Return to the SKLD: Who needs classes?

Two years ago I whipped up a 'lite' version of D&D which I called SKLD! (or Skald) which stands for Search, Kill, Loot, Drink! I've play tested it couple of times but haven't had the opportunity to use it in a regular game. I've been thinking of trying to make some improvements on it it and revise it, so I've decided to write a few blog posts examining certain key features.If you'd like to download a copy you can get a copy from google docs or mediafire. 

One of my main inspirations for these rules was Searchers of the Unknown.  SotU uses classless system.  In the basic original game, everyone is a human adventurer.  All the differences between characters are determined by their equipment.  On the surface is seems overly simplistic, but the more I thought about it, I found that it had a certain charm.  To me, it's the perfect way to achieve the OSR Murderhobo vibe.  Everyone is just a dude, nothing special at all.  The characters develop based on their actions and the equipment they collect. Certainly there are limitations to this sort of system, namely in the magic department, but there are fairly simple ways to work around this.  

For SKLD, I decided that there should be different races available to the players, and that the characters should have have the 6 standard ability scores (SotU does not use any ability scores, everyone is assumed to be totally average). Ability scores seem too iconic to me, as do the the standard demi-human races, so I had to keep those in SKLD. The one mistake that I may have made is not making the demi-humans significantly different from the humans.  I have given them the standard racial special abilities, and some ability score modifiers, but I may need to do some more with them.  I used the standard B/X ability score modifiers, which range from a -3 to a +3, but I'm thinking of changing this to -2 to +2 system (thanks to Courtney from Hack & Slash). 

One of the important aspects of SotU is that the Armor Class is more important than ever.  AC directly affects movement rate and initiative. In SKLD, I've expanded this concept so that AC also affects a character's chances of pulling off special maneuvers, or using magic.  In this way I feel that AC really lives up to the term armor CLASS, and is not just a physical defense rating.  In effect, the Armor Classes are the character classes in SotU and SKLD. 

Next time, I'm going to talk about a magic system without magic-users.

An Ode to Orthodoxy

I've never met Frank Mentzer. I don't know anything about his reputation.  All I know is that he was responsible for BECMI and Temple of Elemental Evil. With that in mind, I find the statement below from 1982's RPGA module R-1 'To the Aid of Flax' to be ponderous.

Has anyone else ever gone 6 years in a single campaign and not created some sort of house rule, new spell, or new monster?  If Mentzer's statement is 100% factual, it has to hold the record for the most orthodox, by the book campaign in history.  Of course I'm sure he used the AD&D combat rules exactly as written.

Why I don't blog anymore

It's been a long time since I have put anything on this blog, though I had lots of ideas to write about. Every time I start writing something I decide not to post it.  I regret not posting, but there's always a reason not to.

It's been said before.  A lot of time things I want to express have been said before, and sometimes quite often. I feel there's no need to add my two cents. Here are some eloquent, thoughtful people that have stated positions and thoughts similar to my own, and I don't see much point in a 'me too' post.

It's stupid.  Little odd things interest me.  Talking about them publicly makes me feel like a very strange person. So I'm hesitant to put my weirdness on full display.

People are going to disagree with me.  I don't mind them doing so, but I feel the need to defend my position, and I dislike trying to do so in an Internet forum format.

I prefer to talk about these things in person.  I enjoy discussing the things I want to post about, and posting is not discussing.  I really enjoy talking face to face or via voice chat etc.  the change of ideas that goes on in that environment see much superior to anything I would get out of posting something on a blog and reading comments.

I don't have anything worth adding. It's just egotistical to think people are going to be interested in my random thoughts about gaming and what I've been up to recently. This is probably my biggest hurdle to blogging. I usually get half way through writing a post and ask "why am I doing is?"  I never have an answer.

So why am I blogging now?  After getting past the reasons I don't blog, I started thinking about why I should. And it turns out that there are some good reasons for me to start posting again.  I want to point out things that others are blogging about that I find interesting. I want to bring up some odd topics I've been reluctant to mention, but write about them from a neutral standpoint.  I'm more interested in seeing what other people think than expressing my opinion about most topics.  I'd also like to start reviewing some products, both RPGs and wargames, old and new.

Out of Print? Really?

I haven;t been posting much recently because my other hobby, playing and recording music, has been taking up most of my free time in the past few weeks.  I've also been spending some time getting back into Warhammer 40k.  In the short time I've been getting reacquainted with Games Workshop and Warhammer, I've noted a problem that GW has in common with WotC; Out of print products that have no business being out of print.

Many other blogs have pointed out that old  out of print D&D products are selling for extremely high prices on ebay, and we aren't just talking about older products from the 70's and 80's.  Even 3.5 core books are selling for face value or above, which would seem to indicate that WotC could make a decent amount of money selling products from their back catalog.  Their reprints of the original AD&D core books should serve as good test case.

Games Workshop also has a problem with out of print products, but it isn't their books.  There are some people playing old editions of Warhammer, but it isn't as pronounced as the OSR.  GW did a reprint of the original Rogue Trader book for the 25th anniversary of the 40k game, but that seemed to be more out of nostalgia than actual demand for the rules. GW's problem is with their miniatures.  While perfectly usable in modern games (a 25 year old Space Marine or Ork is perfectly ok to use in GW sanctioned events), most miniatures from the 80's and 90's are no longer available.

Just 10 years ago, I was able to go to the store at the GW headquarters in Glen Burnie Maryland and place an order for any miniature that was in the catalogs that they had.  These catalogs contained minis dating back to the mid 80s when I first got into the hobby, and included the original metal Space Marines, Orks, and Eldar that appeared in the Rogue Trader book.

Word is you can't do this sort of thing anymore.  If it isn't listed on their website, it isn't available.  I've heard some stories from people in the UK getting some older stuff by calling the mail order department, but those are just rumors.  The fact is that older, out of print miniatures are going for extraordinary prices on ebay, and the current selection of minis from GW is fairly limited.  On the one hand it isn't such a big deal, as the newer miniatures are much nicer than the older ones, so in general you are getting a better quality product for your money.  The problem for me however is that some of the discontinued models have no replacement!  Take my Space Wolves army as an example.  I would love to have some Long Fangs and Wolf Scouts.  A quick look at the 95-96 catalog shows all sorts of Space Wolf characters and basic troops available in metal.  Some of these characters, like Ragnar Blackmane and Ulrik the Slayer are still available.  But the generic Runepriest? gone. Bloodclaw and Longfang Sergeants? gone.  Regular Longfangs and Wolf Scouts?  Gone! Their are no direct replacements for these miniatures, and GW admits it.  The manager at my local store suggested that I just use generic models and spruce them up with some bits.  I'd be all for that if it wasn't for the fact that the models actually existed at one time.

There are a few reasons that GW may be doing this.  I have heard from some people that the older molds from the 80's era may no longer be usable because they are so old.  Some of those older molds may now be the property of the original artists.  Sounds far fetched but you never know how GW was run back in the early days. This doesn't address the issues with the Space Wolves I noted as they are all from the same year, but some models are available and others are not.  Some models may not be available because they are slowly being replaced with "Citadel Finecast" or plastic kits, and GW is trying to create demand by taking the old models out of print well before they are replaced.  Seems like a possibility, but if a person wants a particular model for their army NOW, they are going to go to ebay and get it, not wait for years until GW gets around to replacing it.

In all, it's a sad state of affairs.  GW has every right to control the supply of their product however it would like.  I'm not really blaming them.  It may just be too costly for them to keep all of these miniatures available. As a collector and player it is just sad to think that GW spent all of these years building a large catalog of miniatures, and rules for using them, only to have so many of them go out of print for whatever reason, while players and collectors are still willing to pay good money for those minis.

More Moria please!

Last week I sat down and watched all 3 Lord of the Rings movies over again.  For the record I like them, but don't love them.  Good movies, but not good interpretations of the books, though they are probably the best anyone could ever do.  Nothing against Peter Jackson; his version of King Kong is one of my favorite movies ever.

The scenes in Moria reminded me how much I loved that chapter in the book.  It struck me as funny that with so much of the OSR's attention focused on megadungeons and literary influences there hasn't been more discussion on Moria.  From what I can gather, there have been a few RPG products focused on Moria, but the ones I have seen have done marginal jobs.  I.C.E. did an ok job with their Moria sourcebook for MERP and Rolemaster (I'll do a full review on it later). I haven't seen decipher's sourcebook for their LotR RPG, but from what I have heard it has received mixed reviews. GW's Kazad-dum sourcebook for the LotR miniatures game has a nice side-view map, which is much different from I.C.E.'s, but other than that it doesn't offer much other than lovely pictures.

I never thought of Middle Earth as a good RPG setting, mostly because I feel that there is no good way to simulate the way magic works that world.  I also felt that adventurers seemed out of place in Tolkien's world. But when I think of Moria as a megadundgeon, I think it serves as a great model for creating others.  First it provides a real, sensible reason for the existence of  the original structure.  In this case, we have a valuable mine and an attached underground city, all created by Dwarves. Secondly, we a good reason why the structure was abandoned, namely the release of the Balrog. This also serves to explain why the goblins and other creatures have come to live in Moria.  Third, there is built in treasure. The Mithril and other precious metals would be reason enough to venture into Moria, but there could also be many other valuable items left there by the Dwarves. Lastly Moria is Huge. Like the size of Manhattan huge.  According to I.C.E.'s sourcebook, it is almost 28 miles from east to west, and in places the mines are several hundred if not several thousand feet deep.  As far as any RPG campaign would be concerned, it's endless.

Beyond my reservations about the Middle-Earth setting, Moria has some other issues.  First, it is extremely dangerous.  The inhabitants are fairly well organized, and led by an extremely powerful demon that seems to like to make appearances at the front gate if someone so much as drops a pin in the foyer.  This is not the sort of place where characters would start their adventuring careers.  Also there does not seem to be good location nearby to establish a base camp.  Setting the adventure in the 4th age after the Balrog has been defeat solves part of the first problem, but Moria would still remain an intimidating dungeon.

I'd like to see some other people's takes on Moria.  For me it remains THE iconic fantasy dungeon, and one we can still learn from.

Descent into the Depths

Aaron over at A Paladin in the Citadel recently made this post about the classic AD&D module D1 - Descent into the Depths of the Earth. I had recently been skimming through the module recently, looking for more old school inspiration.  I often like to revisit modules that I never thought much of, and this was one of them.  I had the D1-2 version which combined the original with Shrine of the Kua Toa, and I also owned the Vault of the Drow, so I had the whole series.  They seemed cool, but as a kid they were difficult to use because they were high level adventures that required the GM to do a lot work, and for the players to use something other than brute force. Also, they lacked a defining story or goal  (remember my group attacked the keep in Keep on the Borderlands, so you really had to point them in particular direction).  I never used them in any of my games.

Today I find them much more interesting.  I think they would be better presented as a sourcebook than as adventure modules, but that's a small point.  Rereading all 3 modules as a whole gives me a much better overlook of the underworld.  Aaron sees D1 as a "megadungeon template", but I see it as even more.  The underworld of D1-3 combines dungeon and wilderness settings, and it forces the PCs to make difficult decisions if they try to resupply without returning to the surface.  The possibilities here really do seem endless.  The one change I would make is to lower the average power level of the inhabitants so that players could start adventuring in this environment starting around level 5 rather than 10+.

In a way these modules remind me of the feeling I had while reading Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth".  It's really too bad that those movies stink.

Howard Pyle

I started playing D&D before I was 10 years old.  At the time, I had very little exposure to the what we would consider the "fantasy" genre.  To me, fantasy was fairy tales and ghost stories.  I had seen the Rankin-Bass animated version of the Hobbit, and that had sparked my imagination.  I had yet to read the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings though.  At the time I was mostly reading Hardy Boys books.  Then I found a book in my school library called "The Story of King Arthur and his Knights".

 I knew a little bit about King Arthur from popular culture, but  Howard Pyle's book took the story to a whole new level for me.  I became totally engrossed in the Arthurian world.  For weeks I read the book and three others that followed it.  Despite Pyle's antiquarian writing style, I moved through the stories quickly, and even went back to reread my favorite parts.

Later I discovered Pyle's Robin Hood stories and book of Pirates.  While I enjoyed them, they never had the impact that King Arthur did. Years later I stumbled across Men of Iron, which was an original story rather than a retelling of existing legend.  Reading Men of Iron rekindled my appreciation of Pyle, though I didn't bother to track down any of his other works.  By then I was reading all sorts of fantasy, old and new, but Pyle still intrigued me.  He is generally considered a children's author, but I never found his stories childish.

Today, thanks to the internet, I've come to appreciate Pyle as an illustrator as well as a writer. While it is hard to consider him a fantasy author,  I have to imagine that both his writing and illustrations influenced the pulp artists and writers that followed him in the decades after his death in 1911. Gary didn't include him in Appendix N, and I don't know if he was familiar with Pyle's work, but as a young boy it was Pyle that lit the fire of my imagination and influenced me.

Retrospective: Mordheim

I have a love/hate relationship with Games Workshop.  I could go on for hours about the hate side of it, but I think everyone is aware of the normal criticisms of GW by now.  I do love the Warhammer universe though, and from time to time they put out some really cool games.  It seems that their best games aren't always the most popular though, and they aren't given the long term support that they deserve. Necromunda, Epic 40k, GorkaMorka. Adeptus Titanicus all fall into this category, as does Mordheim.

If you aren't familiar with it, Mordheim is a skirmish level fantasy combat game, fitting somewhere in between an RPG and wargame.  Each player has a warband of about 5-20 models.  The game centers on the city of Mordheim which has been destroyed by a comet, and the bands of adventures that have come to plunder the remains of the city and gather the precious magical warpstone from the comet.  The warbands are themed units based on different troop types from around the Empire, and some more more monstrous units like beastmen and skaven.  Over the course of time, official and unofficial warband lists have been created for just about every sort of Warhammer army and troop type.

What I love about the game is that it doesn't require a lot of work or time, yet is very fun and has a lot of replay value.  Collecting an army of over 100 miniatures is a daunting task, not to mention expensive.  15-20 is great for a beginner or those that are short on cash, space and/or time.  There are also plenty of ideas for scenarios, and the campaign rules give the game depth and purpose.  The rules are fairly simple, being a slightly modified version of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, the major difference being that units don't "form up" in blocks, thus removing the need for a lot of the movement rules.

In short, Mordheim is everything Battlesystem Skirmishes could have been.  With a focused and detailed setting, thematic army lists and campaign rules, Mordheim is a complete game, not just a set of rules.  Yet, if you wanted to, you could take he skeleton of those rules, and use it for a different purpose, say an RPG?

GW lists this as a Specialist game, which mean they aren't producing new material for it, and most of the rules and miniatures have to be ordered online.  It also means they aren't running games in the stores, which is a shame because I think it is a great way to introduce people to the hobby.  Fortunately there is still some good fan support for the game, and a revised set of rules named "Coreheim" is freely available.

BattleSystem Skirmishes

We've all had this situation in our game.  A large party of players, possibly with some NPC help, gets into a fight with a large group of monsters. Suddenly book keeping becomes an issue.  Lots and lots of dice are being rolled.  What looks like a fun fight at first bogs down and takes far too long.  So how do you as a GM deal with battles that aren't full scale warfare, but are larger than your normal encounter?

Back in the early days of 2nd edition, we had BattleSystem Skirmishes.  Most of us remember the various versions of the BattleSystem mass combat rules, but BattleSystem Skirmishes was the less popular and now forgotten system that bridged the gap between RPG and tabletop wargame.  Skirmishes represents individual models on a 1:1 scale, as opposed to the 10:1 or some larger scale that is used in most wargames.  In this way it has more in common with today's pre-painted miniatures games like D&D minis and the Clix games.  As a wargame, it really wasn't all that interesting.  In fact, I don't recall anyone ever using it as such.  However, it did do one thing fairly well, and that was simplifying and speeding up combat for 2e AD&D.

Even though the book goes on and on about the rules of combat, and has good size list of monsters spells and magic items, we only really needed about 2 pages of the book.  Those pages provided charts and rules for converting 2e characters to Skirmishes rules, which actually turns out to be a very simple process.  Hit points and damage are now represented as hit dice or just "hits".  A 1 hit die create from 2e had 1 hit in skirmishes.  your standard weapon that would do a d8 damage in 2e did 1 hit.  Skirmishes used Thaco and armor class, just like 2e with just a few other modifiers. Other than that, you could just use all of the other standard rpg style rules. I loved this system, because it got rid of the damage roll, and weaker creatures were either alive or dead.  You no longer had to keep track of 20 kobolds that had taken wounds.  Even creatures with more hits could be tracked with a die or another simple marker (really tiny d6s were great for this).

Even though this was written with 2e in mind, it would work with any old version of D&D once you see how the conversion works.