The Many Origins of WWII

by on November 23, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had a day of Origins of WWII on Saturday. There was a certain amount of flip-flopping on attendance (Mark, sadly, couldn’t make it due to a business trip getting extended), and the weather tried to interfere with Zjonni biking through rain in the morning, but it came off to a pretty good day. With multiple playings in the same day, my memory gets a little fuzzy as to when what happened, but at least we wrote down the scores.

Zjonni ran a bit late, showing up just in time to see the last turn or so of the first round between me, Patch, Jason, and Dave. I drew the USSR, and did decent with it, but got locked out of Poland and Romania early, leaving the bulk of my 12 points for late-game understandings with the other major powers. Germany got a decently strong start before the team of France and Britain started reigning Dave in, and getting Patch a 16-point victory as France. (Dave almost won with 15 points, but couldn’t quite shave a last two points off of Patch.)

The second round stuck with the historical scenario and I drew Britain for a 12-point loss. The addition of the USA (Dave) had a more profound impact than we expected, with Poland becoming a hotbed of political activity, and never coming under anyone’s control. Dave still only got 5 points, and Patch won with 18 points as Germany after a late game collapse in Austria and Czechoslovakia lead to them both falling under Germany’s control.

After a break for lunch, we came back and tried the Aggressive British-French policy variant. This caused some head scratching. Among other things, the USA uniformly gets points for ‘NU’, or ‘No Understanding’ in that version, and there’s the technical question of whether a country that is Controlled counts for that or not. In general, it seems like ‘control’ is worse than ‘understanding’, but that’s not what the short note on the reference card says, and that makes it really difficult for the USA to get points at all in that variant. In fact, Zjonni scored 0 as the USA unless a ‘controlled’ country is worth points for ‘NU’, in which case he got 12. I had France for 7 points and Patch won (again!) as the USSR for 15 points. I can’t say I remember much of the action in this game.

In the fourth game, we tried the Aggressive French Policy variant, where France starts out normal, but gets massive amounts of Political Factors in the later parts of the game. France also has to spread out to score many points, so its still a challenge to score well. One of the more unusual features is that France gets points for Controlling Germany (which they’d certainly like to do…) and the end of the game saw a large struggle over that, led by Dave as the USSR, who wanted the massive points boost of an Understanding with Germany. There was also some wonder about the exact rules implications of one player country Controlling another…. I drew the USA for that game, and felt even more sidelined than normal, as the US contribution feels excessively puny with the swelled commitment of France. I certainly have no idea how to be effective with the US’s role as spoiler in the game, and got 5 points. Meanwhile Britain (Patch), Germany (Jason) and France (Zjonni) all tied at 14 points, with Dave’s USSR coming in one behind at 13. An amazingly tight game.

Everyone is still very happy with the game, and Dave will probably borrow it from his dad again for this coming year. Just what we’re going to do for next time is up in the air, however.

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A Game of Heartbreaking Fantasy

by on October 26, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Posted In: RPGs

Ron Edwards, along with his work on GNS theory, at one point defined the term ‘fantasy heartbreaker’. In many ways the term was so obvious that I needed no definition to have a pretty good idea of exactly what he meant when I first encountered it.

Going back and reading his essays put a lot of my thoughts upon encountering Undiscovered: The Quest For Adventure into better perspective.

When Dungeons & Dragons first came out, it was something new. It barely touched upon many of possible things games like it could do. The next several years were spent in flurry of creativity exploring the more obvious permutations of the basic ideas. Some branched out further, but many early games were pure reactions to the underlying assumptions of D&D.

I had not realized that there were people who were still effectively stuck in this last mode twenty years later. These are the fantasy heartbreakers: later games that boil down to highly evolved versions of early D&D written by people with little to no knowledge of what happened in the rest of the industry.

Undiscovered was published in 2001, and the PDF form was part of the recent Gamers Helping Pakistan charity drive at RPGNow. I’ve gone through the book, but this is just my initial thoughts of the system.

So, what’s it like already?

The first thing that I like is that this is a done-in-one system. One book of 370 pages, has everything, including a setting. As a fairly standard fantasy system, it should not need a setting, but as some of the races are unusual, it is for the best.

This is basically a percentile system, though d4, d6, d8, d10 and d12 are also used. There are eight main attributes, and scores can range from 1-150 in each, though beginning character scores will be from 5 to 90. There’s both a random and a point-spend system for determining these scores, though I’ll note that the random system will average higher than the point-spend (500 vs 400). Also, the point-spend system has you roll a d10 on each attribute for a -5 to +5 random adjustment, so you’ll never have exactly what you paid for. In fact, as there is no “+0” on the adjustment chart, you’ll never have the exact score you paid for. Since most of the effects on the attribute bonus tables shift every 5 points, this does have good chance of affecting your exact bonuses.

The legal ranges (or the base values of the random system) of each attribute is affected by which race you choose to play. Undiscovered has seven races, including the standard elves (Alfar) and dwarves, and adding Dusters (were-snakes), Seraphs (angels), Muklag (kind of minotaur-like, with ram’s horns), and Dracomensc (draconians). Each of these (including humans) are split into at least two sub-groups with slightly different abilities.

The general thrust of the rules is as a skill-based system. As such, the skill system is extensive and well-developed. Combat-related skills, in particular, have a two-tier system of ‘levels’ and… ‘ranks’ (they don’t actually seem to have a collective name in the system) ranging from Initiate to Master (it is also 5 level system). You spend skill points to get to a particular combination of level and rank. There is something of a choice, as the same number of points will allow you to take a lower level in a higher rank, which will cause a lower skill bonus, but get you other abilities, such as more attacks or more damage. Each skill has its own table and description of the exact bonuses and costs, so while the structure is always the same, there’s lots of lookup of particulars.

In addition to the more normal types of skills, psionic, clerical and spell magic follow this system. Clerical magic requires picking a patron god, who will restrict the types of spells that can be learned. Each type of ability has its own pool of points to power them (the pool is generated from the amount of skill, multiple skills inside each type add the points together).

There are no classes, but there are levels. Levels allow gains of Life (hit) Points, and skill points. Oddly, while the cost of each level goes up, so do the experience awards. For example, a character gets 10 times his level in experience for helping out in a combat. There are some nice bonuses for avoiding combat, but these too are multiplied. There is also flat XP for doing damage, or casting spells, but as levels go up, there should be tougher monsters needing more damage to kill… also boosting XP from those sources. As it takes 1000 XP to go from level 1 to 2, and 1000 more to go from 2 to 3, I would expect characters to ‘zoom’ through level 2. After that, increases in XP needed start correcting the problem, but level 1 is still about the ‘slowest’ level to go through. There is no limit on levels, and the main chart goes through level 50.

The equipment section is extremely familiar, down to banded mail. Armor makes you harder to hit, providing bonuses to Defense Rating (DR). Combat uses percentile roll-low system. Your Attack Rating (AR) is figured by a combination of skill and stat bonus, and equals your chance to hit something with no defense (Defense Rating 0), so your AR minus your roll is the best DR you hit. Despite the finer granularity of d%, there is a flat 5% chance of criticals, and 5% chance of a fumble (equivalent to the odds of a ‘1’ and ’20’ on a d20). (I generally don’t mind ‘auto hit/auto miss’ systems, but I don’t care for flat critical/fumble systems tacked onto otherwise binary success/failure systems.)

The World of Arkas section in the back suddenly drops a point size or two on the font, really cramming in the information. It is fairly typical, with creation from a small set of gods, a cataclysm caused by war amongst the gods, and then newer gods with lesser powers ruling over the current cosmos. The setting is confined to a single empire and its neighbors, though a rough map of the entire world is given. By and large, it is a lot of dense text, and while not written poorly, it is not a joy to go through either. Actual societal/role-play hooks seem sparse at best.

The monsters section after that is reasonably extensive, if typical, and is split into a ‘wildlife’ section and an actual ‘monster’ section. Most of these latter have multiple statistic boxes so that dragons (for example) grow larger and more powerful as they age. Centaurs, Goblins, Merfolk, Ogres, and Trolls are presented as optional character races. I find ‘static’ monster stats for intelligent creatures artificial when player races can grow with experience, so I really like that touch.

Final Thoughts:

I think if this had come out in 1981, instead of 2001, it would still be a recognized name today. It is very much in the ‘old school’ realm. However assertions that skill-based systems are rare, and that being able to buy the exact skill level you want is an ‘innovation’ are annoying, and display a very weak understanding of RPGs as a whole.

There are a small number of supplements that were done, including a four issue magazine, Undiscovered Q&A. The last of these carries a Summer 2004 date, while the publisher’s website carries a 2008 date. It looks to be another RPG that never stood out from the pack and has fallen by the wayside.

It does look to be a fairly solid, unified system, though it suffers from a high degree of fiddlyness in the details. In general, if you want an old-school fantasy feel, I have to recommend sticking with something simpler, or already familiar. However, much of it seems to have root in the same thoughts that shaped the Rolemaster Fantasy family (whether this is because they were familiar with RoleMaster is something I’d like to know), and if you felt that game had a good direction, but is not quite what you want, you should give Undiscovered a look.

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O2 Blade of Vengeance: Session 3: Act 2—Turpin

by on October 7, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: O2 Blade of Vengeance

[Previous chapter: Act 2 – Hermit]

Had another Saturday night session after missing two weeks. I came down sick the next week, and was somewhat recovered on Sat, but Smudge had come down with it by then, and was still recovering (complicated by allergies) the week after.

[Warning! Many spoilers ahead! See the end to skip.]

Erystelle solved the problem of keeping the noise of fighting one group of hobgoblins from attracting the others by simply casting a sleep spell. [Got just enough on the roll for all of them too.] He quickly improvised bonds for the four of them out of their gear, and then woke one up. The hobgoblin, obviously terrified for his life was not as informative as could be hoped. He got his orders from “Karg”, the ogre. He wasn’t sure where the ogre was getting his orders. Right now, they were desperately trying to find the hermit. (A little closer questioning would have gotten that he had been captured, but had escaped.) There wasn’t much more to get out of him, and there was noise of one of the other search parties approaching, so Erystelle left before things could get complicated.

Thankfully, the hobgoblins were spread out all over the place in groups, so not only was it easy to get away, it also wasn’t to hard to get back to the hermit’s place and recover the books found earlier. After that, Erystelle headed back south to Oakendale to recheck on doings there. Mid-afternoon the next day, there was a sudden clatter of hooves on the trail, and a burly-looking centaur came around the bend. He immediately challenged Erystelle, saying, “I am Turpin the centaur, ruler of the roads. None may pass without first battling me in single combat. Er, without spells that is, only weapons to be used.”

Erystelle was not happy. (Why are the loonies finding me…?) But at Turpin’s insistence, he jousted with him, neither one getting a clean hit on the first try. Erystelle, impatient with the entire deal, immediately turned for a second pass, where Erystelle got a solid hit, doing a lot of damage (charge with lance = 1d10x2 = 20!) Turpin was impressed, but insisted he was fine to continue, so Erystelle immediately charged again, and managed an other solid hit (9 x 2 = 18), which promptly felled Turpin.

Killing him not really being the plan, Erystelle checked him, and found him alive, if barely. He grudgingly shelved his plans and tried to dress Turpin’s wounds, and gave him his last healing potion. Turpin eventually came to, and Erystelle had him stay still and tried to wrap him for some warmth, while he went on to Oakendale for help. It was a measure of how badly wounded Turpin was that he did not object to this.

At Oakendale, Erystelle was glad to see that there was militia guarding all the routes into town. He visited the temple in town (which had been mentioned, but not visited on his first stop), and got some healing for his wardog Tarcil, who was still wounded from the first day, and paid for healing for Turpin. After checking with the mayor, he escorted the priests to find the centaur. He left them to help him to shelter, and continued back north.

I figured from the various people he’d talked to, that he really should know about where the destroyed human and dwarven settlements were, and located them on the map. This focused attention on the north, which probably was not wise. Anyway, Erystelle went north again, and checked up on the hermit’s cave and the hobgoblin encampment again. He noted the latter was still occupied, but only about half as many hobgoblins as previously. Continuing north, he found Granitgape, the dwarven town was actually an underground entrance (of course), but the doors had been ripped asunder, and there was a cave-in a short way in.

Turning west, he visited Scrubton, the human town, which was indeed burned to the ground. Both places showed signs of a red dragon being present again.

From there, he continued north, and as the trail came closer to the Greenflow again, Erystelle spotted a pair of stone ‘fingers’ poking up out of the forest on the far bank.

Getting to them was some work, and involved swimming the horse across the river (I figure by this point it’s small enough to be not too hard to cross). Closer examination showed that they were a pair of moss and vine-covered pillars, surrounded by thick brambles, which seemed to get thicker when he tried to cut his way into them.

After giving up on that, he headed north along the banks of the Greenflow, which eventually turned toward the west. I had to start hinting strongly that this was going nowhere fast. He turned around and re-crossed the Greenflow, eventually turning north on the trail again. This quickly left the forest and started climbing into mist-shrouded hills. Smudge got the hint again, and turned around to the south (I also had to point out that the map was scaled appropriately, and going off the north end was unlikely to lead to much…. ~_^)

At something of a loss, Erystelle headed south again, and a couple days later took a second, more westerly, route crossing a tributary of the Greenflow near where it joins the main river. Some miles further on, he came to where the trail he was following ended at another east-west trail.

And there was another classic encounter. A black knight. Black horse, black armor, you get the idea. He immediately lowered his lance and charged for Erystelle. This proved a poor choice for him, as after a couple passes, Erystelle’s lance connected for decent damage. As the fight degenerated into a sword-on-sword duel on horseback, the knight was unable to get through Erystelle’s defense (chain mail +1, ring of protection +1, shield (magical), and Dex 16 adds up to an impressively low AC), while Erystelle slowly wore him down.

As things were looking bad for our villain, hoof beats were heard coming up the trail. Not knowing what was coming, both sides nervously tried to finish off the fight, when Turpin appeared. “I say, Erystelle, a fine little fight, what!”

Well, at least he was friendly. And looking much better. With Erystelle obviously having the better of it, he watched with interest while the fight ended, and congratulated Erystelle on his victory. He expressed disappointment that he hadn’t had a chance to have a try at him. Erystelle told him, “It’s a black knight. They’re all over the place, like locusts.”

A search of the knight’s possessions came up with two lengths of rope (always handy!), two healing potions, and a rough map. [I halted things to prepare it in a hurry. I’m pretty happy with how it came out.] Erystelle was able to translate the landmarks he knew fairly easily, and decided to see just what was up with the ‘X’ marked on the map.

Turpin had apparently felt recovered enough to return to his wandering ways, and had just happened to go head west along the trail that Erystelle had just met. (One can only imagine that he’d been driving all of Oakendale to distraction.) Heading west early the next day, the pair of them encountered a tribe of pixies shortly after crossing the Greenflow.

Their leader invited them to a (small) feast, and explained that he’d heard about Erystelle’s journey, and thinks he has some information that could help. But first, they’ve been plagued by a troll that recently moved in nearby….

“Trolls, great. Fire. Turpin, can you handle torches?”

“Just watch me juggle them!”

It was still a little early, but we called it there, so I could have a chance to read up some. Smudge started feeling really tired shortly afterwards, so the timing was actually pretty good.

[End spoilerific section.]

GM’s notes: Turpin is a fun character, and I certainly couldn’t pass him up. He’s supposed to be a bit more abrasive, and prone to causing trouble than I’ve been playing him, but then, Erystelle is handling that all on his own. Smudge likened him to Armstrong at one point, and I’m going to go with that. (He’s probably about that buff with 30 HP on 4 hit dice; that’s 7.5 per die on what should be d8s…!)

I went with Dark Dungeons‘ assessment of wounding and dying, where HP loss stops a 0, where you fall unconscious, and must start making saving rolls to avoid dying until either given first aid or healed. I just ruled that Turpin wouldn’t die unless left to bleed to death. Smudge’s new dice are very friendly, with the d20 consistently rolling 18+ (though there’s also been a ‘1’; good thing I don’t care for fumble rules).

A fair amount of time passed in all the wanderings, and the events that start pressing the plot forward in absence of a lucky or inspired player are starting to hit. This is part of one of my concerns with the adventure. The initial direction is obvious, but it’s a small sandbox for the lack of direction given after the hermit.

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Republic of Robots

by on September 27, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Mark came over yesterday for our monthly FtF and we tried out his Republic of Rome set.

It’s a 3-6 player game, but there’s a variation for 1-2, and we tried that to get a feel for the game before pitching it to the rest of the group. The two player version is really just the solo version with one of the robot players replaced with a second person. Most of the political infighting is still removed from the game. However, the rest of the game is there, and is very interesting.

The Early Republic scenario is recommended, since it has the shortest playing time, despite being tougher on the Republic’s chances of survival. The opening setup distributes three senators to each player’s faction, and starts with the ‘inactive’ First Punic War in play. During the turn, There’s setup with initial revenue for the state and factions, and then random events coming out (either directly, or through some of the forum cards being wars or leaders for wars). The Senate Phase is normally the heart of the game, where all the infighting and deal making is done, but it’s scripted out in the solo version into mostly just handling the distribution of offices, and setting up to handle the wars. This is followed by actual combat and the possibility of revolutions from successful commanders. The game is controlled by cycling through the Forum deck, and the game ends by draw of the Era Ends card near the bottom.

Mark and I got maybe halfway through the deck in our experiment. It was going distinctly more smoothly as we got a handle on the game, since neither of us had any great grasp of the rules (they seem to be laid out so as to be difficult to just read through).

The first turn saw the 1st Gallic War come out, and immediately become an ‘imminent’ war. The senate was dominated by the robot factions who had all drawn extra senators. There was a little public unrest, which led to the passage of an expensive land bill as well as the recruitment of a number of legions and a standing navy, which drained the treasury. The Field Consul went to fight the barbarians and got a Stalemate while losing three legions.

If only it had been that easy. Figuring out what was going on for this turn took three hours or so (between looking up rules, the scenario instructions, and the 1/2-player instructions). It sped up nicely after that.

The robots also got most of the early Concessions, which generate money for bribes and getting knights (extra votes) into your faction, so we were at a marked disadvantage in the Senate. However, we did start overtaking the robot players in terms of senate votes. The Populists stayed in first, with Mark in second and me in third. Unfortunately for Mark, he didn’t have enough to form a Ruling Coalition with any other faction, and for the last couple turns the Coalition was me and the 4th and 5th place robots, so he never got any direct say in the government.

The second turn saw mostly random events instead of card draws (three of them!). Thankfully, I was rolling high on the dice for them, and they were positive. In charge of the Ruling Coalition, I used Enemy Ally Deserts to temporarily defeat the 1st Punic War while we had a second go at the Gauls. That was a stalemate again, although with no losses, and the additional veteran legion would help.

The third turn saw a manpower shortage that boosted costs to 30 Talents per unit. Thankfully, no new units were actually needed and the treasury started recovering. The Gauls were finally defeated for no losses. This was especially good as while the 1st Punic War had not returned, it had to be in the next card or so, and Hannibal had shown up, promising to promote it to a strength 17 active war as soon as it turned up.

We only did part of the next turn, deciding to pick up early, and see just what was waiting for us. Phillip V showed up, replacing Hannibal in the Curia as the 1st Punic War indeed showed up again. A look through the deck revealed a whole line of wars about to hit. Depending on how quickly they would have gone active, it could have gotten very dangerous. Sadly, we never go to the point of doing anything with the new province of Gallia Cisalpina.

In general, it was a fun time. It obviously takes a couple turns for influence and popularity to start piling up, which is when the personal infighting becomes meaningful. So we really didn’t miss much of that with the robot rules. Certainly, the game should have some of the political free-for-all feel of Russian Civil War which should go well with the group. Of course, looking at that deck of ‘upcoming attractions’ shows just why the Early scenario is so dangerous: it’s easy for a lot of wars to hit all at once. Dealing with them all without the increased revenue of provinces would be tough.

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The Best of Books, The Worst of Books

by on September 18, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: GURPS

In 1990, GURPS was four years old; Third Edition was two years old. There had already been a number of great supplements. I was a committed fan.

A fan without a lot of money. I was surprised, and very happy when one of our local gaming group expanded my modest GURPS collection by giving me a new book for my birthday.

GURPS Aliens was pretty much exactly what I had been itching for: a book on how to construct non-human racial packages in GURPS. The theory had been discussed before, in both Space and Basic Set, but the tools were severely lacking.

The book breaks up into three chapters, the first of which talks about the nature of aliens in a campaign—anywhere from first contact to a universe where “humanity can barely set foot on some barren, drifting space rock without meeting some new intelligent life form.” It manages to cover the topic pretty well for just being two pages long.

The second chapter contains all the ‘crunch’ of the book. 19 pages covering the essentials of creating an alien race for play. From discussions of what high-point-value races might mean in a universe, and why humans might be on top anyway, to pages of brand-new advantages and disadvantages covering all sorts of things that humans can’t do, but plenty of fictional races can, like Nictating Membranes, Slave Mentality or even Independently Focusable Eyes. And there was a section on Extra Limbs. All in all, excellent basics to get you on your way.

The third chapter took up by far the bulk of the 128-page book. 28 actual alien races written up with game stats, a general description, followed by psychology, ecology, culture, and politics; a great template to write up a race in around 2-4 pages. The races themselves were varied: somewhat anthropomorphic pig-men, 3000-point energy beings, living crystals, a pair of symbiotes, four-dimensional traders, and so on.

And it was all disappointing. There was very little that I cared to even consider for use in my fledgling GURPS Space campaign. Looking back, I was a little too hard on the book, there are several races that could be quite good, but my campaign already had a certain spin towards minimal aliens. Part of the problem of course, was a need to be generic. While GURPS Space had done very well, and propelled much of the early line, there was no real setting to plug everything into, so the roles of the aliens presented was often not anything special, being meant to be parts of an undefined interstellar society.

Races were generally either outside society completely, or someone you’d meet in the startown bar. There was an ‘antagonist’ race, with some interest, though one of their big things was slavery, which is a great villainous pastime, but there wasn’t a lot of interest past that. I’d have preferred something slightly more complex.

The book was not helped by the inclusion of the four races given in Space, with fuller write ups. I hadn’t liked them much then, and they remained among the weaker races here.

The ‘crunch’ parts suffered from ‘first out the door’ syndrome as well. Later the same year, GURPS Fantasy Folk was released, in much the same format, and with new updated point-costs for everything. Five years later, the second edition of Fantasy Folk came out, and changed the point costs again. Aliens languished with but a single printing, and lots of errata.

It is good that it came out, since it started GURPS down the road of figuring out how to handle non-humans, but it took no time for it to be surpassed. Today, even a 3E player does not need it for the crunch (GURPS Compendium I will do the job much better); it is only of use if you care to update and adapt the races presented in it. This is not recommended, as most of them nothing special, and four pages (at best) each does not present enough to be worth going after to steal ideas from.

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