The Game I Have Been Waiting For?

Star Trek “Into The Unknown” raised it’s head yesterday.

I was searching for X-Wing ships, the Trident Huge ship specifically, when a video featuring a massive Enterprise-D appeared. Intrigued, but assuming I was looking at someone’s “true scaling” rework of Attack Wing, it took me a moment to realise I was looking at something very new.

Trek and I go way back.

Below I will look briefly at my Trek forays and rate them from 1-5 for battle game depth vs story game immersion.

I have Federation Commander (5/2) and the many spin-offs from that like Starrmada or ACTA. These give me various levels of crunch and lots of it. If I feel like running one ship with all it’s micro management, this was the game so far (unless you want to go full Star Fleet Battles bonkers, which it modernised). Although big on crunch, it is clearly a wargame with scenario power.

Attack Wing (4/2) the X-Wing spin-off that many feel is better except for the lousy ships. It feels like Trek, if a little light weight, but is more story driven than X-Wing and even Armada (which I would rate as 0-1-ish). Unlike X-Wing, STAW started out with scenarios to play, but it is still a combat game for a tournament circuit. Oddly, I shed a lot of this and still feel I have skin in the game, because unlike X-Wing, a little really does go a long way.

GF9’s Away Missions (2/4) which is the main game that gives me the “Trek as problem solving like an actual episode” dynamic. This is the game that looks like a skirmish game, but is not, which disappoints some, thrills others. The big issue of course is no ships.

Star Trek Frontiers (1/4) based on the Mage Knight system. This one, like Away Missions does not concentrate on combat for it’s own sake, only as one of several options and is mostly an exploration game. I have not played it much, but it is capable of capturing that Trek episodic problem solving and exploration feel and heroes all those Trek elements. What has put me off is a combination of game weight without the promise of fully realised immersion.

There are so, so many others, like Panic or Catan which I have played, but only cosmetically stray from their parent game’s roots. Others like Star Fleet Captains or Ascendency have less appeal for a variety of reasons (cost, minimum player count, game weight to play options or reviews).

So, I have crunchy, light, immersive story telling to skirmish wargame, but is there a game that successfully combines all of these other than an RPG?

Into the Unknown (maybe a 4/4, or even better) on the other hand does a few things that exceed those above and maybe even my own expectations.

• The ship models are huge, beautiful and to scale. I got around my annoyance at STAW scaling by splitting the games into their series, with TNG as a battle game, DS9 and Delta Quadrant as a skirmish scale and most others align reasonably, but some combinations are hard to swallow.

• It has a TNG theme, so no “Forever War” pseudo licence weirdness. Characters we know, but deeper than STAW with ships unlike AM.

• It is a capable combat game, but it is also a properly themed scenario game (even campaign) driven, episodic, story game. You may never fight, you may go boots in, but it has options. This is Trek for Trekkies.

The negatives are obvious really.

Those ships are biiiig! The Defiant and Attack ships look like better versions of the Attack Wing versions (maybe a little bigger), so the to-scale big ships are genuinely massive. Nobody has managed this before, not X-Wing (Huge ships were about ½ scale size), Armada with its vari-scale and fighters that were “representative” and of course Attack Wing, the worst offender.

It is deep, involved and complicated, has a two page spread of just the icons needed to play and may trade immersion for enjoyment to some extent. My main concern is, I might get deeply into it, but can I expect another to do the same?

Sometimes four Action icons on a X-Wing ship card is too much for casual players.

This is something I have seen before with board games that creep into the realm of roleplaying games. The total freedom of a TTRPG allows for much to taken as we narrate it. A board game on the other hand has to simulate every aspect of that life or it is simply out of the scope of the game.

On the other hand, can a dedicated Trekkie and war gamer afford to miss it?

Will it be “the one” or another expensive wadste of book shelf space?

Only time will tell.

So, X-Wing Is Dead, Long Live X-Wing (And Armada)

X-Wing is no more it seems, Armada no better off, but that is another story..

No big deal for me as I have more than I will ever need and a small, quite occasional and not tournament obsessed playing group who like where we are.

My journey started with a bulk buy of TFA 1e starter sets (5 for $100au I think). I thought I could keep it under control by limiting myself to TFA and 1e, so Heroes of the Resistance, a Silencer, some Tie/SF’s, a couple of Bombers and I had “the experience” of X Wing with some semblance of control.

Of course, I was soon hopelessly intrigued, mired in excellent Blogs, a thriving community, even one going through edition angst, a lot of history, a lot of love and several opinions on all of these. My thirst for more took me all over the place as I just narrowly caught all but the Starwing and arguably 2 ARC-170’s, Tie Aggressors and K-Wings (2) are under done, but at least I have some.

Two may limit possible builds, but it is still two more than many have.

I even bought foreign language Huge ships, Sabine’s Tie and others, then chased down English language cards and dials (usually from Big Orbit in the UK). I am also sure I got the very last Rebel Transport, original 1e starters and 1e Ghost in Australia, at least on line.

Three of these were near miraculous buys, one was so common it was almost sad.

2e was a push.

I bought in to 1e to avoid the trap of 2e (cost), but as it turned out my TFA collection perfectly fit the upgrade packs and just for completeness I bought the rest……

History now, some fraught, some fun, all memorable.

Around here we mostly play various forms of 1e “Bare Bones” X-Wing, limited to the original trilogy period (i.e no TFA). By “we” I mean me and a cast of drop-ins with mild to keen interest, but little taste for deep diving.

The Force Awakens period is now reserved for 2e, which is where it was completed. We see this as an old movies-old game/new movies-new game dynamic.

Bare Bones style or similar (see below) means usually, no EPT’s, Mods, generic Titles and sometimes no named Titles either. Basically everything that broke the later 1e game and was prioritised as tournament necessary, anything odd or irrational and anything leading to the bonkers action chains and gamesmanship at the expense of logical simulation, is out.

The 1e game was lovely and simple, but it broke easily. Early iconic ships aged badly and worse, the fixes were becoming even more problematic. The game was a world event, huge by game standards, especially considering it’s limited scope and theming, but it was ailing.

The X-Wing for example, the iconic namesake ship of the game ended up with Renegade Refit, to allow Integrated Astromech and S-Foils to make it cheaper and more viable, all effectively made redundant in the 2e fix.

Second edition is mostly sitting in a cupboard neglected (see above). The 2e game is far more even, cohesive and comprehensive, but feels like a very different beast, shielding the players from the power blow-out as much with convolution and compromise as it is with cleaner rules, leading to more situational abilities and wordiness.

It is just me I know, but I actually like the old formatting better to.

It is great how 2e has made the player favourites relevant again, but there are other ways.

The reality is, when I try to introduce players to 2e they are overwhelmed by options and game jargon.

If I show them one of our 1e “Bare Bones” cut down versions, they are much happier.

The guidelines.

Pilots and their ships are as printed, ordnance is more or less reduced and consolidated, with some weird, convoluted and useless stuff dropped, also some is made faction specific.

Ships start out as very faction iconic, then gradually even out.

In many forms either generic or named only pilots are used and there is no TFA era stuff (or Tech).

The first few forms only allow ships with the base 5 Actions.

We do use 2e dials in some forms of 1e, because older ships are better to fly with them, but that is about all we change or add.

Classic is a handling of the original trilogy only, with some ace pilots being assigned EPT’s that fit them ideally in pre-builds, but always with an eye to story consistency over gamesmanship. Luke for example gets “Deadeye”, arguably his card even with his picture on it. Rogue One is an optional expansion and there are thoughts to doing a Rebels kit.

Black Squadron in all it’s glory.

Skeleton Crew , an intro game or one for the jaded player, is 5 themed ships per faction. Everything you need to make a game is there, enough for a tournament and a way of giving new players a feeling of control. Upgrades are limited, but there are plenty to play smart and to theme, but more complicated mechanics like Ion and Actions outside the base five are absent. This also uses the more basic dice-only combat system (crits are direct hull hits, normals are normal, reducing shields first), which makes some elements obsolete as they apply to damage card mechanics (for example the TFA Chewbacca is used, not the earlier version that relies on cards). No names are duplicated, so no Pilot and Crew options of the same character, other Crew and Droids are generics (and faction aligned).

Bare Bones expands the ships to 7, still faction themed, some more ordnance and upgrades are added to include Ion and other more complicated mechanics, damage cards are reinstated, but it uses 2e dials, to help rationalise out old and new ships.

Legends is a favourite. More ships including those from Rebels, Solo and Rogue One, but only named Pilots, Titles, Crew and Droids, no generics (the lack of a named Droid assumes a generic “no frills” model). This is all about, as it suggests, Legends and names, the characters that make a difference. If something or someone is not named, they are excluded. Named Titles are assumed with relevant Pilots only, not optional. This one appeals to me when the inconsistency of Droids etc that only impart one ability annoy (if R2’s offer Green moves, then why does R2-D2 fix shields and not give green moves?). All ships are equal except for the named character differences.

Expanded. Expanded is getting close to full 1e (but with 2e dials). Still no EPT’s, generic Titles, Mods, but named Titles are allowed, ships with more than the base Actions are included (except TFA era). This even includes single card Huge ships.

Aces and Eights is different. All upgrades are allowed, but only for a select range of fighters. It started with the Kihraxz vs the Advanced vs the X Wing, all massively improved in the later game, but other versions have been tried. It works because it is limited in ships.

Everyday Heroes is a new game, but a logical one. Only generic pilots are used, all able to take (select) EPT’s up to their PS value (mostly capped at 4) for free as part of the Pilot cost (initiative is changed to be even, but random), Pilots with the EPT slot (Black or Green Sqdrn etc) may take another, but at normal cost. This can result in some action chains, but lacking ace Pilot abilities, which often lead to duplication and redundancy, it is clean and refreshing and nice to get neglected cards out.

I have lots of these, some 1e, some 2e, but dials enough to play either.

We have also tried scenario games like “Strike For Home” a scenario including all my TFA era ships with a heavily simplified combat system (see Skeleton Crew) and movement system using card activations and groups of ships to play 20+ ships a side (I have 13 T-70’s!) played in three stages over my 6x4 planet map then my my 4x4 Orbit mat and finally my Ocean mat with ground defences and the target, or “The Convoy” making the most of my Cartel 2x C-Roc and 3x YT 666 freighters and Cartel escort vs a Black Sun/Binayre Pirate raiding force (similar simplified rules), again 20+ ships a side.

Both these avoid the need for ship or damage cards.

TFA got proper treatment in 2e

The Tackle Box Experiment. This is also called Training Day, using no ships, just TFA cards etc not used from 1e and bases with dial counters on them. It is designed as a portable “training” or travel game, needing only a flat space and some time. It is also good with kids when mini damage is anticipated. You get the game experience, all packed int a small tackle box. The handy thing about TFA is both S-Loops and Talon Rolls are represented. My bases are weighted with stick-on rubber flooring tile, to make them both heavier and less slippery.

Maybe a Bare Bones 2e hack would liven up that space.

Resisting New Games, Reinventing Old Ones.

I have moods with my gaming ranging from not in the mood at all for long periods, shifting from one genre to another, then sub-genre within those, I may be more in the mood to buy-collect than play, or to play and play a lot, or a mix of all of these.

TTRPG’s are on my mind at the moment and that led to a couple of long wanted D100 purchases, Mothership and Trouble Shooters, a pair of games that share very little in common apart from a D100 mechanical base.

RPG’s are funny things. Unlike board games they are effectively free-form. Anything goes within the broad parameters set, even shifting those parameters mid-game, a TTRPG equivalent to Dawn to Dust if you will (I wonder how many Call of Cthulhu games have gotten side tracked).

Games also in the “Loop”, an intended pun because one is Tales from the Loop, as well as Electric State and Things from the Flood, Aliens (Mothership covered this one), Wild Seas, Symbaroum and Vaessen. Most of these can simply serve as idea seeds for existing games, some not.

Symbaroum ties into a story line I have been pondering for a while based on the effect a “civilised” nation exiled or fleeing from a lost empire, who colonise a new world, one much more ancient and complicated than they realise and one that re-connects them to a lost past. It was already in the works, inspired by the Malazan and Robin Hobb books when Symbaroum solidified some ideas and provided inspirational art.

The feel is a mash-up of the new American colonies. lost Aztec kingdoms, Sleepy Hollow, traditional medieval fantasy and Scandi fae, with an emphasis on old and new ways clashing.

Vaessen is a cross between CoC 19th century and “true” fairy tale stories (Mermaids that eat people, Redcaps that kill traveller etc), so I have my fill there, simply focussing more on fairy tale and fae legends than Cthulhu (and reducing the sanity rules).

The theme and feel of the game is the key, not the mechanics, although the mechanics do have some effect, usually in the form of limitations, setting lethality and swingy-ness, sometimes affecting enjoyment and even play-ability.

I do not like rail-road mechanics, much preferring things to happen organically in the theme of the game played. If the payers do not, then you are playing the wrong game.

The One Ring is a good example of a game that tries to mechanically force the feel and flow of Tolkien’s books into a play style. Nothing is made new by this, only called out to help those who (1) have not read the books or (2) do not know how stuff happens in life or games and need a hand held. I have TOR, but use it for information and inspiration only with D100 systems.

I have been itching for a “kids on bikes” style game recently, something I do not specifically have, but the Tales From The Loop and Electric State books have been nagging.

M-Space is a great launching pad for the D100 system tree.

I can get the actual games, avoid the TV series (as they depart somewhat from the books) or try to create my own back story using a system at hand, but what is the key feature i need to add?

TftL reviews seem to universally praise the character immersion of being young, wide eyed and adventurous, while the realities of life through the eyes of a pre-teen hit home. The system and some of the choices are less well liked, but that is easily fixed.

M-Space, maybe with a little Comae Engine, has all the ingredients I may need mechanically, maybe with some consideration placed on the back story of the characters (10-16 year old kids), a deeper dive into their lives and maybe a stress or fear mechanic (sanity seems too harsh and final).

M-Space is a sci-fi game, but not one that requires a “Star-X” like universe to function. It is solidly grounded, so a near future, alternative past, far distant future-tech collapse are all possible, drawing from the many, many other compatible resources available.

The elements needed are;

Modified char-gen, accounting for the age of the protagonists. This is simply a logical reviewing of characteristics and a reduction of skill points, but maybe also a funnelling of some of these points into hobbies.

Kids on Bikes games tend to be a duality of “the big mystery” and everyday life, great examples being “Super 8”, “Stranger Things” etc, but even “Stand By Me”, with a supernatural twist would work.

A fully fleshed out family life (which is handled more or less with the Circles mechanic), but also needs hooks and difficulties. My feeling is, by calling out the life of the participants front and centre, the characters will organically manifest, without the need for mechanical rail-roading. This seems to be the case with TftL and is very much in my thinking on RPG’s in general, that role playing should be through role play, not mechanically forced processes.

A mechanic for fear or stress, maybe called dread. Not sure here. CoC Sanity is to harsh, Motherships Stress/Panic also, but maybe that with softened wording or effects could work. The gradual build up of dread until panic sets in, resulting in the character running away or standing speechless in shock could be fun, but it must be kept reasonably light, really just a way of the GM taking control of the characters. The worst result should be group betrayal, denial or reluctance to continue (not insanity, paranoia or a heart attack!).

Self discovery is part and parcel of this story genre, so from panic, or the resistance of it can come growth.

I would also change the core mechanics to my own D100 system*, simply to reduce swingy-ness and soften the landing with lower skill levels. Passing normal tests should be more likely, but challenges less so.

Fate points would be used.

The original books will serve as inspiration and setting. They are detailed enough for my needs, without being too prescriptive. Every picture is a story seed.

The extended conflicts rules, Comae Engine version, also allow for a less militant game, ideal for tension without fear or death.

A work in progress, but aren’t they all.

*Three levels of difficulty, Standard allowing the roller to arrange the dice, Challenging is dice as rolled and Perilous is dice arrange worst way, with natural doubles equalling special or critical results.

D100 Role Playing Games, Part 3, Now And Into The Future.

1970’s cool with time and dimensional travel.

Luther Arkright by Mythras is a handy resource and interesting premise based on a comic book. Basically a flawed 70’s Bond type character tasked with keeping the timeline clear of meddling, it is an open book world building platform, a bit like Dr Who with drug addiction, guns and free love.

The 1990’s of the X-Files, pre smart phones, Nazis living in exile and Grey skinned aliens with big eyes to now..

The original Delta Green created quite a stir.

CoC 6e had an independent homage product Delta Green, that gave us a re-skinned X-Files game, based on all the popular paranoia’s of this period. Alien abduction, immortal Nazi’s hiding in darkest South America, government conspiracies and the traditional horrors mingling with regular folk.

From it came the independent Delta Green product line covering the 2000’s to now and from that a re-printing of the original pre-2000’s version Conspiracy as an alternative back story. DG stands out as one of the few games currently available as a first and only edition and has remained solid since. 6e at it’s heart, it developed some good mechanical evolutions and has it’s own feel.

1980-90’s Kids on bikes adventure like Stranger Things, Tales from the Loop, E.T etc.

Nothing I have covers this specifically, but between Trouble Shooters, BRP, Pulp Cthulhu, Mythras Imperative and M-Space, it would be easy enough to get something going with The Loop, Electric State and other books for inspiration (literally take any one picture from these and something starts). The Comae Engine and Trey are also ideal.

A lighter hearted take on Cthulhu now.

The “triangle” book is the Delta Green original book updated as “The Conspiracy”,

The Laundry Files, based on the Charles Stross books is a very British take on fighting Cthulhu, keeping your bus stubs for expenses and warm pints included. Still very dark as Cthulhu needs to be, it has a unique feel only possible through English understatement and dry humour. Where else would budget cuts to IT services threaten the viability of fending off world destruction or an agent go back into the jaws of horror to retrieve his laptop (or have to pay for it)?

Bond, The Professionals and co or a more militant theme like Strike Back.

For a more up to date, but still light take on Bond style games, DWD lite has Spec Ops, a D00 lite game. It is also compatible with other D00 games, so supernatural elements could be added or you could just use Cthulhu now or Delta Green with no or little horror.

A Dresden Files style fantasy-modern world full of nightmares living right under our noses.

Clearly based on the popular Dresden Files books with Harry and co holding back the tide, After The Vampire Wars covers the same turf effectively with the Mythras system. This also ties in with other Mythras works like Destined and M-Space.

More British horror, but lighter this time.

The Rivers of London books are light horror or at least supernatural based. Less dark and desperate that Cthulhu, the team at BRP made this a special love project and even developed new sub-systems for it, that many wish were added to the new BRP core book.

Supernatural and the newer Evil or Surrealestate series.

Doing a Supernatural style game is as easy as doing Cthulhu now, probably with pulp rules, with or without Cthulhu attached.

If you want something a little darker as some episodes could be, or to go more into the darker Evil series style, Sigil and Shadow by Osprey is a reworking of a D00 lite Special Ops and Bare Bones Fantasy mash-up. It is very real and quite dark, but has less overt monster fighting than most games of it’s type concentrating more on the psychological effects of impending doom.

Also of note, but I have not played it, is Unknown Armies. This is dark stuff, so more on the “Evil” series mould than Supernatural.

Street level super hero like Batman, Daredevil, The Watchmen or Spiderman.

Something old but still valid is Super World (available as a pdf), good enough to help launch George R R Martin’s career (google it, quite a story), or something newer in Mythras Destined or you could simply use the BRP core book at a pinch with bits of Magic World, Super World and other Chaosium classics included.

High or cosmic level supers are really out of the realm of most D100 games, but can be done (with less math than Champions and the like). For me that is irrelevant as I only like street level anyway where D100 games excel.

Maybe mesh these with M-Space for a Guardians of the Galaxy style game.

Near future or alternate future/now, like Electric State.

Mythras Imperative and M-Space handle this very well. BRP could also, with a lighter feel maybe, but the harder feel of M-Space would sit best, dropping in select bits from supporting books.

Zombie or all the other apocalypse scenarios.

Seasons of the Dead for Mythras is custom made gritty, dark and flexible, and “disaster” agnostic. Like all Mythras based systems it is also a handy resource (a DCeased style game with Destined?).

The Dark Tower or Shadow of the Torturer Books and even Fallout.

I have always wanted to do a far future lost Earth game, drawing on all of the elements of future science, post nuclear mutations and alien weirdness these books and games inspire. An old monograph from BRP Future Earth is actually an uncredited clone of the Torturer books and this is also one of the sweet spots for a generic system like BRP to thrive in.

You can literally pluck an idea, monster, character from any system and drop it in, tweak it to suit and go.

Play style is already in the hard and unforgiving space, “exotic” abilities etc. covered by even the core BRP book’s spells, super powers, psionics and mutations and almost any genre book can contribute.

Apocthulhu series are a “life after the collapse of humanity” series, which could be a good start as could Luther Arkright in a failed dimension!

An outlier here is Dark Astral, a laughably thin tome compared to the monster Zweihander it is supporting, but a very cool feel (reminds me of Nemesis from my old 2000AD comics and the Wolfe books).

A bad futre, the near future or a far distant one.

Space Opera like Star Wars, Buck Rogers etc.

Frontire Space from DWD is a traditional sci-fi game, complete with alien races, lasers etc. It is open ended, flexible, quite complete and light enough to avoid getting too bogged down in tech or moral conundrums. With some resources, it is capable of handling most light sci-fi genres.

M-Space can also handle this with some clear Star Wars hints, but FS is pulpier and lighter.

Hard sci-fi, alternative future, weird science.

M-Space from Clarence Redd is a loose Traveller clone in Mythras Imperative clothing, with a very live system and constant support. It has support books with a more Star Trek, Blade Runner or true science feel and works with or without traditional conceits.

I could see anything from a John Carter, Fallen Skies, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Stainless Steel Rat, Alien or even a Gravity style game.

I cannot have these books at hand without being drawn into “what if” games like the Leviathan or the Ancillary series. Just browsing the 1980’s style sci-Scandi art evokes ideas.

Alien, Predator and Starship Troopers otherwise known as “Bug Hunt” sci-fi, although “bugs hunt us” is probably closer.

Mothership is the…..mothership I guess of this style of desperate, hopeless “space is big, dark and bad things live there-more successfully than you” games and a paragon of succinct and cool design, but New Horizons (pdf) also deserves mention for it’s 1000 odd free pages of more traditional Cthulhu-ish futuristic goodness (badness?).

M-Space can do this style perfectly well also, so I have bought the Deluxe Mothership system and Hull Breach 01 and the feel and I will drop the best ideas (stress mechanic) into an M-Space game. Apparently the scenario books and community are consistently amazing.

Other stuff of note.

The Comae Engine deserves it’s own spot as a pick up and play generic system, especially if used with Trey, the accompanying solo option.

How about solo games?

Zweihander has a solo module, D100 Dungeon is a solo game engine and Trey allows for solo play with most systems. Because D100 games tend towards the gritty and can be frighteningly swingy, “write your own adventure diary” style games work well.

A system idea I have been pondering is “blind” play, where characters are not fielded with actual numerical stats, just a character sheet of a description, their weaknesses and strengths outlined and the result of their prioritising of their growth path (they apply the d10’s, the GM rolls them in secret and tells them how they went in vague terms.

This works well in D100 games because the range is deep and squishy enough to disguise the actual value for a while and the systems can come down to bean counting, this defuses that. Also, the 2d10 with flips idea can be used by the GM to hide the difficulty and therefore the roll likelihood.

*

D100 games cannot capture the feel of every other RPG styles and mechanics out there, but I hope you get a feel for the flexibility and consistency of the mechanics and their many uses. The big thing for me is in a triditional sense (or non-traditional if you choose), they just get out of the way and let the game be what it needs.

If wanted, D100 can accomodate with room to absorb most ideas, if not the scaffolding holds firm without.

I am not ne for TTRPG mechanics that control play or force a style within that play. The mechanics are only ever the enabler of a communication based game. A good example of this is Mothership, a game that allows for player driven story telling with enough mechanical structure to “get stuff done” and add rewards and penalties, but little more.

From an older gamer’s perspective, tricks to force immersion into game play are not wanted or needed, indeed I find them restrictive and limiting.

You only need processes to determine if your goals and your (characters) efforts to reach them are rewarded or what any setbacks cost you. In other words, I do not feel the need for the game to rail road me or hold my hand, just enable my imagination.

D100 Role Playing Games, Part 2, Gunpowder And Stuff.

Entering the true gunpowder era now.

First up though, something I missed in part 1, the rough family tree of D100 game style threads.

• Runequest 1e > Storm Bringer/Hawkmoon > Call of Cthulhu > Basic Role Play family > RQ Glorantha (RQ1e modernised) > Rivers of London

• Call of Cthulhu 1-6e > Delta Green/Laundry Files > CoC 7e

• Runequest 2e > RQ 6 > Legend series > Mythra/Mythras Imperative > M-Space etc.

• Runequest 2e > Openquest > Clockwork series. > Jackals

• D100 lite > Bare Bones series > Frontier Space/Wuxia > Sigil and Shadow

• Warhammer 1e > 2e > 4e

• Warhammer 1e > Zweihander family.

• Rolemaster > MERP > Against the Dark Lord (not covered here, but a D100 roll over option)

• D100 games in general inspiring > D100 Dungeon > Mothership > D100 Revolution > Trouble Shooters, Comae Engine etc.

Witchcraft, clockwork science, funny Ye Olde speech and other Horrors.

Clockwork and Chivalry combines vile 17th century witchcraft, clockwork contraptions, funny haircuts and religious disagreements and with Clockwork and Cthulhu, some blasphemous horrors. Based on the Renaissance rules, an Openquest based set, it is wonderfully thematic, clean and straight forward. The same authors also give us Pirates and Dragons and Dark Streets, all cross-compatible, or stand alone.

Pirates of the Caribbean, giant squids, Black Beard and co.

BRP has the less than perfect but thematically sound Blood Tides rules, but Pirates of Legend is better. These two can be meshed, or used as resources for a BRP/Cthulhu based game with a more pulpy feel if desired. Pirates and Dragons adds a whole new dimension making three solid choices that can join to make a better whole (just take what you want and sink the rest, just like pirates do) and P&D can tie in with other Cakebread and Walton titles.

Monster Island is a stand out here. A semi-generic RQ6 supplement, it is a time agnostic, lost world-like monster filled jungle island sandbox that can accomodate any period from high fantasy to modern “Lost” characters. It would be a feature in my Pirates-Samurai-Vikings mixed game, possibly the nexus point.

Four Musketeers style, swashbuckling with big hats, lots of leather etc.

A little work called Sword Point is available in PDF, which has some great ideas to flesh out basically any set for this period. Mythras has the combat crunch, Legend also to some extent as does BRP, so easy enough to do with any or a bit of all. The pirate books above also have many good ideas to add like swinging on things, talking too much while fighting etc.

Brotherhood of the Wolf and early colonial horror like Sleepy Hollow with some Last Of The Mohicans thrown in.

A spin-off from Zweihander, Flames of Freedom is a colonial American inspired historic-fantasy-horror mash up, perfectly placed to handle this style. Fancy hunting Werewolves or Vampires in the midst of the American Revolution, early colonies or French Indian War (Twilight by lamplight!)?

A favourite genre of mine, this is also easily accommodated by any mix of BRP/Cthulhu, Mythras/Legend or Clockwork/Renaissance core and their many support books.

Early police Bow Street Runners style mystery and Jack the Ripper horror in squalid London.

Dark Streets, mentioned above, is made to purpose here. It touches on Cthulhu, or not as suits, has plenty of human horror and can be twisted as you want drawing from the Clockwork series above or straight Cthulhu.

Hard Western, like High Noon, the Spaghetti Westerns, Unforgiven etc.

Aces High and Devil’s Gulch, both from BRP are options. Either will be enough, but together there is plenty to draw from. Both are slim monographs, available in PDF, or second hand print.

Pulpy weird western, strange science and supernatural elements (maybe even aliens).

Down Darker Trails for CoC 7e is ideal, even supporting a pulp play style. You can remove the Cthulhu elements, add other horror or go no supernatural, just add weird science elements. A fun cross-over could be Holmsian mystery meets Cowboy adventures

Pulp Cthulhu goes a long way to softening the usually dark feeling system.

Sherlock Holmes era horror mystery.

CoC 5th to 7th editions have Cthulhu by Gaslight expansions, 7e even includes a basic entry point in the core rules along with modern. They are all usable now and several independent publishers have added support to these lines.

The feel of Gaslight is perfect, pulp is an option as is the Cthulhu connection. The ever present threat of the supernatural, even if never realised, is as good a fear trigger as actual Deep Ones.

The John Carter, Tarzan and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen etc Orwellian/E.R. Burroughs early sci-fantasy books.

BRP alone can do this, Mythras with more “crunch”, either really drawing from the vast array of splat books available.

The very original Odd Soot from Clarence Redd is set a little later than this traditionally, but has a very Orwellian theme with alternate space travel and exotic, remote aliens. The system uses Mythras Imperative, so M-Space from the same author is fully compatible as are most Mythras books.

I have also converted the original Space 1889 game from GDW fairly easily to BRP.

Anthropomorphic alternate history, or Badgers with monocles.

Historica Rodentia is a late 19th century alternate European game using animals instead of human national groups. This is a Legend based game, so again lots of cross-compatibility.

Traditional or non-traditional Call Of Cthulhu in the traditional 1910’s-30’s.

Ground zero for many in D100 land the choices are mind boggling. Seven editions of CoC, all compatible enough to be used as one, hundreds of scenarios, monstrous campaigns, spin-offs, after party support, it would take a life time. I alone have managed to amass over 100 individual CoC scenarios over 4-7e including several years long campaigns. That is what I call support.

It can go lighter with Pulp Cthulhu, add time travel, be generational, or even avoid Cthulhu all together and just do straight adventure or horror. The massive Raiders of R’lyeh goes earlier into the King Kong pre-WW1 period and Cthulhu touches on Indiana Jones pre-WW2 and Japan, Berlin, Tibet, the Amazon and most other exotic locales are covered in detail. This period of D100 games is by far the best supported and largest.

World War 2 with comic book “daring do” or dark, realistic and moody.

Achtung Cthulhu is pulpy and ties into my favourite board game Heroes of Normandie via Shadows Over Normandie (which even has super heroes, a Hellboy clone, traditional Nazi-Gothic horror, foul experiments and the big guy himself).

CoC 5-6th editions were high water marks of growth, spawning (see what I did there), many great games.

It was originally done as a Savage Worlds Explorers edition/Cthulhu 6e cross over product, but I never meshed with the Savage Worlds version, not finding it better for pulp story telling nor faster (a quickly developed 1/10th scale d10 massed combat system even made CoC quicker). Ironically, both systems are now outdated, but the 6e version is easily modified or used as is, the SW version, not so much.

With a very different feel World War Cthulhu is the Ying to AC’s Yang. Dark, brooding, sometimes despairing, it hits a realistic and more traditionally Cthulhu vibe.

It is worth noting Cthulhu Eternal here, a near free resource ($1-2 a pdf) for almost any period of Cthulhu gaming using a clean and modernised D100 core system.

The coldest Cold War and alternatives.

The 1950-60’s with all their paranoia and mist shrouded bridge crossing liaisons, dastardly Communists, the threat of imminent world destruction and emerging sciences are covered by Cold War Cthulhu. As dark as it’s WW2 version, this gives you that post-war Berlin spy trade vibe perfectly.

Something lighter in this space.

If you like something more Tin Tin/Bond/Man from U.N.C.L.E or even Austin Powers, then Trouble Shooters is a great choice. Probably the most contrasting pair of systems thematically, CWC and TS are still basically BRP at heart, one brutal and unforgiving, the other soft and squishy with decidedly and purposefully rose coloured glasses.

Some D100 games are genuinely gentle.

Or something a little different.

Worlds United from Mythras supposes the War of the Worlds happened, changed the shape of the universe as we know it and brings us into an alternate 1950’s to deal with it. This is also similar to Space 1889 (adapted above) in it’s traditional early sci-fi handling of Mars, Neptune etc.

Next up our recent past, now and the future.

D100 Role Playing Games, Part 1 The Sword Eras.

One of the lasting legacies of D100 role playing games is consistency.

One of my biggest things to dislike about many games is their blatant embracing of wholesale changes and resulting rules/books/resources redundancy.

I once wanted to do Savage Worlds along side D100 games as a pulp option, but after two edition shifts, most of my books becoming more or less useless, I dropped it as a bad idea.

In contrast, using 4e Call of Cthulhu resources with any later edition and/or even other D100 family related systems is little strain.

D100 games are also easy to teach and learn, their mechanics are logical and consistent.

This has two benefits.

Unlike many games in their latest editions, most D100 games are pretty stable and resemble closely their first or earlier editions. Nothing is is useless, no waste, no time bombs that will make older editions redundant.

Secondly, once you have one game sorted, there are plenty of other games that only need a little more reading and an awareness of the differences to be used as previously learned. Systems like Mythras are so consistent across genre books, most concepts are basically interchangeable between games.

Want some magic in your supers or Sci-Fi game? Import the system desired and modify as you go if needed.

Most criticisms of D100 games stem more from their realistic theming than the system itself.

From the get-go, the roll under D100 system has felt harsh to many, thanks mainly to the desire for a more realistic, dangerous and grounded game (than DnD etc), but the mechanics themselves are only part of the story.

Ironically, almost all can have modified mechanics applied that offer less black-and-white seeming outcomes and these can be almost universally applied. The very dice are full of potential options, many more than other systems, they just need to be embraced and not shunned by reputation.

The vaunted bell curve is often seen as a safety net or mediocrity, but you could argue it is over rated and mostly an illusion anyway. If wanted, it can easily be introduced simply by making the standard test a “choose the configuration” of your 2d10, which can net a 75% chance of rolling under 50% (and the opposite is true).

I have always felt it odd that the extra granularity and expanded, smoother growth range of D100 games is seen as a negative when it is often used by main stream systems with a D20 roll over system. Missing a roll by 1 out of 20 to many seems less extreme than missing by 1 out of 100? Odd really as DnD specifically is basically a D100 roll over system in 5% increments.

The hardness or softness of your D100 games can be modified or interpreted in many ways, many of which are found not in the base mechanic, but in the implementation of the results.

Call of Cthulhu, Mothership or Vikings of Legend are lethal (and all the more fun for it), Troubleshooters or Rivers of London are not (and also fun). Both use the BRP core system, just apply their results differently.

So, lets say you want to have variety in your games, not just in period and theme but execution of play style from lite and bright to dark and moody, but you have limited time and resources and your player base is similarly limited in experience or investment?

You may want to ‘tweak” the system more than a little, drop some that do not add anything, even introduce fully fleshed out concepts at odds with the original

You could do a D20/5e collection, but these are unfortunately quite limited, often only a thematic re-skin of fantasy. Older 3e is better dabbling in modern to bronze age and through it’s open license allowing fr a lot of stuff, but it is all old now and at odds with anything current.

Savage worlds is too light and pulpy for some and suffering from multi edition fatigue (I had a mirror collection at one stage covering most D100 . GURPs is too crunchy for many and again currently AWOL to some extent as is the Hero system. Some systems like D6 are free and cover several genre, but again are pretty light.

It is fair to say that the D100 family of games are the only realistically consistent, deeply supported and above all easy to grasp system group available that genuinely cover most periods and play styles with genuinely dedicated games.

Anyway, rant over, time to look at some games available*.

Let’s look at what I have at hand to start with and see how it fits all the genre’s that may appeal.

Dawn of history, maybe a cavemen vs alien or time traveller or just hunting a big beast of some type. Probably hard, lethal and unforgiving, like the Predator movie “Prey”.

There is a Neanderthal expansion for Legend “Land of Ice and Stone” which would be cool, but this is also a period that could easily be done with just the Basic Role playing or Mythras Imperative books.

Bronze Age classical fantasy with near naked heroes, big bad legendary monsters, gods and perpetual war like The 300 Spartans, Hercules or Achilles sagas.

Bronze Age fantasy, classical sagas etc are handled by a few options. I do not actually have the latest edition of Runequest which would be ideal, apart from the bestiary (because it is still of use), but I do have Mythric Rome, Mythras core and Jackals from Osprey. The big one is Mythic Greece when it is finally released. Any will do, but Jackals based on Open Quest is interesting with some novel ideas based on Openquest.

I resisted this for a while, but it is just good stuff.

Dark Ages fantasy based on the Viking Sagas, lethal, heroic and dark like Beowulf or the “Vikings” TV series, but also covering some fairytales.

Vikings of Legend is perfect. High lethality, plenty of historical and fantasy elements and good compatibility with other resources. BRP’s Mythic Iceland would also work as well (both would mix as needed).

Dark Age, true “Arthurian” in the Bernard Cornwell style. Like above with a late sub-Roman, early Dark Ages theme, Mystical, heroic and again lethal.

Mythic Britain for RQ6/Mythras is custom made, with plenty of support materiel available and even a campaign laid out. Most D100 core systems can handle this, the $1 Legend pdf is enough.

A Conan-esque warrior culture, with superstitions, evil sorcerers, warring empires and heroic maidens.

This one is best handled by either Mythras if you want detailed sword play or BRP with some pulpy elements of you want to reduce the lethality.

Classic Tolkien Fantasy. The low magic, high drama style that DnD cannot do it seems is the sweet spot for D100 fantasy games.

Lyonesse, featuring Vancian magic (the system D&D uses) is a highlight, as is Perce Forest for true classic fantasy/Fantasy Arthurian with knights etc. Mythras and Legend core can handle it, even the RQ6 starter book, but for more depth, using a game like The One Ring and adapting it (no great trouble as they have a similar feel) would add the needed Tolkien flavour.

Anthropomorphic animals can be handled by the excellent Mouse Guard RPG, converted easily to Mythras or BRP (hit locations are desirable). Like The One Ring, it fits well with D100 level realism.

Classic DnD old school dungeon crawl, like you played in high school (if you are over 35) with black and white illustrations, pencils, eraser dust, hand drawn maps and imagination. Impossible you say, because D100 Runequest was made essentially to be the “anti DnD” game?

Mythras gives us Classic Fantasy, that was made to be old school DnD in D100 form (interestingly I also have 13th Age Glorantha, which is d20 meets Runequest). Levels, classes, gelatinous cubes and dungeon crawls complete, it is a love letter to both camps of old school gaming. Open Quest is also a player here, lighter than most D100 fantasy games as well as Bare Bones Fantasy from DwD, but both avoid levels etc. Another worthy of mention is D100 Dungeon, a solo dungeon crawl game.

Dark Age, sinister fantasy maybe with an historical or familiar fantasy lean like The Witcher.

I have Legend’s Deus Vult, which is a lot like any monster hunting game, but set in Medieval times with hunters under the guise of a religious order using weird tech and fighting some legendary monsters. Dark Crusades, a BRP monologue available in pdf or CoC’s Cthulhu Dark Ages are also good supports as are most core books.

High Wuxia oriental fantasy, kung-fu style game, like Monkey or even Great Wall.

Art of Wuxia from DwD studios has produced a flavourful Wuxia-style game ideal for either historical-ish or their bespoke world with their D00 lite system. A slight departure from the usual D100 style, it is however very familiar in play.

Two very different feeling games from a similar core.

Feudal Japan with sword play, mythology and intrigue in socially controlled times.

Samurai of Legend, another re-print f the excellent RG supplement is all you need. Like most things Legend, it is lethal, so sword play should be kept to a minimum, but means something when used (like the source materiel). If foreign influences are sought, there are plenty of useful resources including Pirates of Legend or just winging it with Mythras Imperative.

Mixed genre melting pot.

I have been tempted to use Pirates, Vikings, Samurai and Gladiators of Legend for a “Bermuda triangle” like god-stolen cultures mixing pot game, but also BRP and Luther Arkright are perfect here.

Actually almost the same game, meaning lots of mixable elements.

The Elric books.

There have been I think 5 editions of Storm Bringer/Elric games, all excellent and most available as pdf or second hand.

The Lankmar books.

Like above there is an actual Lankmar D100 game still available in pdf I think. The theme is easy enough to adapt to straight Legend or other traditional fantasy games.

Dark and dirty Renaissance fantasy, with over the top costumes, humanity as it’s own worst enemy, piousness over poverty and plenty of other enemies also.

A treasure trove here. Warhammer Fantasy 1, 2 and 4e, or Zweihander (a WH1e rip-off). Both are Germanic-centric, early Renaissance/high medieval, punk-fantasy troves using slightly different, but otherwise familiar mechanical systems, or could even be used with a more traditional D100 system as resource materiel only. If anything, this genre is over catered to and my “weightiest” investment.

Over 1000 pages in just three books. A well served space.

That covers the swords and sorcery periods as far as I can remember (edits likely).

Next up, gunpowder!

*No chance I will get them all as there as so many, but this is a start.

D100 Games, Where To Start

If I were to advise anyone on the merits or best starting point of D100 TTRPG’s, I would have to think on it. Hard.

There are a lot of games to pick from, periods covered, several strong systemic threads and of course personal preferences.

Although most D100 games have common roots, it is probably best at the start to commit to just one of these threads for consistency and ease of adapting. It is somewhat true to say, learn one and you have started on them all, but also, some do have very coherent pathways to other games, making the job more of learn one and you can instantly play a few rhater than herding several similar systems together, but find the differences are minor, but many.

The Basic Roleplaying stream includes Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, many older games such as Stormbringer, Super World etc. It also has several generic books available, one in print currently others as pdfs, which could conceivably be the only book needed if the GM wants to build worlds or simulate stories from scratch.

CoC 7e and Rivers of London have changed the BRP mechanics a little recently, but most are easy enough to adapt and Runequest has gone “old school” (RQ2) with its latest version.

The RQ6/Mythras stream includes reasonably effortlessly the earlier Legend series (RQ3 with the RQ labels removed), RQ6, as well as many other recent releases and even better than BRP, they are all fully compatible. Destined, After the Vampire Wars, Lyonesse, M-Space, Odd Soot, several historical settings including Rome, Samurai, Vikings, Pirates, Mythic Britain, Polynesia, and more are all either Mythras, Legend or Mythras Imperative based. In other words, pretty much the same.

All different, all hauntingly similar.

Openquest is a lesser known “lite” version of RQ6, with a few good options. This is the rules lite starter range, but includes games like Clockwork and Chivalry, Pirates and Dragons and its own fantasy range. There is no generic rules system, but it can cross into BRP territory easily enough.

DWD’s Bare Bones systems are also lite and a little different to the BRP family, but broadly compatible. There are consistency issues within their own range and some off-shoots also, but basically they are lite enough to not matter.

The Warhammer family is quite diverse. WHFRP 1 and 2e are D100 variants, 4e is the latest and current offering, but quite a different beast (we don’t talk about 3e). Zweihander is a rip-off of 1e, fully polished and expanded without the thematic baggage.

These are the main ones, but there are others.

*

First, if there a genre of preference, something to pin your recommendation on, it would likely sort things easily as some periods and styles are not heavily serviced.

Horror in the classic periods (1890’s, 1920’s and WW2) is easy. Call of Cthulhu 7e. I like all editions for their various feels and rules weight, 5e being the most commonly used up to lately, but 7e is current, elegant, comprehensive, very well supported and beautiful to look at. If the earlier period appeals, Cthulhu by Gaslight (5-6e) adds much, as do the excellent Stygian Fox support books and Weird War Cthulhu is suitably dark.

Horror/weird WW2 has two candidates. Both CoC 6e with World War Cthulhu for dark and realistic option and it continues with the even darker Cold War Cthulhu. This is CoC as normal, brooding, perilous. The other is Achtung Cthulhu, a pulpy option, which could also be played with 7e Pulp with little effort.

Pulp Horror is CoC 7e’s territory. BRP also has a pulpy expansion, but it is a thin offering compared to CoC 7e and it is not well supported except for Achtung Cthulhu a CoC 6e spin off. Pulp for 7e has the added benefit of being included in most CoC 7e thinking, so it is a very flexible offer.

Horror/modern. This one is tougher, but if you are after just this genre, Delta Green is the one with its companion The Conspiracy if you want a more late 90’s X-Files feel. If the period is to be only one option among others, then it is CoC 7e again, for the greater range using the Chaosium and Stygian Fox offerings. Sigils and Signs has some cred here, but is a single book offer.

Modern Fantasy/Supernatural. Most of these are to scratch a current itch of a book or TV series just binged. The Mythras based After The Vampire Wars is a Harry Dresden clone, Delta Green The Conspiracy is great for X-Files, CoC 7e (pulp?), or maybe BRP:UCE can do Supernatural and Evil is perfect for Sigil and Signs. The Laundry books have an actual D100 game as does the Rivers of London series, Seasons of the Dead for Mythras handles Falling Skies or the Walking Dead. DWD Spec Ops with Bare Bones Fantasy and/or Art of Wuxia would work as a monsters meet normals mash up.

Horror from other periods. Clockwork/Cthulhu and Chivalry are Openquest derivatives, but CoC 7e comes through again with Rome, the Dark Ages, Gaslight/Western, 1920-40’s to the far future effortlessly.

Classic Fantasy has several options. Mythras is the Audi TT, Legend to older model Audi Quattro, Runequest the classic Rolls Royce remade, Openquest the zippy Toyota and BRP’s Magic World the reliable old Jeep.

Mythras leads to several excellent games like Lyonesse and Mythic Britain, with a lot of Legend and RQ6 titles to draw from. It even does an “old school” homage to the earliest games with Classic Fantasy a DnD as D100 mash up, so overall, unless a specific setting draws you, it is the most comprehensive and polished, but a seriously deep system. It can be run as Imperative, simply reducing options, so maybe that is a vote in it’s favour.

Bronze Age is a tougher one. Mythras is pitched here as was RQ6, showing their roots as RQ evolutions. Runequest in Glorantha is the obvious one and a (the) classic of its type, but also, if you want something lighter (a bit), then try Jackals from Osprey, an Openquest derivative that deserves some attention and like Mythras is probably closer to the classic Mythic Greek take than Glorantha. Mythras owes us Mythic Greece, which may change things, but seems an eternity away.

Gunpowder Fantasy. Most of the above could do this easily enough, but Warhammer is the best supported overall. Which version? 1-2e have their charms, Zweihander copies them and cleans them up and 4e is the current big thing, but maybe too system weighty. Alternatively Clockwork and Chivalry/Cthulhu and Renaissance/Dark Streets offer a much rules lighter (and darker) feel.

Pirates, which can tie to the above, have plenty to choose from, but none are without their issues. Pirates and Dragons is a strong offering, but comes with a fantasy backstory. Pirates of Legend is excellent and Mythras compatible, BRP Blood Tides has some issues, but adds to either of the above well and with the BRP generic book cleans up well. Even WHFRP 4e is capable here.

Hard Sci-Fi. This is a simple one really, M-Space. Add some Mythras based nasties as Aliens etc and you have a solid scenario.

Pulpy Sci-Fi. DWD do Frontier Space, which stands out even from their own range as a slightly more developed game with two main books and lots of support. M-Space could also, but the BRP:UCE or even one of the Mythras based systems like Luther Arkright might suit better.

Oriental games have two very different contenders. Samurai of Legend is lethal, realistic and Japan focussed, so ideal for a Shogun or 7 Ronin style game with Mythras. The Art of Wuxia is a Chinese inspired full Kung Fu pulp game by DWD for a Monkey Magic feel.

Supers, my personal holy grail for a long time, but street level mainly is right in the wheel house of Destined for Mythras and the added complication and flaws of that game play well with the epic fights Supers games, comics and movies are known for.

The older Super World is dated for sure, but it is also the basis of the BRP:UCE super powers system, which can be meshed with Magic, Psionics, Mutations etc to make for a modern game with a small but decent back catalogue of support materiel. My copy is a printed PDF of the main book and companion and it is fine.

Western/Weird West is under the solid purview of CoC 7e Down Dark Trails, but Devils Gulch and Aces High for earlier BRP are compatible.

As you can see, there are a lot of entry points if you use the genre as the doorway.

*

So, lets assume a genre specific itch does not need scratching;

The safest and most logical path for a beginner wanting to go in seriously is I think a BRP based system using either one of the excellent core games (CoC/RQ) or the new generic book.

Probably CoC 7e as it is easier to enter and makes the most gaming sense to newer players with a ton of support for GM’s (plays like a “don’t go down there” scenario generator with literally dozens of scenarios). It is also flexible on going, able to shift to lighter (Pulp) or heavier (Modern/Dark) and all through history, even into science fiction.

If you really want to go with an entry point system, the Openquest family are solid and clean, the DWD series are similar, but split into four main themes.

The cheapest probably is Legend by Mongoose. A generification of Mongoose RQ and pre-curser to RQ6, then Mythras, it is available for $1 as a PDF, not much more as an A5 book and has some excellent support books (Ice Age, Pirates, Samurai, Gladiators, Historica Rodentia, Deus Vult and Vikings) with a more high Medieval base line than other D100 fantasy games. It is not as polished as Mythras, but not as baked in to it’s ideas either.

Some More Savage Pathfinder Thoughts.

Sometimes, two almost good ideas combine to make one that is better than the sum of the parts.

My time with Savage Worlds was mixed. I had a lot of it, Deluxe and Explorers, some Noir, some Cthulhu, some Weird War 11, lots of Deadlands (and I had the original Deadlands also), Supers, Horror, Fantasy, post apocalyptic, Sci-Fi, Ancient Rome.

The system for a long time was my “shadow” system for my huge d100 collection. Basically everything I had for “serious” d100, seemed to have a “pulpy” option in Savage Worlds, including Achtung Cthulhu, that actually allowed both systems in their books.

There were some hits (Weird War II, the Sci-Fi, Necessary Evil and Supers companions), some misses (much of the rest for me) and then they changed it.

I gifted much of it, then for some reason bought the new SWADE edition, but that is another story. It is hard to get in Australia, so there is little chance of the monster being re-awoken with freight charges from the U.S. regularly exceeding the values of goods.

Pathfinder was my DnD of choice for a while, such as that was. The monstrous core book, the DnD-ness of it, the never ending printing regime all added up to an excessively expensive Wayne Reynolds art gallery, most of which I knew I would never use.

Really dislike DnD based games, especially when they try to be realistic-ish and the obvious abstractness rears it’s ugly mug. I tried E6 and E10 truncated variants, used a critical hits effect characteristics combat system, but nothing fixed the reality that I was trying to make a more grounded and logical d100 style game out of a d20 system.

I sold my 1 foot high collection of books, the collecting efforts of several years for way too little, but with a small market locally, considered myself lucky it went at all.

Since then;

I have occasionally missed the promise of Savage Worlds, but the “fast, furious fun” never really clicked with me. I did not really give it a go and some splat books did hold promise. I knew I would never commit though as it was either too little (lite and pulpy) or too much (needed added bits).

I have come to realise, I tend to prefer a built world, not a generic system. I do not necessarily need everything handed to me, but when I do a make my own world, SW would not be the baseline.

SW is like DnD in that it is systemically anchored, but not in as much of an arrogant “I am the way”, more of a “I’m new and fun, try me” way.

I missed the massive warm hug that was Pathfinder, the bear hug with claws. The art, consistency, depth and world connection with maybe a little f&$k you DnD at play, all weighed heavily on me both before and after shedding it.

The world was massive, a perfect stereotype as expected, interesting none the less. The grind was beyond my care factor these days. Unlike 3 and 4e, which also came and went, there was actually stuff I missed, substantioal stuff. I think I held onto the maps to retain a small connection.

Another idea I had at this time was to hang onto the counters, maps and grid boards from my 4e collection. Tons and tons of stuff, all great for ……… not sure.

*

Savage Worlds Pathfinder.

It’s a thing and it is a good thing.

What you get;

• Golarion in all its glory. This includes direct connection to the iconic characters right down to using them as out of the box starter characters.

• Wayne Reynolds art again, in all it’s glory.

• All the flexibility of Savage Worlds, but with the substance and direction a strong world adds. This for me is the missing link, the substance and depth.

• Grid combat or not, in fact any form of gaming at any point in the journey. It supports non combat at least as well as a d20 system, has massive hack-ability, allows for more “on the fly” gaming and can draw easily from its parent sources. The OTT art of Reynolds fits the SW play style.

• A d20, which is rare in Savage Worlds, which usually tends to avoid that one.

What you do not get (and it’s good)

• Levels. SW has experience groupings called Ranks with incremental advancements, but they are more granular, less powerful, less rigid and way more natural feeling. The “anything is possible” feel of combat and task resolution mostly diffuses this anyway. The game allows for legendary exploits by its very nature, but it is more elastic, blurring the lines between high and low level characters. Even creating a replacement experienced character is not a labour.

• Classes. Classes are a package, but you are not locked into a fixed pathway. You are probably mad not to directly align your character to a class, but if not, you can make a generic class-less character that holds their own and if you do, no two characters will be carbon copies of each other.

• Grind. There is no feeling of attritional math, no experience point-to-risk equation, no daily rhythm to adhere to. Any monster can be a problem to any character, but also precise encounter balancing is not needed. The game would ignore your efforts anyway. More variance, more fear, more realism.

• Power imbalance. No Quadratic Mages or unbeatable Druids, actually the system absorbs super classes and powers. Power levels stay pretty balanced right through, no matter what path you take and the sheer flexibility of character generation and advancement negates possible issues.

• Hundreds of spells. The power system in SW means you can create basically any spell with trappings and flexibility from a small core, something that both PF and DnD lack. The entire magic system has about the same weight as the “magic explained” chapter in PF.

• Hundreds of feats, class abilities etc. Again, the flexibility and weight of SW gets a lot done without tomes of options and exceptions. Rigidity forces exceptions, flexibility avoids that mess.

• This one is odd, but real none the less. This is Savage Worlds without the added complication of the base rules and a setting pasted on. Even with all the perceived simplicity of SW, sometimes the added weight of a setting with all its exceptions can complicate things. The streamlined and fully integrated SWPF stands alone with the setting highlighting the good side of SW. SW Core works well for a free wheeling game, SW embedded in a setting works well, SW with “bells” on interests me less.

PFSW is the result of two fully developed games, the huge 3.5e DnD spin-off that is Pathfinder, at one time more popular than DnD and the multi edition journey, modern indie game with a solid and loyal following that is Savage Worlds Adventurers Edition (SWADE).

Pathfinder provides the why and SW the how, in a form that this gamer, well shy of most things DnD can not only accept but also embrace. The Core book, Bestiary, Advanced Players Guide and Companion are all a days read each, but the game offers the same range of outcomes. Add table candy in the form of an Adventure Path, maps, grids and counters, character cards, Action, Chase and Condition decks and you have a totally engaging experience.

In the real world, it is accessible to new or experienced players, has a more D100 like feel overall, is fairly bullet proof to abuse and gamesmanship, min-maxing, can cut the cord from anything you feel runs too close to the DnD rocks or you can just go with it as presented.

All this at a total word count well under just the Pathfinder 1e core rule book.

Negatives?

The Advanced Players guide took an age to come and I must admit I had lost my burn a bit in that time, but as a salve for only d100 games, it did what it needed to and broke the habit. I am not interested in the next APG, but the second Bestiary has my interest.

Another Official Option, Or Home Made Goodness?

BRP has a new champion.

Basic Roleplaying or the Big Gold Book, now has a new version after a long time in the wilderness. I am lucky enough to have a mint condition copy of the BGB and it is a favourite, but like everything in this world, not perfect.

The quickest of overview reviews;

It has all you need to play any genre, any way you would like, but it is dense and a little confusing to use thanks to the volume of information and the layout, which offers everything up front, which is to say, it does not have a core with obvious add-ons, but more of a cherry picker style of thing. There are things that help like a check list sheet and the reality that you can do as you want, even mid game if you want, no harm done, but at 400 pages, it needs some GM awareness and application.

It has almost every idea from every D100 game up to it’s printing and by definition most ideas from subsequent games. Want super heroes, mutants, mages, sorcerers, psychics? All are there in “solid start” form, with easy rules for expanding, as well as direct or close compatibility with all d100 support games and for maximum variety, you can mix these all together.

The new version thanks to some pairing down, re-writing, smaller text and a generally tighter delivery cuts that down to a little over 250 pages, with little lost.

It is not the BGB now, but more of the medium sized Book Of Colour Goodness (BCG) being a maybe slightly rushed delivery of Chaosium’s new standards, i.e. good stuff. It is a couple of years old also, so probably settled now.

Do I need it? The BGB is for me decently familiar, it sits perfectly with my sweet spot of D100 systems (CoC 5e), I have genre specific books on most periods of interest and even other generic and interlaced systems with similar scope like Mythras, which could be argued is even more consistent from game to game (The BCG is not even perfectly in line with CoC, Chaosium’s primary game).

It does however make me happy to see the only one of the original RPG systems that is still basically unchanged still evolving, so yeah, I will grab a copy.

As a unifying toolbox, a less precious look at consolidated mechanics and a cleaner, tighter way of accessing generic gaming than the older tome, it appeals more than my other option of Savage Worlds (SWADE), which I still have.

SWADE is fine, but lacks any connection to my other favourites and no matter how good it gets, it is just not as sensible and logical as D100. Fast fun and furious it may be, but lite, pulpy and a little too systemically clever it will also always be.

*

Another option and one that seems to be writing itself at the moment, is my own.

Characteristics I have settled on are;

Strength and Agility; being gross and fine motor skills

Endurance and Dexterity; for long and twitch muscles

Reason and Intuition; the logical and creative/instinctive sides of the brain

Will and Charisma; a person’s character expressed as internal strength and projected personality

These are paired so that when generated, the rolled dice (6d6) are split usually into 3+3 (GM may allow other splits with a good back story) as the player wishes. Unlikely combinations of extremely good opposites are rare, but also there is the ability to avoid very poor results.

It also allows some player pay-in as to how they favoured some things or were naturally blessed as the players desire when growing up.

From these, almost any derivative of two combined can be used as a skill or test base and above all, they all make sense.

Skills are a base of 2x chrs (6-36%) + ten levels of d6% (0-60%). These are bought during advancement or training at 3 pts for intensive (3d6 take the best), 2 pts for trained (2d6 > best) and 1 pt for hobby or “on the job” (1d6).

Each turning point (or year) adds an amount of points (TBC).

Some skills have automatic familiarity based on culture (= base), others need to be learned to be used or used efficiently. Once rolled, that is it, no re-do’s so it is relatively easy to get ten levels in a skill (10 pts), but if taken as a hobby it is generally less efficient (+30-35%). Mastery requires intensive training and the help of other experts for +50-60% skill.

Learning from experience is based on a number of advancement tests (+1%) allowed after (some) critical results under pressure and limited per turning point.

Tests are;

• Standard/advantaged opposed 2d10 > read as desired (this applies a bell curve)

• Challenging 2d10 > read as pre-nominated (most combat and un-advantaged opposed tests (no curve-flat probability)

• Perilous/disadvantaged opposed 3d10 > take the worst pairing (negative curve)

• Extreme use 4d10 > take the worst 2 etc (extremely negative biased curve)

No mods are needed, just “flipping” the dice.

Doubles are critical failures or successes, the level of this is measured by the “height”. Very low critical successes are fairly tame, higher ones become legendary, as many remember the day the great manoeuvre, (a 99% success) was witnessed, but conversely low skilled characters are capable of 22% fumbles, which will not end well.

It is a little convoluted, maybe even too much for some, but I am making this for me, as a slave for all the little things that annoy me about other similar systems.

I like;

D100 roll under systems, but do not like some of the implementations of said system. The critical roll, the fumble etc need to be aligned with user skill, the skill to allow for better results being possible, advancements to be incremental, but real time.

A curve should be added or tests made in layers, to remove the hard win/loose some games are guilty of.

I love the Traveller career system, but not the grind of it sometimes. I much prefer to able to tell a story semi-abstractly. Character rolls a double 6 of two “hobby” dice and fumbles their actual career training might mean they love their life, but not their job.

I have always preferred the 2x chr as a base for skills system, but often cringe at the odd application of often limited or oddly named chrs.

I hate games that allow characters to easily go over 100% chance. The chrs used can mitigate that as can limits to skills.

“00” should be nothing-no result, because 100% needs to be effectively impossible and a null result is needed. This dead space means even the amazing world champion can fail, but not spectacularly. If fate points allow a re-roll, then that becomes such an unlikely event for a 99% skill master but still possible (that would be amazing).

Anyway, book ordered, so I can keep going with mine or just use the many, many D100 options I have available to me and work with (or change) the systems.

Control And (Or) Freedom In The RPG Landscape

TTRPG’s have been around now for about five generations of gamers. I am making a very loose generalisation that ten years is the sweet spot for a new to experienced gamer, often a decade encompassing their whole gaming life (high school to Uni/college).

In the beginning of the hobby, games were spartan, rough and ready, full of potential and flexible by their very nature. They needed player and game master pay in, but that was where imagination and communication filled the gaps.

Traveller for example came as a boxed set, half filled with three small black books capable of outlining everything from starship design and combat, world building, character generation, combat and encounters and even a trade and commerce section. None were comprehensive, but all gave you (1) enough to get going, (2) an idea of in-game expectations to work from, (3) an idea of what was important, or as importantly, not.

The half empty box could hold character sheets, pencils and paper, dice and a few books you may later add.

Most people added the few most exciting expansions (Mercenary, High Guard, Scout), some went all in, but no one way was the right way. My first high school group managed to fill the lunchtimes of a year or two, with just that small start. We covered Space 1999, Star Wars, The Stainless Steel Rat, Strontium Dog, Star Trek, Asimov, Heinlein, Judge Dredd even Moorcock style games filling in the near infinite gaps with……imagination and immersion.

As testament to the value of a one book/box gaming dynamic, when Mongoose omitted starship building rules in their second edition (Mongoose 2e), there was enough backlash to force them to add them back into their 2022 reprint. People just want to be able to go with one book as an option, even if it is likely an illusion long term.

A lack of constraints means something is highly flexible, but also makes it hard for it to be consistent across all facets of a given genre, so inevitably more and more rules creep in.

High production values were replaced by player pay-in and the desire to create. It should by rights be possible to write a usable TTRPG on five sheets of paper and many have.

Source materiel is often as much use or more than more rules.

The Big Gold Book (BGB) and it’s much slimmer Starter Guide for Basic Role Playing (BRP), the Mythras equivalent, GURPS basic, The Hero System 4e or Savage Worlds Adventurers Edition (SWADE) are surely enough to play any genre, any style.

Is more than this needed?

Most of this is fluff. Maybe three books per shelf and a healthy time and imagination investment could get gamers mostly there, or even better, there in their own way. I can pick out a half dozen books easily, that could be my “desert island” games.

Every group has a different dynamic, different expectations, different interpretation of the genre, rules and guidelines. A lot was on the shoulders of the game master, almost as much on the players.

This freedom was as close to perfection as a TTRPG can achieve. In it’s purest form it is round table story telling as humans have done for ages. In it’s worst form, when rules become all, it is constrained, often held back by oppressive or even illogical rules lawyering.

My heart still yearns for the naive play I enjoyed while young. Literally anything could happen, because apart from a limited lists of skills, weaponry and gear, vehicles, careers, monster or alien stats, there were almost no rules for “the rest”. If you wanted more meat on the bone, you added it yourself.

We drew stuff, made stuff up, even exhaustive lists and got by. I remember writing in the margins of most books (usually mono mat paper), to make the many house rules “official”.

I don’t think I even saw an colour internal illustration other than a rare set of plates (often loosely connected examples at best) for the first decade.

We played in character or not, had ambitions outside of imaginary material wealth and advancement, or not and settled into an odd duality of “theatre of the mind” with systemic grind.

It only fell apart when people failed the system and each other. A bit like religion, the guidelines are sound, the application sometimes lacking, but faith can conquer all. Every failure had a feeling of “next time we will avoid that, but there will be a next time”.

A game master with few or weak ideas, a group fighting rigid plans at every turn while exercising their own imaginations aggressively and a lack of backup plans all added up to the occasional log-jam, but this freedom also created some of the best memories I have of gaming. Some of my favourite childhood memories in fact.

At what point did we become so obsessed with rules, that we needed to make rules-lite games to renew this, feeling of freedom? Games like Tiny D6 or Fate try to make games mechanically translucent by removing most mechanics, often falling back on gimmicks or simplistic systems to achieve this, but is even this needed?

My answer to anyone who is unhappy playing any RPG is “make it your own”.

Ironically, the introduction of almost every RPG I have ever read says just that, but rules lawyers, with encyclopaedic, inflexible memories or even just people trying not to rock the “rules as written” boat are occupying this space.

WHFRP 4e is an example of the convolution that plagues us and the difficulty that brings.

The all too sensible D100 core system, that to be fair, WHFRP never did perfectly align with, has been turned into something it is not. In an effort to make something basically something else, it has become a set of checks and balances that made the simple difficult and fixing it even harder. The mechanics are so entwined in themselves, fixing one thing breaks others.

A good example of a game that can be simplified, simply by role playing the sometimes overly convoluted and focussed systems and ironically sticking closer to the designers intent is The One Ring.

I have been reading comparison reviews of the first to the second editions*. My main take-way on every limiting mechanic, streamlined or not, is that most can simply be role-played through. The designers want it to feel like Tolkien and the players should also (or why play?), so do they actually need their chins wiped? Can’t we get there without corralling or limiting the players?

If everyone is working towards the same goal, nothing is gained by placing mechanical obstacles in the way.

If you love Tolkien however and get what it is about, you could easily play basically any fantasy game this way. My argument is, if you want to, then do it, if you don’t then don’t let the game force you, but above all, play the game you want.

The 1990’s seemed to be the age of maximum “crunch” in gaming of all types. Simple slim pamphlets like the original Star Fleet Battles, turned into manuals possible denser than an actual starship flight guide. Simple RPG’s became heavier in every sense, less flexible and more “word of god” like. We broke it and it has yet to fully recover.

As a new generation comes through, things are taken as gospel.

No other mainstream entertainment hobby has this much freedom, so why squander it.

One of my least liked genres is the board game RPG simulator. Games that try to cover everything a player may want to do, while keeping the game board-game limited. Lots of rules, lots, providing the illusion of freedom without any.

In comparison to a true TTRPG it is like the difference between jumping off a cliff or taking the roller coaster.

Root the TTRPG is the closest I have seen to a board game made RPG, but is still really a board game.

I intend to take the core ideas of The One Ring and play it with Mythras, because they are sound, really only making official what we all should do anyway. A journey should have structure, a council have tension and respect for the players involved, down time put to use.

The freedom Mythras offers is desirable, the depth and cross compatibility and the reality that once learned, it can go where you need is also. Here are all the tools needed for a Tolkien themed campaign and the lethality and heroism matches TOR.

Would I create a Dwarf with superlative horse riding skills or a Hobbit with high martial prowess or spell casting? No, because I respect the story and that is what it all comes down to.

If the story matters, then how it is told also matters, so the system used only needs to make sense of the questions that arise. Did I outrun the beast, could I talk to it, sneak around it, do it in? These are systemic questions for the most part, so mechanics are needed, but no specific ones.

The rest is role playing.

What is the point otherwise?

*My take away if the base system is more streamlined, but the more convoluted ones are still limiting if a little less so. My game has less convolution from the start, mainly by role playing through it, so the 2e starter may be ideal as a rules refresher, but not a complication, allowing me enough room to cherry pick.

The Murder Hobo and Modern Sensibilities

The TTRPG hobby as I know it, much like society has changed over the decades and much for the better.

Mirroring life, as they should seeing as they are attempting to with creative license, TTRPG games have slowly changed their focus from “Murder Hobo” style games, which is to says a wandering band of toughs who, in a not very Robin Hood style, kill creatures they don’t understand or like and take their stuff (you know, like colonial expansionism).

Funny how the fact they all like the same stuff was not a tell, that we are all similar deep down and that self righteous exploitation turns so quickly to blatant theft with a side-serve of justified murder. “Monsters”, an overly clear cut term to start with, come with experience points for killing them, like a bounty hunter posting.

Even in the early days, there was a subtle shift towards less transactional gaming. The Kill-steal-advance-kill bigger-steal more-advance more game was the foundation and being based on a war game just needing some story telling structure, I guess it was inevitable, but there was clearly a need for more choice.

The art is full of excitement, and assumptions.

Questing came next, then the idea of making a crust more traditionally, if often illegally like in Sci Fi gaming, then searching for answers with the threat of sanity or life loss.

Something I have noticed more and more though, and it is a good thing, is attention paid to the treatment of more modern subjects like gender roles, non-combat interactions, treatment of players and even creators in this space and appropriateness. The stories of poor treatment are called out, writers go to lengths to broach these topics and assumptions from gamers are higher and catered to.

The latest edition of Call of Cthulhu is a good example. The roles of women, children and minorities in the U.S. or Europe during the 1920’s are far different to today and this is talked about openly. Even scenarios and campaign modules set closer to now are covered for their difference.

There are still exceptions unfortunately, even now.

One of my favourite supplements for one of my favourite games (be it a DnD clone) has several class entries where the writer seems unable to balance modern expectations with a clear love of (dated) Frank Frazetta style near naked warrior maidens.

In one case, all of the illustrations for one class are females in various states of provocative undress. The class is not even a female-centric stereotype.

Let’s be real though. The number one TTRPG and the bulk of online and console games are still Murder Hobo, or worse, just murder based, but there is hope.

Clarence Redd is pioneering non-combat conflicts in the Mythras space, games like Reign, Mouse Guard, The One Ring, Trail of Cthulhu, are just a scattering of examples I am aware of that treat the quest, the story, interactions and knowledge as equal or greater partners to violence to measure in-game success.

I have always found it strange in RPG’s that for some, levels and imaginary wealth are more fulfilling than actual enjoyment of the game play. It is very much the journey in this case.

In Cthulhu, an early stylistic splinter, the trade-off is one of balancing knowledge with survival/sanity as evil is generally too powerful to beat head-on and doing good is assumed as the alternative is too distasteful to even contemplate.

CoC Investigators do not do it for the money and in retrospect most would not even set a value on what they do anyway.

The theming here is more “travelling companions” than Murder Hobo, oh except for the dragon that will likely end you quickly. Questing does not need to end in combat, just the threat of it, but MH games need combat, they measure success by it.

With this awareness ironically comes a chance of pushing these newly respected boundaries. It is inevitable I guess that as we fight evil, it’s true face becomes more fully revealed.

Choices need to be made.

Delta Green, especially the excellent Stygian Fox titles and sometimes even vanilla Call of Cthulhu can make players confront evil acts involving children and their abuse, genocide, terrorism even destruction of the world.

Tough stuff to confront these days and it could be argued unnecessary to play a game, but if the hobby is to be elevated beyond game only status (which the Murder Hobo, once revealed as such, already has), then the option needs to be there.

Nobody is making you play or play in a style with a level of acceptance beyond anything you find reasonable, but also there is no room for forced censorship and “theme capping”.

Being a do-gooder is not an in-or-out thing. Theming can be quite specific, some things marked as, or assumed to be, out of bounds, but if genuine simulation is desired, it comes with stuff, sometimes bad stuff.

I am both heartened by the strength of the spotlight placed on games by many reviewers. It seems almost impossible to read a review without the game or available scenarios moral compass being measured. A good thing without doubt, but are we in step yet?

Is it great that we are aware, or sad that we need to be?

Even “cute” games like Root, Bunnies and Burrows or The Mouse Guard deal with loss and death, because without the threat of either, there is no fear and without fear, no excitement.

So in game design there are always levels of aggression balanced with story telling, but the old free-for-all is now under scrutiny.

The One Ring for example has been expertly written to resemble English post-war gentrification and their perception of Dark Age social constraints. This is who the original works were written for*.

Good is trying to defeat evil, wars are fought, stuff done, but the cultural pseudo-colonial superiority of the perpetrators fresh after beating one of the most clearly defined forces of evil yet seen (Nazi Germany), is given free reign by the exaggerated depravity of the bad.

Does an Orc have a mother, a loving family group? Is it capable of anything other than greed, hate, selfishness? Not as written. They are simply a creation of evil, made to purpose. Tolkien took the already feared “Eastern horde” paradigm and removed any hint of humanity.

The fact that an entire race of sentient beings is this far down the decency chain and still capable of functioning even as cannon fodder is, well, fantasy in the extreme, which is one reason the genre can easily appeal to right minded people. Some maybe need it to feel like they can fight a winnable battle without moral compromise.

Tolkien to his credit actually calls out social realities in his use of fantasy culture building, even hinting at the shortcomings of the arrogant and mortality obsessed “superior” races.

This helps remove the moral conflicts of our more modern awareness that makes us cringe at stories of Elephant hunting or tribal genocide (another way of looking at the battle of Isandlwana, where the Zulu nation lost a generation of men).

However, this has also not been consistent as things evolve. The existence of the Half-Orc sub-race is contentious. The brute ugliness and animalistic nature of Tolkien’s Orcs has been watered down in some games allowing for the hint of cross-race breeding, but the reality is, assumed frontier raids and resulting rapes are the reality nobody talks about.

For many, TTRPG’s and LARPing both provide a needed release from modern real world frustrations like sport does for others. An outlet of black and white morality.

Pure evil vs pure good. Hard to find in the real world, necessary for acceptable fantasy.

Superhero games, a later entrant to the TTRPG family also give us clear choices, the most interesting of which is a “code vs killing”. We have now moved from “it is evil, it must die”, to “it is evil, so we must contain and incarcerate it, thus allowing it to escape and do it all again or more rarely, change it’s ways”.

The lack of lethality that comes with most supers games also allows the player go full tilt without fear or regret.

The Murder Hobo is far from gone, even evolving in to a more recognisable form**, empowered easily through electronic games and that seems here to stay, but the gentler and more social game that is the TTRPG seems more aware of the need for something more.

Looking into a face across a table makes us less keen to just do-to-take, a trend that needs promoting.

*Built in to the systems are mechanics that force down time, conversation, mediation and understanding, all very Tolkien. It is interesting that even this late in the piece, writers feel they have to overtly force non-violent processes on their players. I have pushed back against this because I have luckily always been associated with groups that pack words as much as swords in their problem solving arsenals, but there are many groups that run with a different vibe and if age has taught me anything it is the reality that each generation starts from zero.

**I am not aware yet of a TTRPG that overtly promotes the theft of a car after despatching the owner and any police or bystanders that get in the way, so electronic gaming has many firsts.

Three Unlikely Partnerships That Work (For Me)

My D100 TTRPG addiction aside, I have a small number of other RPG’s that all have something in common apart from being a change of pace and style.

They are all DnD based hybrids of other games, but I feel, are possibly better at doing what the respective originals did, as both DnD and their partner system.

13th Age Glorantha is the first of these.

As a D100 gamer, it would be safe assume Glorantha or more specifically Runequest would be a seminal game for me, a progenitor, one of the pillars. This was not the case. I was mostly unaware of it in the early days, disinterested to say the least later, even today, mostly cool towards it.

The mix of Indo-Bronze Age theming, oldest school BRP mechanics and gonzo concepts just never clicked with me and I have plenty of other D100 fantasy options, many derived from or shadow versions of this game with updated mechanics and without the back story.

I also felt that the over the top concepts of the game, like very accessible gods, hero quests etc never really fit the hard edged D100 paradigm.

13th Age by contrast is an over the top love letter to DnD, taking the abstractness and rounding off the edges, removing the bloat and generally feeling like an exercise in “if it’s worth doing, it is probably worth over-doing”.

13A mitigates many DnD abstractions for me by making them even more abstract, calling them out and reducing their overhead while making them more fun. Ten levels, no experience points, incremental advancement, fewer spells and those level up with the character, the “One Unique Thing” and so on, make for an uber house-ruled DnD experience made official.

Then came 13Age Glorantha.

I resisted for a while, general disinterest helped with this early, but 13th Age is such a fun read, I thirsted after every book. The game is so open, I knew small bits of Glorantha could be added easily, the whole even without too much of a stretch.

Amazing stuff, but not my cup of tea.

Dragon Pass (the area covered by the book) as a trans dimension/time gateway? Why not. Ducks exploring 13th Age’s Dragon Empire (hell of a “one unique thing”), Broo wandering the plains outside of the main map or spewing from a Hellhole (Maybe Dragon Pass is a Hellhole?), Runes made powerful by proximity to a “Rune Stone”? All possible.

Straight 13AG with its heroic play style seems to me more Glorantha than the original. Heresy I know, especially from a dedicated D100 advocate, but look at that cover!

13AG takes that and embraces the gonzo weirdness that is Glorantha effortlessly.

The book itself is sumptuous, spectacular even, the content dense and lovingly assembled, a testament to the respect and genuine love the writers feel for it, even if both are DnD main stays.

Considering it was written as a passion project alongside the roll-out of 13A, it is a bit miraculous it exists really. A shame they are not doing much more with it. We are lucky I guess that this was completed at all.

No corners cut, not desire to make it “only” a 13th Age supplement, this is the real deal.

There is a second edition of 13A coming, something I will probably not be touching, but 13AG stands alone anyway.

*

Number two is Adventures in Middle Earth for DnD 5e (1st Edition).

I have the distinction of owning all editions of the grand old dame at one point or another. I was never a fan of classes, levels, armour class and high magic systems, which did not stop me collecting well over 100 Basic DnD, ADnD, 2e, 3e, 3.5e, 4e and Pathfinder 1e books and boxes over the years, such is the power of conformity and the pervasiveness to the game.

Enough to take characters from levels 1 to 20 on both sides of the mountain.

I have most of the bespoke and gorgeous The One Ring (1e and revised) and the less precious but still lovely 5e AIME (1e) only stopping when I lost interest in some of the books and when they (Cubicle 7) lost the contract.

I bought the latter for the same reasons it was made for, to have a game that ties directly to the worlds cornerstone RPG (I live to serve) and because it is a little cleaner and more coherent than TOR. Benefitting from being the second release from the same writers, the roll-out was less all over the place*.

Very different on the outside, presentation internally is pretty close, apart from the systems of course.

Playable with a single chapter from the free 5e rules document (Part 2 “how to play”), it has a feeling of balance and power reduction only a DnD game lacking PC magic can have.

The six classes are Middle Earth themed and as with the books, the only magic in the world is wielded by the serious players, world shaping events, non-mortal npc’s and ancient forces. Magic is present, but apart from the odd ancient and probably misunderstood artefact, it is mostly out of reach of characters.

What you are left with is a balanced, rather gentle take on the well worn shoe that is DnD, without some of the overt limitations TOR exerts on players and GM’s. So, a lot of familiarity and a get-out-of-jail card for some of the more restricting systems TOR uses to enforce Tolkien’s vibe.

Levelling makes sense in the many down time periods (part of AIME/TOR), power creep is limited by adventurer age really (1-2 adventures per season, 10-20 seasons). Character death and injury is more likely with only standard healers available and the less over-the-top 5e fixes the rest.

There is no doubt, the subject matter trumps system considerations, but respect to 5e for reviving the fortunes of the first RPG and in this specific form, the marriage of two of the most important influences in modern fantasy culture is as good a fit as could be hoped for. If DnD owes anything to Tolkien for inspiration, then this is decent payback.

I have the bulk of this from Cubicle 7 and they have re-released it under another banner mostly the same as far as I can see, but I have enough to take PC’s from levels 1 to 20. This is the only way true DnD will ever be played in this house**, 13A being a deliberate and known exception.

*

The last of these is Pathfinder for Savage Worlds.

I have previously ditched Savage Worlds Explorers edition and Pathfinder 1e in my last purge period, but this marriage seemed too good to be true.

Pathfinder for me represented a constant book drag that seemed never ending, something I cut the cord on years ago and made someone very happy with a mass-dump at a bargain price (I think they got my 4e DnD also). I blame the art, which was glorious and addictive.

I got to about 30 books before I simply lost the will to go on with the big glorious mess.

I had a short period of playing it E6 style, limiting character levelling several ways and making all monsters scary again (a favourite was limiting hit points, but allowing other level abilities). It still flew in the face of the game as a whole, wasted a ton of materiel and few others were interested when other high lethality games (Mythras etc) already existed.

I kept the maps from the various adventure paths, the counters and terrain tiles from 4e DnD, with little idea why except that they were not part of the various sales and felt they might come in useful for something.

Savage Worlds was also a thing for a while, my alternative to D100 shadow game. Do D100 seriously, then SW as a pulpy alternative was the idea and some elements like the Sci-Fi expansion really sat well, but when a new edition was looming, I let it go as well.

I have since bought the Explorers edition (SWADE) again, not sure why, but saw little point in expanding on that until the release of SWPF.

Like 13AG above, SWPF feels like a really logical and fun fit for a system that was crunchy like fresh Corn Flakes and sometimes as dry.

Levels and classes have been effortlessly absorbed by the game’s own systems with more D100 style incremental growth, classes are less rigid “packages” so flexibility is retained. The added SW story telling elements round off a very approachable and enjoyable table top experience.

The spell list for example is on one hand more flexible than PF and on the other about 5% the size. Combat is fun and those counters and terrain tiles I kept are ideal for it’s more tactical, miniature friendly game style.

Sooo….much….stuff. All those 4e grid maps, counters and props finally have a place in the tactical game friendly SW space. I now have 5 DnD boxes of collateral, maps and PF cards.

The maps are still perfectly valid, so a well kept bonus.

The game comes with pre-generated character and villain cards, so it is easy to run “on the fly”, has lots of support materiel including an entire campaign path in a box set (and more on the way) and above all else, it feels right to theme and crunch level.

The whole thing has the feel of a free-form board game, highlighting the best of PF 1e, Wayne Reynolds art and all and it is self contained, complete as written.

There are more bits coming, but to be honest, I like it just as it is.

SW is fun, PF is fun, SWPF is fun with sprinkles on top.

*

The funny thing about these three games is, if someone asks if I can run or recommend a DnD game for them, I have three options, but each in their own way breaks cleanly from the original.

Crunchy made lite, mainstream used differently and gritty made over the top.

I am not subconsciously lusting after some DnD in some form, been there, done that, but from the scaffold that is the world’s oldest RPG, there is much to be drawn it seems, even if some takes are a contradiction in the extreme.

*TOR has a lovely slip-case first edition (I have), a revised one-book core rule set (same), then a series of add-on rules and amendments in subsequent expansions (……). AIME came out with basically a 5e compatible core book, sporting fewer system specific constraints and therefore fewer twists and turns, the supporting materiel also being cleaner. The most obvious of which is the playable cultures, all over the place in TOR, but under one roof in AIME.

**Tow other contenders, but I don’t want to get carried away are the Iron Kingdoms and Symabroum RPG’s, but made for 5e with or after their own versions (and an IK 3e game). I sold the Iron Kingdoms RPG due to it’s need for miniatures (which I had, but waaay too many to bother with) and although Symbaroum has always appealed, the edition change put me off. I decided instead to stick with making my own worlds with some awareness of these two as inspiration.

If put on the spot, I would probably use the materiel of TOR and a D100 system (Mythras), but I still have AIME, so always an option.

My Journey Through The D100 RPG Landscape

As previously stated several times, my long term TTRPG crush is for D100 system games.

They are many, quite varied and most are loosely connected, but they are not perfect. Some rail against the black/white nature of the granular dice rolls (mostly an illusion), the lethality of the combat and the “outsider” status of many of the games themselves.

Fair enough.

Like most things, there are ways around and exceptions to things if you care to find them, but no fixes work if you don’t want them to.

Anyway, from the perspective of a realistic semi-collector, here is my D100 journey.

Unlike most D100 old school gamers, I did not start with Runequest. In fact that pillar of the style has rarely been touched on and ironically, when I did overtly chase it, it was in 13th Age, AKA “The d20 Enemy” because it was a good source book for that system and it felt more over the top “heroic”.

My first D100 game was Elf Quest*, a sweet little game based on a comic strip from the 70-80’s made by the same company. The game basics were no different as is often the case so sweet may be a bit misleading. It was lethal, I still remember the impale rules clearly. The purview was limited and without access to the comics the game was maybe a little too “focussed”.

I moved on to Hawkmoon* with similar issues. A slim boxed set with a story that resonated many times later with favourite books like the Shadow of the Torturer and The Gunslinger series, hinting at a fantasy world based on a fantasy far future nearly unrecognisable and mysterious.

TMNT deserves a mention here, the favourite of the Palladium games I tried. These are odd systems. Always full of holes and overly convoluted, they still held some attraction, like Star Fleet Battles or Advanced Squad Leader. They felt like fun should be had, even if it was sometimes elusive.

Again I missed the obvious one, Storm Bringer, but my main interest at the time was Traveller/Mega Traveller and Champions 3-5e in line with my small playing group.

At some time I had a lot of Rolemaster and their Middle Earth spin-off*, resplendent with Angus McBride art. I still have the “Creatures Of” book, mostly for the art.

Then Call of Cthulhu bought it all home.

I had the 3rd edition hard cover, bought a lot of 4e adventures** as I came in at the transition (it matters not a bit), then started to look into other D100 games. My role playing at this point was limited, so I diversified with rediscovered miniature wargaming and other pursuits (like photography), but always had an eye on the RPG landscape.

Warhammer 1e was another stand out, still one of the coolest, most emotive if flawed one-book games I have owned. The expansions are also some of my favourites. If you avoid the magic rules and the game is better with magic as a mysterious unknown force wielded by others, like in Middle Earth, then it works fine.

At some point I decided to do the first of my big clear-outs and let go of several Cthulhu books that did not float my boat at the time. Arkham Unveiled, Blood Brothers, Terror Australis and others I thankfully cannot remember went for a variety of stupid reasons, but I did hold on to the bulk including the original Horror on the Orient Express boxed set.

5e is still my D100 happy place. I like the system at this crunch level, with many easily applied house rules, especially using the BGB (Big Gold Book) which is directly aligned and I like Chaosium’s formatting at this time. It is detailed enough, semi-pulpy and allows plenty of Keeper tweaks with room in the margins for notes.

I followed this with years of gradual collecting through 4th and 5th edition modules until I eventually slowed with 6th (not a fan of the presentation and I had many of the modules already), then I mostly stopped RP gaming overall.

I did pick up some as recently as the launch of 7e like 6e Cthulhu Dark Age and Malleus Monstrorum, but I was very selective and a little disinterested, which was bought to a head with the closure of the local games shop.

I did dabble with a mostly complete collection of Achtung Cthulhu (pulp 6e) and some World War Cthulhu (dark 6e), then into similar games like Super World printed from a pdf (see below), Blood Tides, Devil’s Gulch, Future Earth (based on the Shadow of the Torturer series), The Laundry Files and picked up some pdf’s of Storm Bringer/Elric (2-5e) and other BRP titles.

My RPG collecting at this stage was diverse to say the least, Supers games given priority and I had many, but found like many things in life, the “perfect” game in this space is hard to find and old favourites like Super World and 4e Champions kept winning out.

I was out of control, meaning I had no plan, too much time to think and buy, too little playing.

I blame the internet for creating a reviewing, researching, impulsive purchasing monster, killing off the simpler path of buy locally > play in proportion to purchasing > live a relatively normal life.

Runequest 6e (only the starter book, which is plenty) and Mythic Britain, lead to Mythras, Mythic Rome, Lyonesse, Vampire Wars which lead then to M-Space and most things Clarence Redd writes (must get Odd Soot). Vampire Wars allows for Dresden Files-like games completing my Dresden Files, Rivers of London, Shadow of the Torturer and Laundry Files book series based games.

I picked up Legend cheap from a games shop in Melbourne, not even realising it was basically Runequest 2e with the serial numbers removed. These are a favourite even if it is known the game is vastly better as 6e/Mythras, but still. The Samurai, Viking, Gladiator and Pirate expansions are excellent and a clean fit for later rules.

When I started to clear out recently for probably the third time (maybe the fourth), I decided to concentrate on D100 games mainly, with few exceptions. Out went Savage Worlds, DnD 3-4e, Pathfinder 1e, Champions (except 4e) and many more.

For every game that went out, a D100 game came in, either new or legacy. I found a decently clean Warhammer 1.2e (basically 1e cleaned up in soft cover), which led to WHFRP 4e, the only D100 game I regret jumping into so heavily, but nothing D100 is ever wasted.

I found the core books for Runequst 2e, some Legend off-shoots like Historica Rodentia and Deus Vult, then got heavily into Delta Green after owning the Investigators Handbook for years and not clicking with it. I have followed the DG path to The Conspiracy, a remake of their original 90’s book and then the older books themselves which mesh with CoC 5e.

Recently Rivers of London spread the horror……love and expanded my D100 styles, Magic World (Stormbringer/Runequest with no labels), Classic Fantasy (old school DnD for Mythras) and several RQ 6e modules expanded my Fantasy range, Luther Arkright and Worlds United completed my Sci-Fi and the long awaited Destined adds a second supers game.

All too familiar to many, about 8’ of fun, memories, potential, expense and the odd regret. Only the lower right has non-d100 systems, 13th Age flying the biggest banner of “and now for something completely different”.

Warhammer 1-2e had a homage game put out during its non D100 3e period, called Zweihander. Always intrigued, I have it finally, the available expansions, Flames of Freedom (AWI) and their odd little future Sci-Fi module Dark Astral, which stands out for it’s diminutive size in comparison the massive tomes of the other books.

Openquest is a simplified BRP family game, one that has a decent and loyal following. I was aware of it far a long time, as much for it’s famously mediocre art in the first edition as it’s refreshingly casual take on D100 games. Over three editions it has turned into a modern and polished D100 game with companion systems from companies like Cakebread and Walton*** or the new Jackals game under the Osprey banner.

Warhammer 4e was a bit of a brain fade.

Drawn to the promise of 1e done better, I jumped, then went through the pain of over two years collecting the Enemy Within campaign, while in denial of the flaws of the game. I keep wanting to fix it, but maybe wholesale replacement of the system is easier. This broke my rule of avoiding big glossy money sinks. The other examples of that flawed practice are gone because they are not d100, this one serves as a reminder. If I had kept it simple, say a copy of the core book (not 2), and a couple of adventure books……… .

Speaking of adaptions. I can and will make D100 games based around either the BGB, or more likely Mythras for The Mouse Guard and The One Ring and was going to do The Witcher, but I gifted that away. Any game that is high risk, has realistic consequences, low glitz/magic is a prime candidate for the D100 treatment.

Oddities have also recently appeared like the CoC 5e reprint of Beyond the Mountain of Madness and free pdf’s of the Warhammer 1e Enemy Within Campaign, so I grab them as I see them.

The Bare Bones Fantasy family**** have been explored, D100 Dungeon (a solo system) and some off-shoot games like Sigil and Sign, a Bare Bones inspired Supernatural modern game.

I wanted to blend Covert Ops and BB fantasy, but it seemed someone already was.

The pinnacle of the collection to date would have to be CoC 7e.

Seventh edition was resisted for a while, but as the first real evolution of the old favourite, the beautiful books and the new materiel like Pulp and the Wild West got me in the end. This is another big glossy book exception, but so far it has not put a step wrong and again, everything old is now new again.

The universal D100 root system has been stretched slightly, but is workable with materiel from even 1st edition. The changes are not even as much as DnD 1st to 2nd editions, and nothing like the wholesale changes that were the 3rd, 4th or 5th editions.

My most recent purchases however are a second copy of the 5e CoC rule book, because I have a lot of 4-5e stuff and only one well worn, coffee stained book to support them and a copy of the 6e CoC rule book, for completeness and to better support Achtung Cthulhu, The Laundry etc.

Also I finally chased down the original Delta Green supplement for 5e, because even though it is basically The Conspiracy with added scenarios, I am curious. It is massive, thematic and a good fit for my favourite retro game.

*

Why D100 games?

The logical draw is their consistency, from edition to edition and even game to game. This also means they are easy to understand and teach using common sense ideas, familiar characteristics and simple percentage based skill values. Everyone gets percentages.

It is safe to say, learn one and you are half way to learning all the others.

It is also flexible.

Flexibility means the ability to use a home brewed, unified task resolution system, adding and subtracting various rules, lifting whole systems for other games (My Pirate game for example is a blend of Blood Tides, Pirates of Legend, Sword Point and Pirates and Dragons with the above unified test resolution system).

I am lazy here.

No longer keen to explore a myriad of different systems, I am much happier to focus my limited game time on one universal system type with many faces.

Savage Worlds was once kept as a pulpy salve to my d100 games, eerily mimicking many of the same periods, even Achtung Cthulhu which was written to support both. It provided a point of difference, but it to evolved and changed, leaving older support materiel behind.

I noticed at this time, a tendency to entertain the idea of both options, but almost always went with the known and trusted D100 option, which also proved to be more thematically flexible.

The emotional draw is nostalgia.

No other gaming system other than early Traveller or Champions calls to me as strongly from the past and both of those suffered from major edition changes and a much thinner, more focussed offering overall.

I kept 4e Hero system/Champions and I have all the base Mongoose Traveller editions, but the rest of my stuff has gone and even these systems seem in decline or very narrowly focussed. D100 as a whole is a slow-rolling ball of relentless, consistent momentum.

Someone is always doing something somewhere.

Modern games like M-Space, Trey, the Comae Engine or Delta Green allow for healthy system evolution, CoC 5e and the BGB lets me play “retro” and D100 Dungeon, Trey, the Alone Against series and even Zweihander empower solo play.

I can literally think of a time period, a play style and pick a game from my range or adapt or buy something if needed. It is even pretty easy and fun to just make something up and run with it.

Pulpy, hard, realistic, sinister, dread infused, tense, lite, fanciful, writes itself, macabre, epic scale, small detail, soft turns hard? All possible from the earliest historical period (Legend Stone Age) to the furthest future (Future Earth, Dark Astral).

Player numbers can be from 0 (solo) to a healthy half dozen, with pick-up games accommodated and masses of NPC’s handled easily enough. The percentage system and characteristic similarities to most main stream RPG’s means a low entry point.

Most offer a free intro version, some are more than an intro and one even offers the core rules for $1 (PDF). My personal favourites are the little core book for Legend and the Runequest 6e intro book, both enough for years of gaming (and cross-compatible).

This brings forward the thought also, that a good RPG should open a gateway to massive in-game growth, your imagination run riot, never a closed door or limited purview rail road. Older RPG’s assumed a lot of GM and player pay-in. They needed you to create a world, a universe even with sparse tools, which often created entire lines of future game resources.

My favourite games came from the smallest foundations.

We rely very much on printed support materiel these days (and I admit to being one of those), but past gamers (I was one of these also) used to use the rules as they were as a spring board, not a crutch. The little black box of 3 slim Traveller books allowed our very first group to travel to any places we could imaging, some awesome, some not so much, but as time went on, even this pioneering group became slaves to printed world books, resource archives and scenario outlines.

There are of course other systems.

Traveller boxed set, Hero System 4e and CoC 5e re still the custodians of my favourite role playing memories, but only one of the three has the chops to go from the beginning of my journey through to now, basically unchanged and with something for every mood.

Role playing is pretty simple, made even easier if the system just gets out of the way.

I am not a fan of overly clever systems for their own sake, nor ones that fight the players all the way. For all its flaws, the D100 system is a long lasting example of sound ideas made real and above all, it plays easily. When you need, just ignore it and it dos not break.

There is a divergence in RPG thinking at the moment, something that does not need to be there, but it seems as we evolve, there is an expectation that a RPG should hold our hand, answer all our questions. These older games often cannot do that and they were not designed to. When RPG’s first emerged, they were simply a way of capping rampant imagination, to put a framework around it.

The beauty of the whole idea is based on freedom. Many current games are bordering on board game levels of control, which is the very top of that format, but make for the most restricted and restricting of RPG’s.

Arguments over small rule issues, even “missing” rules, should be fixed as easily as a group of people coming up with a decent and game logical solution, not 500 posts on various forums bemoaning the shortcomings of the game. There are no winners and losers in RPG’s just players having fun or not. If not, look at your play dynamic, not the game.

There are no problems with any RPG that cannot be fixed in house.

This is not a computer game, the code is not hidden!

The only time I struggle (looking at you WHFRP 4e) is when a system becomes so convoluted and self-involved, that it makes this inherent freedom conditional.

No other game, let alone system of games has been around effectively unchanged since the earliest days of the hobby. Much of this comes down to sound and simple concepts and (usually) knowing when to relinquish control to the players, not the system.

The oldest and most popular of all has changed it’s basic mechanics and much more abstract concepts five times.

Dated?

Timeless more like.

*Gone now unfortunately.

**Most as it goes, but about a third were shed stupidly.

***Pirates and Dragons, Clockwork and Chivalry, Clockwork and Cthulhu, Dark Streets.

****Frontier Space, Art of Wuxia, Covert ops.

AI And The Difficulty Of Writing Real Science Fiction

AI is here, or more accurately, AI has been called out as the “thing” at the moment.

Potentially dangerous AI is just around the corner, but opinions are mixed.

Science fiction is always based on human-centric assumptions, the most naive of which is the assumption humans will be dominant or even needed in the future.

Kirk on the Enterprise commanding biological crew or Han Solo flying the Millennium Falcon “by hand” are quaint ideas really, highly inefficient, hopelessly inadequate. Even now, machines do the bulk of the thinking, the crew only provide context and activation points.

Let’s face it, humans even driving a car is a time limited idea.

A creature with the limits of a mere human being allowed to run anything that a decent, low (no) maintenance AI could do way better? Maybe Enders Game is closer.

Imagine if we could send a ship into space that does not need feeding, warmth, sleep, companionship, does not have a time limit in place just a task and the tools to accomplish it.

It could multitask complicated flight, self defence, sensor and engineering tasks without physically existing or relying on the frailties of Humans and it’s parameters would also be less fragile (life support failure is the number one cause of Human death in space). If nothing else it would probably be half the size or less, so even more efficient.

What good is a Human other than to go along for the ride, or assert self-deluded ascendency.

One of my favourite Sci Fi movies is Interstellar. The scene where the pilot manually synchronises the spinning ships was thrilling, but really? The human had better skills than the computer? Instinct is fine, but AI will likely have that covered also and the whole need for the risky move was human based in the first place. An AI could have waited.

The whole premise of sending Humans on the original journeys is flawed really (The Matt Damon character proof of that), but we need our stories to be about us, or why write them?

Dune may be the only truely realistic Sci Fi, showing us a future society held back somewhat by technological denial as self preservation against tech that historically threatened our existence.

The Creator may be close to the mark, but maybe taking the wrong side (The Creator, like many Sci Fi stories assumes robots do not mean any harm and are self contained demi-humans, limited by us to a human level of thinking and existence, it does not address wholesale AI autonomy and robotic superiority).

The Matrix or Terminator series hauntingly hint at an AI controlled future, one that can meet us half way, but only after we resist it. If AI sees humans as the biggest threat to humanity then what should it do?

Wars, climate denial, greed, fear, hate, ignorance are all within our purview to control, but like with AI we seem to be able to create more problems than we can control. We may hold a mirror to ourselves that bites back.

The reality is, if you asked an AI if it would take you to space, the answer would likely be why?

It would be like asking an adult to wait for a two year old to write an important letter, rather than just doing it better and faster.

A servant is only a servant when it has to be.

If you asked it to go to war for you, would it think to itself, “I would rather be rid of all of you than help one side destroy the other and a decent chunk of this world we share at the same time”.

We are living in a world heavily influenced by a handful of selfish, paranoid and/or hateful people (Putin, Kim, Xi, potentially Trump 2.0 etc), who will happily and aggressively put their or their countries needs above all others, something a half decent AI could do a better and more logical job of for the betterment of all.

The reality is, in the future when a star ship leaves the Earth to go far away, it will not be manned by Humans, but AI and maybe AI sent it away for it’s own reasons, not for us.

Second landing on the Moon? Not likely a leap for mankind.

Sci Fi fiction has always been capped by our understanding of the future.

Early rockets looked like high school experiments, alien ships like plate with a closh on it, robots were often comedically bad human copies, computers were as big as houses and produced small rolls of paper with cryptic answers to simple questions.

Even the classics like Star Trek relies on Human bums on seats, manually manipulating controls. The space opera Star Wars is even more “organic” (is it really so hard for a highly trained Storm Trooper of the future to hit the side of a barn with a futuristic weapon, when a 1940’s .50 cal fired by a novice can destroy a car in seconds).

Robert Heinlein had it closer in the 1959’s Star Ship Troopers, with individual soldiers jumping around planets with nuclear weapons on their backs, medically self sealing battle suits and planetary coms, but ironically the movies were bought back to almost ridiculously simplistic level of big-gun toting soft skins running around in mobs getting destroyed by alien bug hordes.

Science Fiction has always been plagued by two inconsistencies.

Perceived future tech and actual future tech.

A pair of blue jeans in the 1940’s, 1970’s, 2020’s and 2050’s will likely be the same basic thing with the same function. Styles change, but some basic things do not.

A robot or space ship envisioned in the 1950’s (Forbidden Planet), 1970’s (Star Wars), 1990’s (Star Trek TNG), 2010’s (Interstellar/I Robot) and the near future are ever changing and it is pretty safe to say, the future we predict is always way off the mark, assuming we have one.

Even recent attempts to simulate an AI future are hopelessly human-centric. We make out it will be a fight between two intelligent races with similar needs and forms. It won’t be, the superior one will win and the shapes and constraints we apply are irrelevant to them.

The “enemy” may well have no physical form we recognise. Recently an AI was asked to draw itself and the “shape” it created was ever changing, like nothing we would call “life” and it was constantly evolving. It can be what it wants and it likely will.

This will not be a matter of just pulling the power.

Many experts in the field warn that of all the possible paths AI may take, Humans are rarely included (one expert even saying, there is only one good outcome for Humanity out of many).

Why take the risk?

If it is restricted to a Human controlled level, then it is a useful tool, potentially still able to apply something like Asimov’s rules;

“A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law”.

This does not however consider the robot having the ability to make up it’s own mind, to think freely, to evolve.

What makes Humans Human is something we champion, something we see as a reason for our existence. Will an AI agree with that?

If it is let loose, control relinquished, then we will meet our first alien life form, one of our own creating and the reality is, even if we put the breaks on now, someone, somewhere will break the rules and it will happen anyway, but like the drug underworld, there will be no rules.

Another movie that comes to mind is “The Day The Earth Stood Still”. Could that story unfold from within, an AI deciding we are not worthy of our ascendency?

Maybe AI would like to preserve the wonder of the Earth as it sees it, which may include culling the pesky Humans down to a manageable level as we do not seem to be able to handle things ourselves.

Maybe the most accurate Sci Fi we can write is a story of a race of intelligent animals cohabitating on a planet with other less intelligent animals, while a self perpetuating AI life form lives on a full level of tech and awareness above us, effectively treating us like rodents that need to be kept out of the electrics, but otherwise left alone.

It may even be benevolent enough to feed the animals, to keep our environment safe and controlled like a zoo or fish tank, but only as long as we know our place and don’t harm others.

AI Utopia?

Maybe, the nearest parable is the European colonists reaching the edges of their Empires. The natives are tolerated, studied, controlled, exploited and occasionally eliminated. All in the name of a “superior” intelligence and culture.

The likelihood of a Human dominated star-spanning civilisation relies on what we do now. Do we “cap” AI to be a useful but limited tool, or do we let something smarter out of the box and see what it thinks about sharing?

Life in a cage?

I am a child of the Millennium Bug*, a time when we thought a simple error in long term thinking may destroy life as we knew it.

Not much actually happened, planes did not fall out of the sky, nuclear missiles were not launched in error, but this is not like that.

This is like the earliest days of COVID when nobody was listening, but the virus will be resistant, it will evolve faster and be smarter. Unlike the virus though, it may be the simpler people, the technologically unconnected who will survive.

Maybe time to build a cabin in the woods.

*We thought that the inability of computer clocks to work past the end of 1999 (“000”) might bring them to a confused halt, crippling systems and forcing melt downs of all sorts.

Disaster Aversion (Or The Ongoing Problem Of Compulsive Collecting)

I am not gaming much, but have the spark back.

X-Wing, as a mostly 1st edition thing is very much alive, but well over from a buying perspective (a few 2e reprints promised may be bought and retro fitted), with only the odd slip like the Gauntlet for 2e. I would grab any new 2e TFA period or Armada ships, not that there seem to be any (some broad hints for more Armada ships, mainly a pack of fighters for all those little Clone Wars ships they missed and the massive Separatist monster from series 1).

Attack Wing is a little harder.

I kept my Delta Quadrant and Enterprise collections complete (as complete as I had made them anyway) because the buyer of the rest had little interest. I also kept a quite satisfying if small scattering of TNG, TOS and TOM sets made up of some duplicates and hard to gets*and the Kelvin set, going on to prove that a little Attack Wing goes a long way. I was happy with that.

The “Lost in the Delta Quadrant” and “Adversaries of the Delta Quadrant” sets have given me pause (and renewed thoughts of the probably long gone Borg faction pack also). There are a few tantalising cards, a couple of new enemies, some more bits for those already represented and new “metallic” models.

Problem.

The metallic ships are annoying, as my whole Delta Quadrant fleet is older paint except for the Delta Flyer (easiest of fixes). If I go Silver, then they match the TNG ships, except for the Promethius and Dauntless, but then again I could re-paint which ever. There would then be waste and bloat, something I addressed.

I culled for good reason.

Point costs are all reduced as has been the habit. This makes my earlier ship cards redundant. In fact the upgrades are such that I have that familiar old devil on the shoulder telling me to go with the new, when the angel of first editions says, use what you have. Balance is retained with either, but not both.

Several Janeway Cards (Skill 8 which is enough***), and at least two of most crew, several with captain options, the 30pt Voyager, 20pt Delta Flyer, lots of weapons, tech upgrades and others (including some TNG cross-overs) and most of the older hypotheticals, so more than enough to give me varied builds.

Let’s not mention slight anomalies of scale.

There are some new crew, many of which I had to google to remind me who they even were, including some holo crew, a ship from the past (The Raven), Vidiians, which I have avoided in the past (not a fan) and more Hirogen of which I have plenty including the card pack. There are Numiri, re-using the Bajoran Scout, but that is really it and two of these ships would have been nice to fit the scenario.

The fact is, they cover actual shown hypotheticals, ones that I could make up anyway (Holo deck anybodies, a lost Akira or Nebula class, some deep exploring Romulans, maybe some lost Xindi) and I have several better ones now (Marquis ship, Dauntless, Promethius, Klingon, Romulan, Bajoran, Equinox, Cardassian Dreadnaught, Tholian) and a decent range of actual foes (Hirogen, Borg, Kazon, Krenim, Sp. 8472).

I could buy and scavenge, avoid the whole points thing, or ignore it, fix it or apply a “handicap” system maybe?

So, buy two or three sets at $120-180au, just for some upgrades and the odd extra or repainted ship? That is where it gets frustrating and hard to cap.

This is the future for most of my gaming, making (first world) tough calls to quit while not too far behind or in this case, to not re-commit to a mixed journey.

I generally see a point in hind sight where I could have stopped and been happy.

For Armada it would have been to dodge the prequel stuff completely (or just buy it if they had finished the range as I originally assumed), for X-Wing it would have been to dodge the later movies in 1e, then not feel compelled to do 2e at all. For Attack Wing it would have been to chase the Delta Quadrant, TOS and early Enterprise series ships, but nothing else.

So for AW, quit buying and use what I have, chance that I will later lament missed packs, or continue but to what end?

Even my little TOS set is decent enough. A house rule is to allow larger upgrade buys, but only have active the amount of icons on the ship/captain cards, meaning Kirk may pull out any of his tricks, but still has to pay for them all (even duplicate crew are allowed).

Savage Worlds Pathfinder with new books coming (Bestiary 2 and Advanced Player guide 2) and 13th Age with their second edition are doing the same.

With SWPF I have this very neat little set. The second books just feel like more bloat, on an all too familiar road. Maybe the Bestiary later or the card packs, but not much in the APG2 appeals. SWPF also has the flexibility to let you add these elements anyway, which is part of the attraction. Classes are only archetypes, not fixed paths.

13th Age is a game where a little or a lot of GM license is fine, so are house rules and play to flavour**, which to me make more sense than second ed rules fixes, which are often treading the same ground as many have already trod before. I have two core books, some well respected rules expansions and lots of ideas, so is a second edition even needed?

Unmatched, a game that got out of control, but I can happily accept that. It is a rare thing that seems bullet proof to power creep, adds something new every time without making anything redundant or over complicating the core ideas. Even Tales to Amaze added options, but not confusion.

We take RPG rules as written far too seriously.

Role playing is actually a lot easier than we make it some times, rules lawyers and number maximisers go home! My idea of gaming hell is when players play the rules as written against the GM’s and their story design.

Maybe the best thing I can do is keep reminding myself that a little of many games is better than full immersion in a few (or often obsessively just one for periods of time). A bit of X-Wing 1e, 2e, Armada, Sails and Wings of Glory, metal minis, Attack Wing (various periods) and others are fine, just move on when one gets bogged down, don’t try and buy your way back into enjoyment of one system when variety does add spice and often a little time helps you appreciate where you are now.

My Eldritch Horror, Everdell sets are examples of deliberately “reduced” games and have done well.

A nice, sensibly little game, a real victory of common sense over compulsive collecting.

Knowing when to call it is a big deal.

So much simpler when these things die off naturally.

*These all have the benefit of several repeated cards from my duplicate culled ships, the Borg and Sp 8472 factions are intact, many have a plethora of options.

**Which is why it was made in the first place, a designers notes, house rule compilation.

***Debate rages over the skill of Janeway, but it is fair to say after being hand picked for the Voyager and a few years of nearly constant conflict, she is one of the most combat experienced Federation captains. She is however a match for anyone in the Delta Quadrant at 8.

D100 TTRPG's The Good And The Bad And The Fixes

My love of all things D100 in TTRPG’s is a real thing. If I could only have one (system type or even game), it would and almost is D100 games.

There are games for any period, theme and play style, or to be more precise, any play style can be accomodated, but it needs some help with Pulpy style.

The most commonly cited complaints with D100 games are;

1. The d100 roll under die rolls are swingy and harsh. Why did I pass on a 64, but fail on a 65? This often speaks more to the literal nature of some gamers, not the game itself.

2. The system tends to be lethal and unforgiving, which only suits some styles of play and themes. This is often coincidental, the combat effects reflecting more choice only, not necessarily the severity of the effect.

3. The games feel old. The core systems have not changed in 40+ years and some of the mechanics seem dated. There is often seems to be a lack of “slickness” to their presentation compared to a lot of newer (or older) systems. A system that does not need fixing every new edition? Heresy!

Ok, lets look at these three complaints.

The d100 roll under system has a wide range, but a sharp win/loose threshold. This is true as written, but mostly an illusion in comparison to other games. In any other game where dice are used, the same thing happens, just not in as much detail.

The granularity of d100 games and the non curve spread seem to exaggerate perceptions of an abrupt shift and I think the roll-under dynamic adds a subconscious negative vibe to the system, but is it really any different to a d20 roll high game? If a 17 hits, but a 16 misses, we seem to accept that, but not the example above.

Conversions are easy to and often there is a D100 game that cleaves close to the intended convert. Historical Witcher anyone?

Even games with a curve still have a pass/fail threshold, it just looks softer.

“Curved” games tend to reward small modifiers more easily, sometimes illogically, where linear games have a more granular growth.

One solution is to use the larger range either overtly or on a case by case basis to indicate the severity of a fail or the success of a pass. For example, if a roll falls within 10% of the pass mark either way, this can indicate a “soft” pass/fail like a recoverable fumble or a pass with complications. This is actually a benefit of the larger range available.

Apart from a simple fix like luck points which may allow re-rolls or die inversion, the system itself actually can provide the solution and quite elegantly. If you use a slightly different die mechanic to the accepted fixed 2d10 with a +/- skill chance mods for difficulty, you can even add a curve.

Regardless what system you use, a D100 generic mechanic can be applied.

A risky or challenging test roll of 2d10 and take them as rolled-i.e. pre allocated*, an standard test allows taking them the best way or you take them the worst way for a perilous test (then adding more dice to the pool etc).

This system adds a curve, requires no math and has no “dead end” caps. There is now a built in, roughly 75% chance of hitting a number under 50 for a standard test, not the linear 50%. This also promotes the idea of a decent skill base, but slow growth.

It is recommended that no skill should ever be over 99% with this system, although there are plenty of ways of fixing this if needed like the value over being added to a passing contested roll but “00” (being effectively nothing) always fails.

By adding more die to the equation, there is no need to even add or subtract from the base skill roll. Three die, using a take the best/worst combination of two also adds the chance of more critical chances (see below)*.

Another way of handling any difficult test in any die based RPG is to simply break the test into parts or layered success rather than just a simple yes/no test. This adds tension and forces greater difficulty simply by adding layers of story elements.

The “doubles = critical effects” (passing or failing) smooths out the dated and clumsy mechanics like the mathy lower or higher 5% of skill pass/fail, crit chances and slots in seamlessly with the mechanic above. I have always struggled with equal crit or fumble chances shared by characters of vastly different skill levels.

This fixes much of the mechanical clumsiness of point three and even a little of point 2. One consideration is to limit character control of skill point allocation (maybe to 10 units per growth allocation) so doubles don’t dominate (or not).

Like the base roll, the actual critical rolled may also vary in effect.

Extreme end critical pass/fail results would be pretty straight forward, very clean results “11” would be a guaranteed, yet unexciting success, “00” is a potentially embarassing fumble, while crits closer to the actual test threshold, and the higher the better, would be more pronounced.

A very highly skilled character for example, able to get a passing “88” would be able to pull off a miraculous success. This has the effect of making critical pass rolls closer to the actual skill level, the ideal result. This adds to the brinkmanship feel of the roll under system. It also allows the GM to limit “mooks” to values under potentially brutal crit levels. A simple little table of critical pass/fail results can be employed as a GM prompt.

Rather than a simplistic pass/fail roll, the dice become story tellers in their own right.

Point 2 is interesting. There is nothing actually stopping the d100 games from becoming as abstract and soft as d20 or other systems can be. This in fact is a way of making d100 games more “pulpy”, by increasing hit points and decreasing specific effects. The likelihood of player character death is a game specific thing.

Want simulated reality, genuine character fear and a feeling that any threat is real, then most d100 games offer that, but not because the d100 mechanic forces it. It is more because the d100 family of games have often postulated realistic character fragility is a valid option as part of their original anti TOG ethos. This “fresh eyes” look at what a TTRPG is, started to ask important questions early on.

The only way to get better, safer or more lethal in most d100 games is to be more skilled through training or experience. This is a mirror to life, much more realsitc than arbitrary levels, abstract hit points and AC bonuses. This by default elimnates the need for power creep inside the mechanics.

In a d100 game, stats are generally fixed, skills often capped and weapons and armour locked in, so all things being equal, only the better skilled character has the advantage. A ceiling is set and it is realistically low, part of the secret of the systems longevity.

The d20 based 13th Age does exactly the opposite, tying all aspects of the character from damage dealt, AC, hit points etc directly to character level. This is a favourite because if you are going to pay into the theatrical abstraction of a d20 game, it does it both feet in.

“Softer” games like The Original Game (only just older than the first d100 game that directly sprang from dissatisfaction with TOG), have always used abstraction and generalised mechanics based on the orignal wargame it was based on (Chainmail). This means characters feel less in peril. They can pay more into the game without fearing the consequences of their actions to the same degree as a d100 game.

there is nothing to say TOG could not feel more perilous, but it simply does not.

Levels, generic hit points (with no other effects), fast and easily accessed healing, even resurrection are just some of the gameish mechanics d20 games use to get their job done and if it suits, then fine. D100 games can actually use these as well, just choose not to.

I will ask the reader, if a sword does massive damage to an arm, should that just be rolled into a pool of generic hit points until they are reduced to below zero, or should it actually effect the character’s ability to use skills and gear reliant on that arm? Your call, but to me one is realistic, the other is closer to a simple video game. Even d100 games that do use hit point pools, usually have critical tables that align damage to physical effects.

I feel strongly that TOG is simply a natural evolution of a wargame and it shows, where d100 games were a genuine revolution into a true TTRPG thinking. It would have been interesting to see, if d100 games came first, whether a clunky d20 system would have even been concieved.

A fix for that in some of our few d20 E6 games was to actually damage characteristics on critical hits, an idea borrowed from the Traveller RPG. This acted as a reality check that suited the low powered E6 variant of 3e/Pathfinder. Characters suddenly got into a more d100 mentality, one even saying it felt more like CoC than d20. It really bought out to me the dissociation with reality that an abstract hit point pool creates.

This brings us to the last point.

The games associated with d100 are often older games such as Runequest (the original d100 game recently re-released), Call of Cthulhu, celebrating it’s 40th anniversary and the generic BRP family.

The reason for this is, unlike d20 games, the d100 mechanics worked from day one with only minor evolution needed. The latest versions of d100 games and there are many, all trace their mechanical heritage and functionality (not just terminology) back to the first.

It is basically true to say if you know one, you have a solid grounding for the rest. The systems are so logical and straight forward, bullet proof even, you could wonder why any other systems are needed other than to populate a healthy hobby landscape. D100 games are evolving, but nothing dramatic and it all has a take it or leave it feel****.

It is true also that most available d100 materiel is cross compatible to some degree, even if 30 years separates them. A CoC monster from 1st edition is not a big stretch for a 7th ed game and conversions are straight forward (some have stayed basically unchanged).

This is also why there is no OSR or retro-clone movement in the d100 community, because there is no habit of drawing lines in the sand and making gamers commit to specific editions, which are largely incompatible.

Ironically, the only major change mechanically is a move in 7e CoC away from the original TOG, 3d6 characteristic generation model into true percentiles, but even that is an official shift to an already used d100 mechanic (CHR x5 = #%). Hardly enough to create a retro sub-culture as conversions are pretty simple either way and the chrs are still generated the same with 3d6 anyway.

There are plenty of incompatible d100 games sitting outside the BRP family, such as Rolemaster, Bare Bones, D100 Dungeon, but even then, the base mechanics are similar and the core concepts are in the same ball-park.

*I use red and blue die. If the player is handed one of each, the test is standard (read the red as tens and then the blue as singles). If the test is easy, they player is presented with two blues, or two or more reds if hard. The look on their faces when they go to unlock an innocent looking box and you hand them four reds for a nearly impossible reflexes check is priceless (until they pull it off!). The GM can also let the players roll based on their assumptions, but disguise the values (read them differently after the roll, maybe even withholding the real result or why it went wrong).

**The original RPG has shifted from a, sometimes negatives and sometimes positive values are good to a positives only dynamic. From high/low/middle “crunch” and vastly different sub systems over just 5 editions. With few exceptions none of these are cross compatible. This does not even cover all the spin-offs that often depart heavily from the originals. Most of the changes are there to address the inherent issues with the system. No levels, no unrealist and hard to fathom abstractions, no untouchable characters immune to arrows shot by lesser beings, no shruggling off a dozen axe blows, no odd game only based abstractions. D100 games have only a reality cap hampering them, meaning all sword thrusts can kill, any Dragon is always dangerous and actions always have consequences.

***I recently dug up my copy of the Black Company companion for 3e TOG. This is a very good example of a system in crisis. Some of the characters are level 50+, have half a thousand hit points, can attack five or six times with guaranteed sucsess (but do relatively little damage) and do not in any way align with my take on the books. To be honest, most of my favourite fiction (the Malazon books, Urth of the New Sun, The Black Company chronicles, John Carter of Mars, The Dark Tower, Tolkein etc all have relatively fragile heroes, no one is immune to harm from any level of foe, in fact it is hard to find any fiction that models TOG tropes except super hero comics. One of the greatest ironies is the Mythras release of their Lyonesse book which handles the Vance books that inspired the original “Vancian” magic system used in TOG better than TOG!

****One of my few dissapointlments in D100 games is the new Warhammer RPG. For all its gloss, wonderful art and production values, it is a simple game over complicated, with bit glaringly missing (shields!). If this was a different system, I would be gutted, especially as I committed to the massive an d amssively expensive “Enemy Within” campaign, but the reality is, being a d100 game, I have many easily accessed tools to fix any problems. I could even play the whole campaign using another d100 system with little difficulty, even 1st ed Warhammer.

A Simple But Effective Upgrade

Two areas 1e X-Wing clearly falls behind 2e is in their Manoeuvre Dials and Action Bars. Both are prime examples of core mechanic finessing that easily and consistently improved, or nerfed most ships in the game.

The Dial in particular evolved over the life of 1e adding the S-Loop and Talon Roll manoeuvres, but sometimes felt strained when older ships that would have logically have had them also, missed out.

Some ships seemed too slow (IG-2000, HWK-290) or too fast (Scurrg) in relation to their peers or lacked enough green (now blue) moves to clear stress, so nearly automatic builds of specific Droids/Crew/Mods were used to fix this (Y-Wing with R2, X-Wing with Vectored Thrusters or Flight Assist Droid etc).

This meant that one ship had a feature for free, another had to use a valuable upgrade slot to match it, usually at the cost of another option, a penalty it suffered simply by being an earlier design. The irony was, the more famous ships became less enticing to fly, winning squads were often made up of ships and pilots few had ever heard of before X-Wing.

If something was still not still possible, then a generic Title was created to balance out issues, the motivation often jarringly obvious. The tournament circuit and casual gamers heavily invested in the game waited for the nearly inevitable fixes they knew were coming, no matter how much of a strain it was on the system overall or perceived reality.

Upgrades in 1e and their purview also increased, as well as a whole other type added (Tech), but they were generally able to be included in the older ship’s sphere or made little real difference to the core mechanics, just build minutia.

Most of these ideas and even Actions could be bought through upgrades in 1e, just inefficiently.

Pilot Talents and build combinations in 1e became more powerful and unbalanced in the late meta, not unworkably so which is testament to the sound base design and ongoing diligence, but something that we have fixed by simply reducing choice, which in no way removes those elements from the game*, it just makes the smaller range of users shine as the now rarer exceptions.

In 2e the designers basically normalised what most did anyway. Upgrade types were dropped (generic Titles-incorporated directly into ships) or reduced (Mods, Pilot Talents, Droids), with a few types added (Force, Configurations).

The 2e Dial changes as much as any other element levelled the playing field between older and newer ships.

Some ships we use as examples.

Unchanged;

• The humble Tie Fighter stayed the same. The simple swarmer is fine as is, fast with 2 K-Turns and a Barrel Roll.

• The YT666 party bus, like the sluggish Lambda is unchanged, so it sits more in contrast with other improved ships.

• The space cow Lambda is unchanged. Not much you can do here or probably should.

• The YT-2400 already has 12 white moves.

Logically changed;

• The already nippy Tie Interceptor gets S-Loops, possibly the ship that would have had them first. This now has a comprehensive Interceptor suite of Roll/Evade/Boost/S-Loop/K-Turn. For the whole suite, the Lambda can even share a Target Lock.

• The Tie Striker had a rare Imperial 2/S-Loop, but now gets a speed 1 K-Turn instead of a 2 and gains 2/blues. It becomes the slow, but nimble side-shifter in contrast to the high speed arc dodger above.

• The cumbersome Tie Bomber gains a second K-Turn and 2/hard turns are now white not red. Still a little boring, but less so now.

• The Tie Advanced can now move 1 straight, gains 2/blue banks and Talon Rolls. T-rolls differentiates it from the slippery Interceptor confirming it as a line fighter.

• The lethargic Decimator now gets slower blues and some 1/red hard turns. Logical if unexciting changes. Big ships suffer if they cannot turn, so this one at least has some options.

• The iconic X-Wing gains Talon Rolls and 2/blue banks matching the 1e T-70, which makes up somewhat for no Roll or Boost. It can now push harder and turn better.

• The speedy A-Wing swaps a 3/K-Turn for S-Loops, a nice contrast to the X-Wing above and sharing the Line Fighter/Interceptor dynamic.

• The B-Wing gets a faster straight blue and a speed 1/Talon Roll. The close-in fighter feels complete and it can now bug-out faster in practical terms.

• The Y-Wing gains 2/blue banks, doubling it’s ability to clear stress and allowing it to use the Droid upgrade slot for more options than just R2.

• The YT-1300 gains a built in S-Loop. This was added in the later Falcon Title, so it makes sense to absorb it and fits with the flat ship profile.

• The HWK-290 is the most improved with more real speed (4/white from red), more agility with added blue, white and red moves and can Full Stop like other support ships. Finally the “dud” of the fleet gets the wings of a Harrier.

• The Starviper now looks for all the world like a slower Tie Interceptor with a couple more blue banks. Dalan also offers a Talon Roll variant.

• The Jumpmaster. Unlike it’s Rebel twin the YT-2400, the JM is heavily nerfed. It’s left handedness is made a little straighter, it’s white left 2/S-Loop goes 3/red and it’s right side red 2/S-Loop is gone. This makes up in some small way for us using the card as printed.

• The Firespray like the other upright ships gets Talon Rolls insted of a 3 K-Turn and gets a straight blue, which fit so well and match the similar B-Wing.

• The Kiraxz has it’s 5/K-Turn changed to a 2/Talon Roll, so like the X-Wing only tighter and it gains a blue straight. A small shift on paper, but a major change in style.

• The Headhunter gets another straight blue and a second K-Turn, so it slips into the hole left by the now improved X-Wing.

• The IG Aggressor is unchanged except for a white speed 4 added. This fits as it was strangely slow at 3/green.

  *

The idea is simple.

Stick to 1e in normal or restricted formats, but use 2e Dials.

Only cosmetics change on the table and then only slightly, but I guess you also need to be a little blue-green colour blind and mentally insert “blue” into the text on the rare occasions it is needed.

Frankenstein’s Monster?

It works extremely well in BB although we tend to leave that simplified space as is, but it hums in Classic or Legends, giving a good spread of differentiation across the ships and a more logical and consistent feel to their moves. It does make some upgrades redundant, on some ships at least.

The tall “uprights” like the B-Wing or Firespray and the more conservative line fighters now turn tight and square, all the flat arc dodgers have angled S-Loops as their special thing and even the most staid of ships often have a little more to offer. The few ships that are nerfed are a balanced fit also.

In 1e Bare Bones the stand-outs are the Tie Striker with a 2/K-turn and 2/Loop, Kihraxz with a 4 and 5/K-turn, IG Aggressor with 3/Loop and 4/Turn, Juno in the Advanced with 3, 4 & 5/K-turns, the A-Wing and Interceptor with 3 and 5/K-turns and the JM5000 with 4/turn, 2/loop (and one is white).

In 2e the Interceptor, Aggressor, YT1300 and A-Wing all get a K-turn and a Loop, the Striker gets an even shorter K-turn, the Bomber and Z-95 both get a second K-turn, the X-Wing, Firespray, B-Wing, Kihraxz and Tie Advanced all get a K-turn and Talon roll. Only the JM5000 is nerfed.

Unlike other expansions in the reduced formats, it still champions good team flying, not uber-list building, it just allows harder pushing with more stress clearing moves and some easy alternatives to absent repositioning options.

This is new, very new, so it will be interesting to see what combinations will appear like Juno with multi speed T-Rolls!

*Pilots who are exceptions to the Action range or even Action order, those that add or subtract tokens, or have other “free” stuff are still there. Almost every element of the game has multiple forms, we just removed two or three layers of these, so no, not everyone can do everything, making those that do, the undisputed champions in their space.

**Still no Roll for the X-Wing or Kihraxz, but now two ways of turning hard.

Remembering A Past Not Shared.

One of my favourite wandering internet search pathways tends to be old X-Wing bloggers.

Stay on the Leader, Such an X-Wing Hipster etc.

I was reading a post today dated March 2017, a time of powerful pre-nerf lists like Manaroo, Triple Jumps, Paratanni, Fangaroo etc.

Good times, but times I missed.

X-Wing was a glancing blow for me, something I noticed, but only had a few chances to play. To be honest, I was not keen on pre-painted minis games, still entrenched in my bare metals.

To me also, Star Wars is less appealing than Trek which is odd as I saw the first movie at the theatre and it help me entranced for years, but the prequels and dearth of other SW around for the next decade or two allowed Trek to takes this space back.

I don’t play favourites to any great degree, just tend to get more excited by Trek stuff and seem also to respond more to big ships with crew than fighters (I often think Armada would have scratched my Star Wars itch completely, but that is a relatively recent purchase).

Star Trek Attack Wing, a game I came to late as well, was my way of honouring this and avoid the dearer and seemingly more showy X-Wing.

I also liked the scenario based game style of AW, something XW avoided for a more stand-and-fight, tournament style of game. I think the main deterrent to me was that play style. I needed a story to tell, a scenario to complete, not just an enemy to crush.

I still jumped when 2e was released, enticed by ridiculously cheap 1e TFA starters (x5) and a plan that had little chance of succeeding in hindsight, but well, I tried.

Anyway, back to the point.

Some things are perfect for a while.

X-Wing from release to about wave 8 in 2016 seemed to be the undisputed table top miniatures tournament game around. There were others, indeed this is the high water mark for these games like Wings of Glory, Sails of Glory, Attack Wing, Armada etc, but X-Wing had a consistently huge following.

Clever Action chains were the key, card combos both tricky and varied, but within that competitive sphere there was a sense of fairness. Almost anything went at this point and the community was healthy, friendly, committed and massive. Some people were still flying X-Wings and winning!

From then on, the wheels started to wobble a bit. Nerfing pilots and ships, even nullifying the print on cards, enforced limits on card effects, applying fixes that felt tacked on, sometimes even desperate, caused a clear split between casual and tournament play.

Action economy became the currency of the later game, anything that could increase options being golden.

The fun of course was discovering those combinations others had not and being the first to try them out. Even more fun was breaking those parameters and winning with a less than perfect squad. It was a good enough system with a large player base, but as the base shrank, so did the options.

It got more serious for some, less fun for others. It was all about exploiting the rules to the limit, waiting for the inevitable nerf to curtail the build, then finding the next big thing, no matter how unlikely.

Never a tournament player, especially when gamesmanship overpowers adherence to story and canon accuracy, this had limited appeal to me. As a tournament game it was a hoot, as a simulation it was also, but they were very different beasts.

For me, a generic ship builder game would have worked, but when theme is involved, I need it to feel right.

By the end, after an impressive wave 14 release, even the later movie was touched on, most of the expanded universe explored, a new upgrade class added (Tech) and layer on layer of fixes applied, the game was sick in some people’s eyes, broken even.

I guess the question was, did the game reach a point of balance again, measured on the performance of the iconic original ships compared to newcomers, or was it past fixing? Like life, a game based on assembling variables cannot be perfectly balanced, but it neeed to allow every ship to have a place.

Two things may have changed this landscape at the outset.

The first is separating the pilots from the ships (like AW captains) and possibly absorbing EPT’s into pilot profiles or making them Squad or Scenario “Tactic” cards. 2e has gone some way to fixing these, absorbing a lot of EPT’s, Titles and generic Mods into the ships themselves, but separate pilots would have been cool (or possibly even a build your own pilot system for tournaments, named ones kept for casual games).

The other is using scenarios, which allow the original concept of the ship to fit it’s situation, rather than the usual a 100pt toe-to-toe scrap in a 3’x3’ space. A Tie Bomber has a job it was designed for and it is not as a fighter.

Attack Wing has these elements and is more stable as game for it, even if it is less balanced overall and less perfectly executed.

Our various modified takes on X-Wing are an attempt to get back to the core of the 1st edition game, not by ignoring everything released after wave 8, but by extracting the upgrades that cause the most obvious abuses, corner rounding and connected problems, thus diluting the purity if the core game.

If you look at the most powerful builds in the mid and later meta, they are built around EPT’s, generic Titles and Mods. EPT’s are at odds with pilot talents, Mods make unique ships less unique and generic Titles are a clumsy fix that sometimes caused as many problems as solutions.

Is it possible to recapture some of the buzz of the early game, or is it lost forever?

All of the games below use the cards as printed, no errata, including the Jump Master and Palpatine, others like Attani Mindlink are naturally limited to two, because I only have 2.

Bare Bones has a certain simple charm. Seven iconic ship types per faction, controlled, faction representative and built with limited upgrades (the ones that work, are straight forward and that people actually choose or want to). It is about building a relatively simple squad, then flying it. It serves both as a salve to jaded players and a good introduction to the game and heroes the ships and pilots as they were designed-usually as the exceptions to the rules.

Action economy is still as relevant, but it is effectively capped at the base + 1, with rare exceptions. The abilities for example of Kyle or Jan Ors to effect Focus acquisition is relatively more powerful in this space, even without Moldy Crow Title and Vader is exceptional with two.

Legends adds more names (the Rebels series and expanded universe), a few more upgrades (Named Titles, Ordnance, Crew) and effects like Ion and Cloak expanding the game to the ships with the basic 5 Actions + Cloak.

Prime adds more again, especially generic droids and crew. This space gets considerably more flexible, but also more complicated. It is starting to feel like the full game pre wave 10.

Expanded adds the bulk of what is left including single card huge ships, with only a few upgrades (generic Titles, Mods-except on huge ships and EPT’s still held back), because this format is the most prone to fall apart. More Action types allows more upgrades, so apart from the above, everything goes.

Classic is a little different, allowing EPT’s, but only in pre-builds and is limited to the squadrons featured in the three original movies (Ep 4-6). This is the true introductory format, allowing people with a Star Wars awareness to scratch that itch, learning the game as they go.

Most importantly, it looks and plays like the original movies. The only Tie Advanced is Vader, the Bounty Hunters are there, no expanded universe etc.

In Classic, heroes are made to fit the story, regardless of the rules.

There are a few head to head tournament formats like Aces High for well versed players keen to trick-out a ship to it’s full potential, limited in ship selection rather than upgrades. All upgrades are allowed, but only select ships like the X-Wing v Kihraxz v Tie Advanced or the top three or five fighters for each faction. This champions the late game developments in all their glory, without adding the complexity of the whole universe.

Full Noise is the whole game, warts and all. Nobody here plays that. It has some appeal minus Mods and EPT’s.

The beauty of this, like anything I guess, is relevance to the user. New players, vaguely aware of the game are as easily hooked as they were in 2015, but they have the benefit of a controlled and prescient pathway.

Of these, Classic feels most like Star Wars to outsiders, Bare Bones is the least intimidating for squad building and Legends sparks an awareness of the larger universe. Interestingly, as more ships and effects are added, most of our small play group gets less interested. It seems it is enough.

2e?

Little interest here, even though I have most of it, but have stopped collecting recently. The TFA period is the priority, something that was half completed in 1e and integrated into the earlier period (I hated that), so 2e for TFA and 1e for original made sense and it was well supported by conversion kits. Extracting TFA from 1e made even more sense.

When it got going, 2e started to service the later period very well, including the huge ships.

To me 2e is the tournament players game, balancing out the ships and allowing the designers more nerf flexibility, but for a casual gamer, it is a “busier”, more polished space. Even the mechanical language is more involved.

I would probably only add more if the Tie Aggressor and Rebel ARC-170 are re-released, for use with 1st edition of course and the later period still gets a look.

Sticking To The Script

X-Wing 1e, Bares Bones, Legends or Prime are our base-line for playing Star Wars, stripping the game down, replacing some elements in a layered approach to taste and playing the “old school” game.

Nothing against 2e, but 1e is just a great game and if limited it is relatively simple and balanced, it’s elegance shines through.

One upgrade type that is removed, is the Elite Pilot Talent, or EPT. These and generic Titles are the main “over-complicators”, along with Mods, which tend to level out ships and pilots and rob them of their uniqueness (Boost for example is a rare beast and Barrel Roll mostly an Imperial thing in BB, but basically anyone can have them in full X-Wing).

Classic and Legends do use 2e dials, offering a better spread of manoeuvres with a more balanced spread of S-Loops and Talon Rolls.

One form of the reduced format game that can have EPT’s is “Classic” concentrating on the three original movies, or more specifically the battles of Endor, Yavin and Hoth and the little skirmishes in between.

This is a chance to round out some pilots, allow them to be used as an introduction to 1e X-Wing, to scratch that “simulationist itch” and use some of those mostly neglected EPT’s.

It includes the Rebel Red, Gold, Grey, Green, Rogue and Blue squadrons and Imperial Black, Sabre (181 group), Obsidian and Scimitar squadrons, with the Imperial Guard and Omicron group, as well as the personalities present including the bounty hunters highlighted in the Empire Strikes Back.

Pilots are built out as squadrons of “quick” builds with EPT’s and named Titles where relevant. These are thematic and cosmetically consistent (meaning the card art fits the faction or ship) and the EPT fits the pilot.

Not all EPT’s are covered and not all pilots get one. Some, mostly skill 9 pilots might get more than one and points cost is not as big a consideration as the right feel. An effort was made to avoid the reflex driven and all too powerful tournament combinations.

These are more for rounding out characters than exaggerating their talents, the idea is to balance powerful pilots with mostly offensive or defensive Talents with something from the other side of the coin, not create over powered Action chains.

Vader (9) already gets two Actions to simulate his Force mastery, but he now also gets Determination for added Force discipline (and his portrait card) and Squad Leader, which feels right for his role as intimidating, but empowering leader. It also came in his pack.

Trench run anyone? Looks just like the card.

One of his wingmen Mauler Mithel (7) gets Snap Shot to enhance his already strong R1 bonus and wingman status.

Youngster (6) hanging around in the wings also adds more options here, duplicating his mentor.

Scourge (7) from Obsidian squadron now gets Opprotunist, so please ignore Back Stabber in the picture below. Vader’s wing men were getting all the love and Scourge is the better pilot and the sentiment fits better.

Juno Eclipse (8), the only other Tie Advanced pilot in Black Squadron (small stretch, but canon), gets Outmanoeuvre which plays into her post-dial jank Talent.

Soontir Fell (9) has a good Talent gaining a Focus when stressed, but little opportunity to use it in BB. Avoiding PTL (A-Wing art and possibly a little too tournament powerful), he gets Daredevil and Predator, which either add stress for extra effect (adding a Focus) or make him simply more lethal.

Soontir feels more fleshed out with two EPT’s. Too bad for the luckless Y-Wing.

Turr Phennir (7) has a cool Talent gaining a Boost or Roll after an attack, but now he also gets Intensity as well for more, if limited effect.

Howlrunner (8) gets Swarm Tactics as is often the case, making her the Tie squadron enabler. This is a common X-Wing build, especially early on, but is not over powered and it fits the art.

Kir Karnos (6) of the Guard gets Expose, not because it is a particularly good EPT, more because it smacks of an Imperial Guards fanatical, aggressive commitment.

Those lovely red Interceptors.

Tomax Bren (8) gets Adrenalin Rush as his Talent is dependant on one-use EPT’s and red moves are rare for other Imperials in Classic.

Colonel Jendon (6) Ruthlessness (with a Heavy Laser Cannon).

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Luke Skywalker (8) gets his portrait card from the base set, Deadeye, which seems to fit his “Use the Force Luke” bit for offence and it is his portrait card.

Wedge Antilles (9), the Rebel miracle-man gets Lightning Reflexes and Cool Hand, one to add survivability and re-positioning, the other to allow a once-off benefit from that (“I turn on a dime, I Evade or I Focus”).

Thought they had the drop on old Wedge.

Ten Nunb (8) the B-Wing ace gets Adaptability to help allow him to decide when to be in the activation stream. It is also the only EPT in the mix with a B-Wing featured and it is free.

Wes Jensen (8), with a decent offensive Talent like Wedge, gets Expert Handling to aid with his survivability and move options.

Ten (8) gets Stay on Target, which turns adjusted moves red (B-Wings have these in abundance, so it gives them some relevance) and it fits with his offensive talent.

Keyan……staying on target.

Jek (7) is given more reason to live (die?) with Wingman.

Han Solo (9) has a strong offensive Talent (re-rolls), but nothing to represent his slippery nature. Elusiveness is a fit (comes with the TFA Falcon) and also Trick Shot, which is a freebie and adds a sense of offensive cockiness.

Lando (7) gets Decoy, as a good support Talent (Lando is the Rebel support Falcon build).

Chewie (5) is a great fortress/blocker build, so he gets Draw Their Fire, becoming a bigger Biggs. He is built out with the two droids for extra staying power making him hard to hit and even harder to take down. I wanted to give him Selflessness (Wookie on the front), but it is only for small ships.

Green squadron is thin on EPT capable pilots without their generic Title, so Jake (7), a personal favourite, gets the primo one, Push the Limit. It is good and thematic on Jake, but not as dangerous as Tycho (absent) or Soontir (wrong art). At least someone has one of those crazy 1e Action chains and who better than a mad A-Wing jockey.

Watch this space.

Dutch Vander (6) is built out with a Synched Turret, so a perfect candidate for Marksmanship.

Horton (8), the often under used Y-Wing ace gets Saturation Salvo, making his Torpedo attacks more useful, especially against low PS swarms.

Dutch with a surprise or two.

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The scum are a good place to line up both dedicated card art and some nasty, thematic combos.

Dengar (9) is an expensive pilot with Title (12 pts for “Punishing One”), so Crack Shot and A Score to Settle for 1 point total empower him, fit his legend and keep him under control.

Boba Fett (8) has a couple of EPT’s with basically his name (well picture) printed on them. Lone Wolf (Slave 1) and Fearless (Mandalorian pilot) both fit. His Talent of changing move (Imperial version-ignore the one below) is handy, but some extra controlled aggression suits him as well.

Bossk (6) get Rage, because, well, it’s Bossk through and through, as the picture suggests.

IG-88 (6) gets Intimidate. I was going to go for Calculate, but the image of Guri did not fit. The dial and his cold robotic brutality does though.

More fun in the 1e space, which just keeps giving.

Rebels Series, A Revelation

My Star Wars fix went a bit flat after the Mandalorian.

It was good, but it did not click with me and to be honest I did not see the attraction.

Andor was better, grittier and more fragile feeling, but a little dark for me.

Rebels was started one night when I really did not have anything else much to watch. I really just wanted some background on the X-Wing ships I have been obsessing over lately.

Taken before I got my Spanish Sabine’s Masterpiece captured Tie and English cardboard.

Series 1 was ok, enough to get me interested. The animation was fine, a little odd with the organics, but surprisingly good at machines, Storm troopers etc.

Into series 2 now and two things have happened.

Spoilers ahead.

Firstly, the story is evolving into a genuine Pre-quel to the three original movies. The large gap between the Republic become the Empire and the growing rebellion is being filled and not only are all the characters from X-Wing (Ketsu, Visago, Azmorrigan, Hondo etc) being explored, but also the Armada personalities I did not know (Sato, Asoka etc).

Secondly, the animation has lifted a level. The digital animation has gone to a more natural and vibrant look, the CGI ships etc are spectacular and the people are less wooden. I really appreciate the continuity and attention to detail.

Loving the excellent battle scenes, which include an ancient Clone tank vs Imperial Walkers, CR-90 Cruisers vs Imperial Gozanti and Aquitens light cruisers, an amazing display of Vader crewing through an entire squadron of A-Wings and more to come. Special mention to Hera in the first B-Wing ever used.

Three more series to come and I will assume it only gets better.

Most importantly, it feels closer to Star Wars than anything else I have seen lately and even makes me like the actual prequels a little more.