An Option To Dungeons And Dragons

So, after lambasting D&D, why have I had a mild change of heart, a softening of rhetoric?

After selling most of my huge Pathfinder collection and reasonable clutch 4th edition of D&D, I swore never to fo down that path again. I did keep another D20 game called 13th Age, but that was more out of book bloat hiding it from culling eyes than design. More on this later.

So, in a moment of open minded weakness, I bought D&D 5e!

Lots of positive press about the improvements in play, clarity and application of needed fixes sucked me in. Also came the promise that they would not bloat the landscape with countless-useless tomes as the past editions had done. Three core books, all done. No Harm.

The books were a good if slightly dry read, addressing a lot of the more obvious problems with 3rd and 4th editions and promising a play style more in keeping with earlier editions, without their system clunkiness and pitfalls. Their main focus seemed to be on curving out of hand magic and making any character of any level always vulnerable.

This prompted me to get the Adventures in Middle Earth (AIME) books by Cubicle Seven. I love their take on Tolkien’s work in The One Ring RPG, but found the system suffered from an “evolving as it comes”, syndrome and some slightly too rigid processes that force players down some strict systemic pathways. I still like the system for all of the right reasons and was disappointed to hear the cleaner and more complete second edition, indeed the whole line, has been canned*.

Beautiful art, good to great writing and a successful capturing of the feel of genuine Tolkien.

AIME is for me the perfect combination of original D&D concepts as refined in fifth edition, blended with the low magic, low power world of Tolkien. Even at high levels, characters feel lower powered.

I am a strong supporter of the D&D 3e “E6” movement, which places a strong limit on character power, usually 6th level, but sometimes higher or lower. It came from an article arguing that Gandalf was only a 6th level Wizard (and he used a sword!) and that a Dragon, any Dragon should be at least region shaping event and frikkin’ scary, not just a “speed bump” for high level characters on their way to demigod status. This led to my own “E10” Pathfinder re-boot and more time wasted, when D100 games were set up this way anyway.

The beauty of AIME is it’s successful combining of the better concepts of The One Ring seamlessly and some say more efficiently, into the well trod mechanics of D&D for a coherent and complete game (the benefit of coming second after TOR is no catch-up). The game is so complete, that it only needs twenty pages from the free 5e intro rules (“Playing the Game”) to work. I traded my 5e books for some X Wing ships and moved into full AIME mode quickly.

Straddling the fence between main stream D&D and The One Ring look, the books are more cohently organised, even if most of the story lines and art are identical to TOR, but who cares. There is enough content to play both without crossing over, but I will be sticking to AIME.

Why does it work for me? Lets look at my main complaints about D&D.

Levels. It does use levels, but the 5e take on levelling up is less powerful than previous versions and AIME feels even gentler, due in part to it’s inherent mechanics. The 5e designers intent was to make even high level characters vulnerable to hordes of low level “mooks”, but magic is still an unbalancing element (see below). Ironically, levels in AIME line up perfectly with the “adventuring year” concept and the decades long campaigns that the designers have created. One year of adventure, an off season of retrospection and contemplation, leading to more preparedness, equals levelling up, then off on another adventure year stronger, better prepared and wiser. This forms decades long stories and it fits the Tolkien ethos perfectly. I have two long campaigns and dozens of filler adventures to fatten up the years of character challenges as well as countless adventure hooks in their region guides. Elven Characters for example could even adventure with multiple generations of the same family.

Magic. Magic is, just like the books, out of the hands of the characters. Some races may have access to magical items and the world has many powerful magical elements, but there are no magic using classes and few powerful magical artefacts or weapons, again just like in the books. Remember a clutch of magic rings and a handful of magic swords changed the fate of the entire world. You may meet a Mage, maybe even Gandalf, but you will not be one.

Classes. There are classes in the game, but they are in keeping with the character types common to the world and heavily influenced by race, region and personal choice. Without magic using classes they are limited to six robust types, with lots of customisation. I cannot find fault with the designers choices. Early trepidation at having only six classes was replaced with much excitement after making up three very different characters from just one class. The classes are D&D equivalents, but fit the genre better.

Combat. Combat is what it is. I have to admit, 5e has addressed a lot of the hit point bloat and un-touchableness of 3e, high level characters and I can accept that long earned experience works as an abstract hit point pool in this game. Hypocritical of me I know, but maybe the original concept has found a harmonious home (for me). I like the story first, old school feel of this world and the mechanics as is.

So, this is one way of liking D&D from a D&D critic’s perspective, but there is yet another.

*Cubicle 7 has relinquished the licence for any Tolkien based work. Fear not though! There is plenty around still and the PDF’s are still available cheaply.

The Problem With Dungeons and Dragons

A long time ago, there was One.

It was first called Chainmail, then Dungeons and Dragons and it created an entire hobby, a genre of gaming in a form never seen before.

Soon after there were three others, Tunnels and Trolls, Rune Quest and Traveller. The last two are where I came in.

D&D has a certain style, but one that I did not personally like. In fairness it has carried the game through good times and bad to a point where it is still standing strong, even dominantly over seemingly countless competitors. My dislike has not stopped me from buying into all five editions and some mirror games like Pathfinder, but that is what being number one can do to a person (I currently have only selected bits left of these systems).

My problem with the game comes from the very limiting and specific core mechanics it uses. These are needed to control what would otherwise be totally open, ad hoc play action, which is the secret of table top RPG’s, constraining otherwise no-holds-barred play with regulated game mechanics, but that does not stop me from having an almost allergic reaction to them.

The four offenders are;

Levels. An artificial feeling mechanism for character reward and advancement.

Class. Another artificial control of character capability and in the field performance.

Magic. Vancian magic as it was called, just plain annoyed me and still does to this day.

Combat. Combat in D&D was abstract in the extreme and way too unrealistic.

There are other ways of controlling these four game elements and the methods tried are pretty varied, some are even brilliant. It is interesting to note that almost all other RPG’s developed since D&D have moved away from these basic concepts.

What is even harder to argue against though is the basic play paradigm of go down a hole, kill stuff, get treasure and cash that in for experience to become a better person. This is just fundamentally unrealistic and unlike any fantasy book I have read.

Many defend D&D’s choices simply on the basis of being “the first”, others just play the game and ignore the abstractness. This is the privilege allowed to the foundation stone of the medium, but the reality is, two of the genres earlier titles strayed from the path right from the get go.

Rune Quest, which became the corner stone for countless off-chute D100 games such as Call of Cthulhu, which is still the longest running “true form” RPG, staying much the same for 6 editions. RQ used a more logical and straight forward percentile system for it’s mechanics and this allowed the game to use single percentile advancement of individual character skills usually advanced through use under pressure. These skills were in turn not limited to a single class (upbringing, race, background and career usually, but this varies) , allowing the player to pursue any likely and logical road of development. You may go dungeoneering and get rich from it, but that is you get, a rich character in a make believe world.

A small part of the D100 inventory. Classic Fantasy on the right is Mythras crossed with D&D - old school.

Want a barbarian-rogue, foot-pad type who dabbles in a few minor spells, can whip up a herbal healing salve, use a boat, climb a mountain all while worshipping their chosen god(s)? No problem. D&D at the time made you choose a Thief or Cleric or Druid, with little workable cross-over. It is telling that 50 years later, most D100 games are using this same basic system, effectively unchanged (and it is surprisingly flexible** when change is made), where D&D has been fundamentally reinvented at least three times in this space and in countless minor ways by copies and off-chutes.

Combat in D100 games has a reputation for being brutal and short lived (i.e. realistic and scary and more fun for it). In D&D players have a tendency to feel like actions do not have consequences. In D100 games they surely do.

D&D uses a highly abstract system of “Hit Points” that have become a catch-all for defences and wound effects. Hit points in D&D raise with level, simulating the characters increased survivability, which has never been properly explained to my satisfaction, especially when Joe the fighter has more than an ancient Dragon. These hit points also tend to come back far too quickly and don’t even get me started on full magical healing and resurrection.

D100 games use either a similar hit point pool, but with very real critical hit effects, or actual body location hit points that are linked to the character’s physical characteristics (only) and seldom increase artificially (levels). You can lose a limb! As the character increases in skill and their opposition stiffens, they must get better at not being hit, not just increase their vague and “squishy” hit point pools.

Rune Quest and it’s successors also handled magic more logically. It often used a power point pool, much like magical endurance that allowed you to potentially cast the same spell over and over until your reserve was tapped, rather than limit the character to one-off spell use per day/fight or rest period. Alternately, the spell could be a skill learned like any other. Tunnels and Trolls, did the same thing, becoming D&D’s main competitor back in the early days.

Ironically, most people that dislike D100 systems say they are too “swingy”, referring to it’s linear dice curve, but D&D uses basically the same system with less granularity (5% jumps).

*

Second, and my true favourite, was first edition Traveller, not the actual original edition with varied weapon damage that a friend owned, but the one after (original 1.1). Coming at the same time I discovered the Stainless Steel Rat books, Star Wars movies and 2000 AD comics in the early 80’s, Traveller allowed me to play Sci Fi in a sandbox environment, using just three slim black books in a little black box (which also held d6 dice and pens etc). The systems were logical, realistic and sublimely succinct.

Again, Traveller managed to avoid the trap of levels, experience points and class, using skills alone. It used one of the best, and most lethal character generation systems ever devised (a mini game in it’s own right).

Combat in Traveller had the brilliant idea of applying wounds to the character’s physical characteristics, directly reducing a wounded person’s capabilities. So simple, so realistic.

Traveller also gave us (after T&T) a dice curve, using two six sided dice added together. This removed the linear chance spread that D100 and D20 D&D had, providing an average. This was more logically sound and predictable.

Mongoose, among others has carried Traveller through to now. The book on the left copies the look and feel of the original, jamming a fully workable game into this slim volume. The slicker book on the right has added colour and smoother mechanics, but both still resemble the original, over forty years old now.

The biggest problem with all of the others is profile.

Most people have heard of D&D, using the term to describe all Role Playing like we use “Hoover” (or maybe Dyson now) for vacuum, but few can name many other table top RPG’s. Even “The Big Bang” and “Stranger Things” reference it directly (though the characters in TTB do not play it correctly-there are no it locations in D&D, for shame), ignoring the hundreds of other options in the hobby.

I have owned enough D&D, Pathfinder etc to sink a barge. I have given it a go, always coming back to different systems for the above reasons.

Until now.

I will explore my (mild) change of heart and the two systems that are at it’s core in the next posts.

*In early versions of D&D, you needed a representative from each major class for your party to survive, which I suppose was the point and promoted team work, but it felt very contrived. In later versions, many tasks and abilities went the way of the Dodo, but some did not. A Cleric that could only kill with non edged weapons, to avoid blood shed (but could still kill by pounding something to pulp with a mace!), Wizards could not use armour because of an ever changing excuse and only thieves were able to pick a lock? How about a big ass axe dude!

It is true that later versions softened these rigid limitations, but the fundamentals have stayed the same.

** It is entirely possible, with minimal effort to interchange core rules from D100 games from any period or genre. The Big Gold Book, a generic RPG tome of great standing, can be cherry picked for ideas for any D100 game from 1980 to now and any genre from fantasy to super heroes with little harm done. It is even possible to play around with the core rules to suit. My own system for rolling D100 is different to most, but works fine. It is not possible, for example, to use a monster stat sheet from any editions of D&D interchangeably.

Confessions Of An X Wing Tragic (Part 2)

Part two of my X Wing retrospective looks at the less pleasurable side of being a “completist” collector placed under time and financial constraints.

It occurred to me about mid March that I was not that far away from completing a full collection of X Wing ships and upgrades, from the original movies through to the latest (the prequels were not at that time covered). The problem was, they were quickly drying up.

Kicking into full scrounger mode, which I had to compromise a little with a couple of near full priced, hard to get ships, I started to fill out the missing ranks of rebel and Imperial fleets.

I was nearly completely successful, missing out on the “Ghost” expansion ironically and a couple of obscure Tie fighters. The Ghost is a big ship, not to my liking and the Tie fighters were just more of the same. The biggest miss for me was the Imperial Veterans set, that I could not seem to track down. It made the Tie Defender and Tie Bombers better, much as many of the later expansions did for B, X, A and Y wings, Scum ships and Tie interceptors. As luck would and often did go, I found a source locally, that I missed first time around due to their naff search engine (entering “X wing” apparently found little. You had to put in exactly “Star Wars X-Wing” to see all listings). This filled in most of the important gaps.

Next hurdle/windfall came in the form of a true bargain. I found a source of Scum C-Roc cruisers from the Huge ship range for $50 au, including an M3 Interceptor and plenty of upgrades effectively for free. I bought two. Oddly the supplier had few other cheap ships. In fact, the secret of my success really was shopping around. One place sold Tie/ln fighters for $9.99 locally, with free freight over $50 and time payment options, another wanted $29.99 for the same, but had the C Roc for little more! I think the average price of my fleet is about half RRP, even with a near full price Raider.

So, this opened up the Huge ship can of worms. What to do. The C Roc was a relatively points cheap, single card ship and a great table presence. The reality is I liked having the bigger ship option, it completed the X Wing story. There was also the enticement of lots of great upgrade cards in the packs that usually improved their included small craft options (Tie Advanced, M3, X Wing).

I missed a CR-90 by a day, the Imperial Gozanti was long gone and the GR-75 transport was very scarce (but luckily I found one). The only one that was readily available was the recently released Imperial Raider. The Raider appealed as the “Big Bad” I felt the Imperials needed (the Decimator pictured above is a notch above the Millenium Falcon, but not the mini Death Star I desired). Lets face it, most Star Wars stories boil down to the cobbled together few vs the mighty darkness. The Raider is also one of the two card ships.

One Raider, One GR-75 and 2 C-Roc ‘s later and the Huge ship thing was fixed. The missing upgrade cards such as the very popular C-3PO crew card were sourced through Big Orbit Cards in the UK, so no need to hunt down impossible to get Huge ships that I did not need. I have no desire for massed big ship battles (Attack Wing can do that), I just wanted scenario drivers (SD’s).

All done. All factions had comprehensive options, all upgrade cards were represented and a new Deep Cut Dunes Planet mat (in the pictures) finished the set.

So…..

Chasing up a second original “Red” core set, just for depth of some cards like R2-D2 and Luke, the distributor emailed to say they were out, but did I want the second edition one for the same price?

I promptly said no, but curiosity had me checking the full price, just to see if I was offered a bargain. Turned out, the core set was already cheap, as were the second edition conversion packs.

A day or two later, I put in an order for the First Order and Resistance ones. For less than $60au I had two factions effectively covered for the future. With free 2e rules online and most other accessories near enough for casual play I was set.

Why these two factions?

Same logic as the first time around, but more logical still. The 2e game is more balanced, the factions all stand up relatively evenly and upgrades do not rule all. The Resistance and First Order are even more robust than the early (and now prequel) ships and FFG has already added several new ships. This is exactly what these factions needed. More depth, more logical stats (Bombers with crew!) and more options. 2e seemed made for TFA period ships. Add a Resistance Transport/pod combo, 3 A Wings, 2 Interceptors.

Upgrading the older period ships is of course likely in the future, or maybe not.

Second edition is less about upgrade card hoarding and more about good piloting. Two factions can represent this well enough (each conversion set comes with over 100 cards), giving hundreds of games of balanced combinations without the need to collect all factions.

I actually don’t want to do a comprehensive change over. 2e has saved my first purchases from oblivion, keeping the two games/periods relevant and different.

Part of the fun of 1e is list building. It can break if not handled carefully, but points on upgrade cards and upgrades on ship cards makes it fun to do and a mini hobby in it’s own right. After all this game was the top dog for the better part of 10 years, warts and all.

Getting back to casual gaming, especially scenario drive friendly games, 1e is fine for the older period ships. It has a charm that suits these ships. Older game-older movies. It fits. How do I get around the meta gaming and broken list building? I stick to semi fixed lists designed as squads with suitable, cannon accurate and logical upgrades. That way “super” builds are avoided and the games feel right. Again, my players are not die-hard tourney gamers. They are friends and family, out for fun not to win at all costs, so if I tell them they can have Ion Turrets only on their Rebel Y Wings, not the recently popular and unstoppable Twin Laser Turret option, then they will not know or care.

2e does not offer points or upgrades on cards , but it does offer “Quick Builds” and an App for points based competitions. The QB option is perfect for fast pick up games (or my own simple system of dividing the ship’s pilot points by 5 and making all upgrades 1 point. It works for fun games of 30-50 points and allows more choices and subtlety than the quick builds without the math- I made a chart as the card have no upgrades on them).

The icing on the cake came from two upgrades purchased today. The Huge ship upgrade streamlines Huge ship* play and the Epic expansion allows massed ship combats. This again just adds to the relevance of the TFA period ships in 2e as it maximises my large numbers of identical ships. The Huge ship expansion provides upgrades specific to the later period (lacking in the 1e ship packs) and Epic allows me to field all 12 Tie/fo and 9 T-70 X wings in one game. The Epic set even accounts for ground defences, so Endor scenario here I come.

*In 1e huge ships are lumbering giants with donut defences and known weak spots, ideal for my mini Death Star scenario. In 2e they play more like smaller ships, allowing me to fatten up the still slightly thin FO and Resistance fleets (FO for example lacks ships with crew options). Perfect synergy and maximum bang from my most expensive ships.

There you have it. Four months from nothing to something - x2.

X Wing “Classic” focussing on the original ships, expanded universe and 1e rules and;

X Wing “New Age”, prioritising the new movies, with the new rules, including the improved Huge and Epic rules options.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Confessions Of An X Wing Tragic (Part 1)

“Pew Pew” games as my wife would say, have been a staple of mine for the last few years. I started with WW1 biplanes (Wings of War, then Canvas Eagles), then WW2 planes (Wings again then Check Your Six and others) and finally Star Trek Attack Wing, which I still feel is better value than my latest addiction, but not without it’s issues*.

Star Wars X Wing was always the one that got away.

A confirmed Star Trek tragic, I had lost the Star Wars magic that struck me after seeing the first movie first hand as a ten year old. I cannot over state my love of the early movies at the time, but the following three broke my waning interest, even without seeing them. Something changed, leaving a hole that Star Trek and other sci fi themes filled to some degree, but the worn looking droids, star ships and ridiculous, but ridiculously cool laser swords, fighters and barely disguised WW1 & 2 guns as blasters had a lasting effect.

Recently (January), at an opportune time it seems, I opened an email from a favoured distributor, revealing their Star Wars X Wing 1st edition specials. The new edition had been out for a year or so and was starting to divide the buying public as the tournament players, who had become increasingly unhappy with the state of the game after 10 years, started to switch. Too many rules, too many exceptions to those rules and far too much meta-gaming had created a friendly, but frustrated tournament circuit. This led to most playing a select handful of winning squads over and over until FFG released a “nerfing” update, which forced them to shift to the next big thing. Squads such as the “U boats” (3 Jump Master 5000’s) went from striking terror into their foes hearts, to being just a pain to use.

Second edition was/is a breath of fresh air for the serious players, who will travel continents to play for state of national titles, but for casual players, the choice is less straight forward.

In a moment of weakness I pounced.

Five “The Force Awakens” core sets (for $100 au total!), netted me 15 ships, and a near endless supply of the collateral needed for play. First edition secure for now and the future! The TFA sets are an improvement in rules and components over the original “Red” core set, but the ships are less popular.

In stage one, I was determined to stick to the two factions represented in the sets; The First Order and Resistance from episodes VII to IX. The logic was sound. These ships are more robust and forgiving than the earlier period ships and they are considered well balanced, if a little “soft” for the tournament circuit. After all, I was just a casual player with only a few opportunities to play. I also liked the new movie.

I fleshed out the two factions as I could making the most of some excellent specials, picking up some expansions of the same ships (different cards), getting lucky with 3 Tie/sf’s, the last three in captivity that I could find, an Upsilon shuttle (dead scary to look at, but a bit flat to play), the Silencer, Heroes of the Resistance and two Bombers. I had depth and enough variety to fill most roles, but I kept researching and looking for bargains.

To clarify my needs as I saw them at the time;

To be able to design often asymmetrical scenarios for casual play and simple head to head, pick up games with players that may not be familiar with the game, while representing the complete “X Wing” experience as the forces available allowed.

At some point, the even better specials available in Scum and Villainy, a faction that I could just justify time line wise, (mostly through ignorance of the Expanded Universe), became too good to resist. This faction is nothing if not varied, offering bounty hunters, cartels, pirates, villains and mercenaries. Scooping up as many cheap buys as I could, this faction soon outnumbered the other two. Even better, they can fight amongst themselves. I have even done some re-paints in this faction (Star Vipers).

Then I felt it was ok to add the odd Renegade ship (2x Saws sets), that allowed me to field older vessels with the latest upgrades, then some Imperials as logical older ships for the First Order (Lambda shuttles, some Interceptors etc) and even some later period Rebels as a New Republic “Rogue Squadron”.

Ok so far. The collection was growing, but there was a vague feeling of controlled chaos.

Then the panic set in.

*Attack Wing gives a good game with less. It offers more factions and variety and the ships are capitol ships, which are naturally more robust and versatile on the table, meaning a core set and a few expansions can make for a good and varied set (I probably should have taken my own advice there). The problems are; varied scale, with some very weird inconsistencies, such as a properly scaled Enterprise A, but over sized Klingon Bird of prey, all of the Dominion ships similarly scaled, when the actual ships are hugely different in size etc. The paint jobs also leave a bit to be desired. The standard is not terrible, but the colours are inconsistent within the same fleets with some identical ships sharing up to three different paint colours or finishes.

My major gripe with it though is the blatant swapping and sharing of non cannon periods and factions. It not unlikely at a tournament (something I would never attend, but..) to find a Borg cube captained by Kirk, crewed by later period Romulans with Klingon weapons. This is extreme but not uncommon. I can get around most of these issues by controlling the scenarios I put up and imposing realistic limits of period and faction adherence, but that is only when I provide all of the game. It is odd that the Star Wars game is pretty clean, where the Star Trek one is a free for all. Not playing Cannon Star wars is on the nose, while playing Star Trek to the faction or even time line makes you a stiff.

On Other Hobbies.

My photography is at a low point at the moment, both in inspiration and practical accessibility. I have not given up on it for the moment, but the spark is missing.

What is not floating languidly on the lake apathy are my other hobbies, nor my desire to write and share.

I feel sharing is important, because my own frustration at not finding what i need to know about something that is important to me must be shared by others.

Ironically, what little photography i am doing tends to be related to these other hobbies, so what goes around…

My other hobbies fall solidly into the mild but not unsalvageable “nerdy” end of the spectrum, but with more people stuck at home and the massive growth and acceptance of things that were, to be frank, pretty fringe when I was growing up in the 80’s (and still working on it), allows me to share my thoughts, with some sense of relevance.

Lets see how we go.