RuneQuest, Second Edition

In the mid 70's, a small games company called Chaosium Inc was founded, for the sole purpose of publishing a fantasy-warfare boardgame called White Bear and Red Moon, set in the fictional world of Glorantha.  Unlike miniature wargames, such as the phenomenally popular Warhammer franchises, White Bear and Red Moon was essentially a self-contained box set.  There were no miniatures to buy or paint or convert, no terrain to build, no additional rulebooks to buy; all the rules, a playable map of the entire known world, and a pile of cardboard unit counters all came in the box.  Like Warhammer, the game was complex, unbalanced, and missing a sizeable portion of the rules at its first printing.  From this humble beginning, however, Chaosium would expand its interest and eventually gain hold of some of the biggest licenses in the roleplaying game industry, including Call of Cthulhu, a game based on the horror stories of H.P. Lovecraft, along with Stormbringer, based on the dark fantasy works of Michael Moorecock.  Most of Chaosium's RPG titles are powered by a roll-under percentile system known as Basic Role Playing, or BRP, which has its origins in 1978, with a black-and-white sourcebook that revisits the low-fantasy, wartorn world of Glorantha.

With RuneQuest, Chaosium attempted to expand upon the history and mythology of Glorantha, detailing a long and storied path in which empires rose and fell, and wars were waged on which the fate of entire civilizations hinged.  Unfortunately, most of this history unfolds in a very distinct "tell, but don't show" fashion.  Events like the Dragonkill War ("named," the book says, "for what the dragons did.") and concepts such as the Lunar Empire's need to extend something called the Glowline are mentioned for a few brief sentences, but never explored or explained in any detail.  1600 years of Gloranthan history is crammed into three pages, with the first thousand or so taking up just about a half page.  The result resembles a modern Wikipedia stub, with almost no time spend developing an atmosphere or tone for the world, except for a brief mention that Glorantha is a Bronze Age society, similar to Robert Howard's Hyboria or Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar (which are both, technically, Iron or even Dark Age societies).

What RuneQuest does bring to the table, however, is the Basic Role Playing system, which Chaosium claimed was the most flexible, adaptable, and universal system of the time.  According to the book, BRP can be easily adapted to any setting or time period.  Players were invited, indeed encouraged, to create their own expansions, monsters, and spells for use with the system, and even to submit their creations to Chaosium for publication, in exchange for free copies of whatever splat books were produced from their submissions.  This open and accepting attitude towards fan submissions and fan-developed material crops up very rarely in pen-and-paper gaming, and I don't believe it ever took off on any sort of appreciable scale until Wizards of the Coast published OGL D20 in 2000.  In this respect, at least, Chaosium was ahead of its time with BRP.

"Have fun," it says.  We'll see about that.

Player-characters in RuneQuest have seven primary Characteristics, and nine derrived Abilities.  The Characteristics are randomly rolled, and include RPG mainstays like Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, Dexterity, and Charisma, while also adding in two new stats: Size and Power.  Size is exactly what it sounds like, indicating the character's height, weight, and/or physical mass.  Characters with high Size can take more damage, while characters with low Size are stealthier and harder to hit.  Power, meanwhile, determines the character's magical ability and his or her in-tuned-ness with the mystical world.  Each of RuneQuest's characteristics advance in slightly different ways: Strength and/or Constitution can be raised up to match the highest rolled value assigned to either Strength, Constitution, or Size.  If either Strength or Constitution has the highest rating of the three, then that Characteristic cannot be raised at all, except by magic.  Similiary, Size can never be increased through non-magical or non-divine means, as a character is assumed to have finished growing by the time he begins adventuring.  Dexterity can be increased as the campaign goes along, up to a predefined, racial maximum.  Intelligence, like Size, can never be altered through non-magical means, while Charisma can rise and fall based on the character's success or failure in adventures.  Finally, a character's Power score is spent whenever he casts spells, while also influencing his starting hit points, as well as modifying various derrived combat abilities.  As all of these scores are randomly generated, it is possible to create characters who are multitalented and versatile, though it's just as easy to wind up with a character who is mild to moderately incompetent across the board.

As noted earlier, each Characteristic is determined by a random dice roll.  For humans, we roll 3d6 on every Characteristic, resulting in a starting score from 3 - 18.  As RuneQuest is a percentile based game, these values are largely meaningless for making tests.  In order to generate useful target numbers, the system relies on nine Abilities, whose scores are determined by a series of tables converting Characteristic ranges into percentages.  Each Ability is modified by several characteristics, with Intelligence and Power showing up in almost everything.  As an example, a character's Attack Ability is based on Strength (his ability to swing a weapon), Dexterity (his ability to aim the swing), Intelligence (his knowledge of fighting techniques), and Power ("A Jedi can feel the Force flowing through him.").  In this case, higher Characteristic scores provide a 5 to 10 percent increase to the target number, while lower scores lower the target number.  Remember, because we're using a roll-under system, higher targets are better.  Now, let's start rolling some numbers so we can see this in action.

STR: 14

CON: 16

SIZ: 8

INT: 12

POW: 7

DEX: 11

CHA: 12

Constitution is my top score, and will provide a handy little bonus to several Abilities.  Strength comes up next, also higher than average, and will help out with damage dealing. Strength can also be raised up to a maximum of 16 if I have the money for training.  Power comes in pretty low at 7, but not low enough to penalize me.  The Size score of 8 will penalize my damage output and hit points, while providing a bonus to stealth.  These Abilities will be shown in more detail below.

Attack: +0%

Parry: +0%

Defense: +0%

HP: 15

Damage: +1d4

Perception: +0%

Stealth: +05%

Manipulation: +0%

Knowledge: +0%

In other words, this character gets +5 to any Stealth target number, and deals an additional 1d4 damage when successfully hitting with any weapon.  He suffered a -1 penalty to HP but still came out higher than average, and everything else is squarely average.  At this point, the character is roughly mechanically complete, though depending on starting cash there's still room to improve certain Characteristics through training, as well as altering abilities through Equipment.  Starting cash is determined by the character's background, which like everything else in this creation process, is randomly rolled, this time on a d%.

Background: 54: Townsman

2d100 Starting Cash: 32 Lunas

32 L is not enough for training, unfortunately.  However, I do get the following generic starting equipment:

GENERIC CLOTHING: Tunic, breeches, boots, underwear, cloak, hat.

GENERIC EQUIPMENT: Belt knife, and tinderbox.

TOWNSMAN EQUIPMENT: Flasks, torches, lamps, rope, trade/craftsman tools.

Now, in order to survive a life of adventure, I'm going to need some weapons and protective gear.  32L isn't a whole lot of money, but it's enough for a pair of Leather Pants (10L, absorbs 1 damage), a Leather Vest (10L, absorbs 1 damage), and a Quarterstaff (1d8 Damage, 20% hit rate, 15HP).  You might notice that my staff has 15HP; that's the amount of damage the staff can parry before it breaks.  At this point, the character is ready to go out and adventure, and likely get himself killed.  To help improve his chances, RuneQuest offers a set of optional rules to allow for a certain amount of "pre-game" experience.  I've decided to have him join a mercenary company in order to get a leg up in life, allowing me to roll percentage for a chance to improve his STR, CON, DEX, POW, and CHA.  My results are listed below.

STR: 61: +0

CON: 64: +0

DEX: 72: +0

POW: 12: +1

CHA: 71: +0

So after some time on the march with a band of disparate mercenaries, our Townsman has increased his Power level by one point.  Not that impressive, but he does get other benefits.  Working with mercenaries provides access to better armor, weapons, and training, as well as a shot at looting some cash from sacked villages and such.  Rolling another d%, I wind up with a score of 91, putting him in the company's Light Cavalry.  This automatically gives him an 80% riding skill, 50% to another cavalry skill of his choice, and 30% to all other cavalry skills.  He also gets 2500L worth of spells, along with access to a level two "xenohealing" spell automatically.  For spells, I've purchased Healing at 2 points, Detect Enemies, one point of Bladesharp (+5% to hit, +1 damage), and Speedart (adding +15% to-hit and +3 damage to non-enchanted arrows).  Rolling a d6 for equipment, I find he gets access to a bow, a one-handed sword, and a small shield.  He also gets some additional armor: cuirboilli cuirass, greaves, and vambraces, leather skirt, and an open helm.  He also scores another 756L in spoils and pay.  Things are looking up!

For this week's sheet, I've actually left out a few things.  The character wound up with enough cash on hand to purchase some additional skill training, but to be entirely honest, I've written most of this with a bit of a hangover, and find the system to be too fiddly to deal with at the moment.  I've also left out a few places where I'm supposed to fill in equipment properties more than once.

A "Player's Edition" (excising the monsters and encounters) of RuneQuest Second Edition can be downloaded for free at this fansite. The cover of this edition is NSFW

Moon Design Publications publishes HeroQuest, a successor to RuneQuest using the same Glorantha setting, but with a new system.  HeroQuest can be purchased at the publisher's site, or at RPGNow.

Chaosium Inc, the original publishers of RuneQuest, have since released the Basic Role Playing system as a stand-alone, generic product, also available from RPGNow.

If you're just interested in seeing the NSFW RuneQuest cover, click here.

Now, it's time to call it a night.

The Doctor Who Role Playing Game: Adventures Through Time & Space

This week, one of my favorite television shows returned to the air for the second half of its sixth season, after what felt like an eternity on hiatus.  I am referring, of course, to the 21st century revival of the BBC's long-standing Doctor Who franchise, with which I've been perhaps unhealthily obsessed since I was a small child, staying up far too late with my eyes glued to PBS.  In honor of this particular, cultural phenomon, let's step into Non-Playable's own gaming time machine and vwoorp back about 26 years.

It is 1985, and FASA is riding high on the success of Battletech, their giant-robot miniatures-based wargame.  In a few short years, they will publish Shadowrun and Earthdawn, forever cementing them as the go-to gaming company for people bored with AD&D.  In the meantime, they came up with this.

For folks not familiar with Doctor Who, it is perhaps the world's longest running science fiction television program, running for 26 seasons between 1963 and 1989, two theatrical spinoff films starring Peter Cushing, a television movie on FOX in 1996, and the aforementioned revived series running from 2005 onwards.  Wikipedia claims a total of 777 episodes for the series as of August 2011, which is pretty impressive in its own right.  The program - and the adventures for this game - run the gamut from adventure, to horror, to mystery, typically with a science-fiction bend (such as the vampire inhabiting the gothic mansion high in the mountains turning out to be an alien, etc), while de-emphasizing the direct application of violence as a solution to problems.  The heroes typically triumph by out-thinking and out-manuevering their opponents, using creativity and ingenuity to turn the villain's plot back against him in some way, rather than simply overwhelming him with force.  This is a stark contrast to the dungeon crawls and other, combat-heavy, "GM vs. Players" style of gaming that once dominated the market, and it's an idea that we don't see much more of until the cooperative storytelling games from White Wolf come into their own.

Although time travel is a central idea to the Doctor Who RPG, it features only sparsely into the mechanics.  The time machine is simply a way for the party to arrive at the adventure, and leave upon its completion, and maintaining causality is typically not something the players or characters need to worry about.  For the purposes of this game universe, time is recorded objectively by a mindblowingly advanced and extremely pompous race of Time Lords, and history is effectively immutable, although the recorded outcome of events hinges on the player-characters' involvement.  For example, William Shakespeare was obviously not murdered by ancient aliens on the eve of the performance of his lost play, Love's Labour's Won.  However, this outcome was only due to the intervention of two resourceful time travellers, who happened to be in the right place at the right moment.  For the few times where time travel may be required as part of the game's plot, the characters make a skill roll to pilot their time machine to the correct spacial and temporal locations, and the results are compared against a difficulty table; successes place the characters when and where they want or need to be, failures can put them off by degrees from "a few feet" to "somewhere on the same planet," or "within a few hours" to "within a few decades."  The same interaction table is used for roughly every skill usage or saving throw.

This same success/failure table is used for all dice-related tests in the game.  All of the player's attributes (strength, endurance, dexterity, charisma, mentality, and intuition) are recorded with a Performance Rating, and all of their skills are recorded with a Proficiency Rating, both of which are leveled from I to VII.  Each rating costs a certain number of Attribute or Skill points, from 1 - 30, and both skills and attributes scale at the same rate.  Each character begins play with a score of 6 points in each Attribute, and 36 + 2d6 Attribute points to distribute in order to raise those scores.  To purchase Skills, the character begins with a Skill Point pool equal to the total number of Attribute Points (including the 6 "free" points in each Attribute), plus a number of Bonus Skill Points for skills based around Attributes, depending on that Attribute's score.  For example, if the character has a total of 15 points in Dexterity, they'd have Performance Level V, and get a bonus of 5 skill points to spend on DEX-related skills (like shooting a rifle, picking a pocket, etc).

In addition to Attribute and Skill levels, players will randomly roll for a Special Ability for their character.  Most results (except for 10 & 11) result in some additional ability, ranging from an enhanced Attribute (confering additional skill points and mastery), to supernatural psychic powers.  Appearance, age, and number of Regenerations used (if playing a Time Lord) are also randomly generated, though with the exception of Regenerations, these don't have any direct impact on gameplay.

Doctor Who uses a roll-under system, in which the player rolls 2d6 for all skill and attribute tests, with the goal of either meeting a target number, or scoring below the target number.  The lower the player's result is from the target, the better the success; if the target is 7 and the player rolls a 2, it's a massive critical.  On the other side of things, the higher the player's result is from the target, the worse the failure; rolling 12 with a target of seven is a massive fumble, with serious consequences.  Target numbers are determined by comparing the proficiency or performance rating of a character's skill or attribute, located along the Y-axis of a difficulty table, with the task's difficulty rating on the X-axis, modified for various penalties or bonuses.  The target number is at the intersection of the two axes. I would normally reproduce this table below, but as it takes up at least half a landscape page, and forms at least 50% of the game's core mechanic, I've decided to cut it for space concerns.  Instead, have some Daleks

.

The list of factors that modify a skill challenge is extensive, to say the least.  In addition to the usual concealment and range modifiers one expects out of a game, penalties are enacted if the attacker is moving, if the target is moving, or if the attacker is using a weapon other than the exact one he is skilled in; for example, if a UNIT commando from the 1960s is trained to Professional proficiency in submachineguns (as such soldiers are frequently seen using in the TV series), but has to attack with a laser rifle captured from an evil, invading Cyberman, he can't use his entire Level V proficiency, though may get to use half of his rating due to the weapon being similar.  In addition to these modifiers, further crunch comes into play when determining the number of actions a character can take during a turn.  Each action available to the character costs Action Points (AP), with different actions having different values.  The total number of AP available to the character is determined by his DEX value, divided by 3, rounded down, plus 4.  Are you still following along?  Using our earlier example of someone with a DEX of 15, we get:

(15/3) + 4 = 9 AP.

My current attempt at a mechanically complete character sheet is below.  I am relatively certain that the character is playable, per the rules of the blog, however due to organizational issues in the book (the rules for the game are spread across three different volumes within a single box set, with most but not all character mechanics discussed in the Player's Manual, while other's are described in the GM's Operation Manual), I'm not entirely confident that I haven't missed something. 

My eternally-supportive future-wife also attempted a sheet this week, apparently having a high tolerance for pain and unpleasantness.

Okay, maybe not that high.

A new Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space game based on the new series is available on RPGNow.  I believe it uses an entirely new rule system, rather than a revised edition of the game reviewed here.

The BBC's official Doctor Who website contains more information about both the current television series, and the original version.

Earthdawn, 1st Edition

First released by FASA in 1993, Earthdawn was the game for several of my internet acquaintences back in the day.  My friend Joe was such a fan that he formed his own gaming company, Living Room Games, and acquired a license to produce splats, and later an entire Second Edition.  As I don't have a habit of being nice to the games I review, I will not be touching LRG's Second Edition out of deference to my old pals, and the Third Edition from Red Bricks LLC is too new for the purposes of this blog, so we'll be examining good ol' First Edition today.

Earthdawn, in all its incarnations, can be described as a sort of post-apocalyptic fantasy.  Hundreds of years ago, the background goes, the world's magical aura peaked, allowing mindnumbing Horrors from the astral plane to cross over into the material world and wreak all manner of chaos and destruction.  This was the time of the Scourge, and during it, most life on the surface of the world was erradicated.  However, the "Name-giving" (sentient) races of the world (humans, elves, orcs, trolls, dwarves, etc) were warned of this impending disaster by various wizards and shamans and prophecies, and constructed elaborate, underground cities called "kaers" in which to hide and wait out the destruction.  The kaers were sealed shut for centuries while the Horrors plagued the earth; some cities survived unharmed, others were breached by rampaging monsters or natural disasters.  The setting's "present day" is about four centuries after the start of the Scourge, when the magical aura has started to subside, and most Horrors have been forced to retreat back to the astral plane.  The majority of the surviving kaers have opened and civilization has returned to the surface, though some vast, underground cities remain closed, their populations unaware of the changes taking place over their heads.  For those playing along at home, you may have noticed that you can replace "kaer" with "vault" and "Horror" with "atomic bomb," and suddenly you're playing Fallout, four years earlier.

All of this is detailed in the book's extensive background fluff, primarily written "in character," as anecdotes, histories and oral traditions recorded by denizens of the fictional world, and punctuated with beautiful art, ranging from fully realized paintings to atmospheric pen-and-ink drawings.  Beyond its postapocalyptic tone, however, Earthdawn sets itself apart from most other fantasy RPGs by largely doing away with linear character progression.  Rather than levels, character advancement is measured in "Circles," with each Circle containing a new set of talents and abilities that the character can access.  However, acquiring a certain about of experience does not automatically advance a character to the next circle.  Rather than the usual XP systems, Earthdawn awards players "Legend Points," which can be used to purchase Karma (which can be spent to improve dice rolls, similar in some ways to Action Points and Action Dice in various d20 flavors), or used to improve Skills, Talents, and other class-related abilities, or finally to gain a new circle alltogether.  Furthermore, in the Earthdawn system, dice rolls increase in magnitude by "Steps," representing increasingly potent combinations of dice.  The number of dice rolled when a character, for example, swings a broadsword, would be determined by adding their appropriate, governing attribute (Strength) to the Damage Step of the sword.  In other words, while most games would assign a static dice value to that big, two handed greatsword, Earthdawn simply assigns it a modifier that improves your overall attack and damage rolls. The degree of improvement corresponds to a combination of dice, noted on the Step/Action table, a portion of which is reproduced below.

Unlike the previous games reviewed here, Earthdawn uses a point-buy system for generating attributes, allowing players a customizable, yet objectively measurable way to design their characters.  All characters begin with 66 attribute points to spend.  A score of 5 costs 0 points, scores below 5 grant additional points, scores above 5 cost points.  My initial attribute array, before adding in racial modifiers, appears below.

Attribute Points: 66

 

Dex: 11

Str: 9

Tough: 11

Per: 17

Will: 18

Cha: 11

 

I've buffed up Perception and Willpower, having decided to create a Nethermancer (a magic-user focusing on spirits and other planes of existence), whose spells rely heavily on those two attributes.  I've decided to build a T'skrang, part of a race of flamboyant lizard-people.  While not entirely optimized for spellcasting, my gaming group has a tradition of off-type lizards, and I felt like joining in.  Now, the T'skrang gets a +1 to Dex, Toughness, and Charisma, making my racially modified stats look more like: 

 

Dex: 12

Str: 9

Tough: 12

Per: 17

Will: 18

Cha: 12

With that sort of array, he's strictly a back-row character, but we'll see just what he can do shortly.  Before we get to skills and spells and talents, we need to derrive our character's Death Rating (hitpoints), Wound Threshold (amount of damage he can take before suffering an injury), and Unconsciousness Rating (amount of damage he can take before being knocked cold), along with his carrying capacity, movement speed, initiative, and other secondary attributes.  Fortunately, there are no complex calculations here; everything is based on the Attribute scores above, converted via a massive table on page 52 of the book.

With that out of the way, now we can get to skills and talents.  At start, an Earthdawn character gets one Rank 1 "Artisan Skill," and two ranks worth of "Knowledge Skills."  Magic users get one Artisan Skill, Robe Embroidery, so there you have it.  Artisan skills are more or less mechanically useless and under normal circumstances, an Earthdawn character will never actually have to make an Artisan skill check; according to the background fluff, individuals who are corrupted by Horrors are unable to concentrate long enough to perform artisan tasks (such as sculpting, weaving, etc), so having an Artisan skill proves the character is uncorrupted.  Now, because Nethermancers deal with weird magic from other realities, I'm going to go ahead and spend two ranks on Knowledge: Horrors.

With skills assigned, we get into the real mechanical meat of the character, Talents.  Talents are where each discipline becomes mechanically distinct from one another; an archer will have talents for aiming and evasion, a cavalryman will have talents for riding and melee combat, etc.  In the case of my Nethermancer, he starts with access to the following First Circle talents: Karma Ritual, Read & Write Language, Read & Write Magic, Spellcasting, Spell Matrix, Spell Matrix, and Thread Weaving (Nethermancy).  The character has 8 rank points to distribute among these talents, which affect the rate at which he regains Karma points, his ability to learn new languages and spells, and the difficulty he has casting those same spells.  I'm pouring two points into Nethermancy,one into each Spell Matrix, two into Spellcasting and one each into R&W Magic and Karma. This allows me to store one First Circle spell in each Matrix, regain one Karma point each time I use my ritual, and increase my steps for casting a spell by 2, my steps for weaving a complex spell by 2, and my steps for learning a spell by 1.  For the spells themselves, I have access to 7 "Spell Points," (equal to the Perception step), which can be used to purchase spells from any circle.  First Circle spells cost 1, Second Circle cost 2, etc; since this little lizard can only cast First Circle spells, I'm focusing on those, though you can purchase from any circle; you just can't access those spells to your character advances to the required Circle himself.

Spells:
First Circle:

Bone Dance (one point)

Command Night Flyer (one point)

Spirit Grip (one point)

Undead Struggle (one point)

Insect Repellent (one point)

Shield Mist (two points)

Of these, I can't cast Shield Mist yet, but it never hurts to be prepared for later.  Spirit Grip and Insect Repellent go into the Matrices for immediate access.  Now, for actually casting these spells, the rulebook suffers from a serious case of vagueness.  Spirit Grip requires no threads, and can be cast by a Spellcasting test, rolling dice for the character's Perception step + his Spellcasting rank.  In this case, that would be Step 9, or 1d8+1d6.  Insect Repellent, however, requires a Thread to be Woven first; so, the character spends one round Weaving the spell, and then makes his Spellcasting check once he's done Weaving.  In order to Weave a Thread, the character must pass a Thread Weaving test. The book, however, does not say what to roll for a Thread Weaving test, in any section that I could find detailing the magic rules.  Presumably, one rolls the appropriate Attribute (probably Perception) + the Thread Weaving rank, as with Spellcasting, but it could also be designed so that I just roll on the Thread Weaving rank.  If Rank + Attribute, then I'd be rolling 1d8 + 1d6 again and casting fairly consistently, but if I'm supposed to just roll on the Thread Weaving rank, that's 1d4 - 1, which produces fairly unfavorable casting results.

 My inability to locate the Thread Weaving Test information is indicative of a larger problem with first edition Earthdawn, that being the complete lack of organization in the rulebook.  The book is heavy on fluff - beautiful, well written, incredibly atmospheric fluff - which lays out a world that is, quite frankly, one of the most exciting that I've ever seen in a stock pen-and-paper campaign.  However, while the writers and editors have an amazing talent for creating fiction, they were pretty bad at laying out mechanical information in a way that makes it easily accessable.  The book discusses the same features, such as Thread Weaving, in multiple sections (Talents, The Working of Magic, and Spellcasting), each section referring back to the other sections for more information, no single section providing all of the needed information to use the mechanic.  Hopefully, later editions resolved these organizational and editorialerrors.  Certainly, if I were going to actually play the game, I would grab the more recent Third Edition.  

My ever-supportive fiancee will not be joining in the character creation this week, as her new, absurdly early work schedule is kicking her ass at the moment.  Hopefully, her sheets will return next week, as things settle down around the office.

All images above are sourced from the now out-of-print Earthdawn First Edition, published by FASA.

RPGNow offers both Earthdawn Classic Edition, an edited and revised version of First Edition, and the fully updated Earthdawn Third Edition for sale, both published by Red Brick LLC.

Earthdawn Second Edition, from the largely defunct Living Room Games, is also available at RPGNow.

This ancient, Earthdawn fansite from the 1997 Internet contains a good portion of the First Edition rules.

Roleplaying On Rails

Having sifted through GWQ1, The Mutant Master, on a scavenger hunt for encounters, plot hooks, and delicious post-apocalyptic flavor, I now feel compelled to write out a few impressions. For those folks playing along at home, The Mutant Master is an adventure module for TSR's Fourth Edition of Gamma World, which was based heavily on AD&D 2nd Edition. Now, I never had an opportunity to play AD&D as a kid, being more of a Palladium fan at the time, and have only the vaguest understanding of its rules (armor class gets better as it gets lower, right?), so my read of this splat was focused less on ways to convert its monster's stat blocks into GSL d20, and more on the progression of the plot and the sort of weirdness it attempts to throw at the players.

The first thing that struck me about this module, and this edition of GW in general, is the use of gibberish words to replace phrases that the players might know, but their characters should/would not. Sometimes, the module pulls this off rather well; the adventure takes place in and around what once was the State of Michigan, though most of its cities and landmarks have been wiped from the map after the apocalypse, and the few surviving locations' names have been severely corrupted through oral tradition and hearsay. This results in the party walking along the shores of Lake Mitchgloom, or exploring the ruins of Sagow. These corruptions are evocative of the "proper" names, but weird and different enough to feel at home in a world where civilization as we know it was swept away several centuries prior. The flipside to this, then, are words which the publishers felt the characters would or should not understand, even though the gamers would. In these cases, nouns and adjectives are replaced with absolute, vaguely foreign sounding rubbish words. "Science" becomes "fleeg," "gravity" turns into "hatwick," and my personal favorite, "laser" is replaced with "mundil," even though characters might be carrying a laser weapon and be well acquainted with its use. It's important to note, these are not words used in any language presented in the setting, they're simply inserted to simulate a character finding a word or phrase he doesn't understand. This lends itself to confusion both in and out of character, as players may have difficulty assigning a sense of tension or urgency to stopping a villain from installing a tooka on the dreaded yurkum torkel.

In addition to ridiculous feats of language manipulation, The Mutant Master whips out some egregious railroading sequences, ensuring the party always runs into certain encounters, and that these encounters always play out in a very specific way. Now, most adventures include a bit of player herding, funneling the party forward into the next band of orcs or ninjas or electrokinetic rat swarms, but this book takes things just a little bit further. As an example, while on their way to the first Plot Point, the characters will always encounter four monsters attacking an unarmed NPC. Regardless of whether or not the characters choose to intervene, the NPC is written such that he will always display a unique and incredibly devastating power that will defeat the entire group of monsters. Indeed, it specifically states that it is impossible for the party to close to combat range before the NPC unleashes his attack, so that the players' interaction with the scene is entirely meaningless. Even more meaningless is a mandatory trap which the party will always be forced to fall into, dumping the characters down a long chute and into a narrow tunnel filled with water, which only one can climb out of per round. This trap has been written so that the last party member in line will almost always drown, forcing the player to roll a new character who appears outside the tunnel and can then reset the trap, allowing the survivors to escape.

I really, honestly wonder how modules like this developed such loyal fan followings. Did we actually find this railroading acceptable? Did we not know any better? Or did we simply not have any other options?

GaWoMoCo...Mo

That's "Gamma World Module Conversion Month."

While the rest of the world is working on their NaNos or whatever, I've decided to put together a Gamma World campaign. This will be the first time I've ever attempted to actually run a game since around 1994, so I've decided to use this blog space I've had kicking around gathering cyber dust to record the process.

The first hurdle I've identified to this project, both in terms of the blog and the campaign, is that I am not a particularly well practiced or consistent writer. For a GM this can be circumvented by purchasing and running a prebuilt adventure module (sadly, nobody seems to sell prebuilt blogs). The issue here is that WotC hasn't pushed its Gamma World adventures out the door yet, and won't until December. Similarly, although TSR published and supported the property for several years, culminating in the AD&D-based fourth edition, we've gone through two and a half iterations of the core rules since then. This is where the "conversion" part of that title comes in: taking the classic TSR modules (and maybe a few Sword & Sorcery adventures), and rebuilding them to be up to spec with 4E (or specifically, Gamma World 7E).

Secondly, and of a more practical concern, is the new Gamma World's trading card mechanic. Most members of my group are scattered around various locations across the US (maybe one or two outside the States, even), and our RPG medium of choice has been Gametable. Fortunately, Gametable includes a card/deck drawing mechanic, which will facilitate the use of Alpha Mutation and Omega Tech cards. Unfortunately, this means a lot of data entry work, typing up a list of starter deck cards into the GM's deck, and assembling further lists based on booster cards for each player, and then entering these lists into XML documents for Gametable. It might also be handy to create a pog for each card, so players can have a nifty visual representation of their readied powers.

As I crack into these challenges (and probably discover new ones), armed with rulebooks, splats, supplements, fan-compiled lists, mapmaking tools, spreadsheets, and Notepad, I will attempt to keep this blog updated with my progress. I'll also attempt to link to any handy, web-based resources I find, and upload whatever (hopefully non-infringing*) files I create. To kick things off, you'll find links below to the Gametable client, and to info on the Gamma World starter decks.


The Gametable Wiki

Gamma World cards on the WotC forum

*Wizards folks: if you find anything I post violates the GSL or infringes on your IP, please let me know, and I'll pull the offending content immediately.