Roleplayers Wanted: Dead or Alive!

Okay, I’ve been humming and harring about it for sometime, but now I vaguely know where I’ll be for the next six months or so, I feel it’s time that I bite the bullet and looked for some fellow gamers to try role-gaming again…

Only there’s one small problem: I don’t know anyone here! I’ve done some looking online for groups in my local area, but there’s not much geeky action going down. There is a student gaming group at a Manchester uni, although I don’t know if non-students can join. It’s also run in a student-uni bar, which to my mind isn’t conclusive to having a good interuption-free game, but if I can’t find any better action i might make inquiries… Still, I’m a bit long in the tooth to want to hang about with a bunch of bratish emo-kids… meh! Hmmm… it’s not going to happen is it? Well, consider this a speculative punt more than an earnest attempt to get back into RPGing at any costs… (I just hate all people in general really)

Anyway, I’ve put an ad in the hobbies/activities section on Gumtree, asked about on the RPG.net forums and on NearbyGamers, but I’m getting no bites (wrong bait, maybe), so I thought I’d whore myself on here too, in case it comes on on a Google search for some other desperate gamer. Of course exposing my dodgy RPG past on here might put some people off, but nothing ventures and all that…

So, I’m in the Greater Manchester area, UK. Prepared to travel, but limited to public transport, so realisticly that means no late late sesions due to the shitty early times of last trains in the Northwest. My tastes probably lean to wanting to try the cultural/freeform-style of gaming rather than a very structured game, but any game considered, but preferably with a fairly mature (in attitude if not age) group of gamers and no muchkinism. I suppose I’m prepared to ref, but preferably not straight away, although I’d consider jumping straight in the refereeing deep-end for a bunch of newbies.

So, if you are reading this and you are interested or know of a group or know of a different way in which I might find a group, then let me know by dropping off a comment.

ElfQuest

Elfquest by Steve Perrin (Chaosium 1985)

Long-time: no-post, but better late than never I suppose…

Bit of a strange one this in my RPG collection: it being a relatively early second generation RPG that I only ended up owning about six years ago or so: at a time that I no longer role-played any more as I hadn’t done for some time and as I had little intention of doing so again (as far as I remember). So why did I buy it? Simply because I was flogging some old RPG stuff on eBay (something I’ve done on and off ever since) and when browsing the auctions to gauge prices I spotted this: a game I always fancied getting, but never did. Anyway, my eyes were bigger than my belly and get it I did…

Due to the colossal area that old-skool Chaosium boxes take up I was unable to fit the entire box on my scanner, but you get the idea...

Why did I want it? Well, I never read the Elfquest comics from which it is based, but I’ve always been a big disciple of the Chaosium and the Basic Role-Playing system. I was intrigues to see yet another variation on a well loved theme again. Anyway, there wasn’t much in the way of interest in it, so I threw in a bid and hey-presto: it was mine, all mine! Of course I barely looked at it once it arrived and it’s been stuck in a box ever since – until a few days ago when I spied it again while I was perusing my old games as a means of potential revenue. So, here’s a review on yet another game I never played… Actually I doubt many others ever played it either, but, as ever, if you are one of the few and have any memories of playing the game then please leave a comment and tell me what it was like!

Confession time: as I said, I know nothing (well, next to nothing) about the ElfQuest comics from which this game is based, although I am broadly familliar with their existance as such and I think I have an idea as to what they are about, but it goes without saying that I’m flying blind here, so if I’m off the mark… you’ll have to like it or lump it; or, better than that, tell me in a coment.

It being a Chaosium game you know the drill: it uses a variant of the Basic Role-Playing system first made famous by Runequest and used in almost every game they’ve published since. In case you don’t know its a skills-based system, where skills are rated as a percentage and are rolled against with a simple yes or no d100 roll. It’s an elegant system which has influenced more game design than any other RPG system ever invented, although it does have its limitations. Interestingly of all the Basic Role-Playing variations since RQ it’s the one that retains most of RQ’s excesses in mind-numbing complexity, keeping such details as Strike Ranks, Hit Locations and the Armour Points of weapons for parrying: complexities which were pretty much all dropped in Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer and Pendragon. The effect of these extra rules upon that mythical game-balance is something that I’ll get to in a bit, but needless to say they cause their share of problems.

So what’s ElfQuest? Well in case you don’t know EQ the RPG is based on ElfQuest the comics by Richard and Wendy Pini, which first appeared in the late 1970s. Set in the World of Two Moons, a Neolithic Ice Age planet, the comics told the story of the Wolfrider tribe of elves and their search for a new home. The elves in EQ are the descendent of the original elves who landed on the World of Two Moons many thousands of years ago, who have degenerated biologically, culturally and technologically into a smaller and more primitive species. The original elves (unoriginally called High Ones) arrived on the planet from some artefact from the starts (yes, you guessed it: a fucking space ship) and, although it is never explicitly said in the rules, I think it is fair to say that the elves are descended from some kind of aliens. However I must stress that EQ is no science fantasy setting, it is purely fantasy in the epic tradition.

Anyway, the privative humans on the World of Two Moons didn’t take kindly to their new elven visitors and promptly kicked their skinny asses, leaving the survivors battered and bruised and scattered across the planet. Over many generations the elves have evolved or devolved into distinct tribes, such as the aforementioned Wolfriders, the more civilized Sun Folk, the hawk-riding Gliders and the hunter-gatherer Go-Backs. The game also invents a few more elf variants that aren’t found in the original comics, such as Desert Elves, Sea Elves and Plainsrunners. The elves also have to share the world with the Trolls, who also came from the artefact, although relations between the two once space-faring races is no longer friendly – and there are also the fairy-like Preservers too, although they don’t seem so iportant to the setting to me. However the main cause of conflict is between the elves and the xenophobic humans tribes. And it is this clash of cultures which should probably be the focus of much of the game.

As you can see over-comming distrust between the elves and the humans is a reoccuring theme in the game and presumably the comics too

Now, I’ve never read the comics, so I have no idea how faithfully the games manages to recreate the comics, however it does seem to me that the ever adaptable Basic Role-Playing system has done a fairly good job. Character creation is a simple mix of random stats from which you determine starting skill levels then add extra skill points or raise stats from previous experience depending on how old you starting character is. Starting age is likely to be fairly old in human terms because elves are effectively immortal, although the harsh Ice Age hunter-gather life style means that old age is something of a rarity for Woldrider elves. Another interesting facet of EQ is Recognition. Basically to offset the effects of immortality, elf fertility is amazingly low, hence elves can only breed with their Recognised mate: someone they are genetically compatible with. Elves are free to hook up with other elves, but it is only through Recognition that they may breed. All very well, but what I like about it is that just because two elves are genetically compatible, their personalities might not be: leaving the possibility for some interesting role-playing situations. Starting PC’s have a chance of already Recognised, but if not then they must roll every time they meet a new tribe of elves to see if they might ‘get some.’

What is interesting about EQ is that despite the briefness of the rules (72 pages and 36 pages in total) and almost no explicit details as to how to run an EQ campaign, I have a much clearer idea of how an EQ games should be run than I do with many other more thorough RPGs. It seems to me that a campaign would consist of the PC’s tribe battling against their slowly thawing Ice Age environment, while trying to forge alliances between themselves, other elf and troll tribes and trying to keep relations with the suspicious humans as sweet as possible under the circumstances. A campaign would be incredibly simple to set up compared to other game systems as much of the world of EQ has no cities or other large settlements, so a GM’s job would be just to create a load of NPCs within the various tribes and set up the occasional stimuli, such as the need for food, territorial disputes or Recognition to get things moving now and again. Possibly EQ is the most intuitive game system I’ve ever read!

The tone of the game is also refreshing. It is neither as tomb-plunderingly old school as an endless moronic dungeon bash nor as annoyingly hip as some angst-ridden dark fantasy bull shit. In fact it’s refreshingly light in tone, possibly a little too hippy and cutsie for by liking, but the tone could easily be tweaked into something a little more weighty, something like Princess Mononoke or indeed the clash of cultures to be found in a Glorantha based RQ campaign, if the ref and the players want. Actually I imagine that the EQ comics must have been an influence on some of the Studio Ghibli anime films, although I might be talking crap again…

Anyway, back to the game system. As I said the rules are basically the same as RQ. Okay, the number of skills and spells is massively stripped down, but combat is about as complicated as ever. Actually it is only in combat that I have a problem with the game (as fact that won’t surprise anyone who has had been unfortunate to read any of my other reviews) and where I imagine that the system might fail to evoke the comics, because unless a major character dies on every other page then I feel combat in EQ the RPG is far far FAR (!) too fucking deadly. As I have stated elsewhere on this blog, the RQ/Basic game system and its many variants needs constant fudging by the beleaguered ref to keep the players alive. But one facet of the RQ combat system that I probably didn’t emphasis enough is the utter importance of armour in allowing the poor players any reasonable chance of surviving even the simplest of combat encounters. Without armour basically any hit from any standard weapon will kill or seriously incapacitate any character. Certainly any two hits will kill them. In case you don’t know armour in RQ works in the standard non-D&D way of subtracting damage from the total damage. Now this is okay in Glorantha for RQ or the Young Kingdoms for Stormbringer, as armour is fairly plentiful in these setting, but this is not the case in the ElfQuest universe, where metal armour is basically unknown. Things are made worse by the inclusion of RQ’s hit location system, something which Strormbringer and Pendragon wisely ditched. RQ’s hit location system means that not only do characters have to worry about their total Hit Points being reduced to zero, but also each hit location’s HP also. Needless to say that an arm or a head have much few HP than a character’s total HP. Things are made worse in EQ by how HP are determined. Old hands at RQ-related games will know that HP are derived from the stats Constitution and Size and don’t go up with levels as nonsense like levels just don’t exist (just like real life). Now an average human will have ~11 HP or a pissy 4-5 HP in each location, but an average Woldrider will have a mere 7-8 HP meaning only 2-3 HP per location due to his tiny size. Baring in mind that in EQ more than 1-2 Armour Points in any given hit location will be a rarity and that a short sword does 1d6+1 points of damage not including any STR/SIZ bonus,meaning that a single hit will easily hew off an arm and quite probably slay a character!  This is obviously realistic, but surely it makes any kind of standard combat encounter as found in any mainstream fantasy RPG far too deadly and turns every combat encounter into a fudging nightmare for all but the most putative of referees.

Which I suppose should mean that most EQ games will be fairly combat-lite, which suits me as I hated running fights as a ref. Boring, boring! Which is fine! Players will have to find non-violent means as a way to overcoming the odds. However judging by the three sample scenarios in the Worldbook this is not how Chaosium imagined the game to be played. Actually I use the word ’scenarios’ in the loosest of ways as basically the ’scenarios’ consist of little more than three combat encounters. The premise of them all is okay and would certainly fit into the overall campaign structure that I suggested earlier, but I just fail to see how any of the players would survive them unless they put all their previous experience skill points into the ever useful Dodge and Parry skills; and even then I think you’re looking at a bunch of dead elves.

However I think I see a rule-tweak which might work, although one that bares no semblance to how damage works in reality. The total HP should be a buffer to be used, after which point damage goes to the hit location. Not very realistic but easy to remember and it doesn’t require a massive rewrite of the game system. Also it still keeps some of the lethality of the combat system.

Moving on… Magic is simply a bunch of skill-like special psychic abilities that fall into Telekinetic and Telepathic Powers. They are the remnants of the psychic powers inherited from the original High Ones and have massively atrophied over the millennia. The only good thing I can say about it is that it is at least simple and there aren’t many boring spell descriptions to wade through, which suits me as reading endless lists of hardware and spellware is something that I have little intention to ever doing again. However, elf-magic isn’t very evocative. But functional: yes it is.

So, would I play it and am I going to sell it like I’ve done with so many other games? Well, I’m definitely going to keep it and if I ever role-play again then yes, I would certainly consider running EQ, especially for beginning players. The basic EQ set-up gives a limited and distinct framework for players to work in: the PC’s being young bucks in a tribe who are trying to survive and procreate. Everything is against them from the icy wilderness, to tribal squabbles (internal and external) and the threat of humans. Keeping one eye open for your Recognition partner so you can get some gives your character a good cultural reason to go a wondering and check rumours of other elf tribes. Perfect roleplay potential! It might not have the cultural depth of some settings, such as Tekemul or Glorantha, but its more intuitive and it doesn’t require reading hundreds of pages of pretentious mock-history to ‘get’ it. Obviously EQ also has bucket-loads more than originality and potential for cultural role-playing than Forgotten Realms ever had.

However I do think that EQ is still a bit skimpy in places. There’s no real information as to how a tribe is structured or how the division of labour is organised. What’s the deal with Recognition and gender roles? If an elf-gal is Recognised by an elf from another tribe, do they just let her go. I guess there’s less imperative to guard the women-folk if none of them have been Recognised by any of the fellers from that tribe. Of course all these aspects could make interesting fulcrums for many a game session and some refs might enjoy the freedom this brings (I think I’d one of them), but I do think that it needs thinking about rather than just ignoring. Religion is also strangely absent. I guess this means that the poor ref has to put in some extra leg work. Actually while we’re at it, it would be nice to know how big an average tribe is in EQ? Quite small I’d imagine… Of course all these questions (and more) might be answered in the comics, so I might have to see if I can pick some up nice and cheap on eBay while I still have some PayPal credit left… Or of course you could just come to your own conclusions.

If I was to run EQ then I think I’d also dig out GURPS Ice Age and the ye oldie AD&D Wilderness Survival Guide, as well as any supplements or games that deal with shamanism and such-like, as I think further understanding of the human tribes, the wilderness and shamanistic magic would add much to the game. I think EQ would suit a relatively freeform style of gaming, with the ref handing over much of the responsibility of the campaign over to the players. Actually I think the game would also suit a Ars Magica style of troupe play, with the players creating a handful of characters from the larger tribe-pool of PC/NPCs each from which they can draw from as needed in their quest for resources and survival. Considering the lethality of EQ this seems to make sense. I’d probably adapt Pendragon’s Winter Phase system to run EQ as a large-scale style of campaign play. Indeed I see an EQ campaign to be run along similar lines as post-apocalypse style games like Living Steel which gave the players a large group of survivors to use as a character pool.

So what happened to EQ? Well, it, like so many other games licensed from niche sources, was largely unsupported by Chaosium and it died soon after. In total Chaosium produced three supplements for the game: the Elfquest Companion, which I don’t own, and Sea Elves, which I do. There is also something called Elf War. I imagine the Companion to be fairly typical of Chaosium companions from this era, i.e. a few extra monsters and spells and two or three adventures, but if I see it I’ll buy it and review it here. Strangely a few weeks after getting EQ on eBay, I saw Sea Elves, which I bought for very little and I’ll review it on here some day.

Cover artwork not by Wendy Peni this tim, but this is still - to my tiered eyes - a very pretty cover indeed

Overall: I like EQ, I like it a lot. It’s not ‘kewl’ and it’s not stupid, it’s just a nice simple little game. It’s a simple, unpretentious and potentially interesting – and, even, thought-provoking game, which would be ideal for a moderately experience ref to introduce RPG-virgins to… Now that’s a phrase which could be read into in many many ways!

As you can see the art, taken from the comics, is really very lovely. A bit cutesy in places for those raised on Games Workshop's crass 'chaos-spiky-bits' but for the rest of us...

• Linky to a less kind, but very fair review, which goes into greater detail about the history of the game and the comics.
• And for those, like me who know next to nothing about the ElfQuest comics, here’s a link to the Wiki page.

Finest Hour (Campaign Pack for Golden Heroes/Squadron UK)

Superhero comics are full of the most unlikely resurrections. Villains who as they shed this mortal coil swear vengeance upon those conquering crime-bustin’ defenders of liberty clad in knickers over their leggings and their capes flapping in the wind. It maybe a cliché but its one we all love. Even heroes are prone to Christ like resurrections, sometimes days, sometimes years after their original demise. But the news of the resurrection of Golden Heroes the 80s superhero role-playing game really did take me by surprise. Yes, news to me even if it isn’t for you, but it’s back after all these years. Back but not the same. Well, not quite the same, this time it has a new name: Squadron UK, but other than that very little has changed. It’s still the same excellent and innovative game it ever was. Not only that, but there’s a bunch of new supplements for it too!

A brief preamble on the history of Golden Heroes/Squadron UK for those who don’t know:

The particulars of the return of Golden Heroes/Squadron UK is a tale of fans of the old game starting an online community in homage to the original’s splendour. Thus inspiring the game’s creator Simon Burley to don his old leggings and cape once again to fight crime, write supplements, self-publish and, if there’s any justice, sell some games too. As any one who read my review on the original game (written when I had no idea of the game’s new-found resurrected status) will tell I am a big fan of many of its game mechanics and its understated yet underlying ironic Britishness in contrast to its brasher American superhero RPG cousins.

In fairness apart from the name change the new game seems to have changed very little over its 20 odd year fallow period. A trait which it shares with another old Games Workshop game Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play, which returned unchanged when it was originally republished by Hogshead in the mid-90s after a much shorter period in the wilderness. However Golden Heroes was never as broken as WHFRP was and while there remains a few very minor niggles, the game system remains as strong as ever. Perhaps in an ideal world maybe combat could have been slightly simplified and maybe it lacks a unified mechanic like the d20, Basic Role-Playing and many other systems which might make the game aesthetically a little more pleasing, to my mind it’s 20 odd year old design still has more charm and originality to it than many more unified systems. Anyway, its modular nature, like old school AD&D bits and bobs approach to game mechanics, certainly allows for easy tweaking without any wholesale re-writing of the game-system, but unlike AD&D the Golden Heroes system isn’t as half as messy nor is their any great need to tweak.

For those intrigued by the game in general or would like to read the specifics of one of finest game mechanics in role-playing history: the Campaign Rating mechanic (not just my opinion but also scientific FACT and you can’t argue with that), which is a statistical measure of a PC’s personality which changes depending upon the PC’s actions and behaviour, pre-dating Pendragon’s Passion system, then I’m pleased to say that a FREE Basic version of the new-look Squadron UK rules is available from Simon Burly (just follow the links). Actually there is nothing basic about the Basic rules at all as I believe that they are pretty much the same as the full rules, only without extended descriptions and examples of game play and rule use and such. A decision which has to be commended in my opinion. Okay there’s a lot of other free RPGs out there right now, but how many of them have the same pedigree as Golden Heroes? Only the free pdf of Ars Magica 4^th edition from Atlas Games, Marcus Rowland’s Forgotten Futures or Paul Mason’s Outlaws of the Water Margin come close in my opinion.

For those with old versions of Golden Heroes then there appears to be little reason to up-grade to the full version judging by a quick looksee through the Basic Rules, although there might be some extra campaign background information that I don’t know about in the full rules. Anyway for the first time in decades there are a bunch of new supplements available as pdf files and, coming soon, as hard copies, which might be of interest. Some are free, other require parting with you not-so-hard-earned cash. Of interest to me was the campaign pack Finest Hour, which is one of the ones which will cost you money: $5.99 for the pdf, print version to come on Lulu.

Oh, while I’m here I’ll just say that for convenience when I refer to the game system I shall refer to it as Golden Heroes rather than Squadron UK or the more long-winded Golden Heroes/Squadron UK, simply because those are the rules I own in full and while I like the name Squadron UK for a superhero group, I don’t like it for a name of a superhero RPG. It sounds too militaristic to my ears. Also it would be too tempting to abbreviate it to SUK, which would be unfortunate, because if there’s one with this game doesn’t do is that. Although I suppose Squad-UK has a ring to it, although it does sound a bit like a punk band.

But before I review in earnest I think its only fair to come clean and declare my potential bias:

Unlike everything else so-far reviewed on here I’ve not paid for the Finest Hour. No I haven’t ‘alf inched it, you cheeky git! I’m pleased to say that after reading my nostalgic review of Golden Heroes game designer Simon Burley offered to send me one of his game supplements to review, which, as I’m a huge fan of the game, I was only too happy to accept. Obviously though there’s a difference between spending your own money on a game and getting one for free. A situation which I’ll try my best to take into account in my review, by being a little picky here and there. Also, I’m not a ‘professional’ reviewer as such, so take that into account if you must do too. I’ll also confess here that I take little pleasure in putting in the boot to any ‘indie’ or self-published stuff as in my opinion life is hard enough without me adding to their woes. So I accepted Simon Burley’s kind offer with the proviso that if I didn’t like it or at least didn’t find it interesting in some way that I would pass and simply not review it at all.

Now, as this is a review of said product you will probably assume that this review will be at least in some way or other positive. Which indeed it is. Read on…

Finest Hour (a Campaign Pack for Golden Heroes/Squadron UK) by Simon Burley

In a nut-shell: Finest Hour is a 46 page campaign pack, available as a pdf or (soon) in print, giving rules, scenarios and advice for running a Golden Heroes campaign in the 1940s: providing a couple of adventures, a bunch of adventure seeds, an alternate character generation system and some solid advise and ideas on running a super-powered campaign against those evil Nazis at the height of WWII in the style of all those classic war films, such as Where Eagles Dare, and the pulp novels and comics scripts from the period; and those more recent pastiches of the genre, such as Indiana Jones and The Rocketeer.

Now this strikes me as a rather good idea for a superhero campaign setting as it saves a game from emulating the ubiquitous post-modern taint that has, in my opinion, all but consigned the superhero comic into a wannabe psycho’s wet-dream and returned it to its rightful place: back in the ‘Golden Age’ of comics. In fairness WWII and the Nazis have always had their place in the super-genre, from Captain America’s war-time Super-Serum origins to the more ironic multi-dimensional Nazis super soldiers found in Zenith in the late 80s.

As you can imagine, Finest Hour doesn’t stray too far from its ‘pulp’ source material. The Brits are the goodies, the Nazis are the baddies. Good vs. Evil, with no, or very few, shades of grey in-between. The Heroes will be patriotic and be prepared to fight and if necessary die for their country. If that premise doesn’t do it for you then you better look elsewhere or be prepared to significantly change things. Of course you don’t have to be a car-carrying member of the National Front, but your characters will be patriotic in a way that is very rarely seen today (at least by me and the tiny circles I move in) even if you aren’t.

Golden Heroes always took an innovative approach to character generation and Finest Hour is no exception. Instead of generating a bunch of super-powered Heroes to wade right into the Nazis super-threat, Finest Hour starts the Heroes off as ordinary everyday service men and citizens, and embroils them in a super-powered Nazis conspiracy to poison London, steal Excalibur and strike at the heart of the British navy. The PCs initially will be very much out of their depth and have to use their non-super abilities, wit and good old-fashioned stiff-upper-lip to defeat the Nazi plot. With luck, by the end of their first adventure the Heroes will be members of a secret organization called ‘Black Watch’ and be prepared to do it all again for King and country should they get the call. And you know they will get the call, many times over. Of course things won’t stay un-super-powered for ever as last Finest Hour adventure in the pack will power-up the PCs into Britain’s very own superheroes.

As far as I’m aware Finest Hour is the first superhero RPG to take this delayed approach to superhero creation, an approach that is to my mind a brilliant idea. The origins of a superhero are usually integral to a his story and in many cases his appeal, as fact that superhero movies have always realised all too well by focussing much of the plot of their first films on this ‘back-story.’ Strange then that superhero RPGs consign a heroes origins to half an hours dice rolling and head scratching with the referee. Well not any more. I believe this approach would be suitable for even contemporary superhero campaigns. I guess role-playing a character’s origins has been done before (Vampire: the Masquerade comes to mind), but usually as a one-to-one with player and ref for half an hour or so. To role-play out an entire adventure or even, if the ref wants to use the scenario seeds as inspiration, many such adventures, seems like a great way to develop a PC’s character up over time and a highly original concept to boot. Of course a non-super-powered campaign against super-powered opposition could be fun in itself and how much more will the players appreciate their characters powers when they finally get them.

But eventually as victims of Nazis experimentation the players will get to try out the second half of the tweaked character generation rules via the lovely and much improved super-power generation tables. Rather than one ‘master’ table to roll your powers on, each table has a unique selection of powers each reflecting powers appropriate to their respective origins. A player’s super-origins include: animal powers, surgery, drugs, radiation, occult or powers derived via some found Nazis technology in the form of powered armour or some strange device. For instance if the PC gets his power via Nazi drug experimentation, like Captain America’s super-soldier origin, then he might role anything from super strength to psi powers to shrink, but he won’t role something incongruous to his origin like magic powers or armour. I very much like these new costume power tables and I think I would use them for all character generation is any Golden Heroes game and for these alone Finest Hour is work the money. While it doesn’t stifle the ‘rationalize your powers or lose them’ method of the traditional character generation system, it does reduce the chance of a player being lumped with too many inappropriate results that might be next to impossible to rationalize on the fly. To be honest I’d have liked to have seen something like these tables introduced, at least as an option, in the rules found in the Basic rule-book, as some tables like this appeared in an old issue of White Dwarf back in the day and I though it a good idea then, as, eventually, other game-systems like TSR’s aweful Marvel Superheroes took this approach to random character generation.

I like the approach Simon Burley takes with Finest Hour. Instead of providing tonnes of background data from which the referee should be inspired from, he instead gets thins moving with a long introductory adventure, ‘Dark Business,’ which drip-feeds the players the setting: taking a peeling layers off the onion approach to scenario design, which always works well. The second mission, ‘Dark Origins,’ to be run sometime later, results in the PCs gaining their super-powers. Once the players get their powers the rest of that mission, ‘Escape to the Light,’ follows in what amount to a daring escape followed by a massive punch-up in which they can flex their new bulging biceps and energy beams. I like both adventures, but for me ‘Dark Buisness’ is far superior to ‘Dark Origins/Escape to the Light,’ which is based a little too strongly on an aforementioned war film in this review, which makes certain sub-plots a little too obvious to nay players familliar with this film.  Finest Hour also gives a dozen or so adventure seeds to either run in between the introductory adventure and ‘Dark Origins’ or to run after the players get their powers – depending on how much the players and ref relish the ‘against all the odds’ style of adventures that an un-powered Finest Hour campaign might offer. The quality of some of these adventure seeds are a little variable, but there is plenty of good ideas here to inspire even the most jaded of referees. Finest Hour finished off with some great advice and some interesting suggtions for  directions that the ref might wish to pursue: my favourite of which should result in the Heroes trying to stop the Allies from nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki while simultaneously forcing the Japanese to surrender by forging their own attack. All in a days work, I suppose!

As you can probably tell I like the Finest Hour, I like it a lot, but, like just about everything, it isn’t entirely perfect, although it’s pretty damned close. Still, in the name of armature journalistic endeavour I better list the few minor issues I have with it.

• Firstly it’s not going to win any graphic design awards. Unlike many games from the 90s onwards which seemed to really integrate the physical design hand-in-hand with the game setting, Finest Hour looks more like a early/mid-80s module. Not that it’s ugly – it’s just not very pretty. Of course it’s unlikely that anyone will be buying it for its aesthetic qualities and in the only criteria that is important, i.e. readability/playability, it is perfectly functional, especially baring in mind that many people will be reading it off a laptop screen (like me) and only printing off the bits they need for game play. The art is mainly sourced from ’stock art’ and online resources and thus isn’t very remarkably, although it more than does the job. The period pictures are probably the best, while some of the super villain illustrations are less impressive. Again, they’re not beautiful, but I’m glad it’s there. There are also a few typos here and there which even my tiered dyslexic eyes could see. Again, not a serious problem and one which is common in many small press publications (and probably common to this blog too). Still, in the context of this being a self-published product it looks more than good enough.
• While I like the approach of showing the setting through scenarios, there is an issue of an almost total lack of dedicated background information. There is no guide to war-time Europe, no historical information, very little detail on Britain in the 1940s (cultural or geographical), no time-line for the War and, possibly most importantly, no maps of war-time Britain or London. Now how much of these details will be necessary for all refs is debatable. If a ref decides to play the game for ‘pulp’ adventure and ‘pulp’ adventure alone, then almost all these details are unnecessary, although they might still add atmosphere or inspire scenario creation for the referee. However should a prospective ref with to mix the ‘pulp’ action with a little bit of cultural role-playing then, effectively, he or she is on their own. Now all these details could easily be sorted with a trip to the library or some online research, but it would have been nice to have included something to wet the appetite here.
• No enough maps! No, not maps of war-time London or Berlin or whatever, but the adventures are a little on the map-lite side for my liking. There are maps for most of the combat encounters in the introductory adventure, although the final climax, set on a naval destroyer, could have been better equipped in this regard. But the final two-part adventure is the worst offender: providing no maps at all in a big location that as a ref I’d really like to have maps for. The adventure is set on a massive cliff-top Austrian estate with a presumably quite extensive underground complex underneath. Okay, it should be possibly to wing it as the action is going to be fairly cinematic, but personally I’d prefer even a simplified map or two to aid my flagging imagination, especially regarding combat encounters, which for me are never my favourite part of refereeing. Okay, I should be able to source something or other with a bit of surfing or from another game supplement or something, but I do feel that this is a bit of an oversight. Understandable as this is a self-published product and professional looking maps aren’t the easiest of things to produce, but I’d sooner a scan of a pencil sketch than nothing.
• Not much information on the Black Watch. Okay, I’m being ultra-picky here, but there aren’t many details about this covert organisation. Not that I think many would be needed, but perhaps a few more details here and there would have been nice. Also a map of the secret HQ underneath one of London’s more famous landmarks would have been nice (although not essential as the other map shaped holes), if only because creating these kind of play aids is a pain in the ass. However the lack of specific details here allows a referee to model the Black Watch to his own campaign needs and once the PCs are super-powered I don’t suppose that this organisation will be more than a background detail.
• A bibliography: While source material might be obvious for us oldies, I’m sure there is at least one generation by now who haven’t been raised on a diet of War films and comics. A brief bibliography is always a nice touch.
• The adventures are linear. Okay, this is unsurprisingly considering the source material, but the adventures are heavily plotted and don’t allow a lot of options for the characters beyond the constraints of the story and the genre. Not that Finest Hour is alone in this regard. Pretty much every published scenario ever published suffers in this regard to some extent and Finest Hour isn’t, by far, the biggest offender. Now this is not to say that there is only one way to progress though the adventures. There is usually at least a couple of ways to follow leads and many scenes encourage the players to invent their own solution, but often the outcome of their actions isn’t in doubt, which won’t suit all styles of play. However it is true to the genre. But still there is no getting away from it, the scenarios assume that the PCs will eagerly put their necks on the line, follow the clues and jump through hoops. Should your players be the type so say ‘fuck this!’ and fly off to the Caribbean till the whole thing blows over, then you’re on your own. Now, I doubt that this will be a problem for many, but some players resent being rail-roaded and prefer a more free-form style of play. If, however, you and your players relish action-packed cinematic mayhem, then this simply won’t be a problem. But it might, just might, be something worth considering.

But none of these issues is catastrophic and many won’t be an issue at all to many referees. Some will only effect certain referees and players who demand a certain style of play, while others can be fixed with only a little foresight. The only significant problem in my opinion is the lack of scenario maps for a couple of key locations. Apart from that Finest Hour could be run by a half experienced ref after only one reading and I imagine the players, providing they accept the genres limitations, should enjoy every Nazis-bustin’ moment of it.

Okay, complaints aside: Finest Hour is a truly excellent supplement for any Golden Heroes referee wishing to give his players a new look and many of its ideas could easily be adapted to other game systems should you desire: Forgotten Futures or Feng Shui maybe. It faithfully replicates those ye oldie war films from your tender youth and perfectly pastiches a style of escapist ‘pulp’ adventure which lies sadly forgotten these days. Note: I use the word ‘pastiche’ here as a compliment, because Finest Hour does so with real love and respect for the genre. Apart from the potential issue of sourcing one or two maps, Finest Hour gives you a campaign setting that can be run with the minimum of fuss. It also does that clever thing which all really playable campaign packs should do: reading it simply fires up your imagination. On every other page an idea or two as to possible missions or interesting directions I could take a potential campaign would literally pop in to my head. No sitting there desperately trying to see a way in which I might use the setting. From the first page it is obvious how the game would run, which makes it a perfect campaign for novice referees or for more experienced refs to break in newbie players.

So, liking a game supplement is one thing, but would I actually run it? In a word: yes. It would be a shame for such an inspiring campaign to lie dormant in my head. Although I will qualify my ‘yes.’ Stylistically I think my role-playing head is facing a less structured direction than this today, which is a pity, but should the right players ever come along, then I’m more than tempted. Previously, despite my love of many of the key mechanics of Golden Heroes, it would be unlikely that I’d have ever have run anything longer than a one-off mission simply because contemporary setting don’t in general really do it for me no matter how clever or lovely they might be, but Finest Hour circumnavigates this and provides an excellent reason to don tights and capes, and does so in the last proper pre-contemporary era in my opinion. For the life of me I don’t know why more RPGs haven’t be set in the 1940s. It seems sadly neglected, which is strange considering the hot-bed of intrigue, clashing ideologies and full-scale war which defines it. Finest Hour readdresses this neglect and does so in style!

Golden Heroes

Golden Heroes by Simon Burley and Peter Haines (Games Workshop, 1984)

Superhero RPGs have been around almost as long as role-playing. While individual superhero game systems have come and gone over the years (mainly gone), their influence on game design can not be underestimated, even if the longevity of these individual game systems is mayfly-like when compared to mainstays of fantasy and SF RPGing. Champions is probably the exception, having survived on and off (more off than on probably) in various incarnations over the years. No doubt this is because it was the first and, I suppose for many, also the best. Marvel Heroes (TSR) and DC Heroes (Mayfair) both had decent short term success, yet, despite having highly successful licenses supporting them, they faded away surprisingly quickly.

While the fleeting commercial lifespans of these games systems were short, they have all left their mark on RPG game design to some extent. Champions had the first point-based character design system, with all the advantages/disadvantages, and I’m pretty sure it introduced hero points as a legitimate means for players to fudge the dice. Okay, Marvel Heroes was actually rubbish, but I guess it could be argued that the descriptive rather than numerical stats pre-dated the descriptive Amber system, although I admit that the ethos of these game systems is entirely different. But for me the DC Heroes system is my favorite of the big three super-RPGs. Its game design was by far the most elegant, including a resolution table which even today is a thing of beauty, especially when you consider the system had to reconcile the difference in power between, say, Robin and Superman, which it amazingly manages to do all on one little table and logarithmic stats! But best of all was DC Heroes system for resolving subplots was excellent and, to my mind, gazzumped Pendragon and the latter ’storyteller’ style games in providing a meaningful framework for handling personal character-focused dramas.

Of course there were and (probably) are other super-RPGs out there, from fleeting things like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to White Wolfs failed Trinity/Aon thing, to the long-term if unremarkable success of GURPS Supers. What of course all these games have in common is that they are all American, which is understandable as the superhero genre is perhaps quintessentially an American genre. Sure there are exceptions: Watchmen, The Boys, Zenith and the less well known but utterly amazing New Statesmen are superhero comics that all come to mind, but these subvert and deconstruct the genre and all but one is actually set in the US. Yet despite this there was one genuine superhero RPG that did sprout out of the UK’s fledgling RPG industry (an industry that died long before its teens alas).

And that game was Golden Heroes! In fact GH has the dubious distinction of being Games Workshop’s first home-grown RPG. Before that GW had only released UK licensed versions of American products, such as the UK editions of Runequest, Traveler, MERP and Call of Cthulhu, as well as generic RPG aids like floor plans and those mysterious ‘hex sheets.’ I’m guessing that for GW to produce their own RPG in 1984 was a fairly big deal for them at the time. Maybe even make or break? And I’m also guessing that the idea of producing a generic superhero RPG must have looked like a fairly smart move too. The fantasy RPG market must have looked fairly crowded at the time (D&D, AD&D, RQ and Tunnels & Trolls, among others) and the SF market couldn’t have looked much better (Traveler, Star Frontiers and Gamma World, etc…), so only having to compete against Champions must have seemed like much better odds. Of course I could be wrong, maybe the decision to elbow in on the proto-super-RPG scene was more organic than how I’m presenting it, but either way it must have seemed like quite a smart move at the time. GW also had the trump card of having their own house RPG mag White Dwarf from which to bang their drum, a luxury that Champions didn’t have…

The physical design of the game books emulated the comic book look

But before you could say “Holy d20, Batman” licensed super-RPGs would be on the scene and the super-RPG market, what must surely be a fairly niche market within the greater if only slightly large niche market of RPG industry as a whole, must have started to look a little too crowded for comfort. It wouldn’t be long for GW to pull the plug on GH, instead developing another game based on another licensed comic book: Judge Dredd, and later their own Warhammer universe. In its year long run GW release a grand total of three supplements for GH: a combat screen and two adventure modules, and a bunch of scenarios and articles in WD.

But enough procrastinating… was it any good? In a word, yes! Very good indeed. The game system was a bit of a modular hodge-podge of different rules and dice like D&D was back then, but among the mess (which was common at that time across almost all RPGs) there were some brilliant ideas, which deserve recognition. Here goes…

• Hits to Kill/Hits to Coma: not sure if GH originated the distinction of having two lots of hit points, but in the context of “It’s clobbering time!” style brawling that almost never ends in a any fatalities, it makes perfect sense.

• Character creation: random! Nothing new in that you say, but the groovy thing was, that you rolled up selection of stats and powers had to be justified by your background rationale. Let’s say you roll the powers: stretch, weather control and wall crawling, then you have to think of a background to justify them. If you can’t then you can’t have them. Realistically this will probably mean dropping a power or two out of the seven or so you generate. The Players Book gave eight examples of radically different character rationales to the same set of random powers to inspire the daunted player how this might be done. In fairness there was a suggested mechanic to compensate players for dropping unsuitable or unrationaleable powers, although the compensation didn’t really compare with loss of the power. Of course, just as some players will relish the challenge of this, other players won’t, so it doesn’t suit all. I’m not going to get into the pros and cons of random vs. design methods of character creation, however I will say that I probably favor the former for easy and for fun, although I do understand the arguments against it from the designist camp. Anyway, I think in this case it works well. It certainly encourages the wackier end of the superhero spectrum and makes it almost impossible for players to generate a load of boring X-Men clones. The selection of super powers was far from vast, being only 40 odd, but the rules seemed to cut the players and GM, called ‘Scenario Supervisor’ or just the ‘SS’ for short (you can see why that abbreviation never took off for fuck’s sake), plenty of slack in regard to subtly mutating the powers to suit the rationale whenever possible, which even today seems refreshing.

• But the most impressive element of the game mechanics for my money was the dully named Campaign Ratings: an array of fluctuating characteristics and stats, which could go up or down due to actual role-playing! No, not spending experience points, but the way your character behaves. Of course your character rationale would also have plenty of influence on there starting values too. Now if you think this sounds a little bit like the Passions and Trait system in Pendragon which is widely celebrated in revolutionizing RPGing from the binary shackles of good-evil alignments and such other horse shit then you are right. What’s more GH came out a good 12 months or so before Pendragon did. Now I’m not saying that Greg Stafford ripped it off, but I am saying that GH got there first and deserves to be remembered for it.

• So how did GH’s Campaign Ratings work (sorry in advance if it gets complicated here, but there’s lots to discuss and I mean to get jiggy with the nitty-gritty here, baby): basically there were three master CR: Public Status, Detective Points and Personal Status, all made up from their respective five mini-CR. For example Personal Status was totalled up from: Conscience, Success Rating, Public Response, Expression and Security: four of which were rated from 1 to 5 and one (Security) rated from 1 to 10: giving a total from 5 to 30. For aesthetic reasons it’s a pity that they weren’t all rated in the same range of numbers, say all from 1 to 5, but as I said those were messy times in game design.

• So for example lets say our hero is of the X-Men variety: a bit of a freak to look at and from a troubled background in some way. Hmmm… let’s say he accidentally fried his mum at the dinning table when he first let loose a energy beam over a disbute oover the gravy: a secret which his alter ego doesn’t want the fuzz to find out. As he has a skeleton in his closet (just in front of those dice) his Conscience is 1 out of 5, he’s a bit of a loner so his Expression is only 2, his freakish appearance means that public opinion is mixed at best giving him a Public Response of 2, obviously he’s a tad pessimistic so his Security is only 3 (out of 10 remember) and his Success Rating is how many of his last five crime-fighting adventures were successful, so lets say he’s just above average, solving 3 out of 5 cases: giving him a total of 11 out of 30: meaning his state of mind is uncertain and his private life is unstable. Okay, not only does this give us a numerical value to use as a role-playing guide, but also it allows the player to have some control on his character development. If the player wants to see the character to get better then he better do something to sort his dark secret and maybe get a spin doctor to help his public relations.

• As you can see there is a degree of interconnectedness between the the various CRs: not only in the relationship between the mini-CRs and their respective master-CR, but also between the Public Status CR (which consists of things like Heroism, Public Relations and Public Identification), which effects the Public Response mini-CR which in turn effects his Personal Status PR. Now obviously all this is a tad more complicated and convoluted than Pendragon’s elegant Traits and Passions system, yet what I like about GH’s CR system is that it makes you think about how the different facets of you character make up the whole.

• So do Campaign Ratings mean anything in game terms? Yes. By multiplying the CR (5-30) by three you get a number between 15 and 90, which is a perfect range to roll a d100 against. So Public Status might be rolled against to see if the cops try to arrest you for your vigilante activities or pat you on the back. Detective Points can be rolled against to see if you spot a clue or recognize a criminal. And Personal Status could be used as a luck roll.

• Obviously all this means that a ref must keep his eyes peeled for min/maxers and power-gamers, as the relative freeform nature of character creation could easily be abused by greedy players. Still its refreshing for a game system to hand over so much control over to the players and the ref rather than try to impose arbitrary restrictions on role-playing in the form of stupid rules. Especially so when GH was published: back in 1984!

For the SS

So what else was there?

• Well, Day Utility Phases or DUPs replaced experience points. Basically players had 7 DUPs per game week to spend on improving powers, building gadgets and even improving CR through activities like patrolling. Therefore removing the carrot/stick approach from the SS. Now this isn’t going to be to every ref’s taste and at the time I remember thing that maybe it would be better if the ref dished out 5 to 10 DUPs at the end of every adventure, but looking back at it today… I like it. Experience points are usually dished out in an unfair and Byzantine manner by most refs and logically they make almost no sense. Why should solving a crime or saving the world make you better at fighting or flying? No, training makes you good at stuff and training should predominately happen off screen so to speak. Anything which minimizes the amount of ref direction is a good thing I think. GH (with RQ of course) was fairly unique at the time at treating the players as adults rather than a bunch of retarded children who need constant supervision to stop them thinking for themselves. Again DUPs are highly reminiscent of Pendragon’s Winter Phase system. Anyway, rapid character improvement isn’t really reflective of the superhero genre as a whole, where characters like Superman and Spider-Man remain largely unchanged for decades at a time.

Any other nice touches?

• Frames per Round: GH also admirably was one of the first games to model the rules on the setting, much like Cyberpunk did years later with Humanity, although, sadly, this time it didn’t really work. Imitative in combat was determined in Frames, with different actions taking various number of Frames to complete. A superhero or supervillian had 4 Frames per round, while Goons and Thugs had to make do with only 2 or 3 Frames per round. Frames are obviously game mechanic representations of the frames on a comic page and as you may have guessed combat in GH was basically a phase system, with Phases being re-Christened as Frames. Nothing revolutionary here, but a nice touch all the same.

• However being an ex-Judge Dredd ref I’m not a fan of highly complicated initiative systems. In fairness GH’s isn’t too fussy and it seems to fairly reflect the combat of superhero comics, but personally I prefer my combat more streamlined and less overtly structured. Others may disagree, but they’d be wrong!

So if GH is so great why did it flop and why don’t we see CR in other games?

Well, as I’ve already said, like our ugly hero, generic superhero games have a tougher time winning over the public compared to their good looking licensed equivalents. But basically even here super-RPGs have failed to set the world on fire. Why? Well, obviously some RPGers don’t like comics. Probably less of a problem today than in the past, but there was definitely some snobbery against the genre back in the mid-80s. But also, the success of the deconstructed superhero comics like the Watchmen and Dark Knight effectively made old school golden-aged superheroes look distinctly old hat: a move reflected in RPGs, especially when games like Cyberpunk came out by the late 80s/early 90s.

But I think the other problem is there is less room for role-playing in these highly genre-influenced gaming sub-genres like superhero gaming. There’s a limit to how many times you’re going to find it amusing to say “It’s clobbering time!” or “Cowbunga Shredhead!” Superheroes are stereotypes by definition and while I doubt that there are many cases when role-playing has ever transcended fairly 2D character playing, in my experience players rarely enjoy having their actions and behaviour imposed upon by genre conventions or the ref or anything else for that matter. Of course there’s no reason why your superheroes have to wear pants over their trousers and fight crime at the weekends, and of course you could make similar arguments for fantasy and SF too, but here at least the reality of the setting is altered: whereas in superhero comics reality is basically just the same as contemporary society: there’s no immersion possible because there’s nothing to immerse into other than the genre cliché.

Anyway, I digress. So where are Campaign Ratings today? Well I’ve mentioned Pendragon, but other than that I’ve no idea. I guess they must have looked like a lot of extra bookkeeping and were sadly abandoned, which is a pity I think. I remember Pete Tamlyn wrote an excellent article in WD expanding the idea of CRs to other game genres: designing a superstition/piety set of CRs to be used in fantasy or horror games. I think for games like CoC something like Campaign Ratings could really work well. Actually you could probably replace almost all stats with them with little trouble. Of course any culture games would really suit them too. I suppose you could argue that Bushido tried it first in a limited way with its Honour stat, but GH expanded upon the idea massively.

Cover art by Brian Bolland

Another aspect of GH that I like is the tone of the game. While never explicit, the rule books seemed to suggest a certain irony to the superhero genre. Never mocking, but definitely a knowing smile could be detected. The selection of sample villains is excellent: many of which are more memorable than those found in the comics. The sample adventure ‘Crossfire’ is also excellent. Of the two scenario modules released for the game both were outstanding: Legacy of Eagles a short but sweet scenario gives the PCs a chance to inherent a base from superheroes from yesteryear and Queen Victoria and the Holy Grail by the ever witty Marcus L. Rowland has a cryogenically frozen Queen Victoria recruit the heroes to battle Morgan Le Fay to save Britain and return the Holy Grail to the Royal Family! If that doesn’t do it for you then nothing will!

Overall I prefer GH to all the other super-RPGs that I’ve dabbled with and mentioned here. Some, like GURPS Supers and Champions, seem far too complex for my take on the genre, while others like Marvel Heroes were just plain awful! For me, taking the basic mechanics of DC Heroes with its subplot rules and coupling it with GH’s Campaign Ratings would be a fairly sweet compromise. In fact both the subplot system and Campaign Rating mechanics should make it into pretty much any game played today.

Don't forget to bow when you meet the Queen, Cyclops-clone!

“Interested in Role-Playing Games? Your Questions Answered…”

Ever tried explaining what role-playing is to a total newbie? Well this is what the six page leaflet called ‘Interested in Role-Playing Games? Your Questioned Answered…” tries to do. It dates back from the Third Citidel Open Day c. 1984-5-ish and was published by Games Workshop, back in the days when they used to make and sell their own RPG material as well as sell RPGs published by other companies. A long time ago.This leaflet takes the form of a Q&A session, with some details of specific game systems at the back. It’s fairly dry and overly technical for newbies, but remains an interesting, if worthless,  item in the archaeology of RPG history if nothing else. Why I kept it, I have no idea, although it is testament to my fanaticism to RPGs that I kept it as a keepsake of the Citadel Open Day.

Looking at this leaflet today its a wonder that anyone ever played these games at all! If it wasn’t for the two comic strip Samples of Play I doubt anyone reading this would have  fathomed what all this RPG stuff was really all about by the explanations offered here. Obviously explaining RPGing on the printed page is always going to be a  fairly thankless task but surely they could have done better than this.

Here have a look at the first page:

Not the first thing I noticed about the answer to the first and most obvious question: ‘what is a role-playing game?’ is that it bombards the newbie reader with the different game systems straight away, rather than trying to define what a rpg actually is. Then it goes on to give different examples of characters and what they do, but still no mention of what context this is in or how it is really done. Instead we are told how many players you need, what one of them is called (something called a ‘referee’), then again it name-drops some RPG titles into the mix and the talks about something called a ’scenario,’ whatever that is? In fairness it does describe these things but in a way which would be fairly oblique to a newbie.

Page 2:

There are also far too many nebulous phrases like:

“Nasty or perhaps good surprises are also part of role-playing games and some may well have been prepared by the referee to heighten the excitement of the adventurer and to test the strengths and weaknesses of the participating characters.”

Well, no one can accuse GW of sexing-it-up! It goes on to say:

“Too few surprises and adventures may go flat, too many and the adventuring party may cease to exist!”

Okay…

It then goes on to say:

“The referee is important, but so too are the players.”

Well that’s nice to know!

” ‘I’ve seen these games played and the players were just talking and pushing scraps of paper about – doesn’t that get boring?’

Some years ago pieces of paper were the only way of representing your character [...], but today all that has change.”

The ‘only’ way! Surely, baring in mind D&D’s war gaming roots this isn’t true at all. And what about scraping the miniatures and just using your imagination? No mention of that option.

Then it goes on to list unnecessary complications such as miniatures, floor plans, something called ‘hex sheets’ and ship plans! Is this really necessary to know about at this stage? It’s just more off-putting jargon to learn!

I know when I was first looking to get into RPGing I found the distinction between role-playing and war-gaming hard to distinguish. I think this sort of advice help perpetuate that confusion and hindered the wider development of RPGs with such niche groups as women and grown-ups.

And, while we’re at it, just  ‘how do you create a character?’

Well, apparently…

“All role-playing games will describe to you a set of character ‘classes’ with which to play the game.”[italics are my emphasis]

Wrong! I have two words to say to this: Rune and Quest. The first RPG to be covered in the recomended games section.

Then it goes on to summaries character creation in Traveller (another game without character ‘classes,’ as such)… I’m not sure why specific game rules need to be explained at this stage, especially as the leaflet has done such a shoddy job of explaining what a RPG is at this point.

Page 3:

More terms here, although this time GW seem to be making some up:

“Character selection and ‘dicing up’ “

What is character selection exactly? And surely it’s ‘rolling up?’ Sorry to be perdantic, but if you are going to bombard a poor ignorant newbie with what will seem like a confusing array of overtly technical terminology then at least get it right.

Then:

“[...] but remember once you have role-played a number of times you will find that you are able to use the game system to your very own specification.”

WTF does this mean? How is this even possible? I suppose with point-based character design systems like GURPS and Champions (which is later mentioned in this leaflet) it is possible, but with D&D, Traveller or RQ… how exactly is this possible? Are they talking about cheating here? Yes DM, I really did roll 18:00 Str!

But my favourite bit is: the response to the question: ‘what age do you have to be to enjoy these games?’ 11 to 35 apparently. But then;

“We also know of solo players and game groups in schools, colleges, youth clubs [all of which seems quite probably to me, but then it goes on to say], factories, shops, banks, advertising agencies and the armed forces.”

Banks! Well that explains the credit crunch I suppose. And I’d like to see what the factory forman would say when you down tools to commence a Greyhawk campaign!

But the best bit is:

“We even know of a police force where the game Tunnels & Trolls is very popullar [!]“

Lol! My eyes were literally watering when I read this! So when the police are moaning about all the paperwork which stops them catching criminals, they’re not talking about red-tape, instead they’re busy rolling 9sorry ‘dicing’) up characters! Also this has to be the first and last time in recorded human history that the words ‘Tunnel & Trolls‘ and ‘popular’ have ever been used in the same sentence! Who would have thought that the words ‘police force’ would also appear next to them? Apologies to T&T fans: I know you must exist somewhere.

The rest is just more ‘winner and loser’ guff.

Here are pages 4 to 6 for your further amusement:

The most interesting thing here is to see that there were just five, yes only FIVE Games Workshop shops in existence at this point in time! Now there is literally thousands of the things. But they don’t sell RPGs any more of course…

While obviously the predominate reason of me posting this is too mock it and also to share a useless piece of RPG history, it does pose the questions: just how should game companies explain RPGing to newbies and just how far is their ineptness responsible for the failure of table-top RPGing to compete with their computer game equivalents.

Realm of Chaos: is it worth the money?

Realm of Chaos, vol 1: Slaves to Darkness (1988)

Realm of Chaos, vol 2: The Lost and the Damned (1990)

Not by any means a review, just a belated warning to those WHFRP GMs who think they might need these two colossal supplements. ‘Belated’ because I’ve just sold my copies for what seems like an extortionate amount of money. Presumably people have more money than sense or they mistakenly think that these mighty tomes might be useful to a WHFRP GM. If I was kind my eBay ads would have come with a warning: ‘of absolutely no use whatsoever as a game aid to WHFRP, only Warhammer Battle players need apply!’ But that would have cut me off from a potential and much needed source of income in my time of finacial need. Hence I kept stum, flogged ‘um – and only now I spill the beans…

So why do these manuals demand such high prices if they’re close to useless?

Because they’re rare as hen’s teeth that’s why. They date from the end of the era when Games Workshop actually published RPG material (and the last non-toy looking version of Warhammer Battle) that’s why and thus they only had a relatively short print run. Of course these supplements were always in demand due to the insanely long wait for their eventual publication. Realm of Chaos was first mooted nearly 5 years before the first volume was eventual published: dating back to the very first edition of Warhammer Battle (which also provided some very bad role-playing rules). And when it finally arrived it turned out not to be one supplement but two! I guess it proves the old adage about game supplements being like buses… (useless)

But surely they must be of some use to the humble WHFRP GM, I hear you say? Well… No, not really. Not even a bit. Well not if you run the sort of game which makes WHFRP potentially different to any other generic fantasy RPG, such as D&D. As I said in my (sort of) review of WHFRP: the game is at its best when played as a mix of D&D with Call of Cthulhu as in the Enemy Within Campaign. That is to say concentrating on the more mundane pseudo-European setting while adding an unhealthy mix of evil chaos cult intrigue and a slice of irony. Of course you can, and will, throw in a few blasts of dungeon action, but in the main: less is more with WHFRP. Chaos should be a threat whose presence you feel but never quite see, blah, blah, blah…

The two Realm of Chaos books offer a different approach to the one suggested in the Enemy Within Campaign. Firstly, they’re little more than army lists for WHFRP’s older war-gaming brother: Warhammer Battle. Sure there’s stats for both games, but how many different types of Chaos Warriors and Beast Men do you really need in your average game of WHFRP? (answer: not this many, surely)

Each book gives you stats for the beasties belonging to only two Chaos God: vol 1: Khorne and Slaanesh; vol 2: Tzeentch and Nurgle. Unfortunately there’s little meaningful difference between respective hoards of Chaos described within these pages. Okay, the demons and spells are a bit different, but all the Beast Men and the Warriors are fairly generic. Also it seemed strange to me that Slaanesh, Tzeentch and Nurgle would even bother with half this stuff: as they’re the Chaos Gods of decadence, corruption and disease, respectively, aspects which are hardly best reflected in these endless lists and descriptions of fairly universal Chaos armies. I could only ever imagine Khorne, the Chaos God of War being interested in all this guff. The others seem more insidious to me. Okay, maybe that’s only my perspective. Maybe you imagined it differently. But remember this: you are wrong, I am right.

Possibly the endless array of mutations in these books might be useful for a WHFRP GM, but then how common do you really want to make the taint of Chaos in your campaign? Not too common or it’ll turn the game into a freak show. One or two lying low in every sizeable town, maybe? But one in every street, surely not? No, to my mind Mutants must be relatively rare away from the chaos wastes. Rare enough so the occasional non-Mutant gets burned by mistake at any rate, by a paranoid population. But to make the use of the hundreds of mutations on offer here you’d need to crank up the Mutie population by a degree or two of magnitude. Of course its nice to have the choice for when you’re not feeling inspired, but there’s a lot of silly stuff here too that you’ll never use.

I’m sorry to say, but to use even half the guff in these books you would have to switch the game setting away from the civilized Empire to a more full-on local in the war against chaos. And to do this is to loose the CoC element of the game which distinguished it from AD&D at the time. Okay, dark fantasy games today are two-a-penny but back then it seemed as fresh as fuck. No, to stripe the CoC element from WHFRP leaves you with Tolkienesque fantasy with a simplified Moorcockian cosmology. You’d be better off switching to playing Stormbringer. At least then you’d have a better system and setting.

What I wanted from the much anticipated Realm of Chaos supplements was details on Chaos Cults in the Old World and the Empire: something like RQ’s Cult of Prax, but with guidelines and scenario seeds for running cells of cultists. Maybe even rules for running cultist PCs? Instead I got endless army lists, spells, demons and more tables than Chivalry and Sorcery! Okay, the art was up to GW’s general high standards of this period, although their preference for adorning everything with chaos-spikey-bits is too strong for my tastes. Very disappointing indeed.

Basically if you play Warhammer Battle 3rd (or earlier) edition then you’re laughing. But who the hell plays early editions of Warhammer any more? And if you do it won’t be an edition as early as this. Which, I have to say is a pity, because Realm of Chaos 2 comes with some nifty campaign rules for warring bands of Chaos armies using Battle. But frankly Warhammer Battle at this point became too unwieldy. The rules were too complex and unbalanced, and, while later editions looked more like toys that games, they at least made the rules more playable and less Byzantine. The problem stems from these supplements trying to appeal to both Battle and WHFRP gamers alike. Unless you play both then a lot of this stuff isn’t going to be of use. And to make matters worse some of the pages are specific for Warhammer 40,000: the futuristic version of Battle.

PS. And if you think the WHFRP scenario Castle Dranchenfel might be worth the cash? No, it’s just as bad as that Flame Publication dungeon-bash campaign was (whatever it was called?). Please, save yourself some money. The only GW era WHFRP supplement worth buying IMO are Lichmaster, Restless Dead, Companion and the Enemy Within Campaign of course. I’ll review them as or if I dig them out.

Confessions… (continued):Part Six: The Rise and Fall of a Dungeon Master in Mega-City One

Part Six: The Rise and Fall of a Dungeon Master in Mega-City One

My first attempt of referring a RPG was at Judge Dredd: the game based on that Orwellian comic-book cop from the pages of 2000ad, and to my surprise the first couple of sessions went okay. I played it safe and ran the two sample adventures that came in the rules. In fairness the first one was little more than a glorified fire-fight, but the second was a proper investigation ending in an exciting and potentially explosive climax. I wouldn’t make any great claims for my GMing ability but it went okay.

As the RPG club ran twice a week, me and one of the other lads alternated DMing/GMing between us: me running Judge Dredd and he running AD&D. Our table was small, consisting of me and the other ref, and his best friend and another lad who I can’t even remember at this moment. As you can tell enthusiasm for anything that wasn’t AD&D was practically non-existent from the rest of the muppets in The Stone Circle RPG club. In fact when we were deciding on the new groups we were actually booed (albeit in good humour) when we stood up and asked if anyone else fancied playing Judge Dredd! Which confirms one of my prejudices about RPGers: that they are a conservative bunch of stay-at-home fuckwits!  Now at this point I wanted to try just about every game I could lay my hands on, but they couldn’t see beyond their d20s! I think that it would be probably another years or so before any other RPG system was experimented with within the  club walls. Apart from the occasional board or battle game like Talisman or Car Wars that is, which doesn’t really count.

Anyway part of my downfall as a prospective DM/GM and looking back the very beginnings of my downfall as a role-player in a wider sense was due in no small way to the two friends, the other ref and a player, who I shared that tiny group with. You see, although they were the best of friends, but they pathologically hated each other in the way only best friends can. Never were two friends so dissimilar. The ref, who I’ll call Judge Explode (for reasons that will be made apparent later) was extremely excitable, loud and passionate. The other friend, who I’ll call Goldblum because he looked a bit like Jeff Goldblum, was incredibly chilled, with a super dry humour and a nasty habit of winding up his friend for the sheer fun of it. Once he had wound Judge Explode up to bursting point he would then sit back and softly say (ever so softly): “Shhhh, shhh, shhh…” (maybe I should call him Bjork?) in this  patronizing way and then Judge Explode would… well, explode! BANG!

Not that that is why Judge Explode is called Judge Explode – I’m coming to that shortly. In fairness Judge Explode could wind-up Goldblum too, so they were about even, but then they were never entirely even and one was always trying to wind-up the other for some imagined or not-so-imagined slight. They were both great guys who for a few short years I became quite good friends with before they grew up and left RPGs behind and I never saw them again.

Anyway, during Judge Explode’s AD&D game Goldblum started to winding him up. Not so surprising you say. But it was at that time because at that stage I hadn’t worked out that’s how they both behaved with each other. So I thought it was all great fun and joined in, mainly by laughing my head off. In fairness Me and Goldblum probably behaved like cunts and, seeing his game disintegrate further and further into chaos, Judge Explode exploded! Great fun! Except… it wasn’t really. There was nothing malicious in it nor was it in anyway bullying, but it was disruptive and disrespectful to his game and (to make matters worse) Judge Explode remembered it, harboured it… The fact that I was only an accomplice was no defence and I don’t offer it now.

The next session my Judge Dredd game instantly ran into trouble when Judge Explode crossed out his old character’s name (Judge Doc if I remember) off his character sheet and wrote ‘Judge Explode’ across the top of it. For the next four hours he refused to use any ammo other than High-Explosive rounds and proceeded to single-handedly destroy my game. I was neither old enough nor wise enough to know how to handle it and the game disintegrated around me.

The next few sessions, for both of us, were equally terrible as we played a game of tit-for-tat and the unknown fourth player dropped out of our group making it too small to work. Some people from one of the other tables must also have dropped out, so the three of us joined them and Judge Dredd gave way again to endless sessions of AD&D, which (as I said) ruled supreme for at least another year or so. In the short-term it also put an end to my DMing ambitions and triggered a new cynicism about RPGing that I could never quite shake off…

Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play

Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play

So far I’ve mainly ‘reviewed’ (ahem!) games from the golden to silver-age of role-playing that I barely or never actually played. All thanks to that annoying compulsion so buy games that you have no real intention of playing. A compulsion that seems to haunts all role-players for at least some time during their role-playing career. However despite the impression that I may have accidentally given over the last half-dozen posts or so, I did actually play and at times DM many different rule systems between 1984-90-ish and again during a brief spell in the mid-90s. In both periods I played and DMed Warhammer Fantasy Role Play and I know the system well enough to ‘review’ it here without even digging it out of the closet. Actually I’m not even going to review it here, as I am only familiar with the first edition, which has been superseded by its current incarnation that I have no knowledge of. Also the 1st edition was available, unchanged, for such a long period that I’m guessing that anyone who was interested in it would have bought it before now. Indeed, looking back at the rules in the cold light of day, it is clear to me that they were no way near as big and cleaver as I thought they where at the time and so, instead, I’m going to list all its major strengths and weaknesses as I see them.

But first let me quickly describe the rules to you, so it all makes at least some sense! The task resolution system was like Rune Quest percentage based, although instead of a long list of skills each with their own %, WHFRP used a huge number of attributes ranked either between 1-100 or 1-10. The attributes consisted of your usual Intelligence, Strength and Dexterity type stuff; catch-all ’skills’ such as Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill; some combat specific stats like [number of] Attacks, Wounds, Initiative and Movement; and a surprisingly large number of personality-based stats like Cool, Leadership and Will Power; making a total of 14 attributes, which must be something of a record. There was still skills, but rather than them being individually rated, they just added a bonus to your stat, which kind of makes the stupid number of stats okay then, but still… Obviously the mix of 1-100 and 1-10 stats looks messy now and the whole thing betrays the games war-gaming roots.

Oh yes, just as D&D evolved from Chainmail or whatever it was called, so WHFRP evolved from Games Workshops Warhammer Battle, with both Battle and Role-Play sharing the same setting, which I’ll come to later.

Starting with its weaknesses… but because there’s so many of them, I’m going to have to limit myself to the most annoying ones:

• Career Path: one of WHFRP’s most innovative game-mechanics at the time was its character class and character progression system. At first glance the career path system used in WHFRP seems like a great idea and as far as I know it is original to this game. Indeed I do still quite like it, unfortunately in practise it isn’t really worth the hassle nor the screeds of pages the game has to donate to describing the hundreds of available careers. So what do Careers do for you in WHFRP? They give a character a template of skills and bonuses that a PC can buy with their experience points. Okay, how does that work then? Well, skills cost 100 EXP each, while stat bonus start off at 100 EXP for a +10/+1 bonus, the cost of which goes up in relation to the size of the stat bonus. Oh yeah, to change a career costs 100 EXP. What I do like about it is the sheer mundaneness of most of the career options. Starting Career is generated randomly, and you have more chance of starting out as a Pedlar, a Rat Catcher or a some sort of street performer than you do as starting out as a Bounty Hunter or Wizard or something more glam. I like this touch of reality. It distinguishes the game from D&D. However once you start playing its unlikely that you’ll hang about training to be a Black Smith. Instead everybody is going to look at the more outré professions. Not in itself a problem, however the rules give you little to go on as  how to actually go about changing Career paths or how it should all work in practice. Actually GW’s in-house organ White Dwarf did shed some light on this, but really this advice should have been in the rules. Presumably it is a little harder to become a Mercenary Captain or Militia Leader (or a Blacksmith or Rat Catcher for that matter) than to just spend your 100 EXP. Surely it requires some for of apprenticeship or promotion for most of these career changes and surely this training would require training which in turn would require time and dedication, which is not something most adventurers have in spades. But the problems don’t end there. You don’t have a total free reign as to what Career you can choose. Each Career has specific Career exits: a list of Careers from which you can progress to. Or you can change to any Career that is listed in your starting Career Class: arbitrary catogories in which Careers are listed in (Warrior, Ranger, Rogue or Academic). Today all this in needlessly fussy to my mind, although I loved it all at the time. Presumably should my humble Pedlar befriend an Assassin who wants to take him on as an apprentice I wouldn’t be able to take up the offer because my Career exit doesn’t allow me to! Okay, maybe I’m being anal about this and maybe the game assumes that any training or promotion happens ‘off camera’ so to speak and all you need to do is spend the EXP and swap careers. But then that leads to the ludicrous situation of my Pedlar spending 100 EXP to change careers to a bridging-Career then spending 100 more to change to an Assassin. There is no stipulation against doing this in the rules. Okay the GM can impose his own restrictions on quick Career hoping, but this would just force players to spend EXP on stat bonuses and skills they don’t want. I think the problem really stems from GW trying to have their cake and eat it by trying to combine the freedom of RQ skill system with the clarity of an AD&D-like class system. The Careers work fine as templates for starting characters but despite its initial charms, WHFRP’s Career path system looks foolish now. A clear example of how a game-mechanic can look good on paper.

• Magic: The magic system in WHFRP sucks. It sucks big time. In fact I’d go as far to say that it is the worst, the blandest and the most mechanical in RPG history. It basically is directly lifted from the WH Battle rules, meaning the majority of spells are combat focused. The system is a mish-mash of D&D spell levels underpinned by another RQ-esque magic point system. Compared to this the AD&D magic system is Ars Magica.

• Combat: Now mechanically there’s nothing especially bad about the WHFRP combat system per se, when compared to the other clunky game mechanics offered by many other systems from RQ to AD&D, except that it doesn’t do what it sets out to do. Combat in WHFRP is meant to be deadly. And ostensibly it is. Well, it is for beginning characters or for characters foolish enough to follow a non-combat Career path, but should a PC judiciously spend 400-500 EXP, which should only take him one or two short adventures to do, spending them on Toughness bonuses and the Dodge skill, then suddenly he becomes almost impossible to damage. Let me explain some basics before I explain how bad it gets. An average human or humanoid monster will have a Strength of 3 and Toughness of 3. Damage is rolled on a 1d6 plus your Strength minus opponents Toughness and armour. Obviously in this case Strength and Toughness will cancel each other out, so assuming the defender doesn’t have any armour then an average of 3-4 points of damage will be delivered upon a successful hit (and a maximum of 6 points in damage. With average Wounds being around 7 a defender should be able to take two hits with a sword before sustaining critical damage: at which point he’s in big trouble. However lets ’super-size’ said defender by a very reasonable few hundred EXP and give him an effective +2 Toughness vs. damage from stat bonuses and skills, and give him chain mail armour and a shield (all far from excessive). Now armour gives you a flat 1 point of protection and so does a shield: making that 2 AP (even my maths can handle that), so lets take our average attacker with his 1d6 plus 3 Strength damage, minus our defenders 5 Toughness and 2 point armour: now his average damage is only 0 and his maximum damage is all of 1 or 2 points, which he will only deliver one third of the time. Baring in mind an average human’s or orc’s Attack Skill will only be in the region of 30-40% then you can see that our fictional defender should be feeling pretty happy with himself, especially if he’s spent a few more EXP on some attacking stat/skill bonuses too! Things get even worse if a defender has the Dodge skill as he gets to roll against his Initiative stat to avoid a blow. Beginning human Initiative is 30-40%, which is easily raised making him effectively VERY hard to hit compared to anyone who doesn’t have this skill. Okay, a natural roll of 6 to damage can deliver extra damage (note I said ‘can’) and obviously multiple opponents will slightly nullify the advantage of the overpowered Dodge skill, but still for warrior-types combat is very very easy. Now my fictional ’super-sized’ defender isn’t ludicrous by any means and it is well within the realms of possibilities that a warrior-type with only a little more experience could reduce that average damage to a negative number and the max. damage to 0!

“Hey, you’re a fucking hypocrite!” I hear you say. Yes, in both my RQ and my Cyberpunk reviews I did moan on about combat being too deadly: effectively making campaign play impossible without endless fudging by the DM and blah, blah, blah… And you’re right to pick me up on it, but in my mind combat in RPG needs to have a purpose. And that purpose is to kill of those pesky PCs! Well, not quite. The purpose is to make them think that they could very easily get killed, when in reality they only might get killed if they’re very unlucky or very stupid. If they can’t die then there really is no point in rolling all those dice. For me, as a DM, the one thing that I hated more than anything is running fights. Endlessly rolling dice bores me, so there better be a good reason for it! Also one of the few rules the game gets right, Fate Points (see below), effectively nullifies any headaches lethal game systems gives me, so its a pity they chose to ignore it with this unbalanced and boring combat system!

Any other problems?

• Yes. I mentioned the stats. A messy mix of 1-100s and 1-10 and 1-infinity in the case of Wounds. But what do they all mean? Lets take Strength for example. As I said an average human’s Strength is 3, but a few EXP points can raise a players Strength easily to 6 or higher and with certain skills his effective Stregth when calculating damage can be even higher. So what does that mean? Is he really twice as strong? Less? Or more? Should a human so easily be able to raise his Strength higher than an ogre? Probably not. Okay, you’d imagine that a player won’t lump all his EXP into one area, assuming that his Career template will allow him to do so, but it is very easy to turn your starting mundane PCs into super-heroes. I think the problem stems from the messiness of the stats and the problem that they all derive from their war-game roots. The stats remain too abstract and ill defined, which leads to all the problems I went on about in combat. Did anyone even playtest this game I wonder?

So what does it get right?

• Fate Points: I’d seen many variations of Hero or Luck Points before: a pool of points that you can use to modify dice rolls to represent the heroic feats of comic and fantasy characters, but I hadn’t seen a WHFRP style Fate Point system before and, surprisingly, I’ve rarely seen it since. Basically for want of a better way to describe them they work very much like Lives do in a computer game. Whack! You’re dead. Bing! I’m back – minus one Life of course! Although it’s not quite as simple as that. Fate Points might save you, but they aren’t magic: they don’t reset the clock. Let’s say you get killed in combat (an unlikely possibility, but for argument’s sake): instead of the mace caving your head in, you get knocked out and left for dead. Later you wake up, you’re weak, but you’ll live to fight another day. Or let’s say a wizard blasts you with a fireball. Instead of being turned into crispy-duck, the blast destroys a supporting beam and you fall through the floor. The wizard leaves you for dead and you brush yourself down ready to fight another day. Basically whatever excuse the GM can come up with for you surviving will do (or maybe he’ll allow you to decide if he trusts you). Characters start with 1-4 Fate Points and can’t buy them with EXP. Instead the GM can award one or two for completing adventures of special importance, such as saving a town from a gate of chaos or stopping an assassination of the Emperor, but that’s it. Interestingly Fate Points are also used as a means of maintaining game balance between the four races on offer: human, elf, dwarf and halfling, with elves receiving the least and halflings  receiving the most, which seems fair compensation for the discrepancy in stats. It’s just a pity that after a few hundred EXP have been spent Fate Points become effectively pointless. I’ve GMed and played WHFRP a fair bit and after a few adventures I’ve never seen a Fate Point used in anger and I have NEVER seen a character death.

• It’s a complete game! Yes everything you need to play it: rules and setting, are all to be found in one fat-assed book! Now how many games can you say that about?

Sadly that’s about the only great idea in the WHFRP game system.

So, the setting: well the creators of WHFRP were hamstrung by the generic fantasy setting invented for WH Battle, so its unfair to judge it too harshly and seeing what they had to work with they achieved remarkable results. Briefly the world of Warhammer is a pseudo-Medieval fantasy version of our own Medieval world with the twist that the New World has already been discovered. While not identical, even the world map bares a striking resemblance to the one you know from your old school atlas. Most of the world is fleshed out, but the majority of the space goes to describing the pseudo-Europe, especially The Empire: a pseudo-Medieval Germany-England hybrid. The basic rule book provides enough information to kick start a home-brew Empire campaign with only a little work. The Religion section is also surprisingly good, providing cult details on all the major deities, although its no RQ and the gods are a little predictable. The thing that separates it from most AD&D settings is the Moorcockian twist of using Chaos as the bad guys. But in fairness if you replaced every mention of Chaos with the word Evil in the rule book it would barely change the meaning. Indeed WHFRP’s take on Moorcock’s Law-Chaos cosmology hardly caries the same philosophical intelligence. Apart from that there’s elves, orcs, goblins, ogres and all the other generic fantasy trappings to go with the chaos warriors and beast men. In a word, it’s okay.

No there is little that is special in the setting. So why do so many people swear by this game? Well its nothing to do with anything in the basic rule book. On the heels of the rules GW released the first two parts on what was to be known as the Enemy Within Campaign, a series of interlinked adventures and expanded setting information in the Empire. The Enemy Within Campaign is widely regarded as the second best RPG campaign of all time. The first being The Mask of Nyarlathotep for Call of Cthulhu. Why is the Enemy Within Campaign so good? Basically because it turned a generic fantasy setting into a ironic Lovecraftian-Moorcockian epic Medieval fantasy-horror political conspiracy thriller. A classic case of making something stronger than the sum of its parts and it remains the only significant RPG achievement in GW’s wonky gaming crown. I won’t say more right now as the Enemy Within more than deserves its own space, but needless to say that it ranks as one of the finest RPG publications of its era. Nuff said!

I’m sure most fans of the game will think I’m being incredibly harsh and despite what I say, I do actually still quite like the game. But if I was to play the Enemy Within again today (an unlikely possibility I grant you) would I use WHFRP? Not on your life! I’d probably use either GURPS, D&D 2nd or 3rd edition (or higher edition, maybe if I knew what that was like) or – most likely – RQ, probably 3rd Edition as it has sorcery spells which suit the setting better than the magic system in the 2nd edition.

The Confessions of a Failed Dungeon Master: Part Five: How I Survived My First Death

Part Five: How I Survived My First Death

As a player in my first campaign I was lucky enough to have a pretty decent DM. Looking back it was a fairly clichéd Greyhawk campaign, but, despite a bias towards his friends who were also players, the zit-ridden ref delivered it with charm and some nice touches.

I was the second youngest on the table and I was still finding my feet: playing a fairly passive role in the proceedings, really. The youngest player has since then become my oldest friend. He too was also relatively quiet among the bigger boys and was relentlessly teased (with humour, I think) over his character’s Citadel  miniature, which had sooooo much black paint on it, it looked like a big black locust. In homage to that weird black figure, and to preserve is anonymity,  I’ll refer to him in these memoirs as Black Locust or maybe just Locust for short. Well, it took the heat off my crappy figure so I didn’t mind.

My character was a fighter, which, un-originally, I called Slainé after the barbarian Celt-punk warrior in 2000ad (who has since had a RPG dedicated to him proving how cutting edge I fucking was). During character creation I had somehow rolled a 17 or 18 for Charisma, which (apparently) meant that  I had to go in front of the marching order so my CHA bonus would preferentially influence something called a ‘reaction roll’ (whatever that was?)… or so the more experienced players on my table told me. As far as I know at no point during the whole campaign did the DM ever make a single bloody reaction roll! I mean, a heavily-armed bunch of mercenaries come pouring into you orc lair with nothing short of ethnic-clensing in mind… what other possible reaction could there possibly be? “Come in, my friends – pull up a chair. Let’s disguss our differences in a calm and rational manner.” Anyway, the upshot of being upfront was that my poor fighter took more than his fair share of damage, but somehow I survived! Woot! Woot!

Well, I survived for a while…

One of the nice little touches the spotty DM did was an encounter with a gypsy fortune-teller who told us that something terrible would happen to one of the party. [cue scary music] To answer our questions of ‘which one of us?’ She needed to perform a test on us with her fortune deck… [cue really scary music] Now the DM had us play the card game Chase the Ace! You know the game when you remove all the aces but the dreaded  ‘Ace of Spades,’ shuffle, deal the cards among the players, then each player draws a card at random from the one to his left or right, disposing of pairs along the way. When you dispose all of the cards you are ‘out,’ until one player is left holding the Ace of Spades and he is the looser. Or in this case: his character is dead! Or if not dead, some other nasty fate from the dark corners of the DM’s foul mind would happen to him… something worse than death maybe?[cue more scary music]

Chase the Ace is a good fun game at any time (well, it’s okay when you’re stoned), but try playing it when the fate of your beloved character might weigh in the balance! It was nerve shredding… and as the game went on and one by one the players went ‘out’ (safe from the gypsy’s curse), until it was just me and the DM left (playing the gypsy of course) and three cards. I had one card left and he had two: one obviously being the dreaded Ace of Spades! So I had to pick one from him. If I pick the Ace then I’m fucked. Tense stuff I can tell you. Anyway, I picked my card, turned it over in super slo-mo and lo, it wasn’t the Ace: I had made my last pair and I was ‘out,’ having turned the table on the gypsy! Fucking awesome! Take that, you gypsy slut!

I have no idea what the ‘bad thing’ was that would have happened had I picked the Ace, but my feeling of relief was palpable! After the session the DM told me he had made a mistake including himself in the gypsy’s game as he hadn’t foreseen the possible result of the gypsy cursing herself and I’m sure it through his campaign off track a bit, but being able to escape the curse of the fortune deck and turn the table on the gypsy made the experience unforgettable to me. Thinking about it, this escape from the tyranny of the dice was very ahead of its day and is exactly the kind of thing games like Dread are doing but with Jenga.

Anyway, a few weeks or so later Locust’s fighter died in some meleé or other. I remember he looked sooo gutted. His first character death. I remember being so glad that it wasn’t me. But after by character turned 4^th level it was my turn! I really can’t remember how my character died. What monster killed the mighty Slainé? Probably just a bunch of orcs I suppose… Or was it a trap? Or a magic-user’s fireball spell? But, anyway, I remember how gutted I felt. A sickening hollow feeling. My eyes prickled with proto-tears, but I managed to save myself from the shame of crying about it like a big girl. Somewhere I still have that first character sheet today. I’ll post it on here if I find it. So, Slainé never quite escaped the gypsy’s curse… [cue sad music]

It’s amazing how effecting that first character death is. Or it is when you’re 12 years old. Maybe it’s not so bad if your a bit older? I don’t know. All I do know, like an under-aged girl loosing her virginity to a angry bull, it only hurts the first time. After that it’s like throwing salami up a wind tunnel. No other character death has emotionally bothered me at all as far as I remember. Maybe I’ve got shirty about it if I felt the DM was being unfair, but never has it ever stung me so again. Me and my mate Locust have nattered about it in the past, as both our first deaths happened within a week or so, and he says much the same. You never forget the first time. I’m sure it causes permanent psychological damage. Or maybe its life affirming in some way? Who knows… I might post again on the subject should it occur to me to do so again.

Anyway the campaign collapsed shortly after that as the DM wanted a break and new tables were formed to freshen things up a bit. This came at a good time for me as I was one of the few gamers in the club to be eager to play non-AD&D systems. Being a 2000ad enthusiast I was first in line to buy GW’s Judge Dredd RPG and was eager to play it. A small group of other players were also interested and I was about to find myself, reincarnated from my recent death, in the form of being a DM (or GM) for the first time!

The Confessions of a Failed Dungeon Master: Part 4: Us Against the World

Part 4: Us Against the World

The hoard of The Stone Circle continued to grow. the hoard was predominately adolescent idiots, but briefly we did have a group of adults with us, experienced gamers from the first  generation of RPGs I suppose. I’m not sure what games they played, as they were in a separate room in the church hall we played in, but I imagine they had put away such childish things as AD&D and were probably disciples of Rune Quest or Traveller or one of the other ‘better’ 1^st-generation RPGs, like MERP or Rolemaster that adults played.

At the time the letters page in White Dwarf was full of disgruntled adult-gamers who had been introduced to RPGs at university or whatever and now found themselves mildly horrified to see the waves of spotty kids, namely me and my generation of role-players: the Fighting Fantasy generation. At the time their attitude pissed me off!  Patronising ass-wipes. We didn’t have a clue what we were doing, but, surely,  if enthusiasm counted for anything then we should consider ourselves equal in the eyes of the law and the great DM in the sky. As it turned out enthusiasm counts for nothing in this world and they were right to fear/hate us, the infantile prols taking over the toyshop and making a mockery of their game…

Eventually the adult members of The Stone Circle went their own way. They must have discussed it in earnest during one of the sessions and I think it had been brewing for a few weeks, as one Sunday they sheepishly walked out on mass.

Looking back we must have seemed like a pack of idiots. Loud idiots! Why would a bunch of fully grown adults want to hang around what was effectively an unofficial youth club? I know I wouldn’t! Indeed my generation heralded a new level in the commercialization of the hobby by Games Workshop and TSR: at the same time as the FF game books, Citadel release a range of giant plastic FF miniatures (what exactly you were meant to do with them I have no idea) and also you had the dreaded Dungeon & Dragons cartoon! Now even I found this embarrassing. I considered myself too old and sophisticated for cartoons at 12 or 13 or however old I was then. Fuck, I’d even left Lord of the Rings behind by then… I’d moved on to much darker territory, including  2000ad and Elric novels which had sex and death in them. Now because of this fucking cartoon it meant my hobby:  no, make that my way of life, my fucking dice-throwing religion, had been reduced to some childish nonsense. Luckily my natural shyness and inherent awareness that roleplaying was deeply uncool meant that I had kept my new RPG love quite from the school rabble… but, with the broadcast of the D&D cartoon, secrecy became even more imperative! Being a RPGer was akin to being one of the early Christians in Roman times or a paedophile today. Exposure meant certain death or – at least – public embarrassment and shame on the family.

Yes, RPGs were once the domain of post-graduates, but the steady process of infantilisation that had widened its appeal to a new generation would I’m sure eventually turn many more away from it. The degeneration that probably started with FF would eventually lead to GW’s obsession with ‘chaos-spiky-bits,’ which would eventually reduce the hobby in the UK into an over-grown range of toys for braying rich kids to play with and into a joke for the rest of the world. Like all things RPGing would become a victim of its own popularity. Instead of carefully harvesting a loyal band of enthusiasts who would stick with it, ‘they’ turned it into a childish fad that imploded into a geeky mire which would become increasingly embarrassing for all concerned. It seems to me that half of the hoard of spotty boys who were initially attracted to the hobby by its sudden accessibility, would eventually be put off by the steady decline in the quality and content from TSR and GW. Entropy in fast forward…

BTW I’m not slagging off FF game books here. In many ways they were more satisfying than RPGs ever was and I wonder if something more literary could ever have been done with the format? (Or maybe it has and I don’t know about it – if so please tell me about it!) FF books were effectively a form of cut-up fiction without the pretension of Burroughs and all those Beat twats, meaning a novel could, in theory, be read  many ways. Rather than just telling a shitty dungeon adventures, why not use the choices to follow different themes or concepts in a novel to their respective logical conclusions. Certainly themes of morality or ethics could be explored in this fashion. Effectively very few so-called anti-novels are ever very satisfying compared to a real more linear novel, so surely here something interesting could have been achieved by someone. Imagine a choose your own Kafkaesque novel or a stream of conciousness game book… I think proper novelists were cowards for not giving it a go. About the only proper novelist who gave the format ago was Harry Harrison, but this was only with a comedy Stainless Steel Rat book, although it was fun.

But as I was saying: I’m not slagging off FF game books here. I just can see why the older players didn’t always like them nor like where the hobby, their hobby, was going. And in retrospect time has proven their trepidation was justified.

Anyway, they’ll be time for recriminations later. The adults left the club no sooner than they arrived and we were left a hyperactive bunch of dice happy morons playing our stupid games where 10th level magic-users would walk into an inn and hire a bunch of 1st level weaklings to clear out some orcs from somewhere… Epic stuff!