim blue light.
• Vanishes after use, but reappears at midnight. At the point it disappeared. I hope you remember where you shot it!
• No special effect versus red dragons.

13th Age:

• Standard bow damage +1d4 cold damage (+2d4 at Champion, +3d4 at Epic).
• Does 1d4 cold damage to the archer when fired.
• When hit, the target must make a normal (11+) save or one random magical effect or spell affecting them is suppressed until the next noon.

Quirk: Your manner is abrupt, brusque, and curt. To-the-point, one might say.

B/X:

• Standard bow damage +1d4 cold damage.
• Does 1d4 cold damage to the archer when fired.
• When hit, the target is affected as if Dispel Magic has been cast on them, with the archer's level standing in for casting level.

Fighting Fantasy:

• Standard bow damage + 1 cold damage.
• 2 STAMINA damage to archer when fired.
• AFF: When hit, the target is subject to Counter Spell; assume the archer has a Magic skill equal to her SKILL, modified by the STAMINA cost of the original spell.
• Troika: When hit, the target is subject to the Undo spell; roll versus the original casting, using the archer's SKILL.

CHOMPA

This small, scrappy shield -- almost a buckler -- is made from the stretched face of some hideous swamp-dwelling creature, and was created by an insane goblin wizard, or so the story goes.

• Growls and jabbers all the time, never forming coherent words, but making stealth pretty much impossible.
• The gob leads to an extra-dimensional space but everything there is consumed; this could be annoying or useful.
• Goblins recognise CHOMPA as an important cultural artefact, and will be predisposed to be at least neutral to the wielder.

13th Age:

• +4 Hit Points.
• On a natural attack roll of 8, CHOMPA bites a mêlée opponent for 1d4 damage per level.

Quirk: You are always peckish.

B/X:

• +1 Armour Class.
• On a natural attack roll of 8, CHOMPA bites a mêlée opponent for 1d4 damage.

Fighting Fantasy:

• +1 SKILL.
• On a natural attack roll of 8, CHOMPA bites a mêlée opponent for 1 STAMINA damage.

(I am inclined to restrict the extra damage to a roll of double 4 but this seems a bit churlish in comparison to the other systems, so you may allow it on any roll of 8, although that may be too far the other way.)

LIMB OF WOE

This is a withered severed leg with dirty bandages wrapped around the stump.

• Two-handed club.
• The wielder counts as unarmed for any relevant effects or purposes. For example, if they are a character that normally must fight bare-handed, or if they are casting a spell that requires touching a target. That sort of thing.
• The wielder also registers as undead to abilities or effects that detect or track the living dead.
• The knee joint gives it a wild, unpredictable swing.
• The LIMB OF WOE has a strong smell of something like old leather and pickling.
• Every morning at 2am, it twitches for two long, creepy hours.

13th Age:
+1; small, two-handed.
The wielder has a 1 point conflicted relationship with the Lich King, in addition to their other relationships. If they already have a negative or positive relationship with the Lich King, then things just got complicated!
Quirk: Tap your foot constantly.

B/X:
+1 to hit and damage.

Fighting Fantasy:
+1 SKILL and +1 to the club row on the damage table.

DLC for the FF GBs

On Monday night I dreamed that I visited my Korean cousin in Toronto. I don't have a Korean cousin in Toronto, so I suspect this is my subconscious telling me I'm sad about Kim's Convenience being cancelled.

Anyway.

While there we went to whatever the Canadian equivalent of a charity shop is, and I was excited to find a bunch of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. I managed to plug a couple of gaps in my collection, and found a second copy of Blacksand! to probably sell, but alas even in the realm of dreams Allansia eludes me, which probably says something about my sense of self-worth. I also discovered that Vault of the Vampire is called Vault of the Vicar in Canada, no doubt to some obscure Canadian law about promoting vampirism, or a general Canadian fear of the clergy perhaps.

The most interesting find was a series of short, 30 to 50 page books that were designed to be used in conjunction with the main FF adventures, as side quests of sort. They had GREENSPINES and everything. The main books would be edited to add something like this:

You now have the opportunity to embark on a sidequest. Select a book and turn to 1 in that book. If you survive your sidequest, follow any special instructions there, or return here to continue on your adventure.

If you would rather ignore the distraction of another quest and continue on your journey, turn to 87

Would this work in practice? I remember there being a disclaimer in the shorter books warning against the potential unbalancing effect of sidequests on the main book -- again, that tells you something about my subconscious -- but it seems like a viable idea, a sort of analogue DLC to make replays of one's favourite FF adventures a bit more unpredictable and interesting. You could tailor the digressions so that they would be suited to certain books over others, both in terms of game balance and setting, so you don't suddenly end up fighting a bunch of medusae on a pirate ship or whatever.

(I suppose in theory you could do this with the existing books. Start Caverns of the Snow Witch, then interrupt it to play Moonrunner, then jump back, although that seems clunky and excessive. If you paired up the right books it might just about work. Hm.)

I woke up before I could try any of the new books, but if I dream about them again, I will report back. Meanwhile, if anyone has a copy of Allansia they don't want, let me know.

Yummy Yummy in My Tummy

Patrick Stuart has written an interesting post about tweaking the rules of D&D -- or rather tweaking how you use the rules of D&D -- to encourage a different play style, one that is gentler and more social. One of the things he talks about is food, how the sharing of food is an important social ritual, and how that could be reflected in a game.

(Be warned, I am now about to miss about 98% of the point of Patrick's post.)

That got me thinking about how food is used in role-playing games, or rather how it isn't. Meals and rations appear on equipment lists and you may have one of those GMs that pays attention to whether the player-characters are eating enough, but for the most part it's either a background element or a nuisance, a "starvation counter" that needs to be managed along with how many arrows or torches you have.

It seems a bit of a waste and it would be nice if more were made of food in games, as Patrick suggests.

(It's interesting that what fantasy games have taken from Lord of the Rings is the long walks but not the many, many pages of discussion of what the characters are eating and how it tastes. That's a bit weird.)

I've always been fond of how food is used in Fighting Fantasy, perhaps because I grew up reading-playing the books. There food is presented as a source of healing; if you are stabbed by a GOBLIN then you get better by eating sandwiches. It's an abstraction to the point of nonsense but the silliness is part of the charm. I love the idea of a battered group of adventurers having a picnic and emerging healed of their wounds.

Food-as-healing seems common in computer games, I suppose again because it's a useful abstraction that sort of makes sense, and the immediacy of the idea works well in context. Another seminal influence on my philosophy of games -- ludo-philosophy? -- is Sega's Phantasy Star, which has a science-fantasy setting somewhere between Greek myth and Star Wars, and in which the main healing items are burgers and cola. Again, the absurdity of the idea of adventurers going around a dungeon with a bag full of Big Macs and bottles of Pepsi appeals to me.

A recent and more complex implementation of the idea is Final Fantasy XV, which makes food the most important part of the resting mechanic, and gestures in the vague direction of the social elements Patrick is talking about. Ignis, the party butler -- they never say it, but he's obviously the butler -- cooks a meal for the adventurers every time they rest. Most of his dishes give some sort of bonus to character statistics and if the recipe is a favourite of one of the other party members, there's an added effect for that character. Travelling the world and speaking to people exposes Ignis to new ingredients and tastes that he can add to his notebook, which is a nice way to integrate the characters into the setting and reward exploration.




Almost all of the bonuses are combat related, because that's the sort of game FFXV is, so it doesn't get into the sort of thing Patrick discusses, but the fact that different characters have different favourites is a nice touch -- and one easy to pull into your average D&D game; a d100 table of favourite meals is easy enough to do -- and we are at least treated to a little cut scene each time, with the lads sitting around a camp fire in those flimsy folding fishing chairs, enjoying the meal and each other's company. It's a start, anyway.

Where am I going with all this? I don't know. Perhaps nowhere. I think all I wanted to say is that because of how I started in gaming I have this feeling that food should be more prominent in our games, even if it's just replacing healing potions with meatball subs and packs of Monster Munch, but it would be nice to do something more.

The Book of Dreams

I have fond memories of sitting on the sitting room floor and leafing through the back section -- always the last few pages, with the toys and games -- of the Argos catalogue and making a list of all the wonderful things I wanted for Chrimble that year. I imagine that, wherever you are, you have a local equivalent.

Someone has done a wonderful, nostalgic, thing and scanned and uploaded the Argos catalogues of years past. Look at this page from 1993's catalogue:

Battle Masters! Dungeons and Dragons! The Legend of Zagor! Warhammer Fantasy Battle! Games Workshop, Fighting Fantasy, and D&D all in one festive season!

It's interesting that Battle Masters was more expensive than its "grown up" cousin Warhammer; I suppose that's because it had more miniatures in the box, even if they weren't quite as good as the proper ones.

(By 1994's catalogue Battle Masters is gone, Warhammer has gone up by £5, and is joined by the second edition of Warhammer 40,000.)

The big surprise is that D&D is only a tenner, not least because this is the Big Black Box edition that came in a, um, big black box, with the rules, a big dungeon map, a GM screen, cardboard miniatures, and probably a bunch of other stuff too. This version of the game only covered up to fifth level -- the Rules Cyclopedia took you the rest of the way -- but that's still a bargain.

Was 1993 the geekiest Chrimble ever?

With a Little Bit of SKILL/STAMINA/LUCK, We Can Make It Through the Night

This is a review of the new edition of Melsonian Arts Council's Troika! but first, a bit of a digression. It will be relevant, I promise.

Fighting Fantasy is one of my favourite role-playing games, but it is not without its problems. It was designed to run the Fighting Fantasy solo gamebooks and while it's just about fit for purpose for those, the ruleset struggles when taken out of that context.

In the gamebooks there is some freedom of choice -- which is what makes them fun after all -- but it's not like a tabletop rpg, where you -- or YOU -- can take a beating, return to town for a rest, then return to the dungeon for more donnybrooking. Fighting Fantasy gamebooks are almost always about forward movement, with branching paths that nonetheless carry you forward.

It's also rare to have allies, and when someone else does turn up to help, they either hang around for a couple of fights then run off, or they get eaten by a GIANT CRAB (SKILL 10 STAMINA 11) after two paragraphs. I was surprised to discover that the recent Port of Peril features a non-player companion who not only hangs around for a fair chunk of the book, but is also somewhat competent.

All of this means that gamebook characters verge on the superheroic; they have to be to have a fair chance against the individual book's many challenges.

You can perhaps see where this is going. Translate that to a multiplayer rpg and you have problems. Now there's a group of four or five titans -- ho ho! -- wandering about, cutting through monsters and shrugging off traps; there's fun in that -- I ran a short and self-explosive campaign along those lines and it was brilliant -- but it's not sustainable for extended play.

The other issue is -- and I'm aware of the irony here -- that the randomness and simplicity of character generation means that some characters are much better than others. When you have only three player-character statistics and those are generated by dice rolls, you can end up with characters with wild differences in competence and survival prospects. Again, this isn't a problem with a one-off adventure but it can cause problems for a campaign. Advanced Fighting Fantasy makes the issue worse with its advanced skill system; your SKILL score also determines the points you add to your SKILL to determine the value of your special skills, so if you roll well, you get even better, and if you don't roll well, you never catch up.

Fighting Fantasy is a great little game and I love it, but these are major issues that can make it unviable for a long-term campaign, or at least a sensible long-term campaign.

I mention all this because Troika! is more or less an alternate Advanced Fighting Fantasy -- see, I told you it would be relevant -- and is going to be vulnerable to the same issues, unless author Daniel Sell has found solutions.

He has. Sort of. I think.

The SKILL problem is solved by acknowledging the inherent imbalance and randomness in the system and embracing it as a feature; maybe your rolls are crappy but look, you're a space giant with a magic map! It's a gutsy approach; adding even more randomness with the Backgrounds system and sort of trusting that things will balance out, or at least will be more interesting.

If we're thinking in terms of pure numbers then I don't think the problem is fixed -- it may even be worse -- but the strength of the addition of Backgrounds is that they give players interesting things with which to play that are not just numbers to plug into the combat or skill checks or whatever. The other advantage of this approach is that it adds no mechanical complexity, so the game remains simple. I approve.

(A quick aside: I'm playing in a D&D5 game at the moment using the revised ranger class and it comes with a bunch of special abilities that aren't mechanical as such -- they don't interact with target numbers, dice rolls, character statistics, or anything like that -- but still have a significant impact on the game world. It almost feels like cheating and I'm loving it.)

The STAMINA problem is tackled by inflating damage output. In Fighting Fantasy a GOBLIN (SKILL 5 STAMINA 5) with a sword can hit you for two points of STAMINA damage. In Advanced Fighting Fantasy the same GOBLIN can do between one and three points. The Troika! GOBLIN can ruin your day with up to ten points per kidney-poke! It's swingy and brutal and it's not the approach I would have taken but it looks like it should work, and will make for fast and exciting combat.

The other big change to the original Fighting Fantasy is a new initiative system. You add tokens, such as dice, to a bag -- player-characters get two each, henchmen get one, opponents get a varied amount -- and then characters act as their token is drawn from the bag, until the "End of Round" token is drawn and everything resets. This mechanic is tactile and unpredictable and I adore it, but I can imagine that the unpredictability of it could prove too much for some.

Elsewhere the game is much the same as Fighting Fantasy. It's simple, quick, and with the major issues of the original resolved, it seems quite robust. That said, Troika! isn't just a new edition of a venerable classic, as it abandons the generic fantasy of Jackson and Livingstone's Titan for something somewhat more exotic.

The setting is implied through the Backgrounds and the monster list, just enough to give a feel of the world without pages of maps and historical data. It's a strange world, a little bit Planescape, a little bit Book of the New Sun, a little bit Spirited Away. It feels decadent and almost febrile, the same way David Lynch's underrated adaptation of Dune does; I imagine the world of Troika! is hot and sweaty and everyone is struggling under some sort of summer cold.

The light touch to setting elements means that it should be easy enough to switch them for those with a closer match to your own campaign backdrop. I suspect it would be a significant amount of work to come up with d66 new Backgrounds, but I doubt it would be arduous.

Sells' writing style is infectious, arch and playful, without coming across as pretentious: "Notice that [starting Backgrounds] only touch the very edge of specificity." At times, when explaining rules, this dancing, slippery tone can border on obfuscation but for the most part it's entertaining and fun to read.

There is less art than I expected from this deluxe release of the game; there was a fanzine-style edition a few years ago. I would have thought the upgrade to a fancy hardback would have meant the book would be drenched in pictures but aside from the Backgrounds section art is scarce. It's all good stuff though; I'm quite fond of the aforementioned Background images by, I think, Dirk Detweiler Leichty. They have this mad, angular, almost abstract look, sort of like the face cards in a standard fifty-two card deck; the style probably has a name but I'm too much of a barbarian to know it. Now that I think of it, a deck of character generation cards would be a lovely little gimmick.

The book's design and layout are neat and functional and it's quite easy to read and navigate; the use of old-school rules organisation -- "6. Actions... 6.1 Hit Someone... 6.2 Shoot Someone", and so on -- is a bit excessive in a game of this complexity but is a cute stylistic flourish. The book is a sturdy hardback and is presented in A5, the One True Format, so extra points there. I will dock a significant number of points because the character sheet doesn't have "Adventure Sheet" across the top but you can't have everything, I suppose.

While I have some quibbles with Troika! they are minor, and on the whole it's a solid and entertaining update and enhancement of one of my favourite role-playing games; should I be lucky enough to once again run a Fighting Fantasy game in the future, I will probably use Troika! because Troika! is ace.

Arbitrary score: 87

Troika can be purchased in digital and physical forms.

Remix of the Snow Witch

Last weekend I again endured the pernicious lottery that is Southern Rail and visited my friends Courtney, James, and Liam in That London. You remember them; they were the ones who strongarmed me into running them through The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh back in April.

Once again they had requested that we play "some D&D" and so in the days running up to my visit I pondered what adventure to run for them. I considered Barrowmaze, inspired by Mike Evans' recent delves, and I almost went with Eyes of the Stone Thief, as I don't know if I'll ever get that to the table otherwise.

(I pondered using the opportunity to run another playtest of CUFFS SHRIEK, but we also played Mansions of Madness and Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu over the weekend, so I think it would have been too much of an eldritch thing. Yes, that is a clue to the subject matter.)

In the end I decided that the most sensible thing to do with a couple of days until Play Day was to rewrite Fighting Fantasy gamebook Caverns of the Snow Witch. Which I did. On the train on the way up.

It didn't turn out too bad for a frenzied bit of last minute scribbling. The original caverns are quite linear, which is perhaps no surprise from a solo gamebook from 1984, so I Jaquaysed them to make exploration more interesting. I switched some of the encounters around, or changed their context, added some new ideas and dropped others. The original SNOW WITCH is quite playful and talkative, at least in comparison to most gamebook villains, so I wrote her to emphasise that aspect and make her less of an End Boss; alas, while I wanted to include the bit where she forces YOU to play a sort of scissors-paper-stone game just for fun, I ran out of time and couldn't work out how to include it. Next time.

Highlights of the adventure included:

• The player-characters discovering the footprints of a YETI and almost deciding to turn around and go home. This would be within ten minutes of starting play.


• The player-characters deciding that a cauldron full of yellow liquid was a potion that turned people into YETIS, because it was impossible that it could be anything else. In fact, it was a potion of cold resistance but their idea is too good for me to not use somewhere.


• The unexpected cheer that went up around the table when I semi-accidentally gave my Baldur's Gate II character John the Bastard a cameo as Generic Dwarf Prisoner #1.


• Liam's thief finding a pair of spiderclimbing boots and using them to run onto the ceiling of caverns to shoot at SNOW CULTISTS, safe from reprisals...


• ...until a summoned ICE DEMON flapped its stubby wings just enough to get within claw range of the thief's head...


• ...leaving the other two adventurers -- once the ICE DEMON was killed -- with the interesting problem of how to loot recover their deceased comrade's corpse.

Last time I played with Courtney, Liam, and James, I noted how they seemed to think everything in the adventure was significant and it proved to be the case this time too. They seemed to regard the adventure as a closed system in which every item had a use and every encounter had a purpose; the SNOW WITCH's necklace had to be a key to unlocking something and couldn't be normal jewellery, for example. I don't think there's anything wrong with that approach but it's not how I design or run adventures, so I feel there was a bit of a clash there.

If there was a clash, it wasn't serious enough to ruin the game, and I think everyone enjoyed the adventure, even though the Snow Witch escaped and Liam lost his character just before the end; I am a bit of a wimp when it comes to killing off player-characters and as such I don't believe I'll ever be a true Old-School Gamemaster, but the players seemed to be made of sterner stuff. They were cautious and clever and didn't try to fight everything, and while they also didn't find every treasure or uncover every secret, the player-characters emerged from the caverns with a big pile of gold and other loot. I don't think they gained a level, but they got close.

As comfortable as they are with old-school gameplay, I don't think this group of friends is that fond of old-school rules. Labyrinth Lord is a fine game and I chose it because it was a close match for the type of thing they wanted to play, but during the game they expressed frustration that their characters were rubbish in various ways, or that only the thief could detect traps, or that sometimes they had to roll high and other times they had to roll low, and so on. I've shattered at least one tooth as a result of excessive gritting due to descending armour class, so I understand their discomfort.

As such, next time we play I think we will use a different ruleset, but I'm not sure what that will be. I think it should be something simple, that feels like D&D but maybe isn't D&D itself. D&D5 is a possibility, but it may be too fiddly for this group. I've also got my eye on The Black Hack, but I dislike the roll-low core mechanic so I'm pondering a hack -- The Black Hack² perhaps, or The Hacked Black Hack -- if I can make the maths work.

Any other suggestions -- not Torchbearer -- are welcome; I've got some time to look around as I won't be up in the glittering capital again for a couple of months at least. Also, if there's interest -- and if it's legal -- I may post my remix of Caverns of the Snow Witch, but it needs a bit of a tidy up first.

Hashtag and Eggs

Oh okay then, let's have a look.

I'm not going to do one a day; no one wants to see that. Let's bash through the whole lot in one fat hit.

Here we go!

1. What published rpg do you wish you were playing right now?

What, right this moment? I'm okay thanks. I like games but I don't want to be playing every moment of every day, like some sort of...

Oh.

I want to play Mutant Year Zero. It's been sitting in my reading pile for a year or so but I haven't got it to the table yet.

2. What is an rpg you would like to see published?

I may write a longer blog post about this but I think it's fascinating that computer rpg series like Final Fantasy spit out a complete ruleset and setting every couple of years and then move on; would anyone buy or play these games if they were released as tabletop rpgs? I would be interested, at least.

3. How do you find out about new rpgs?

I don't follow any news sites or anything like that, so I tend to pick up on new releases when people get excited about them on Google+.

4. Which rpg have you played the most since August 2016?

I am a sad loser and I have logged everything I've played and because these things are true I can tell you that it was the Frankenstein patchwork d100 game I used to run The Dracula Dossier. Thirteen sessions in all.

5. Which rpg cover best captures the spirit of the game?

That's a great question. I can think of lots of covers I like but do they capture the spirit of the game? Fifth edition Call of Cthulhu has a wonderful cover but I don't think it's indicative of how the game plays, as such.

Of the games I own, I'm going to go with the second edition of Shadowrun; it's not the best image in the world -- the composition is a bit flat and that drain is given so much prominence that you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a main character -- but does a great job of showing what the game is about.

6. You can game every day for a week. Describe what you'd do!

Assuming I've done all the preparation and I'm ready to go, I'd probably try out a bunch of games and play a different one each day. Maybe two a day, one after lunch and one after dinner.

I know. Rock and roll.

7. What was your most impactful rpg session?

"Impactful" is a horrible word. Eurgh. Stop it.

Anyway, probably the most influential -- much better, see? -- session was the first time I played Call of Cthulhu. I'd played other rpgs before that, and it was Shadowrun that probably got me hooked, but that first CoC session was a profound and enlightening experience.

8. What is a good rpg to play for sessions of 2hrs or less?

"2hrs"?

Good gravy.

(Mental note: stop being an arse.)

Anyway, two hours doesn't seem long enough to get going, once you've taken into account making the tea and moaning about what the Tories have done this week, but I'd go for something quick and easy, like Fighting Fantasy. I imagine you could rattle through a lot of content in two hours with that game.

9. What is a good rpg to play for about 10 sessions?

Most campaigns I run last about ten to twelve sessions, so the easy answer is "any of them" but that's not very helpful.

There's a suggestion in 13th Age to run a campaign in which everyone gains a level with each session and characters have ten levels in that, so you get this focussed and neat sort of "zero to hero" thing. I don't know if that means 13th Age is a good rpg to play for about ten sessions, but I'd like to give it a try some time.

10. Where do you go for rpg reviews?

Reviews from R'lyeh is good, as is tenfootpole. Ramanan Sivaranjan knows what he's talking about, and I will always pay attention to what Patrick Stuart or Zak Smithsabbath like, although our tastes can often vary.

11. Which "dead game" would you like to see reborn?

TSR's Saga System -- the one with the cards -- was ahead of its time and had a lot going for it, but died when TSR did. I'd love to see a new version.

12. Which rpg has the most inspiring interior art?

Death is the New Pink or Troika! because Jeremy Duncan is a genius. So are Jez Gordon and Zak Sabbathsmith, but I don't think there's a published rpg out that features their work. Yet.

(I also have some pictures in DitNP but if you're looking at my stuff instead of JD's then You Are Doing It Wrong.)

13. Describe a game experience that changed how you play.

I was going to blog about this. Maybe I did. I'm old and can't remember everything. Hrm. It was when I was running The Enemy Within II: The Enemy Within and the Temple of Doom and I noticed that WFRP2 sort of expects you to build non-player-characters according to the same rules as player-characters and I remember thinking "no, I'm just going to do what I like" and made up the statistics.

It's sort of obvious and everyone else has probably been doing it for years but it had never occurred to me before and now I do it all the time.

14. Which rpg do you prefer for open-ended campaign play?

I'm not sure how to answer this one because every open-ended game I've played has fallen apart at some point. I would imagine that the best sort of rpg for this kind of campaign would be something where characters don't change much in terms of power level; perhaps something like basic D&D, the Chaosium d100 rules, or Traveller.

15. Which rpg do you enjoy adapting the most?

I don't understand the question. Is this asking if I enjoy hacking games? If so, then I don't do it often because if I have to change a ruleset in order to run something then there's a good chance that there's already a different ruleset that's better suited to what I want to do.

That said, I am a big fan of the Chaosium d100 rules and I find them easy to tweak and modify, so maybe that's my answer.

16. Which rpg do you enjoy using as is?

See above. I'll drop rules if they make no sense or slow things down but for the most part I'm not much of a hacker. Fighting Fantasy and WFRP2 are both games that I run without changing much, if anything.

17. Which rpg have you owned the longest but not played?

Probably Lacuna Part 1: The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City. I've had it since 2009 and I've never got around to playing it. I find it interesting and I'm excited to play it but I also find it a bit intimidating and all I can imagine is making a right mess of running it.

18. Which rpg have you played most in your life?

Ooh, crikey. I've played a lot of Pathfinder in recent years, and I played a stupid amount of Shadowrun when I was but a wee sprogling, but I reckon it's probably Call of Cthulhu. I've run three big-ish campaigns and have played double figure one-shots.

It may be Pathfinder because that takes ages to play, but I don't like it nearly as much as I like adore Call of Cthulhu and I would be sad if I have played it more often.

19. Which rpg features the best writing?

Small but Vicious Dog.

20. What is the best source for out of print rpgs?

I get mine from eBay because all the shops that used to sell ancient rpg books have closed down around here.

In the brief time during which I lived in Minnesota, the local Half Price Books was like a treasure trove of old rpg stuff, but I wasn't gaming at the time so I didn't pick anything up. Tsk.

21. Which rpg does the most with the least words?

Probably one of these twenty-four hour games or two-hundred word rpgs but I don't think I've read any of them.

Troika! is quite lean but also good. Let's go with that.

22. Which rpgs are the easiest for you to run?

I have no patience for fiddly games any more so I only run games that are easy to run. This is one reason I like 13th Age; for the players it's like AD&D in terms of complexity and options but for the GM it's more like Basic D&D.

The easiest for me is probably Call of Cthulhu because the d100 system is super simple to use, and almost everything is on the character sheet.

Then they ruined it by Pathfindering the seventh edition but I've already moaned about that.

23. Which rpg has the most jaw-dropping layout?

Rifts.

Oh, did you mean jaw-dropping in a good way?

24. Share a PWYW publisher that should be charging more.

I don't know of any PWYW publishers off the top of my head. Lamentations of the Flame Princess sometimes does it but it seems to work for James, so what do I know?

25. What is the best way to thank your GM?

I think it depends on the GM. I always appreciate it when the players tell me they enjoyed the game and would like to play more.

Alas, they tend to tell me this either (a) after the final session of the campaign, or (b) years after the game dribbled away into nothing because of -- I thought -- a lack of interest.

Fist-shaking bitterness and tearful self-doubt aside, it never hurts to just say "thank you, I had fun".

26. Which rpg provides the most useful resources?

What?

Does this mean the core rules, or anything published for it?

I use the d1000 mutation tables from Realms of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness whenever I can, but that's not an rpg.

27. What are your essential tools for good gaming?

Whahuh? These are getting vague and weird now.

A game and some people to play it. Anything else is optional. I mean, it doesn't even have to be a good game as long as you have good people.

I keep thinking of when I played Mutant Chronicles when I was seventeen and it was terrible so we drank whisky as we played and I was sick in a bush.

28. What film/series is the biggest source of quotes for your group?

We don't do quotes. Stupid comedy accents, on the other hand, we do a lot. Comedy German is a popular one.

(Sorry, Germany.)

29. What has been the best-run rpg Kickstarter that you have backed?

The standard for rpg Kickstarters seems to be set so low that "deliver what was promised and on time" is considered some sort of achievement, rather than basic competence. That said, the Mutant Year Zero people know what they are doing and the Hubris Kickstarter was run well.

30. What is an rpg genre-mashup you would most like to see?

I'm not a singer as I lack both the ability and the confidence, and it would probably be insufferable torture to watch in action, like a thousand Frozen Youtube videos in one, but I reckon there's potential in an rpg in which singing is used as some sort of resolution mechanic.

31. What do you anticipate most for gaming in 2018?

That's a bit odd. Why not "the next twelve months" so it ties in with the next time everyone does this?

(Mental note: remember the first mental note.)

Anyway, the thing I'm most excited about is that there will be not one but two new editions of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay coming out soon. One will be based on the first and second editions and the other will be based on the absurd high fantasy of Age of Sigmar; I'm keen to see both. I have no idea if they will be out in 2018 but let's say they will be just to end this on a positive note.

My Top 10 Role-playing Games Ever (in 2014) #9

The first entry in my top ten may have come as a bit of a surprise but this next one is perhaps more predictable, if only because like many British gamers of a certain age, if you cut me I bleed Fighting Fantasy.

The Americans all seem to have started their fantasy adventures with The Keep on the Borderlands, but for us on our rainy, windswept isle, it was The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Well, for me it was Masks of Mayhem and that blasted prairie fire, but my point holds. It was this wonderful -- some entries less so, but on average they were ace -- series of books that fostered my interest in role-playing games, although they weren't rpgs as such.

One day my friend Gareth showed me a new gamebook he'd bought, one that was a bit different to the others in that it was for multiple people to play at once. We sat in his dining room and took turns reading it and trying to make sense of it; we didn't grasp the need for a gamemaster so our fumbling attempt to lead Armstrong, Bigneck, and Crystal -- adventurers, not solicitors -- through a battle with some ORCS wasn't quite right but I still count it as the first time I played an rpg.

Is it nostalgia then that puts Fighting Fantasy at number nine in my list? In part, yes, but I think there's a lot to be said for the game itself, not least the simplicity of the system, which is more or less a straight port of that of the gamebooks without much in the way of modification for a multiplayer setting. This limitation becomes a problem in campaign play -- there are no rules for experience or healing between adventures because those weren't relevant concerns for the gamebooks -- but I'm not sure the original game was ever intended for such; the advanced version tries to remedy this flaw and expand the game into a "proper" rpg and is a brilliant failure, although the second edition is much more successful.

A Fighting Fantasy character has three statistics: SKILL, STAMINA, and LUCK. That's it. STAMINA is the character's health, as one would expect, and is reduced by damage and restored by scoffing food, a mechanic that is absurd but also endearing. SKILL is the character's active ability; if Bigneck wants to jump across a crevasse he rolls 2d6 and tries to get a result equal to or less than his SKILL score, and if he wants to hit an ORC he rolls 2d6, adds it to his SKILL, then compares that total with that of the ORC, who has done the same. LUCK is what it says on the tin; does the rope bridge break as Crystal crosses it? Roll 2d6 and compare to Crystal's LUCK to find out; where it differs from SKILL is that LUCK diminishes each time it's used, a beautiful little mechanical twist.

That -- aside from a PIXIE-sized handful of specific combat and situational mechanics -- is Fighting Fantasy in a nutshell. It's basic -- and oh, how I've come to appreciate simple rules -- and yes, it's also blunt, but it's more than good enough for an evening's gaming when there's nothing else to play, or for those rare and joyous occasions when one is introducing new people to role-playing games.

I'm going to be bold and say that Fighting Fantasy is the best introductory rpg there is. The rules are simple and make sense, and the book is full of good, jargon-free advice and even two complete adventures. When those are done there's The Riddling Reaver -- a campaign that's much better than I remembered -- and about sixty gamebooks from which to draw further inspiration. Second-hand copies of the book are abundant and cheap but even so this is one game that should always be in print. I don't play it often these days but that does not diminish my affection one smidgeon.

Next: buckets of dice, a machine gun, and a dragon.

Advanced Fighting Gumshoe

A few weeks ago my group had a go at Gumshoe -- why do they capitalise it? Is it an acronym? Are they shouting? -- with The Esoterrorists and in the past few days Doctor Bargle has been thinking about alternative skill systems for Advanced Fighting Fantasy. As is the way with these things some cross-fertilisation occurred in my addled mind and I started to wonder how a Gumshoe -- I'm not doing it -- type system would work with AFF.

The first edition of AFF has a skill system that could be considered a little bit broken. In the basic game a character has a SKILL -- okay, I'm a hypocrite, what of it? -- score that is used to determine if she could jump a crevasse, climb a wall, or hit an ORC; for general use 2d6 is rolled and a success is a result that is equal to or less than the character's SKILL, while in combat the roll is added to the score to generate an Attack Strength -- italicised but not capitalised, because I don't know why -- that is compared with that of the opponent. Simple.

In AFF special skills are introduced. If a character wants to be better at jumping her player can spend points and add those to the character's SKILL score to get a new value, so Alice of Zengis may have a SKILL of 9 and spend two points to get Jump 11. Fair enough, except the number of points available to spend is equal to the character's SKILL score, so someone who has a good score gets more points than someone who doesn't and their skills will all be better too, in a spectacular cascading clusterfudge of wonky maths.

Oops.

In Graham Bottley's second edition of AFF starting SKILL is not random and does not affect the availability of skill points, the same number of which are available to every character. This is all much more sensible and doesn't need fixing, but I will propose an alternative anyway.

There are many versions of Gumshoe -- stop it -- but in general active skill -- something like jumping, climbing, or fighting -- use succeeds on a d6 roll above a number determined by the gamemaster; skill points are spent before rolling to reduce the target number -- or add to the roll; I'm not sure which and I'm not sure it matters -- to increase chances of success. If the difficulty is 4+ a player can spend three points for an automatic success, for example.

Let us now put AFF in one Brundle pod and Gumshoe in another and observe the results. Open your copybook now.


In this misbegotten hybrid of two games systems that were doing quite well enough without my tinkering Alice of Zengis would have a SKILL of 9 and Jump of 2 as before, but that latter value represents not a constant bonus as it does in AFF but rather a number of points that can be spent to influence a jumping roll. In other words, Alice could spend two points to give her an effective SKILL of 11 for one jump or one point for a SKILL of 10 on two different occasions; once out of points Alice would have to rely on her raw ability for all her leaping needs.

The pool of eight or so skill points given in AFF2 is a bit stingy in this context so I would perhaps allow sixteen to twenty points to be allocated during character generation. Spent skill points would be restored at  the end of the adventure -- however that is defined -- just as LUCK is in AFF2.

I have a suspicion that this is an elaborate fix for a problem that doesn't exist -- a charge I've often laid at the Gumshoe system, as it happens -- and it seems a bit of a mean-spirited limitation, or "nerfing" as the Colonials would have it. I also have no idea how or if it would work in play as I haven't played AFF this century but it was buzzing around in my head, clamouring for release, so there it is.

Forgotten Phandelver

Undeterred by our previous experience with the game, tomorrow my gaming group will have another go at Dungeons and Dragons 5, this time using the mini campaign from the boxed set, Lost Mine of Phandelver.

There's no way I'm going anywhere near the Forgotten Realms though, so we're going to be adventuring somewhere else instead.

That's better.

GREENSPINES

I have just taken a delivery -- thanks Ben! -- of a pile of boxes from my university days that had been in storage at the other end of the country for over a decade. Among works of classical Greek literature and dry philosophical texts was this:

Also in the box was my first set of gaming dice, bought in 1995 or so.

March Madness 31 Day Obscure Game Blogging Challenge Ex Plus Alpha

I didn't get involved in the February Dungeons and Dragons blog event meme thing because I didn't want to clog up the blog -- blogclog? -- with half-hearted recollections of a game with which I have little connection. Then someone pointed out Tedenkhamen's non-D&D version and so here we are.

You're getting it in one big chunk because I don't think you need me wittering on at you every day for a month.

1 What was the first roleplaying game other than D&D you played? Was it before or after you had played D&D? 

The first role-playing game I played was the multiplayer version of Fighting Fantasy. I remember my friend Gareth introducing me to the book and I think we ran through a fight using the rules but I don't know if we got any further than that. I didn't play Dungeons and Dragons for the first time until a good five or six years after that, although I was aware of the game.

2 In what system was the first character you played in an RPG other than D&D? How was playing it different from playing a D&D character?

I'm pretty sure we used the sample characters from the example of play -- Armstrong, Bigneck and Crystal -- in that first FF not-game so I'm not sure that counts. If not then the first character I created would have been Mister Majeika, an ork street samurai in Shadowrun. At the time I still hadn't played D&D but Majeika was an ork on a motorbike and he had a submachine gun so I like to think that I had some sort of nascent awareness of the differences.

3 Which game had the least or most enjoyable character generation?

I did not like Traveller: The New Era at all but I enjoyed the way characters entered the game complete with this little biography telling the player where they'd been and what they'd done. I haven't played any other versions of Traveller -- not because TNE put me off but because no one I know plays it -- but I understand that they all take a similar approach.

4 What other roleplaying author besides Gygax impressed you with their writing?

I'm not that impressed with Gygax's writing to be honest but perhaps I've not read enough of the classics to appreciate his prose. +Chris Hogan's Small But Vicious Dog is a delight to read and I'd love to see more role-playing books follow his lead and move away from the technical manual style that seems to dominate the hobby.

5 What other old school game should have become as big as D&D but didn’t? Why do you think so?

This is a tricky one but given the fact that Star Wars turned up at around the same time as the role-playing hobby was taking off I'm surprised that Traveller didn't become more popular. It is popular, I know that, but it seems like it should have been able to capitalise somehow on Star Wars and so rival D&D in popularity.

6 What non-D&D monster do you think is as iconic as D&D ones like hook horrors or flumphs, and why do you think so?

It may be a bit of a cheat but I'm going with Cthulhu and I'd say he's more iconic than most D&D monsters. More so than the flumph anyway.

7 What fantasy RPG other than D&D have you enjoyed most? Why?

I love Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. I like the simplicity of the system and the wonderful career-based character development, but it's the sense of humour that I like the most. I know a lot of people consider it to be dark fantasy or even horror but I see it as a comedic game, sort of Blackadder does D&D.

8 What spy RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details. 

I haven't played any spy games, at least not in the strictest sense. I enjoyed aspects of the first edition of Conspiracy X but I'm not sure that counts. Cold City and Hot War are excellent games that both involve espionage to a certain extent but I don't think they could be called spy games either. I really want to play Night's Black Agents.

9 What superhero RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

My superhero gaming experience consists of one session of the 1980's Marvel rpg so I suppose by default that's my answer. In fairness it was good fun; I played Death's Head in a team with Deadpool, Cable, and the Human Torch and we nuked St. Petersburg. It was an accident. Sort of.

10 What science fiction RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

I enjoyed running Rogue Trader even if the campaign spluttered to a halt. I had great fun playing Shadowrun in my teens -- see 2 -- if the presence of magic, elves, and dragons doesn't discount it. That said, Rogue Trader has elves, orcs, and magic too.

11 What post-apocalyptic RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

I know it's one of the classic genres but I don't think I've ever played a post-apocalyptic role-playing game. I did play Twilight 2000 a couple of times but the GM was using the rules to run an X-Files pastiche so that probably doesn't count.

12 What humorous RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

See 7.

13 What horror RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

I love Call of Cthulhu more than any other role-playing game. I first played it some time after being introduced to Shadowrun and Star Wars and it was so different; we were playing normal people with no special abilities -- beyond an aptitude for accounting or natural history -- investigating a haunted house. It opened my eyes to the possibilities of the hobby and to this day it's the only game that's scared me and the only game with which I've scared players. I also consider it to be one of the most heroic rpgs; you play librarians pitting themselves against nigh-omnipotent alien space gods that they cannot hope to defeat but they try anyway.

14 What historical or cultural RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

I can't say that I've played any such game. Call of Cthulhu is historical but the alien space gods probably disqualify it.

15 What pseudo or alternate history RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

Again, I'm not sure I've played one of these unless Call of Cthulhu counts. This exercise is making it look like I've only ever played about five games in my entire life.

16 Which RPG besides D&D has the best magic system? Give details.

I wouldn't say D&D has a good magic system, let alone "the best" but that's not an answer. I like the way that magic in WFRP2 is so unpredictable and even the smallest spell has a chance of going wrong and causing a mutation or summoning a major daemon; it's also a nice simple spellcasting system based on rolling a small pool of dice and adding up the numbers. Easy.

My favourite magic system though is probably that of Shadowrun circa the second edition. I like the little details; spellcasting is limited by the caster's toughness and so a mage can be exhausted or even killed if she pushes herself too far.; spells leave a trace in the astral plane so can be tracked back to their casters; urban shamans can conjure spirits made out of rubbish; it's packed full of fun ideas but they've all been thought out and make sense within the context, or as much as magic can make sense anyway.

17 Which RPG has the best high tech rules? Why?

Technology in rpgs tends to translate to "stuff to buy" in my experience and I don't really care about equipment lists. I will say that if a game has construction rules -- for starships, vehicles, robots, and so on -- then it has an above average chance of winning me over.

18 What is the crunchiest RPG you have played? Was it enjoyable?

Traveller: The New Era had rules for calculating the effect the gravity of various planets would have on the range and damage of bullets fired upon said planets. An admirable attention to detail but in no way enjoyable.

19 What is the fluffiest RPG you have played? Was it enjoyable?

I assume this means the rpg with the most setting and fewest rules. Fighting Fantasy uses 2d6 for everything and has a wealth of setting information if you count the fifty-odd gamebooks. Was it enjoyable? Read on, Macduff.

20 Which setting have you enjoyed most? Why?

This is tricky. My favourite rpgs each have their own settings -- Call of Cthulhu has umpteen -- but I can't say that I have any particular attachment to them divorced from their associated rulesets. That said, Cthulhu Invictus is amazing but who doesn't like Romans?



If I do have a favourite setting then it is probably Titan, the world of the Fighting Fantasy books; I haven't played a game set in Jackson and Livingstone's jumbled patchwork world in many years now, but I spent many happy hours bashing GOBLINS there and I'd love to return one day.

21 What is the narrowest genre RPG you have ever played? How was it?

I'm not sure what this question is getting at. What's a narrow genre? I suppose it's referring to something like Pendragon where you all play male, English knights in Arthurian Britain and there's not a lot of wiggle room; the game doesn't support Sir Cedric of Slough going dungeon crawling or getting in a boat and sailing off to discover America, or of being Lady Cedric instead.

If that is what the question is getting at then Pendragon -- despite its narrow focus, or perhaps because of it -- is an excellent game and is in my top five rpgs.

22 What is the most gonzo kitchen sink RPG you ever played? How was it?

One of my great regrets is that I've never played Rifts, a game which must be near the pinnacle of gonzo gaming. I have played Feng Shui though, and that's not only bonkers but also a great deal of fun.

23 What is the most broken game that you tried and were unable to play?

I recall trying to play the Mutant Chronicles rpg once. We gave up and drank cheap whiskey instead.

24 What is the most broken game that you tried and loved to play, warts and all?

It is clear that the first edition of Advanced Fighting Fantasy had almost no playtesting whatsoever but even so I remember running and playing a long campaign using the rules that was bonkers and brilliant and only stopped when the rules couldn't support it any more.

25 Which game has the sleekest, most modern engine?

I think this may be two questions masquerading as one. I find Chaosium's d100 system to be quite sleek as it's intuitive and light and gets out of the way but it also originates in the late 1970's so is not in any way modern.

26 What IP (=Intellectual Property, be it book, movie or comic) that doesn’t have an RPG deserves it? Why?

I am astounded -- astounded, I say -- that there isn't a series of Final Fantasy tabletop rpgs. It seems like such an obvious thing to do. I'm no fan of the franchise but I'm also surprised that there's no Harry Potter game.

27 What RPG based on an IP did you enjoy most? Give details.

See 7.

28 What free RPG did you enjoy most? Give details.

I don't think I've played a free rpg. I've got a few and they're stacked on the shelf ready to be played but the opportunity has never arisen. When it does I'd like to give Lady Blackbird a try.

29 What OSR product have you enjoyed most? Explain how.

This is an odd question. I'm not supposed to be talking about D&D in these answers -- it's the whole point of the exercise after all -- but the OSR is dominated by D&D so I'm not sure what to say here. If people in the OSR are producing swathes of material for WFRP, Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, and Pendragon, they haven't told me, the blackguards.

30 Which non-D&D supplemental product should everyone know about? Give details.

I really want to say Vornheim here because it's one of the most useful and innovative rpg products I've ever seen but it is sort of D&D focused. Instead I will go for the d1000 random mutation tables from either the old Realms of Chaos books or the more recent Tome of Corruption; both are for Warhammer but can be used with any game with just a bit of work and they're so much fun to use.

31 What out-of-print RPG would you most like to see back in publication? Why?

This is perhaps a bit of a cheat as it's D&D-derived but Dragonlance: Fifth Age was a fun and promising game that got sucked into the demise of TSR and I would love to see a new edition with the Dragonlance stuff left behind.