I went into the shop to have a look at 5e...

... I turned the box over in my hands, read the blurb, looked at the art and... decided that there was no reason for me to buy *this* version of D&D. I am with Newt on this one; I have more than enough versions of D&D in my cupboards, on my bookshelves and on my harddrives to not really need another version, official or not. Indeed, if I was to buy another D&D, it'd likely be another OSR game, or a hardcopy of one of the games I only own as a .pdf. I am not saying that 5e is no good. Hell, I'm not even saying that it isn't a version that I would like. I've skimmed through the .pdf of the Basic Rules and there isn't anything that screams, "play me, and put away your TSR D&Ds, your clones, and your OSR games". In my first draft of this post that was a huge list of classic and OSR rulesets, but I figured that I'd only leave out some deserving clone or OSR game, such is the genuine renaissance of gaming based on the simplicities of HD, AC, Class and Level. Indeed, there is so wit, wisdom, vim, and vigour among the hobbyists producing D&Dish material that 'official D&D' is largely redundant to someone like me who doesn't, for example, engage in 'organised play'.

Honestly, if Kevin Crawford would just tone down the creativity a bit (next up; a sandbox 'Cthulhu' OSR horror game?!) and embrace vanilla fantasy we'd be sorted. If he'd rebuild the classic D&D classes (in pseudo-Medieval costume) using the SWN/SotD engine, importing all his campaign construction and management options - domains, mass combat, factions, trade, etc. - spread out across Red Tide/An Echo, Resounding and various SWN products, combing them all into one big 'rules cyclopedia', well then I would have my 'permanent D&D'.

So I ended up spending about half the money I'd earmarked for a boxed set of D&D on Dead Names: Lost Races and Forgotten Ruins and Scarlet Heroes instead. Kevin Crawford, a one-man-band of OSR awesomeness, epitomises the best of the OSR (whether he calls himself part of the OSR or not). There isn't a bad product in the entire Sine Nomine line, but they're not just setting books, or collections new classes, spells, monsters, and useful tables. Almost every product is the distillation of a particular gaming philosophy, one that emphasizes player choice and agency in the context of a long-running campaign in a living world (or worlds, for Stars Without Number). If you are at all interested in sandbox play, read something written by Kevin Crawford. Stars Without Number has a free edition. So yes, they're packed with tables for campaign construction and adventure design, yes, the setting ideas are interesting, and put new spins on D&Dish games (Spears of the Dawn has some great African-inspired magic using classes), and yes, they are all cleanly written with non-nonsense procedures that achieve in game what other games seem to require GMs maintain spreadsheets. But they are also motivated by an idea; an idea of what a roleplaying game should be, and why playing a roleplaying game has unique qualities that set it apart from other forms of gaming.

So, even if I do end up buying 5e - and you know that I will submit in the end - you can be sure that I'll still have a whole bunch of Kevin Crawford's books loaded on my tablet as a reminder of what this game is all about. 

And of how productive one man can be! I would struggle to believe that Kevin Crawford wasn't some kind of collective identity for a whole bunch of writers, if there wasn't a singular vision running through all his books.

[God, that's a bit gushing isn't it? Still, click 'Publish'...]

A very old school critical hit chart...

In real life, I've recently been reading a little about medical illustration. And I came across this brilliant image:

This is the 'Wound Man', an illustration by Hans von Gersdorff published in a 16th century manual for barber-surgeons on the treatment of battlefield injuries.

Now then. What I'm thinking is that something like this would make an excellent die-drop table, of the kind seen in Zak S' excellent Vornheim. Suitable for all manner of OSR games, but probably particularly suited to Lamentations of the Flame Princess. I'm imagining that, as with the supplemental critical hit tables for WFRP1e, there would be a different die-drop table for a different sources of injury, all graphically realised in gory faux-woodcut detail. In order to 'bulk' the supplement out to 16 pages (or whatever), there could be a few pages of similarly illustrated diseases, poisons, and 'advice' on healing. It would masquerade as a 'real' manual, complete with a pun-tastic 'German' name in the classic WFRP style.

Here's the front cover to von Gersdorff's manual. Now that has some serious Old School vibe!

But I can't draw, so someone else has to do it! And anyone who can draw probably wouldn't need me to supply the words. Especially the person that immediately sprang to mind when this idea popped into my head.

This year, I have been mostly playing...

Okay, so it is not even close to the end of the year. It isn't, is it? Please no, where has the time gone...

I picked up a copy of Savage Worlds Deluxe Explorer Edition. I thought that I'd best see what the fuss is about. 10 years late. As I said something of the sort to the guy behind the counter, I realised that if I listed the games that I had run over the past 12 months you would struggle to tell that it wasn't sometime in the mid-1980s. In 2013 I have run games using:

• Several iterations of Classic D&D (including BECMI/RC, Labyrinth Lord, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and Adventurer, Conqueror, King System)
• Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG
• Classic Traveller
• Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2e

Even the games on this list that have been published in the past few years are clones, simulacra, new editions, or what have you of game systems published about thirty years ago. Given that my next game will be either Marvel Super Heroes or Classic Traveller, and that the 'serious' campaign in gestation is a d100 fantasy game heavily inspired by Griffin Mountain, and you've got a picture of a man hopelessly stuck in the past - but I like it here! - like some kind of gaming Doc Brown.

   

Old School Aphorisms

Søren Kierkegaard, on the development of players characters by play, and emphasising that 'story' is something made after play:

Life can only be understood backwards... but it can only be lived forwards.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, on eschewing railroads for more sandbox-y play (with an emphasis on exploration):

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. 

Both pinched from the University of York Vice-Chancellor's speech, celebrating 50 years of my alma mater. They weren't talking about Old School gaming, and neither was the VC. Can anyone else do violence to the thoughts of long dead thinkers by recruiting them into the OSR?

The Old School is Pathetic – A Rant

A rant, in which I play the pseud, before growing tired and irritable.

Pathetic [pəˈθɛtɪk] 
adj.
- arousing pity, sympathy or compassion,
- arousing scornful pity or contempt,
- miserably inadequate,

- affecting of moving the feelings.

From the Greek pathos: suffering.

Now that I have your attention, are you ready? Ok? Ok.

What I am arguing is this; old-school D&D, WFRP1e, early WFB, W40K1e, and other old school fantasy games, hell even Fighting Fantasy, all have a healthy dose of the ‘pathetic aesthetic’ running through their design. Not only their art, but also the setting and the game design itself. This is in contrast to many contemporary games, which have abandoned the pathetic aesthetic in favour of a concentration on designs - art, setting, and the game itself - which evoke awe (or at least, are meant to). Hereafter, this juvenile aesthetic will be referred to as TEH AWESUM. A lot of people have written lately about what the OSR means (or means to them). I could have posted some photos of the lovely products of the OSR that are in use at my gaming table. Ho hum; you can buy those books from Lulu too, you'll learn nothing from me there. Instead I will introduce the pathetic aesthetic, which I think binds the best elements of a diverse Old School of gaming together, and suggest some reasons the gradual elimination of this aesthetic from contemporary gaming. 

None of this is to say that Old School games did not contain plenty of  things designed to make the gamer go 'wow!', but these were (almost always) tempered with elements that aroused pity over awe. And do not confuse the pathetic aesthetic with being 'dark' or 'gritty' of with the laughable labelling of material designed to titillate teenagers as 'mature'.

Consider Fighting Fantasy. Juvenile reading, yet possessing a far more genuinely mature aesthetic than many  contemporary games. Titan, the world of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, is one in which there are umpteen master wizards (mostly bad or mad), in which YOU might fight animated statues, ride on griffons, fight a topiaric monster etc. A world of high magic. And YOU will have a minimum SKILL of 7 and STAMINA of 12, making YOU far more powerful than any normal man. But the design of the books as a game produces the pathetic aesthetic; there are plenty of death traps, and choices that lead to the lines 'Your adventure end here'. And even if these are avoided, YOU are more likely than not to die in a way that isn't dramatically satisfying, whether through slow attrition or the lack of a magic gee-gaw. And look closer at the setting; are there are more pitiable bunch of monsters than the inhabitants of Firetop Mountain or the Citadel of Chaos?  Much of the world is pitiable, the ever-present prospect of failure renders YOU pitiable. And that is before we consider the YOU that is the Creature of Havoc.

Consider the design of Old School D&D. These are games in which PCs typically have low hit points, are subject to Save or Die effects, and in which adventuring includes an emphasis on resource management (what could be more pitiable than being trapped in the Underdark with no food, dwindling light, and a Cleric who went dungeoneeing to kick ass and cast Cure Light Wounds, but is all out of Cure Light Wounds?). And these PCs are the product of random character generation - which is a feature of many games with the pathetic aesthetic - the opposite of point-build character design. One manifestation of the pathetic aesthetic is about playing with the hand that [cruel] fate has dealt you, not choosing flaws and drawbacks, whether for dramatic effect or as an exercise in character optimisation. D&D PCs can still do awesome stuff. They are far better than a 0 level human,  and a skillfully played adventuring party can put terrible monsters to the sword (and spell and burning oil, and henchman's spear and wardog's teeth). But if the players want their PCs to do this, or to experience other awesome elements, they have to find it through play, not in what is written on their character sheet before they even begin. And they might well die trying in a way that makes little dramatic sense. A D&D PC is not Aragorn, destined to return as the King, and they might not even die like Boromir. In both creation and death a D&D PC might well be pitiable.

WFRP1e. Do I actually need to say anything here?

Roleplaying games take place in the imagination, so it is the system (and setting) that produces the aesthetic  of the game as much as the visual art. At least, that is my excuse for having written so much without mentioning the art! Early D&D art shows brave men and women  (and Elves, Dwarfs and Halflings) engaged in dungeoneering, a high risk activity. And if something is risky, then there  must be a good chance of failure, of [permanent] negative consequences. These adventurers are frightened, likely doomed. The same is true of WFRP1e and Fighting Fantasy. Even when the adventurers are doing something awesome, they are not TEH AWESUM superheroes that dominate the aesthetic of contemporary games.

In miniature gaming the visual aesthetic is more central; you are shoving little men across a table. But look through the photos of the battles in early WFB – those Dwarfs look wide-eyed with fear as the Skeletons climb the hill towards them. And what are the Dwarfs defending? A farmhouse, perhaps. What does the equivalent picture for WFB8 look like? The Dwarfs are on steroids, huge hulks with snarling faces, and they are not defending a barn but the legendary Tower of SKULZ. Think of the early scenarios and the characters they contain. In the Magnificent Sven you might play a disgraced Dwarf inventor scrabbling for treasure and reputation in Lustria. In Terror of the Lichmaster you play a handful of Dwarf miners and a hamlet of ordinary humans as they defend their homes from the terrifying undead led by Mikeal Jacsen. These are pathetic battles, and all the more interesting for it.

Oh, and as for Rogue Trader; have you ever seen a universe so filled with the pitiable? And Realms of Chaos? Those were awesome books, but they were about playing once mighty heroes that were destined for ruin as a post human monster...

The loss of the pathetic aesthetic in fantasy gaming has to do with a number of things. When I were a lad, all this were fields, and computer games gave you three lives and then you started from the beginning again. Computer games now are amazing. They tell stories that critics compare favourably with contemporary books and films. But to ensure that you see these stories, these games are built on a playstyle of save, save, save; catastrophic failure, or even serious negative consequences, are never permanent. Unless you choose them to be (or have made a metagame mistake in your save strategy). Success is given, if you put in the time (and read the walk thrus). Computer games dominate our broader gaming culture, and the removal of a genuine risk of ignominious failure - an essential part of the pathetic aesthetic - has been largely removed from this culture.

Computer games have influenced table top RPGs in other ways too. When someone recommends that you use a computer programme to manage the bookkeeping required to create and run an RPG character, it should be a joke. But it is not. High levels of complexity make it difficult to provide for and accommodate player choice in play. How can a GM make stuff up on the fly with such complex 'natural laws'. This results in a front-loading of player choice, concentrated in character design. Naturally, many players optimise and go for TEH AWESUM. And, if a GM cannot accommodate player freedom in play, the 'railroad' that the players walk down has to be one at which they will succeed. The more the game is a railroad, the more any failure is the fault of the GM rather than a result of player choice. It is not pathetic if the GM kills the PCs, just weak.

And then there is 'balance'. Contemporary RPGs are seemingly designed so that all PCs, when  properly optimised, contribute equally to an encounter. 'Encounter' has been reduced to combat (that the PCs can win) or a skill check (‘social combat’? that’s wrong on so many levels), and 'contribute' to a mechanistic intervention. So all characters need to bring TEH AWESUM as if this was an MMORPG. Ugh. Smash the computers and sing the name of Ned Ludd. But not before I have finished writing my rant on this one.

Fantasy miniature gaming has seen the malign effect of tournament play and another intervention of 'balance'[1]. The drive to balance gradually eliminates the pathetic elements of the game leaving only TEH AWESUM. Of course, the designers could have kept these games as being about pathetic Dwarfs and pitiable monstrosities, but once one army had a unit that could bring TEH AWESUM to the table... (see the next paragraph). Curiously, a balanced battle should evoke pity. Want to see a real balanced battle?  Try the Somme; two armies lined up against another, with little manoeuvre, no subtlety, just endless bloody grind and big bombs. Yup, WFB8 with tournament-optimised army lists. But if we are all children who think the big bombs are TEH AWESUM...

You young folk just don't know how to have fun these days! Not proper fun anyhow, what with your Xstations and would Wiboxes. Games companies moved from catering to older hobbyists to targeting a younger, casual market. Well, a couple of the big beasts did, but these monsters dominate the tabletop gaming culture, and what they think gaming is, or should be, matters. Targeting a younger market is good business sense; there is more money in it, and the market refreshes constantly. Do I, as an adult gamer, need any more Dwarf miniatures? No. Will I ever? Well, I will never need more, but I might buy one or two, maybe even go on an eBay binge from time to time. Which makes me a bad customer, even if I am a good gamer. But this younger, casual market is not the kind that will enjoy a pathetic aesthetic, they are not going to wait for awesome things, they are not going to work for it, and if they do have to spend many sessions playing their snowflake PC into awesomeness, they are not going to accept that their Dragonborn Paladin has died a dramatically meaningless death. They deserve better, they have been told, as they have put in the work to get there. The notion of games as work is another malign influence of  computer games; grinding up levels rather than playing for the sake of playing. Who would have thought that it would be older people trying to teach younger people about the virtues of play for its own sake?

An unwillingness to accept the pathetic aesthetic stretches to adults too, who have mistaken fantasy gaming for a storytelling medium (or some dramatic art). They want plots and story, and they want it first. Old School play places the game first – the act of play – and if there is a story to be told it the story of play. A standard denigration of Old School games runs; "Why would I want to play someone who might die at level one? I want my PCs to have a story like the heroes of fiction." To which I say, "read a book, watch a film, idly daydream, or play a computer game (save early, save often)". Proper fantasy gaming embraces the pathetic aesthetic. It not only defines it, but the pathetic aesthetic is done better by fantasy gaming then any other medium. Any other form of fantasy gaming is badwrongfun![2]

[1] Did these game designers learn nothing from Appendix N? It is the conflict between Law and Chaos that is exciting, not Balance!

[2] I am smiling when I say that. But if you look in my eyes you will see that I really do think that you are playing it wrong.

Oldhammer's Alive!

Orlygg has organised an Oldhammer day at Wargames Foundry in Nottingham, most likely on 24th August. I may well be going; I know a couple of other people planning to make the long trip from the Celtic wilderlands, and so a lift up there should not be a problem. The problem, as always, is choosing (or rolling), collecting, and painting, my warband.

A very dark (and not in a good way) photo of some random (but not random-ised) Chaotics

I have decided to declare 'Oldhammer's Alive!' and collect all new miniatures for my warband. Naturally, I'm only going to choose those that capture something of the classic Warhammer aesthetic, but I'm not going to be bound by this. I am taking my lead from the OSR here; while the old models and books are cool, and are great if you can get them, making the movement about out of production models and books limits participation and makes it a hobby for collectors and old-timers. In the OSR, it is the retro-clones, and the second generation of OSR games that have taken their lead from older play styles (whether near-clones such as Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Crypts and Things, or new games such as my new love, Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG), combined with the ease of publishing that .pdf and print on demand (PoD) offers, that have made Old School gaming accessible to anyone who wants to get involved. Flint-eyed eBay scouring, searching for that Rules Cyclopedia, is not required.

So I have set myself the task of building an perfectly [un]acceptable Realms of Chaos (now, if only Games Workshop would release that as a PoD product, or even as a .pdf - come on, look to dndclassics.com) warband using only in production miniatures. I could trawl eBay, I could rummage through the white metal that is hoarded here, there, and everwhere in our house. But I do not think that the OSR is/should be all about nostalgia, and I do not see why Oldhammer should be either. I will, of course, post pictures of my progress as I acquire the miniatures, and as I slowly and crudely paint them.  

Admonitions

I recently got myself a copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics - a replacement for my duplicate gift that the people at IGUK were very good about. I might post a review at some point, but I will say several things.

1) The game has atmosphere. To quote Russ Abbot, 'what an atmosphere!' The writing, the art, and the rules all combine to produce a unique, distinctive vibe - all without relying on encyclopedic setting information. There are flavours of older editions of D&D in there, and not a little WFRP1e, but DCC is very definitely its own thing.

2) The rules for magic, which take up half the book, are the best that I have yet seen. They appear to make concrete the idea that magic is powerful, but is a dangerous, corrupting force. Something like this is what the WFRP1e setting promised but the rules failed to deliver.

3) Critical Hits! Yes, we've got kneecap smashing, head cleaving action built into the game, with different tables for the different classes/levels, and separate tables for monsters and dragons.

4) A non-'mechanical' experience system. XP are not won by getting gold of killing monsters, but by engaging in adventuring activity - mortal combat most of the time, but other kinds of activity might also provide an XP or two. XP rewards are tied to the power of the PCs - so a difficult encounter, which might result in a fatality, for example, is worth 3 points - and the XP intervals between levels grows wider as PCs grow more powerful.

5) Indeed, the first level interval, between levels 0 and 1, is just 10XP, which works out at 5 'typical' encounters (a challenge, but no fatalities or significant losses would be expected), is just one session's worth of adventure. And that is 'the funnel': four 0 level PCs per player, with the survivors achieving classed PC status and all the power and survivability that comes with that. Now, I'll no doubt run a funnel adventure at some point in the future, but doubt that such a bloodbath would be the best way to introduce my players to the real charm of DCC.

6) A chapter titled 'Skills'. That is two pages long, providing GM advice on handling non-combat activities - summed up as, largely Old School, based on player skill, but don't be afraid to roll some dice now and again.

But the first page of the 'Judge's Rules' contains Joseph Goodman's 'Admonitions', which, after the usual advice to house rule the game, are 'always roll your dice in public' and 'let the characters die if the dice so dictate it'. Over the past few weeks I have been idly looking advice on running fantasy RPGs from books published in the late 1980s and the 1990s, and that advice was the exact opposite; the standard instructions to the GM seemed to be that it didn't matter how much you fudged the dice or railroaded your PCs, just so long as the players didn't know and 'the plot' was preserved. So it is refreshing to read something that points out that the very essence of an RPG as a game comes from the idea of challenge, of the possibility of failure.

And with that in mind, I would like to point anyone who has not read it already towards Courtney Campbell's A Guide for New Dungeon Masters. New DM or not, it is still good advice. His articles on player agency are also very interesting. 

Biggest disappointment of Christmas 2012

It wasn't that the only boardgame I received was one that I already had (Elder Signs).

It wasn't that my copy of Blood of the Zombies had a drink spilled on it before I had a chance to read it.

It wasn't even that the kit bag that I asked for turned out to be a rucksack smaller than the one that I already have, too small for my judogi, never mind anything else.*

It was that THIS wasn't real!

Nice work, Zhu Bajiee [compliment]. Nice work, Zhu Bajiee [sarcasm born from dashed hopes].

However, Gygax Magazine is real. Despite the big names associated with Gygax Magazine, we will have to wait and see if it is better than Oubliette, Knockspell, Fight On!, or any of the other OSR magazines out there. 

*Yes, I am an ungrateful so-and-so.

Painting in Primary Colours

I have lots of D&D material. AD&D1e, AD&D2e, and my beloved BECM(I[*1])/RC. A cupboard full of the stuff. But I haven’t played D&D in ages. Recently, we've been playing WFRP1e and 2e in our gaming group. And lately, I've been really interested in running RuneQuest/Legend (or OpenQuest) recently. I like the elegance of the d100 system, the bloody death that awaits characters who charge thoughtlessly into combat. I’d been considering it as the engine for a new sandbox campaign, with a world to be generated from the ground up (with some components acquired by unashamed robbery from existing campaign settings, fantasy fiction, and legend – I wouldn’t even file the serial numbers off). To satisfy my desire to both GM and to play, I convinced D to run this campaign as a co-GM, populating the world through a developing array of random tables and a library of stock elements. With no great secret plot driving the action, rather the decisions of the PCs, co-GMing is not much of a problem. And, anyhow, if you are unable to separate player knowledge from character knowledge, you are not going to make much of being a GM anyway.

But what do we come up with? A Viking-based, low-magic, all-human campaign, in which the PCs are tied to their community and culture by 'realistic' economics and a Pendragon-based personality system, with one or two adventures per game year. Giving the campaign an epic, intergenerational scope. I am not saying that is boring. It certainly got me and D excited. But will it excite the players in our campaign in quite the same way? This is a campaign concept that you really need to buy into. I have a strong feeling that, at the moment, some of the players in our group want their game painted in a few more ‘primary colours’ rather than the seven shades of, er… grey that is a well done WFRP or RuneQuest game. And that isn’t just in terms of the game style – killing monsters and taking their stuff >over> scrabbling, unrewarded, in the dirt – but also in terms of game mechanics – I’m a fighter, I’m a wizard etc. lets get to it >over> I have a range of skills that mostly overlap with yours. These things, of course, are a spectrum – skill-based systems have class-like archetypes, and class-based systems, even RC D&D, have skill systems, and campaigns about fighting dragons and clearing out the kobold caves can have gritty elements, just as a campaign that began wrestling in the Middenheim mud with a pox-ridden beggar[*2] might end with a Trollslayer, a Wardancer, a Knight, and a level 4 Wizard facing down giants and chaos warriors.


More than that, there's the structure of our gaming group. My wife and I have just had a second child. The other GM in the group has two children (and a non-gaming wife). This produces play sessions are short compared to what we might once have played - 3 hours is about the typical maximum - and, potentially, irregular. If we’re gaming weekly, we’re doing well. The other players, well, I’ve got a feeling that they would be far more into a ‘killing monsters and taking their stuff’ style of campaign – I am pretty certain that, for all they enjoyed Shadows Over Bogenhafen, for example, the lack of combat and character reward[*3] did not match expectations.

So what game and play-style is geared towards quick, episodic thrills and easy fun? My thinking is a sandbox campaign, with a hex map populated by small dungeons – strongholds, encampments, ancient tombs, sewer systems, caves, and dense forests – with random tables and improvisation generating the world on the fly in order to generate a sense of real player/character freedom. Put aside any worries about the world having a ‘realistic’ economy [*4], ‘realistic’ geography, or ‘realistic’ cultures – in Mystara for example, the Viking analogue culture complete with Scandanavian analogue geography immediately abuts an Arabian analogue culture and geography. So what? There is also a flying Gnomish city, an Empire of 36th level Magic Users descended from extra-dimensional ‘humans’. And if you really want the problem of unlikely neighbours, there is a nation of Halflings living in a late-Medieval rural English idyll right next to a plateau of magical Native American analogues. And all this makes it fun. Not mindless fun, not even cheap fun. Just primary coloured fun.

But what rule set? Well, I can’t use AD&D1e. Why? I can’t make head nor tail of the arrangement of the rules in those books, I never have been able to. I love them, but it is like reading someone’s house rule document out of context. AD&D2e [*5] is a goer, and I’ll be able to make use of the rulebooks that I had shipped from Scotland to the Caribbean [*6] the Christmas of their release. Those books are well travelled companions of mine. BECM(I)/RC is also a goer – many of those books are also the original having assembled all the GAZ/PC series etc. over the years I have endless optional rules and classes to incorporate, and campaign locations and NPCs to steal. Largely, though, I see D&D and AD&D1e/2e as essentially the same game. Alternatives would be Dragon Warriors, or Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2e, though the D&D nostalgia, and the weight of the D&D cupboard, bear down on me. The default settings of those two do contain important flavours to stir into the mix – the darkness of Dragon Warriors Legend takes some of the edge off the high fructose corn syrup of Mystara, and a dollop of Titan adds a very British spice. But in the end, this will be a world that develops from player/character action (and overt player suggestion), GM improvisation on top of some sketchy preparation, and random tables – let the dice decide!

*1 I don't have the Immortal Set. I do own one Immortal level module - The Immortal Storm -, and I think I'd have to be in a pretty special headspace to consider running it.

*2 Sorry, I mistyped. You are the pox-ridden beggar wrestling in the mud. And it is fun.

*3 The PCs were all still alive at the end. What more do they want?!

*4 Though I will be returning to my series (currently stalled on part 1) on ‘fantasy’ economics – did you know, for example, that a BECMI Magic User can earn 3,000GP per month for sitting around in someone else’s castle?

*5 What is the ‘problem’ that some have with AD&D2e? It is still recognisably A/D&D, unlike 3e and on.

*6 Releasing the Monstrous Compendium as a ring binder rather than a book was a nice idea, but made it awkward to post internationally in the 1989.

Zhu's Oldhammer Contract

Zhu Bajiee has devised a manifesto for old school Warhammer gaming.

Inside: Dwarfs in the Jungle!

In other news, I've being playing too much Blood Bowl lately. FUMBBL, the free online Blood Bowl website, is an excellent way of getting a Blood Bowl fix when the logistics of arranging a tabletop game are eating away the fixture list. Anyone else on FUMBBL?