Tunnels and Trolls Classic Solos

As a backer of the Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls crowdfunding, I also received the Adventurers Compendium (in PDF format.) It is a compilation of 10 solo adventures (and some GM adventures too), originally published from 1978 to the early 80's. Looking for a quick RPG fix, I decided to try some of them (being fully aware that many of them are brutal.)

To keep to "old school" traditions, I rolled a character (although Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls does have an option for point-buy character creation.) Thus was born Brelok, the rogue. From his attributes, we can see that Brelok is quite frail and not really charming; an odd, twitchy man hiding in the shadows and stealing what he needs:

https://openclipart.org/detail/71209/rogue-warrior

Brelok (level 1 human rogue)

STR 6, CON 17, DEX 4, SPD 14

IQ 12, WIZ 5, LK 13, CHR 4

Personal adds: +3

Talents: lock-picking, stealth

Items: high quality dagger (2d6+4), 20x caltrops, leather armor (3 hits), lock picks, basic delver's package, 6gp.

(Note: personal adds are a bonus added during combat by the character. For those curious about this game, there is a free short version of the rules.)

The wannabe warrior

And off went Brelok for a stroll in the wilds, only to be captured by barbarians, stripped of his possessions and put to a trial to determine if he is the reincarnation of a legendary king. That is how the mini solo adventure "Kingmaker" starts. It did not last very long: in the first trial, Brelok was crushed in combat against a much tougher opponent.

After such a quick career, Brelok went to the Abyss, a solo adventure for dead characters, included in the Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls book. Not that he fared much better there, being dragged to hell by a demonic creature right away.

The smuggler

In a parallel dimension, Brelok II tried to smuggle drugs into the city of Gull, in the solo adventure "Golden Dust, Red Death". Not only did he make a good job of it, but he gained 2000gp and 1000 adventure points. 

With these gains, Brelok II raised STR to 8, DEX to 7, SPD to 17, LK to 15. These changes increased his personal adds to +8. He also purchased a high quality shortsword (3d6+4) and a suit of brigandine (8 hits, -2 DEX).

After these upgrades, Brelok II went to another shopping session at the Great Bazaar of Khazan, starting "A Sworded Adventure". He got mugged but got 200 adventure points in the process, more than enough to raise LK to 16 (add 1 to his personal adds.)

Enjoying his good luck so far, Brelok II traveled to a distant fishing village, in "Seven Ayes." There he found his doom in a tavern filled with weird and ugly folk (and I cannot add more without giving out spoilers.)

Conclusion

I am still amazed at how open and rules-light Tunnels and Trolls is, compared to other "old-school" RPGs. Looking at its 1st edition reprint, the same core ideas present in the Deluxe edition are already there. This alone makes it inviting for narrative play and solo play. The vast amount of solo adventures is good, too.

The mini solo adventures that I tried can be really brutal. I am convinced that if a given adventure is recommended for characters up to, say, level 4, then a level 4 character is required -- preferably a warrior with a lot of personal adds.

Fernewelt

I recently picked up Fernewelt ("distant world" according to Google Translate), a free, 9-page story-oriented RPG system. It is a very compact and simple set of rules to describe characters and resolve actions. The rules nicely tie greater risks to greater rewards, which makes me think it is best fit for fantasy or epic stories.

There are also some tools intended to help playing without a game master: first, a creativity tool in which you generate three random letters and interpret them in the context of your game. This is a welcome addition to the solo RPG toolbox, along with Mythic tables, Universal NPC generator etc. Then there are random lists for motivation, crime, plot twists, behavior and a number of other things.

The text is generally clear and to the point. The only doubt I had was how to judge a character's competence in order to determine their chance of success. I have assumed it is evaluated based on the character's profession and nature (and thus, depends on the players and narrative, rather than stats.) That said, I can imagine players could write down important skill ratings, e.g. "average strength" or "bad driving skills", for their characters. As with other story-driven RPGs, it seems that the author assumes all players are interested in taking part in a story and use common sense, so there are no concerns about "exploits" or players trying to create an invincible character.

To try the system, I played a very quick game, in which a goblin attempts to steal a relic from the church of a village.

The story of Speedy
"Speedy" is a goblin that left his tribe to join a band of greenskin bandits. To prove his worth, he must steal a golden relic from the human settlement of Discipline. It is a small village with a temple at its center and a small garrison of empire troops. Speedy's profession is "trickster": he is undisciplined, sometimes even careless, but also very adept at hiding and misplacing things. He has a mental nature, being very quick to notice and react. His usual equipment is a dirty cloak and a knife.

Speedy reaches the outskirts of the village as the sun is setting. Keeping behind bushes, he observes the villagers and guards. He decides to wait until later to start his mission. [I rolled for a small chance for him to be detected while waiting. It did not happen.]

Carefully, Speedy sneaks through the village, avoiding the attention of the guards. At one point, a dog starts barking but he manages to hide behind a wall, undetected. Finally, he reaches the temple. [In my judgement, sneaking across the village at night was a "normal move" for the goblin, as he was alone and unencumbered. I also judged his sneaking ability at a "trained" level. These corresponded to a "possible" chance of success, corresponding to a difficulty rating of 4 (on a six-sided die.) I decided that the consequence of failure would be a wound, not to end his adventure right away. Since I rolled a 4, I decided to add the barking dog -- although the rules do not discuss degrees of success.]

Speedy peeks into the temple and sees nobody. On a table by the far wall rests the relic that he must steal [I rolled to see if there would be anyone inside, with a 50/50 chance.] He sneaks in, then crawls up to the table. The goblin unties his cloak and uses it to wrap the relic, and crawls back to the entrance. At this moment, a dog starts barking again -- but it is on a leash held by a guard on patrol. He releases the dog and shouts, calling for other guards. Speedy starts to run, grabbing the relic. He gets out of sight of the guard but the dog catches up with him and a gruesome fight happens. When Speedy's knife stabs finally kill the creature, his face and arms are torn and his leg is deeply wounded. [Given Speedy's story, I decided he would also have a 50/50 chance of taking the artifact and sneaking out of the temple unnoticed. Since this was his main goal, I decided he would need a reward of "find an artifact". This implied a risk of being disabled. Unfortunately I failed.]

Weak from the fight and the wounds, Speedy tries to crawl out of the village but guards find his trail, and then his twitching body. They recover the relic, and in the following weeks, increase their patrols in and around the village. [Due to the circumstance, I decided that escaping the village was a special move at average ability (thus reflecting the goblin's wounds.) The consequence of failure would be death. I needed to roll a 1, and instead rolled a 2.]

Conclusion
I found that the action resolution system worked well when used to resolve the outcome of a scene in a story. It is interesting to note that the consequence of an action (wounded, disabled) can be physical, mental or social. So, for instance, I might have opted to make Speedy socially disabled when he failed to sneak out of the temple: he might drop the relic and flee, and then be kicked out of the bandit gang and mocked so much that he gets a local reputation of being a coward. It is a matter of choosing what works better in the story.

I think that interpreting degrees of success and failure may be helpful to add details to the action resolution rolls. It may also reduce the problem with using only a six-sided die, which causes large steps in the chance of success between difficulty ratings. For instance, since I failed the last roll by 1, maybe Speedy could have escaped but become permanently scarred, rather than die.

In any case, Fernewelt was a welcome surprise and should be checked out by anyone interested in solo RPGs. The various generators may also come handy for miniature gamers playing campaigns or other story-driven games.

52A347

Last weekend I spent some time reading and having fun with The Traveller Book. Released in 1982, this classic Traveller compilation predates my first contact with RPGs by almost a decade. Having read about how inviting to solo play this system was, I got the PDF some time ago but I had not made anything with it yet. It is a scan of the printed book and some pages are a bit blurred but readable. So after skimming over the book I went on to perform some of the suggested "Basic Traveller Activities" (p.122) -- in this case, creating characters.

Starting with a blank slate, then adding some rolls to find out the character's fate. [source: The Traveller Book]

My first character, with reasonable strength and dexterity and good intelligence and education scores died during his first term of service in the army. The title of this post is the "UPP notation" of the characteristics of my first surviving character, who despite the low dexterity and intelligence scores, served two terms in the army to raise to the rank of captain. UPP (universal personality profile) notation lists the character's attributes (strength, dexterity, endurance, intelligence, education and social standing) as hexadecimal numbers.

Jake Maxwell, 52A347, age 26, Captain (Army)
Skills: Rifle-1, SMG-1, Gambling-1, Body Pistol-1, Dagger-1
Possessions: 10,000 Cr, High Passage

Afterwards I created two more characters:

Mark Sanders, 7877D4, age 26, served on the Navy
Skills: Blade-1, Vacc Suit-1
Possessions: 50,000 Cr

Julie Briggs, 735856, age 30, 4th Officer (Merchant)
Skills: Vacc Suit-2, Medical-1, Body Pistol-1, Electronics-1
Possessions: 80,000 Cr, Low Passage

Character creation assumes that characters start at the age of 18. The six attributes are rolled and then the character may attempt to enlist on one of six services (navy, army, marines, merchants, scouts and other). Failure to enlist results in being drafted into a random service. After this, characters may serve one or more four-year terms, during which they might improve skills and training, go up in ranks and so on. They might also get killed in service. Provided this does not happen, at the end of a term of service the character may muster out, collect some benefits and go on to adventure.

"Mass Effect" anyone? [source: The Traveller Book, p.28]

It is fun to see this "simulation" approach to character creation, something that other games would later adopt (Fuzion and Blue Planet come to mind.) While it is miles away from more recent story-driven role-playing game trends, it does provide a "game within the game" that may itself serve as a procedural source of other character stories.

A quick update and Solo Heroes

It has been a month since my last update! May has been a busy month at work, meaning not much free time for tabletop gaming. On the other hand, I have been reading some books and setting up a couple of games that hopefully I will be able to play soon...

Among those books, I have read the free Black Streams: Solo Heroes from Sine Nomine Publishing, which is a guide to adapting the rules from old school OGL-based RPG systems for solo play. They mostly tackle the problem of survivability of single, low-level heroes in those games. The adjustments are interesting and have convinced me to put their Scarlet Heroes RPG in my shopping list. Although it is meant to allow a single player to game with a game master, the advice should work well for solo dungeon crawling too.

I also have noticed that recently Crusader Publishing has been adding their games to WargameVault. Does anyone have information on their games Crusader and Legions of Battle? I could not find any reviews.

Nine questions in the mutant future - part 1

Since I read JF's post of the 9Qs PDF, I have been wanting to try it. Well, over an year has passed, he released an updated 2013 edition back in March and I still had not played anything with it.

I like post-apocalyptic games and I have a number of RPGs with that theme to try... the problem is that trying two things for the first time at once increases the risk of something going wrong. So I decided go with Mutant Future, which at the same time satisfies my need for some post-apocalyptic role-playing and is based on a very familiar game system.

The PC Party
Characters were randomly rolled using the "roll four dice, drop lowest, for each ability in order" method. I just decided beforehand that I would have a party with a mutant human, an android and a mutant animal. For the character names, I googled "post apocalyptic character name generator" with little hope of finding something so specific... this led me to the Badass Mad Max Style Post Apocalyptic Nickname Generator. Some generated results are bizarre but a few clicks gave me more than enough inspiration. I also used the Universal NPC Emulator to generate some traits for each of them. Here is the party:

James 'Equalizer' O'Neal, Mutated Human (Neutral)
AC 5, HP 73, STR 18 (+3 to hit, damage, force doors), DEX 16 (-2 AC, +2 to hit with missiles), CON 17, INT 13 (+5% on tech rolls), WIL 14, CHA 11.
Damage turning, spiny growth (medium spines, 1d6 damage), ultraviolet vision.
Heavy crossbow, leather armor, long sword, 50 heavy quarrels, backpack with basic items.

Equalizer is a 6' tall bald man with tanned, dry skin. Thick black spines jut out of his forearms and legs.  Despite the scary looks, and the fame gained defending his village, his real passion is in restoring ancient technology. That puts him at odds with scavengers and junk traders, and draws him to the city states of the pure humans. [UNE description and motivations: dignified artisan, overthrow resources, associate with the wealthy, conceive pleasure.]

Artiface, Basic Android (Lawful)
AC 2, HP 50, STR 17 (+2 to hit, damage, force doors), DEX 13 (-1 AC, +1 to hit with missiles), CON 7 (-1 radiation saves), INT 7 (-5% on tech rolls), WIL 13, CHA 14 (-1 reaction adjustment.)
Control light waves, dwarfism (1' tall, -2 damage, -2 AC, +1 to hit), increased hearing.
Chain mail, short sword, backpack with basic items.

Artiface is a very short android, a product of the ancient world. Found and repaired by Equalizer, he has become his loyal companion. He enjoys aiding villagers in improving their living; at times the android will start rambling about "reconstructing the glory of civilization," which is source for amusement, and sometimes trouble. [UNE description and motivations: habitual adept, obtain the world, relate disbelief, produce expertise.]

Bandit Missle, Mutant Donkey (Neutral)
AC 4, HP 36, STR 10, DEX 14 (-1 AC, +1 to hit with missiles), CON 14, INT 5 (-10% on tech rolls), WIL 15, CHA 16 (-1 reaction adjustment.)
Body adjustment (4 times a week), capable of speech, chameleon epidermis, dual cerebellum (+10% on tech rolls), killing sphere.
No weapons, bite attack does 1d4 damage. Beast barding, also carrying provisions (rations, waterskins, rope etc.)

Artiface and Equalizer freed Bandit Missle, or BM for short, from a group of mutants that used him as a beast of burden. Since then, they take the simple-minded, two-headed stealthy donkey along with them to protect him from raiders and slavers. No one is sure why he took that name but he speaks it proudly and spells it that way. BM is fond of roaming the wasteland to learn of stories about the animals of the ancient civilization. [UNE description and motivations: unseemly gypsy, oppress pride, obtain myths, indulge enemies.]

Heroic Motivation
The characters are tied together by their interest in the ancient civilizations and their willingness to travel the wasteland to look for information and relics. Their home base is Crevace, a small village of mutants hidden in the mountains. Therefore, their main motivation is to recover ancient relics, and the opposition are scavengers and whoever might be guarding those relics. A secondary motivation is to protect Crevace from raiders and slavers.

That is all for now. Hopefully I will be able to post at least part of a session this week.

Crowdfunding rewards and other updates

About a week ago I got an update from the Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls kickstarter saying that some of the rewards like postcards, bookmarks and such had been mailed to the backers. "Oh, cool, in a month or so they should arrive," I thought. Surprisingly, I got them today, twelve days from the postage date!

In other news, Fields of War has released a FAQ for their Border War game, of which I wrote a short review/playtest. The FAQ is written like the letters section of a magazine, which makes it fun to read.

Smugglers in the Dark - part 3

With some delay, here is the last part of my solo dungeon delve. Based on comments on the first report, it became clear that I should define the mechanics for group decision. After some thought, here is the system to be used:

1) I will set the scene based on card drawn, Mythic description chart etc.
2) I will come up with a likely course of action for each character, based on description, and I will test them with the Mythic fate chart. A result of "exceptional yes" will mean that the character will want to stick to their plan, possibly disregarding others' opinions and even taking immediate action. A result of "exceptional no" will mean they will actively avoid that option even if others suggest it. In the case of a simple "no" I will try to come up with secondary plan and test it again. A second "no" means the character has not made up their mind.
3) Based on the results from each character, I will try to interpret the decision of the party. This may require more fate chart rolls if a character tries to persuade the others, for instance.
4) If all characters rolled two "no" results on step 2, the action will be initiated by the NPCs, environment etc. For instance, a trap might be accidentally sprung, wandering monsters arrive, the NPCs start asking questions...

Since I am not very experienced in solo RPGs, I tried to fit most decisions into the "make a common sense question / answer with fate chart" framework from Mythic. I will leave the comments about how it worked for the end of the report:

Ingont woke up to the sound Eryz and Swyem talking. They had built a small campfire and Swyem was making some kind of tea. He had planned to wake up before sunrise and start preparing... Now all this chatter would make concentrating harder, not to mention the risk of drawing unwanted attention. At least Swyem seemed to have recovered, and the blood stains on her armor were the only reminder of yesterday's fight.

The party walked back to the ruins and passed through the entrance in mid-morning. They moved slowly, wary of any signs or sounds of movement, until reaching the point where two corridors crossed. [Party order remains the same: Eryz, Ingont and Swyem. Turns 1 and 2 were spent moving to the crossing found on the previous day.]

Smugglers in the Dark - Part 2

Here is the first report on my solo dungeon delving. You can read about the characters here and the dungeon generation system here. Rules details and other comments are shown in square brackets.

Ingont arrived at the village nearly at sunset, to avoid drawing too much attention. For the same reason, he met Swyem at the closing trading post, not the tavern or her house. Seeing her brought him some joy, mostly from the memories of their childhood, when they could afford to be careless. Swyem told him that she had confirmed the location of the kobold lair, but she could not find anything new about the courier or who could have poisoned him.

On the following day, Swyem and Eryz left in the afternoon, allegedly on a trip to a nearby village. Ingont, who had rented a room at an old widow's house, left again at sunset. The trio met in the woods, halfway between the village and the kobold lair and camped there for the night. The plan was Ingont's to avoid prying eyes from the villagers.

Before sunrise, they left their horses at the camp and walked to the entrance of the lair. Stone steps covered with dead leaves and roots led down into a dark opening. Once inside, they could see that the passage continued ahead and there was a second corridor leading away from the left side. [Turn 1: Entrance to the dungeon. I just rolled a die to find out how many exits there were. Marching order: Eryz leads, followed by Ingont, who carries a lantern, and lastly Swyem. I mapped each explored dungeon area as a 5x5 block in gridded paper.]

Smugglers in the Dark: Dungeon Setup

Here is the card-based dungeon mechanics I will use to continue the Smugglers in the Dark adventure. From a standard deck of playing cards, I will use the following: one red and one black of each face card (jacks, queens, kings) and numbers 2-7. One card is drawn at the beginning of a turn when the party is moving further into the dungeon:

• Face cards mean that a new room is entered and an encounter happens, focused on a given character, Jack: Eryz, Queen: Swyem, King: Ingont. The nature of the event is defined using the event focus and event meaning systems from Mythic.
• Number cards require a roll of a ten-sided die. If the result is greater than the card number, the new area is a corridor or passageway. Otherwise, it is a new room, filled according to the "stocking the room" rules on the Basic game.

The number of doors found in a room or corridor, including the one used to enter that section of the dungeon, is given by the roll of one six-sided die: 1-2: 2 doors, 3-4: 3 doors, 5-6: 4 doors. Each door will be locked on a roll of 1-2 on a six-sided die.

The color of the card will be used to indicate the kind of encounter, when applicable. Red cards indicate a conflict of physical nature (combat, obstacles, traps to dodge etc.) while black cards are related to mental conflicts (social interactions, puzzles, traps to disarm etc.)

If the adventurers spend more than two turns in the same location, I will make a check for wandering monsters. For this adventure, the wandering monsters are kobolds, and their number is given by the roll of one six-sided die: 1: a single kobold, 2-4: two kobolds, 5-6: three kobolds. However, for every previous encounter with wandering monsters, a +1 modifier is added to the roll.

After six cards have been drawn, one joker is added and the cards are reshuffled. When the joker is then drawn, the players have reached their objective -- the stolen magical trinkets.

Smugglers in the Dark - part 1

There are several entertaining posts about solo dungeon crawling at Tabletop Diversions and Solo Nexus. While I have played some crawls using Dungeons and Dark Dungeon, with the recent re-release of old Dungeons and Dragons PDFs, I decided to try a little crawl using the Basic Set.

Character creation
The first step was to generate a party. I wanted to have a fighter, a thief and a magic-user. I started rolling the three characters' attributes and then assigned them to a suitable class, with maximized hit points. I then used the Universal NPC emulator (UNE) to create a general description and two motivations for each character. To keep things simple, I discarded one motivation from each, trying to make them consistent with each other. Lastly, I rolled on the Mythic description chart to give them a quirk.

From the results I got, I did not think that any of the characters would be lawful, so I used the Mythic fate chart to answer the question "is the character chaotic?" with a likely chance for each of them -- an "exceptional no" would mean the character actually was lawful. I rolled a 50/50 chance for each character to be male or female and finally, I used this fantasy name generator to pick names for them. These are the resulting characters. UNE and Mythic results are marked in brackets.

Ingont
Chaotic Human male Magic-user
Few people would be able to guess that Ingont spent the last several years studying in the Academy. The light-haired man dresses like a peasant and seldom talks about magic, carrying his spellbook hidden in a bag. His actions and words are carefully measured to disguise his plotting mind. Currently involved with a secret society, he is tasked with expanding their smuggling routes to the south of the kingdom. [logical herald, maintain contraband, irritatingly nondescript]
HP 3, AC 9, STR 9, INT 17, WIS 12, DEX 11, CON 7, CHA 12
Modifiers: +10% XP
Spellbook: magic missile
Backpack: dagger, waterskin, flask of oil x5, lantern, iron rations x1, 95gp

Swyem
Chaotic Human female Thief
Swyem is a frail young woman of light and delicate manners. For a few years she has worked for a local trading guild, managing the sale of goods in neighboring villages. Lately, however, she became involved in a smuggling scheme. She is not troubled by exploiting others' weaknesses and needs to serve herself. [habitual drifter, guard deprivation, slowly fancy]
HP 3, AC 7, STR 8, INT 10, WIS 10, DEX 10, CON 7, CHA 11
Modifiers: -1 to hit and damage
Short sword, Leather armor
Backpack: dagger, waterskin, iron rations x1, thieves tools, 4gp

Eryz
Chaotic Human male Fighter
Eryz thinks that they are out to get him: the village elder, the tax collectors, the king's knights. He only really trusts his half-sister Swyem, who arranges jobs for him to guard or sometimes bully others. Physically, he is not very imposing and may even come out a little clumsy but if you look into his eyes, you can see an eerie fire burning. [fanatic bum, agonize the government, quietly messy]
HP 8, AC 5, STR 11, INT 9, WIS 9, DEX 7, CON 11, CHA 11
Modifiers: -1 to missile fire, +1AC
Sword, Chain mail and shield
Backpack: dagger, waterskin, torches x6, iron rations x1, 50' of rope, 34gp

The story so far...

Ingont, Swyem and Eryz grew up together and used to cause all kinds of trouble in their village. Eventually, Ingont went to study the magical disciplines in the Arcane Academy and Swyem moved to another town, taking Eryz with her. She kept corresponding with Ingont and they started to smuggle magical trinkets in and out of the kingdom.

Ingont paid a visit to Swyem when one of their couriers went missing. She had found out that the courier was poisoned and died in the woods, and a group of kobolds took the magical trinkets to their lair in some ruins. The three characters bought the necessary supplies and are now ready to enter the lair, to recover their "merchandise."

... To be continued.

Last Stand at Kirrinbahr

This is just a quick post to comment on the solo adventure "Last Stand at Kirrinbahr." It is a paragraph-based adventure, along with some maps to help understand the context and a simple action and combat resolution system. I've just finished playing it in about 3 hours and thoroughly enjoyed it. By the end of the game I was really immersed -- a feat in solo games as it's just too easy to step back and analyze the game from the outside.

Two things I liked: your actions have logical consequences (at least for me) and the story does have some twists. Actually, make it three: the action and combat resolution systems work well to keep the game moving.

Two things I didn't like: the PDF could have hyperlinks to aid navigating across paragraphs and maps (I bet many people will play this on a computer or tablet instead of printing the book) and some character options don't seem to matter so much as others (but I didn't explore every possible path in the book.)

It's hard to comment much more without spoiling the game, so I'll stop here. As with most paragraph-based games, the replay value isn't very high although I'll probably try again with different character choices.

Tale of Blades and Heroes

Tale of Blades and Heroes (ToBH), the RPG based on Ganesha Games' Song of Blades and Heroes miniatures game, was finally released last week. Having read its 50 pages (but not yet tried even a quick session) here are my first impressions:

ToBH is a sort of "rules light" RPG with an emphasis on fun rather than crunch -- but it doesn't ignore crunch altogether, and at its core it has a solid set of mechanics. I can see the game being played without miniatures but  I also think a lot of the experience will be lost by doing so.

It's possible to see two main sources of influence throughout the book. One is the "old school" of gaming, noticeable from the "rulings, not rules" principle (mentioned with different phrasing at the beginning of the book), to constant advice for the game master to interpret and adapt, to the use of few "character stats." The other is, obviously, the Song of Blades engine, craftily adapted for RPG use. Seriously, looking at the size of the list of playtesters and considering the time the game has been in development, it must have taken a lot of work to get it right. In my opinion it worked well, as the rules seem effective and ellegant (for the most part.)

Two really nice touches to the game are the exploding dice mechanic and the magic system. Usually (in my experience) "exploding dice" systems give a random smallish chance of exceptionally good results. In ToBH, it's more of a gamble: on a very good result, you may opt to roll more dice again, replacing that result. So you may actually improve a lot (and statistically, chances are you'll improve at least a little) but there is risk of it backfiring, too. I can only imagine the tension of choosing between an OK outcome or risking it all during play.

The magic system is an open ended affair that reminds me of Ars Magica (but simpler) and Donjon (but with additional provisions to avoid abuse.) As such, it steps away from spell lists, spells per day etc. so common in fantasy RPGs. It also naturally embraces utilitary uses of magic, instead of focusing mostly on combat.

The one point that makes me a little uneasy is the use of "damage tables" (four of them) to determine the result of a successful attack. I can understand how their use moves the game away from bland "hit points" but the fact is that players might have to reference them repeatedly during the game, differently from most other rules in this system.

That's it for now. The fact that the system has simple rules (and combat is similar to Song of Blades and Heroes, which I'm used to) makes it a good candidate to use in solo sessions with Mythic, so I might try that some time (another project on my list...)

Who cares about the "rebooted" D&D

Ok, Dungeons and Dragons is the "forefather" of RPGs and lots of fun can be had with its many editions. I agree that 4th edition might work as a miniature game / dungeon hack game -- a much narrower scope than its predecessors, even if it was done by design. It might even work as a solo game, after all, everything is so well determined that you can easily randomize some encounters and have fun.

However, when I read about the announcement of yet another "reboot" of Dungeons and Dragons, this time allegedly with "input from the players" my first thought was, "don't reboot it, just shut it down for good." I mean, come on Wizards, you already have product lines that perfectly fit the needs of showing increasing sales figures to shareholders. The market of RPG books is a niche one that doesn't grow really fast. To achieve that with RPG books, you have to continuously release new, "rebooted" editions to try and force your player base to buy them all over again. That is, until you burn out your audience or maybe the whole market. Keep your boardgames and novels and maybe license the IP to videogame companies, rather than trying to emulate videogames with pen and paper.

Edit: found this awesome quote, from page 7 of the Player's Handbook (2008): "This is the 4th Edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Game ... It builds on what has gone before, and firmly establishes D&D for the next decade of play." Yeah, right.

Creating a character to play Mutant Epoch solo

So November has come and it's time for me to join in on the solo gaming appreciation month promoted by JF of the Solo Nexus blog. My Qwik teams aren't ready for action yet so I decided to kick start my activities with something else.

In keeping with the post-apocalypse theme, I turned to my digital copy of Mutant Epoch, a relatively new post-apocalyptic RPG, published by Outland Arts. It has a very "old school" look and feel, both in the book and rules and at the same time it brings some refreshing ideas (at least to me.) I'm still reading it but I thought I'd try to make a character to run a solo adventure during this month.

In the Mutant Epoch, centuries of conflict and abuse of technology have resulted in a world in ruins, where humans are a minority fighting for their place among mutants, cyborgs and other creatures. It's gritty, violent "science fantasy" and I believe a gaming group may play it as over-the-top cinematic action as well as focus on the social issues of such a torn and changed world.

The standard method of character creation is randomized. You start by rolling to see what type of character you'll get and from there, roll on tables (sometimes shared by different character types) to determine traits, skills, mutations and so on. For those that prefer, there are rules for a point-buy system too. Using the random character creation rules I got this:

Zendar - Clone, Labor
Male, 24 years old, 89kg, 1.97m, left-handed, fair swimmer

Traits:
Endurance 79/70
Strength 66, Agility 74, Accuracy 49,
Intelligence 20, Perception 18, Willpower 31
Appearance 23

Defense Value: 0 + 8 (agility)
Strike Value: 01-50 + 4 (accuracy)
Melee damage bonus: 8

Run speed: 7
Healing rate: 8

Pre-game caste: slave, labor
There is a bounty for his return

Inventory:
Rags, 6 silver coins, Bow and 12 arrows, Knife

And this is why I like random character creation systems when they're well done: I wouldn't ever think up of making an escaped slave clone as my character, especially when there's so much mutant crazyness to explore. Still, it is a consistent and competent character (if a little low on intelligence.) I also think that having to play a random character adds to the immersion in a post-apocalyptic setting, where resources are scarce: you don't choose your character, you have to make do with what you got.

By the way, clones are one example of interesting, if disturbing, concept in Mutant Epoch. Like a radical extrapolation of current debates on the ethics of stem cell research, clones in the game are often "DNA re-issues from the long-dead ancient people," used as slaves. Yes, imagine brainwashed clones of olympic athletes serving as soldiers or labor slaves and you get the picture.

That's it for now, later we shall see how Zendar will fare in the wasteland of the Mutant Epoch...

Weird West and Emulators - Part 3

This is the last part of my  report on the experience of using the Universal NPC Emulator, Mythic GM Emulator and Weird West RPG together. Part 1 describes the creation of the characters and part 2 starts the adventure.

Scene 4 (Chaos: 4)

[The plan was to confront the mayor and the owner of the prospecting company to see if the truth comes out. However, I got another interrupt scene. Event focus: NPC Positive (mayor.) Event meaning: violate reality. Does the mayor disappear? Yes. How? calmly delightful.] As the party rides back to town, the mayor starts to whistle a tune. It is a soft, soothing and strange melody that none of the other men recognizes.

Weird West and Emulators - Part 2

This is part two of the report on my experience using the Universal NPC Emulator, Mythic GM Emulator and Weird West RPG together. Check out part 1 for the details on the characters.

The trio of adventurers arrive in Perseverance, a small town of about 400 people that grew from a settlement of farmers and prospectors. The community leader is Adam Kinsey, a kind man who tries to keep the town growing and peaceful.

[Adam Kinsey on the Universal NPC Emulator: kind performer, comparable power level, strives music, compels the wealthy, manages moderation.]

Scene 1 (Chaos: 5)

[I used the stand event generation to set up the first scene. Focus: ambiguous event. Meaning: transform of news.] As they stop by the Shady Tree Saloon they hear a story about how a newfound gold vein proved to be an illusion, with the gold turning into rocks days after being digged. Doc McPherson was intrigued by the possibility of the illusion being caused by some magical property of the land, while William was wondering about some kind of scam being played upon the prospectors. With some reluctance from Strong Tom (who was annoyed by the doc's interest in the matter) they decided to pay a visit to Adam Kinsey and ask what he knew about it.

Scene 2 (Chaos: 6)
[The plan was to have the party talking to Adam about the illusionary gold but I rolled an interrupt. Focus: PC Positive (William.) Meaning: arrive of intrigues.] News travel fast in such a small town, and even before the trio talks to the mayor, they are approached by a man by the name of Scott Atkins. He owns a prospecting company and had invested money into hiring more people and buying more equipment to mine the new vein. He suspects some kind of foul play -- possibly involving the mayor -- and wants to hire them to investigate. It seems he's heard good things about William and is even willing to pay some money in advance. The party accepts the job and leaves to check out the gold vein.

Scene 3 (Chaos: 5)
[The idea was to travel by horse to the gold vein and look for clues. I rolled an altered scene and asked a few questions. Do they get ambushed? No. Has the vein disappeared? No. Is the mayor at the site? Yes. Hmm...] As the party approaches the location of the illusory gold vein, they notice a man standing near a horse. He greets them and introduces himself as Adam Kinsey, the mayor of Perseverance.

[Rolling on the UNE Discussion Module, I get: the mysterious mayor speaks of shadows regarding the PCs' history.] Taking care not to be noticed, Doc McPherson drinks something from his medicine bag and proceeds to question the mayor about his motives for being there. [I made a Skill 2 test for the doc to get some reliable information. Rolled a 4, modified by -1 due to his low Skill. Rolling for the Medicine Bag bonus, I got a +3: success!] As they start talking, the mayor tries to imply that they are mere mercenaries and thus untrustworthy. However, Doc McPherson keeps the pressure and the mayor lets slip he is involved in this: "It shouldn't have happened like this!"

The mayor refuses to give further explanations and when threatened to be arrested and brought back to the town, he simply asks, "who do you think the town will trust? Me or a bunch of guns for hire?" [The idea was to try the party's luck. Rolling on the NPC binary response chart, Tom agreed and Doc was against it.] "We will take our chances", answered William. They tied the mayor's hands and William pulled his horse. Tom went on the back of the group, and they rode back to town.

To be continued... (Chaos for the next scene: 4)

Weird West and Emulators - Part 1

Recently I found out about the Universal NPC Emulator, on the Mythic discussion group. This universal system, written by Zach Best from Conjecture Games, consists of two parts: the NPC Creator, meant to give an overall description and motivations to an NPC; and the NPC Association Emulator that takes care of the interaction between the NPC and player characters.

So I decided to combine it with the Mythic GM Emulator and run a solo game of the Weird West Role Playing Game by Stuart Robertson. I started creating a party of three characters. I allocated the attributes for all three, then used the NPC creator to get the motivations of Strong Tom and Doc McPherson.

William Hays (Adventurer): Fighting 1, Grit 2, Skill 1, Stamina 7. Equipment: leather duster coat, six shooter, knife.
William came to the west on a caravan of settlers and prospectors when he was eleven. He was fascinated by the weird things that would scare other people, and soon he started his carreer as a traveling jack-of-all-trades. [This is the "main" character and as such I didn't roll for his motivations.]

Review: Wizards & Gunslingers

During the last summer sale on DrivethruRPG I picked up a few less known game systems, one of which was "Wizards and Gunslingers," by Trevor Banister from Avalon Games. It is possible to find a couple of reviews of the game if you scour the web for information, with statements related to good ideas and poor execution.

The 199-page standalone rulebook contains information on character creation and advancement, combat, magic and other resolution systems, reference of creatures found in the game, game mastering advice and the setting of Westrue. The book is set in grayscale, with text in two columns. The quality of the illustrations range from inspiring down to amateur. At the end of the book there are also several maps, quick reference tables and the mandatory character sheet template.

Character creation is based on allocating points to three main attributes and then deriving several secondary values. After that, skills are also purchased by using points. There are six skill categories and, in an interesting twist, the character's class is determined by the category with most skill points. It took me about 40 minutes of reading through and, at the same time, creating my character for this playtest. If you already know the rules or have someone to guide you, I'd say that a character can be created in 10 minutes.

3:16 Solo Play

I bought 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars and fell in love with the system. It has a very competently designed "light" rules set, and allows play ranging from mindless alien slaughter to deep character development. In my opinion, it's not the kind of game well suited for solo play, as any other RPG that builds tension based on the creative uses that players make of the authorial power granted to them, like Fiasco for instance.

Anyway, I wanted to try the game and I'm still not sure when I'll be able to find a group willing to play it, so I thought I'd use good ol' Mythic GME along with a couple of house rules and see what happens. My main inspiration regarding solo Mythic stuff, by the way, is the Solo RPG Gamer blog, which has a lot of interesting posts on the subject.

To start the game, I created four "player" characters in the following manner: first, I used the Mythic random description tables to get inspiration for each character's reputation. Then I rolled one six-sided die, adding one for their Fighting Ability, re-rolling on a repeated result. From that, it's possible to figure the rest of each characters' information. I rolled for the weapons and on the names table for each character. Thus were born:

Sergeant Hicks - reputation: Lunatic
Corporal Miller - reputation: Pushover
Trooper Abe - reputation: Sleazy
Trooper Sims - reputation: Righteous

I randomly generated the planet and alien attributes, using the game rules. Since I had 20 threat tokens to use in alien encounters, I decided to roll one six-sided die, adding 1 for each encounter after the first, to figure how many I'd allocate to each encounter. Once I had eight tokens or less left, I would go to the final encounter of the mission. Lastly, I rolled for the NPC who would brief the team. Lieutenant Goodman got a result of "oficially odd" on the Mythic description table. I asked "is he seen as too informal for an officer?" on the fate chart, getting an Exceptional Yes answer. Then I was ready to start...

The Goblin Lake

Last night I played "The Goblin Lake," a solo adventure included in the free "sampler" of the Tunnels and Trolls RPG from Flying Buffalo. From what I've read, this free edition contains a subset of the core rules -- enough to understand how the game plays and to try some solo adventures. Even though this game is probably older than me, and I have been trying several RPGs through the years, I still hadn't experienced Tunnels and Trolls, so here are my first impressions.

The system
The game system has some features that are usually associated with more recent narrative-driven games, such as a uniform task resolution mechanic and a fast, abstract combat system. On the other hand, it also has some "old school" elements such as rolled character attributes and "shopping list" character inventory, complete with an encumbrance system.

I found the combat rules especially interesting. Close combat is simultaneous, and with a single check it is possible to determine if either fighting character gets hurt and how much damage they suffer. Damage is subtracted from the target's constitution attribute or monster rating, which has the effect of weakening monsters as they take damage. Each combat round lasts for two minutes in the game world. The result is a freeform, abstract combat system that may not appeal to everyone, but certainly gives a lot of freedom for narrative interpretation. Instead of describing exactly what you want to do, then check for success, you can simply state who you're in combat with, and narrate the results. Defeated a foe in a single round? That surely sounds like a "critical hit," even though there are no rules for such events. Speaking of which, this system can be very deadly, specially for unevenly matched opponents.