Let me begin by saying that I generally have little time for nostalgia in general. I've revisited some of my favorite television series from my youth, and realized that not only are they disappointing now, but I'm not real sure what I saw in them back then that made me enjoy them so much. Ditto video games. Ditto some music. Ditto some books I've read. So bear that in mind as you read on.
The following represents one grognard's opinion. It may provoke debate, which is perfectly fine.
I'm an old gamer. I'm not too terribly many years away from being eligible for an AARP card. I bought my first wargame, Avalon Hill's The Russian Campaign when I was 12. I bought my first RPG, the Traveller Little Black Book boxed set, at age 14. Both of those events are pushing 30-35 years ago. Back in those days I ran and played in a lot of Traveller, some of SPI's short-lived but excellent hard sci-fiRPG Universe, D&D (starting with the red box Basic Set, moving on to the Blue Box Expert set, and then on to First Edition AD&D). Later on I included things like Boot Hill, Tunnels and Trolls, Gamma World.
I don't play any of those games now and there's a reason for that. The art of game design has moved on past most of those old games. There are still some gems. I think Classic Traveller holds up reasonably well for its age, though I think the 1950's Golden Age of SciFi tropes and setting common to all versions of Traveller (including Mongoose's version), were actually tired 20 years ago at this point. I think Call of Cthulhu holds up remarkably well for the genre it represents, though I'm grateful Delta Green is there to remind people that present day Call of Cthulhu can be as good or better than the 1920's pulp setting Chaosium was so eager to detail. The truth is I was tired of 1st Ed AD&D and its progenitors before the Reagan Administration was over. I skipped 2nd Ed entirely (too similar to its predecessor), and really didn't pick up another version of D&D until 3rd Edition.
The biggest reason for this is that D&D and 1st Ed AD&D, boiled down to its nuts and bolts, were too table dependent (fuck Thack-Zero and the horse it rode in on), and frankly, for a newbie player, gave absolutely nothing to hang their hat on in terms of character design compared to most of its contemporaries, let alone the legion of designs that have come since. All you had were six abstract numbers. Comparing this to Call of Cthulhu, with its large number of occupations and skills, or Traveller and its prior career generation system, character design in pre-3rd Ed D&D seemed wonderfully quaint back in the early 1980's, let alone 20 years later when the rest of the world had pretty much left AD&D in the dust in terms of design.
This is kind of the RPG equivalent of pretending that wargame design peaked with Chess, or that first-person shooters never got better than classic Doom. While there's nothing wrong with admiring these games, or even playing them (I still play Call of Cthulhu, and have a near complete set of Classic Traveller books, including third party stuff), I would hardly want to go back to playing nothing but them.
I say this because in recent years, I've been somewhat amused by the Old School movement. Effectively it consists of using the 3rd Edition OGL to basically reconstruct 1st Ed D&D/AD&D. There are a number of systems doing this. Some of them are skewing so close to the style, design, layout, and text of the 1st Ed AD&D/Basic D&D that they might as well have taken the 1st Ed DMG, Player's Handbook, and Monster Manual removed the cover art, and just put a yellow-wrap cover on it like the old generic food labels of the 1980's.
Now some of the games are incorporating other innovations. I for one am rather impressed by Old School Hack, which ties together some of the basic D&D tropes with some more modern design concepts. It's not likely I'd ever play it, but I'll give it, and some of the others, credit for not just trying to recreate a design that had ceased to be interesting before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
However, I have to say I have no idea why somebody would go all the way back to something like OSRIC, which painstakingly reconstructs 1st Ed AD&D out of 3rd Ed, and tries to pretend that 30 years of design, and more importantly, innovation never happened. I've been there. I've played all the 1st Edition AD&D I ever want to play, and frankly, I didn't enjoy it that much after a while back then.
Monday, June 18, 2012
My Holy Grail
Have you ever had a movie, television, or novel property that you thought just screamed for somebody to do a setting or RPG for?
Here it is the week before Conflagration, and I'm spending an evening working on adapting S M Stirling's Emberverse series (or at least, the first trilogy of novels) to Basic Roleplaying system, which is rapidly becoming my favorite generic system for its ease of use.
Anyway, I needed a break from reading the stuff I'm running for the Con, and this is what I'm doing for the moment.
Here it is the week before Conflagration, and I'm spending an evening working on adapting S M Stirling's Emberverse series (or at least, the first trilogy of novels) to Basic Roleplaying system, which is rapidly becoming my favorite generic system for its ease of use.
Anyway, I needed a break from reading the stuff I'm running for the Con, and this is what I'm doing for the moment.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Cthulhu Invictus: A Review
OK. I'll admit it. I've gone in the past few years from a guy who'd never run a horror game in his life to somebody who counts Call of Cthulhu (and particularly its third-party setting, Delta Green) amongst his favorite systems.
One of the things I like about Call of Cthulhu is the ease with which it can be modified to play cosmic horror in a variety of historical eras. The core rulebook itself provides support for games set in the Victorian era, the 1920s, and current day. A few years ago, Cthulhu Dark Ages took the tentacled beasties back to the 10th Century. Cthulhu Invictus, Chaosium's latest for the game line, takes Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, the Deep Ones, a whole bunch of new Lovecraftian horrors from ancient mythology and Cthulhu himself all the way back to the First Century AD, during the Julio-Claudian dynasty, when the Roman Empire was at its absolute zenith.
Cover and layout:
Cthulhu Invictus is a gorgeous work. The front cover is haunting, the interior illustrations (mostly charcoal and or pencil drawings) evocative of the setting, and the rest of the layout economic and best of all, uncluttered.
4 out of 5.
Content:
The challenge of gaming in a historical period can be daunting for a gamer unfamiliar with the period, and requires different thinking than a modern day or more recent setting period might. Wisely, Cthulhu Invictus acknowledges this.
Chapter 1 begins with a good section on Rome the city, as well as Roman culture, followed by a timeline of historical events leading up to 80 CE (the setting pretty much wraps up around this time, during the reign of Titus, who was the son of Vespasian, who was the last man standing during the Roman Civil War of 69 CE, known as the "Year of the Four Emperors." This is then followed with a very thorough survey of the myriad of regions of the Roman Empire, along with barbarian territories on its border. This section takes up a good third of the book, meaning that Chaosium did its job.
Chapter 2: Character Creation takes a look at some of the differences between a 20th Century and 1st Century game, with a suggestion on character names, new occupations, aging, money, etc. Besides the obvious differences in occupations, it's worth noting that aging is tweaked substantively to reflect the shorter lifespans of the day.
Chapter 3: Skills modifies the skill list, adding a lot of the same skills that are found in Cthulhu Dark Ages, a host of new weapons skills, and obviously deleting the historical anachronisms from the regular Call of Cthulhu game. Credit Rating is effectively replaced by Status, Natural History is replaced by Natural World, and a few other skills are added.
Chapter 4: Equipment and Supplies adds Roman era equipment.
Chapter 5: Recovering Sanity (a single page) outlines the difficulties in recovering sanity in a day when Sigmund Freud wouldn't exist for another 1800 years.
Chapter 6: Combat, adds some important changes to combat to add more options to melee combat, as well as adding a variety of new melee and ranged weapons, armor, herbs, and poisons.
Chapter 7: Siege Weapons briefly outlines the larger siege weapons of the period, as well as Greek Fire (which is something of an anachronism for a game set in the First Century, as Greek Fire really wasn't developed until well after the demise of the Western Roman Empire, and well into the Byzantine period (which is the reason it's called Greek Fire, not Roman Fire). My guess is that the various Siege weapon skills in Cthulhu Invictus will be about as useless as the Operate Heavy Machinery skill in the base game.
Chapter 8: The Grimoire, speaks about Roman religion, provides a host of new spells, new tomes, and melds right into Chapter 9: Bestiary, with a variety of new creatures, as well as hints for how to work existing Mythos creatures from the corebook into the setting. Rejoice, oh, Dark Young fans...you can be devoured by them in Rome as well as Arkham.
Chapter 10: Cults and Secret Societies takes a look at the more esoteric religions, cults (both mythos-related and more benign) evolving in the Roman world at the time. While Christians may object to the description of their own religion at the time, considering its small following some 250 years before the rise of Constantine, cult is probably an apt description.
Finally, the book wraps up with a section on the legions, a short scenario, and a bibliography/selected reading list.
The section is thorough, and gives a good amount of information for running a Roman era game. I don't think it could be better without becoming a history tome.
5 of 5
Overall Value:
For the most part, Chaosium seems to be content to live off of past glories. The company does a lot more republishing of its classic titles (and slight revisions to its rulebook) these days than publishing new titles. Cthulhu Dark Ages was an exception to that a few years ago. Still outside of the Monograph program (where Chaosium sticks a front cover on what is otherwise an author written, edited, and laid out creation), whose work can only be regarded as of uneven quality (Cthulhu Invictus itself saw an earlier life as a Monograph, this new version is a much improved revision), a lot more third-party stuff from publishers (Pagan Publishing/Arc Dream, Miskatonic River Press, SuperGenius Games, Goodman Games, etc.), as well as third-party licensed games (Pelgrane's Trail of Cthulhu, Realms of Cthulhu etc.) than actually gets put out by Chaosium.
Still Cthulhu Invictus shows that Chaosium can still support its game. A book of scenarios is published for it (Cthulhu Invictus Companion), and Miskatonic River Press has published a campaign for it. Hopefully this won't be the last we see of the game.
At a cover price of $25, if you like Call of Cthulhu, have an interest in the Roman era, and like the idea of throwing the two together in a blender and hitting frappe, you could certainly find worse places to spend $25 than Cthulhu Invictus.
5 of 5.
One of the things I like about Call of Cthulhu is the ease with which it can be modified to play cosmic horror in a variety of historical eras. The core rulebook itself provides support for games set in the Victorian era, the 1920s, and current day. A few years ago, Cthulhu Dark Ages took the tentacled beasties back to the 10th Century. Cthulhu Invictus, Chaosium's latest for the game line, takes Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, the Deep Ones, a whole bunch of new Lovecraftian horrors from ancient mythology and Cthulhu himself all the way back to the First Century AD, during the Julio-Claudian dynasty, when the Roman Empire was at its absolute zenith.
Cover and layout:
Cthulhu Invictus is a gorgeous work. The front cover is haunting, the interior illustrations (mostly charcoal and or pencil drawings) evocative of the setting, and the rest of the layout economic and best of all, uncluttered.
4 out of 5.
Content:
The challenge of gaming in a historical period can be daunting for a gamer unfamiliar with the period, and requires different thinking than a modern day or more recent setting period might. Wisely, Cthulhu Invictus acknowledges this.
Chapter 1 begins with a good section on Rome the city, as well as Roman culture, followed by a timeline of historical events leading up to 80 CE (the setting pretty much wraps up around this time, during the reign of Titus, who was the son of Vespasian, who was the last man standing during the Roman Civil War of 69 CE, known as the "Year of the Four Emperors." This is then followed with a very thorough survey of the myriad of regions of the Roman Empire, along with barbarian territories on its border. This section takes up a good third of the book, meaning that Chaosium did its job.
Chapter 2: Character Creation takes a look at some of the differences between a 20th Century and 1st Century game, with a suggestion on character names, new occupations, aging, money, etc. Besides the obvious differences in occupations, it's worth noting that aging is tweaked substantively to reflect the shorter lifespans of the day.
Chapter 3: Skills modifies the skill list, adding a lot of the same skills that are found in Cthulhu Dark Ages, a host of new weapons skills, and obviously deleting the historical anachronisms from the regular Call of Cthulhu game. Credit Rating is effectively replaced by Status, Natural History is replaced by Natural World, and a few other skills are added.
Chapter 4: Equipment and Supplies adds Roman era equipment.
Chapter 5: Recovering Sanity (a single page) outlines the difficulties in recovering sanity in a day when Sigmund Freud wouldn't exist for another 1800 years.
Chapter 6: Combat, adds some important changes to combat to add more options to melee combat, as well as adding a variety of new melee and ranged weapons, armor, herbs, and poisons.
Chapter 7: Siege Weapons briefly outlines the larger siege weapons of the period, as well as Greek Fire (which is something of an anachronism for a game set in the First Century, as Greek Fire really wasn't developed until well after the demise of the Western Roman Empire, and well into the Byzantine period (which is the reason it's called Greek Fire, not Roman Fire). My guess is that the various Siege weapon skills in Cthulhu Invictus will be about as useless as the Operate Heavy Machinery skill in the base game.
Chapter 8: The Grimoire, speaks about Roman religion, provides a host of new spells, new tomes, and melds right into Chapter 9: Bestiary, with a variety of new creatures, as well as hints for how to work existing Mythos creatures from the corebook into the setting. Rejoice, oh, Dark Young fans...you can be devoured by them in Rome as well as Arkham.
Chapter 10: Cults and Secret Societies takes a look at the more esoteric religions, cults (both mythos-related and more benign) evolving in the Roman world at the time. While Christians may object to the description of their own religion at the time, considering its small following some 250 years before the rise of Constantine, cult is probably an apt description.
Finally, the book wraps up with a section on the legions, a short scenario, and a bibliography/selected reading list.
The section is thorough, and gives a good amount of information for running a Roman era game. I don't think it could be better without becoming a history tome.
5 of 5
Overall Value:
For the most part, Chaosium seems to be content to live off of past glories. The company does a lot more republishing of its classic titles (and slight revisions to its rulebook) these days than publishing new titles. Cthulhu Dark Ages was an exception to that a few years ago. Still outside of the Monograph program (where Chaosium sticks a front cover on what is otherwise an author written, edited, and laid out creation), whose work can only be regarded as of uneven quality (Cthulhu Invictus itself saw an earlier life as a Monograph, this new version is a much improved revision), a lot more third-party stuff from publishers (Pagan Publishing/Arc Dream, Miskatonic River Press, SuperGenius Games, Goodman Games, etc.), as well as third-party licensed games (Pelgrane's Trail of Cthulhu, Realms of Cthulhu etc.) than actually gets put out by Chaosium.
Still Cthulhu Invictus shows that Chaosium can still support its game. A book of scenarios is published for it (Cthulhu Invictus Companion), and Miskatonic River Press has published a campaign for it. Hopefully this won't be the last we see of the game.
At a cover price of $25, if you like Call of Cthulhu, have an interest in the Roman era, and like the idea of throwing the two together in a blender and hitting frappe, you could certainly find worse places to spend $25 than Cthulhu Invictus.
5 of 5.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Con Game Preparation IV: A Dirty World - Bucknell 13, Delaware 7
A Dirty World is the one Dollar original I'm running. I had actually had plans to run a second original design, a pulp era game, but frankly it was coming in a bit long to really run at a con, and I was hesitant to cut it down as just too perfect. So I'll torture my group with it at an unspecified future date. Let's just say Dinosaurs, World War II era Japanese super-soldier experiments, zombies, and chimera were just too much awesome for one four hour session. But that's a topic for another post or two. :)
A few weeks ago I reviewed A Dirty World, go read it if you need a refresher on what the game is like. The beauty of the one-roll engine, in any flavor I've seen, is that it's an easy game to teach. I taught it to my current group in the space of about ten minutes. This makes it basically ideal for a convention game, where time is at a premium, and one would rather not spend the first hour of a four hour block teaching game rules.
The biggest reason for creating a game for A Dirty World is that I truly love film noir. I've got a sizable collection of films from the era, as well as later films that really seem steeped in the atmospherics of it. The trouble is, I tend to let my id run wild in creating such games.
My first original scenario was a sordid tale in the depression era South involving white slavery, bigamy, murder, and blackmail. If Bucknell 13, Delaware 7 is any indication, I was just getting started.
It's an ambitious scenario. The players can interact with a good dozen and a half NPCs (though I suspect several of them the players may never meet directly, some of whom are red herrings, some of whom are vital to the plot, and all of whom are pretty much horribly messed up human beings. The PCs themselves are a mess. Every one of them is horribly flawed, most of them are pretty well despicable, and in some cases, the possibility of character conflict is almost inevitable.
In other words, it's one of my Dirty World games.
A few weeks ago I reviewed A Dirty World, go read it if you need a refresher on what the game is like. The beauty of the one-roll engine, in any flavor I've seen, is that it's an easy game to teach. I taught it to my current group in the space of about ten minutes. This makes it basically ideal for a convention game, where time is at a premium, and one would rather not spend the first hour of a four hour block teaching game rules.
The biggest reason for creating a game for A Dirty World is that I truly love film noir. I've got a sizable collection of films from the era, as well as later films that really seem steeped in the atmospherics of it. The trouble is, I tend to let my id run wild in creating such games.
My first original scenario was a sordid tale in the depression era South involving white slavery, bigamy, murder, and blackmail. If Bucknell 13, Delaware 7 is any indication, I was just getting started.
It's an ambitious scenario. The players can interact with a good dozen and a half NPCs (though I suspect several of them the players may never meet directly, some of whom are red herrings, some of whom are vital to the plot, and all of whom are pretty much horribly messed up human beings. The PCs themselves are a mess. Every one of them is horribly flawed, most of them are pretty well despicable, and in some cases, the possibility of character conflict is almost inevitable.
In other words, it's one of my Dirty World games.
Con Game Preparation III: Darwin's World-The High Road to Hell.
Next Up, I'll talk about preparation for the High Road to Hell.
Darwin's World is a third-party campaign setting for d20 Modern, WotC's venerable, out of print Modern line using the OGL. Fortunately, while the d20 Modern print books are long since out of print (though they can still be had second hand rather readily), the Modern SRD is still available for the asking, and a nice PDF of the MSRD rules can be had free from Darwin's World's publisher, RPG Objects. Darwin's World is simply the best d20 post-apocalyptic setting out there, with a broad range of support, and a very plausible, post-nuclear setting.
The High Road to Hell is another published adventure. My responsibilities here have mainly extended to building serviceable pregenerated characters, drawing up maps, and getting things ready to run. I've still got a few maps to do, but that should be finished by tomorrow afternoon. High Road to Hell is basically a wilderness adventure where the PCs are attempting to catch up to and rescue some kidnapping victims while racing the clock to do it.
Darwin's World is a third-party campaign setting for d20 Modern, WotC's venerable, out of print Modern line using the OGL. Fortunately, while the d20 Modern print books are long since out of print (though they can still be had second hand rather readily), the Modern SRD is still available for the asking, and a nice PDF of the MSRD rules can be had free from Darwin's World's publisher, RPG Objects. Darwin's World is simply the best d20 post-apocalyptic setting out there, with a broad range of support, and a very plausible, post-nuclear setting.
The High Road to Hell is another published adventure. My responsibilities here have mainly extended to building serviceable pregenerated characters, drawing up maps, and getting things ready to run. I've still got a few maps to do, but that should be finished by tomorrow afternoon. High Road to Hell is basically a wilderness adventure where the PCs are attempting to catch up to and rescue some kidnapping victims while racing the clock to do it.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Con Game Preparation II: Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green - The Last Equation
I actually started writing a one-shot for this one...and will finish it one day, but I decided instead to run the excellent short adventure for Delta Green, The Last Equation.
For those unfamiliar with Delta Green, it was a setting originally published about a year prior to the start of the X-Files. It basically takes UFO and Paranormal mythology in a different direction than X-Files, adds a revamped and updated for the present look at the Cthulhu Mythos, throws it in the blender with contemporary UFO and Paranormal mythologies, and hits frappe.
There are several elements that make a good Call of Cthulhu game. First, the menace needs to be one that can't easily be comprehended by the players. Second, it needs to have an ancient, murky origin. Third, there has to be a real, palpable sense that players can die from this threat, even if they do everything perfectly. The Last Equation fits these molds perfectly and like most great horror tales, the monster isn't half as dangerous to the characters as the characters themselves are.
My work on the game consisted mostly in generating pregenerated characters. I'm using the excellent HeroLab (with the Call of Cthulhu data files suitably modified for Delta Green), and generated 10 characters...out of those, the players will choose six. Due to a precondition of the game, there's a very likely chance some of these character may or may not be played based on the game instructions. Depending on the characters the players select, this could be a very different game.
For those unfamiliar with Delta Green, it was a setting originally published about a year prior to the start of the X-Files. It basically takes UFO and Paranormal mythology in a different direction than X-Files, adds a revamped and updated for the present look at the Cthulhu Mythos, throws it in the blender with contemporary UFO and Paranormal mythologies, and hits frappe.
There are several elements that make a good Call of Cthulhu game. First, the menace needs to be one that can't easily be comprehended by the players. Second, it needs to have an ancient, murky origin. Third, there has to be a real, palpable sense that players can die from this threat, even if they do everything perfectly. The Last Equation fits these molds perfectly and like most great horror tales, the monster isn't half as dangerous to the characters as the characters themselves are.
My work on the game consisted mostly in generating pregenerated characters. I'm using the excellent HeroLab (with the Call of Cthulhu data files suitably modified for Delta Green), and generated 10 characters...out of those, the players will choose six. Due to a precondition of the game, there's a very likely chance some of these character may or may not be played based on the game instructions. Depending on the characters the players select, this could be a very different game.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Con Game Preparation I: Star Wars Saga Edition-The Betrayal of Darth Revan
Betrayal of Darth Revan is a game I've tried to get on the table for a couple of years now. It's a WotC RPGA module that was created for GenCon 2008 (timed to coincide with the release of the Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide for Saga Edition). For those familiar with the Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU), that is the novels, comics, video games, etc. set in the Star Wars universe, the module takes place not long before the start of 2002's Knights of the Old Republic video game and is a key part of an event that appears in a couple of cut scenes from the game.
It's a fabulous adventure that was released by the RPGA when they ended support for the Saga line. It combines a little of everything that makes the Old Republic era great in the first place, Jedi vs. Sith, lots of aliens, space battles, ground battles, the works. I've never run or played it before, but I've read it and can't wait to put it on the table.
The fortunate thing about this one is I've got very little prep to do. Print the maps, create my usual hints one-page to give neophytes a primer on the rules system, print the character sheets and the adventure text, and study the adventure in depth.
As for what led me to choose it? I figured, with the release of the MMO, that there might be renewed interest in the Old Republic era, and that this would be a good, easy to do tie-in to the game. It also acts as a pretty good overview of the system, and looks like a rollicking good time.
It's a fabulous adventure that was released by the RPGA when they ended support for the Saga line. It combines a little of everything that makes the Old Republic era great in the first place, Jedi vs. Sith, lots of aliens, space battles, ground battles, the works. I've never run or played it before, but I've read it and can't wait to put it on the table.
The fortunate thing about this one is I've got very little prep to do. Print the maps, create my usual hints one-page to give neophytes a primer on the rules system, print the character sheets and the adventure text, and study the adventure in depth.
As for what led me to choose it? I figured, with the release of the MMO, that there might be renewed interest in the Old Republic era, and that this would be a good, easy to do tie-in to the game. It also acts as a pretty good overview of the system, and looks like a rollicking good time.
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