More d100 madness. I have decided to pull the trigger on Zweihander and it’s companion Main Gauche, which are super cheap on big bad Amazon at the moment. That’s 1000 pages of retro goodness for about $100au.
Zweihander is a slightly contraversial re-hash of Warhammer 1e, or to be kinder, it is a fan driven generic re-imagining and clean up of the 80’s system, made well after it was dropped by the makers. I am ok with that.
I also stumbled across a game that had blipped my radar a while ago, but dropped away soon after. Osprey’s Jackals is a fantasy take on ancient Greek/Egyptian/Persian mythology, using Open Quest as it’s base.
OG3 in turn, is my favourite implementation of all d100 systems. It uses the “doubles as criticals” option, caps skills at 100% and has generally a common sense approach to most things d100. If I were to make a d100 game, these would be the framework I would start with and with it’s open license, I actually can.
Mythras owes us a system defining Mythic Greece book, but until then, you have base Mythras, Runequest 6 Essentials and other bits to get by with. What took me about Jackals though, and I will accept the tag of hypocrite here after my last post, is the glossy art and world creation. It is gorgeous and close to its historical ties, but free of historical clutter. The great thing about any d100 game is of course, I can press any other d100 mechanic into service with little fuss. There is nothing to say the setting could not be used with full Mythras or other Open Quest elements added. ed. since cancelled because I do not need a glossy take on the same basic stock RQ6 already covers.
So, just how compatible are the d100 games?
Most, if you call “most” the main two groups of Runequest and Basic Role Playing games, use the same 6 core and a few flexible characteristics. Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Power, Size and any of Education, Appearance and/or Charisma, depending on the system. These are very similar to the original TWORPG’s 6.
Power is the only odd one, calling out a difference between a true supernatural/spiritual characteristic and a mental/personal one like Charisma or Wisdom. Sometimes Power is a perfect fit, sometimes an odd one, but it can be dropped or renamed if it wrankles.
The benefit though is a more flexible range of choices than the fixed six.
The mine of information and system options is deep and mature.
Almost all are skill based systems that eliminate two of my bugbears, classes and levels. This is the biggest selling point to me. I dislike the abstractness of levels and classes. They are game system controls, not reflections of reality. Ironically, TWORPG has always struggled with skills or proficiencies, d100 games thrive on them. Why can’t a thief sing, a fighter perform acrobatics or a magic user swing a sword? The reality is you cannot do eveything, but the reality is also, you cannot artificially restrict a characters path without a break in that same reality.
The basic roll-under system is also consistent, although how that is implemented varies. The cool thing is though, as long as you are consistent, you can always change it to a version of the system you prefer. I feel that the basic principals are continually evolving, always with forward pointing growth, but nothing is left behind. No edition wars here, just a constantly improving landscape.
Combat varies a little in two main areas. The first is the choice whether to use hit locations or not? Even if no hit locations are used, reverting to a more abstract style hit point pool, combat in d100 games is universally realistic, brutal and final. Massive hit point reserves are rarely used as a buffer against imminent doom. This does not have to be a d100 only paradigm, it just generally is. Possibly the desire to simulate reality as closely as possible and avoid abstractness generally, leads down this pathway, but what ever the reason, very few d100 systems are “soft”. I like this also.
It makes every interaction tense and dangerous or, more accurately, hyper realistic. TWORPG in particular can be simplistic and dull in combat, a mathematical exercise, sometimes barely worth slogging through. In most d100 games, a single lucky hit can be game changing, so no enemy can be brushed off as toothless.
The second element is less specific system “crunch”. For example the Mythras family has post-roll critical success choices, allowing the player to decide what it is they have done over and above just hitting. This opens the door for all sorts of special effects.
Magic on the other hand varies enormously. The beauty of the similar systems though is, you can mix and match to a certain extent. At last count, I have probably 15 bespoke magic systems at hand and that is not at all comprehensive. What I like is the variety both mechanically and thematically, which is often enough to define the feel of a game. Caution needs to be exercised with some combinations, but after a while you get a feel for what will work and what needs revising.
After this, there is always a ton of game behind each title no matter how small, but the core things that drive them are quite similar.
Basically, each addition to my d100 collection adds to all my d100 collection.
Handy.