Fighting Fantasy in the Guardian

Well, I couldn't miss it, could I? The old Fighting Fantasy logo on the front page of the Guardian Online. Interestingly, the argument of the article - that the fusion of game and story in Fighting Fantasy has fundamentally changed our view of games - is undermined by Livingstone's 'desert island' game: chess. Of course, if Livingstone did spend eternity with only chess to play he may well end up house-ruling chess to replace the abstract playing peices with NPC mono-motivated pawns and PC knights with their own interest in L-shaped moves.

How Fighting Fantasy beat traditional games
 

YOU are a buffoon!

Between the time when summer rains flooded the North, and the rise of the XXX Olympiad, there was an age undreamed of. And onto this, YOU, destined to roll 12 for SKILL and 8 for LUCK. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!

The Rings of Kether. Ugh. YOU play a space cop trying to bust some drug smugglers (brave for a kids book). Unfortunately, the space cop YOU play is also a buffoon.  My space cop landed at the space port and checked out the local underworld bar. Seeing a table where a bunch of known criminals were gambling, I decided that the space cop should join the game and see what he could learn. What does the buffoon do? He finds out that the horrible looking, criminally connected woman, Zera Gross, runs an import/export agency, and says, "More exporting than importing, I'd wager, the nature of the drug business being what it is! Ha, ha!'. I’m not kidding. Space cop gets beaten up, loses 2 STAMINA points, permanently. By the time my space cop gets his brains blown out on the roof of a warehouse (about 10 sections later) I couldn't really care what happened to this idiot. Is he really is a elite space cop, an agent of the Galactic Federation, a Grade 1 Investigator, or in some later twist does it turn out that YOU are playing a 'jimp'?

Anyhow, The Rings of Kether reminded me of the need for the fantastical in my fantasy gaming. Only the faintest of colours on the edges distinguished this book from one set in the 20th century. No science fictional or space fantastical elements had any major role in either driving plot or generating atmosphere. I could tolerate that, if it was a hard-boiled detective game with mere sci-fi dressing, but YOU are definitely not Philip Marlowe in space. 

Indiegogogogogogo

I've recently gone in on a few Indiegogo campaigns. I went in on James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess hardcover campaign, which was funded along with one stretch goal. However, by the appearences of Raggi's next campaign, he's failed his Sanity check. 19 inter-related campaigns, each needing $6,000 of funding to run, but with the perks for big pledges dependant on other campaigns being funded (i.e. pledge $20 for the print+pdf copy of the adventure = no risk // pledge $100 for the print+pdf of this adventure and up to five others = $120 of books, maximum, but very likely much less). Crazy. Nevertheless, it looks like some will fund, with Jeff Rients' Broodmother Sky Fortress currently just shy of the $6,000 mark.

Award-winning (it counts, doesn't it?) adventure designer Kelvin Green has an adventure in the crazy campaign - Horror Among Thieves. I've contributed to this campaign. And, remember, James Raggi has failed his Sanity check, so:

"Kelvin Green’s gone nuts and he’s infected LotFP Central! 

If Horror Among Thieves does NOT fund, LotFP will still be publishing the adventure. It won’t necessarily be on the same timetable as if it were to fund, but we’ll put it out. 

Anyone contributing $10+ to the campaign will get the adventure PDF, WHETHER OR NOT THE CAMPAIGN FUNDS. Anyone contributing $20+ to the campaign will get the physical book, WHETHER OR NOT THE CAMPAIGN FUNDS. 

That’s right, if the campaign doesn’t fund, you get your contributed money back at the close of the campaign, and you will get the stuff anyway when it’s published. (Note that if it doesn’t fund with this campaign, books will be shipped 2nd class and it does not include any of the campaign extras.) 

Spread the word. Now there really is no excuse not to fund this thing."
 

There's just 6 days to go on these campaigns.

But that's not all. Graeme Bottley, re-animator of Advanced Fighting Fantasy, has an Indiegogo campaign running, to fund not only the republication of the classic Blacksand book, but its expansion. With just a $3,000 target, and well over a month remaining, this looks like it is almost certain to meet its target. Now, I've gone for the softcover, but if you're a fan of big beautiful books, higher contribution levels might well get you something special.

And finally, the Indiegogo campaign for OpenQuest Remastered / OpenQuest 2 will go live very soon. Another campaign well worth funding.

All this is conditional on you having any money left after pre-ordering what is sure to be a (hefty) work of art - RuneQuest 6. You have just under a month...

'Advanced' Skills in Hammerstein!

Hammerstein! is [going to be] a d100 skills-based game. My first draft of the Hammerstein! 'Skills' chapter, obviously built on the equivalent OpenQuest and Renaissance chapters, renames 'common skills' as 'aptitudes' : "those skills in which everyone, by dint of natural capacity or commonality of human socialisation, has some ability."

Here's my first attempt to describe 'Advanced Skills':

"In Hammerstein!, skills beyond the list of aptitudes are classed as Languages, Lores, and Crafts. These are skills that require training or experience in order to have any grasp of the basics. While the Hammerstein! basic game provides a range of examples of skills of these kinds, there are, potentially, a vast number of these skills – a GM (and players) with a taste for granularity could decide that each craft specialism, no matter how obscure, should have its own Craft skill, that all dialects deserve their own Language skill, and that every minute field of knowledge is defined by differentiated Lore skills. Hammerstein! does not recommend this approach. Keeping the Language, Lore and Craft skills broadly defined ensures that players can develop competent, rounded characters with skills that benefit adventuring. If it becomes necessary to differentiate the abilities of a character with Craft (Farming), whose background is in arable farming, from those of a character with Craft (Farming), whose background is in dairy farming, the GM might want to consider just what kind of fantasy adventure role-playing game that he is running. If there is still a need to differentiate, use difficulty modifiers and common sense."

Bandits and Farmers... might have high % skills but they're not the 'rock star' adventurers of Hammerstein!

Of course, the chapter then continues for [too] many thousands of words describing just the kind of skills that I consider are appropriate for fantasy adventure roleplaying. Lately, though, I've been thinking about collapsing these skills further still. First, Languages, Lores, and Crafts are all the same kind of thing - bodies of knowledge and capacities for action that require some specific training or experience not covered by basic human socialisation.

Second, I've been thinking of adopting the ideas that I'd been using to deal with 'advanced' combat abilities to cover 'advanced' or granulated forms of the basic aptitudes. Here's what I mean: I've always been disatisfied with the tendency in d100 games to allow a character to have 100% skill using a sword but only 20% skill using a dagger, or 80% in Influence but just 15% in Seduction (or whatever). So OpenQuest, with its collapsed skill list, really appeals (as does Legend / 'new' Runequest with its combat styles). Nevertheless, I like the individualisation and characterfulness of the differentiated skill system, as an idea, even if I don't like it in play.

So, with regard to combat I have been taking my lead from WFRP1e - most weapons are covered by the Close Combat or Ranged Combat skills, and basic unarmed combat is covered by the Unarmed Combat skill. Some weapons or advanced techniques, however, need more training. In Renaissance, these are given their own % skill rating. In Hammerstein!, these will be learned as 'proficiencies' - if you have been trained to use a polearm in combat, you can use it at your Close Combat skill %. If you have not, it is going to be Hard (-40%). As well as specialist weapons, there are also advanced techniques such as two weapon fighting - including sword and shield - and unarmed combat techniques. Most of these weapons and techniques provide those skilled in their use with options in combat that go beyond simply 'add X% points'. Learning one of these proficiencies, if not provided in the archetype, requires training and improvment rolls (two, three, more? I've not decided) and a roll against the relevant skill, with rolling under being a success - it is easier to learn new techniques the more advanced your ability in the basic skill.

I have already adopted this system to deal with literacy (related to the appropriate Language skill , but a high % does not necessarily = literacy), and the ability to swim (related to the Athletics skill). I had been musing over just where to draw the line with other skills. As with advanced combat techniques falling under the umbrella of the three combat skills, so do many advanced skills seem to be subdivisions of other aptitudes - particularly, but not limited to, Influence and specific Regional Lores. Does Hammerstein! need an Etiquette / Courtesy advanced skill, for example? I am leaning towards treating all those advanced skills for which an aptitude could be used as substitute as 'proficiences'. This allows two characters, both with Influence 80%, to have very different ways of putting the skill to use; one could have the Seduction proficiency, the other the Leadership proficiency. These would have the effect of altering the difficulty of tasks by one(?) step - i.e. a 20% bonus - for skill use in those narrow areas. This prevents skills such as Influence being an undifferentiated mixed bag, while also avoiding the sitiuation in which high Influence is for nought as advanced skills eat away at its niche, producing a skill proliferation that breaks the advancement system.
In short:

Aptititudes - everyone has got 'em, ability = %.

Languages, Lores and Crafts - skills for which an aptitude cannot act as a substitute, which need training or experience to learn, ability = %.

Proficiencies - the ability to use the above skills in specific ways, which need training or experience to learn, ability = you've either got it or you don't.

Yet more complications to a wonderfully elegant system. Why do I persist in breaking OpenQuest?

Mystaran Bullet Points

So, I have established the key concepts that I am borrowing from Titan. As I wrote, these are the sort of things that I must continually remind myself of when building the world of Hammerstein!, else it degenerate into pseudo-historical beige, unfit for adventure. But what about Mystara – the D&D world so lovingly detailed in the Gazetteer and Creature Crucible supplements, and the Voyage of the Princess Ark? What can I take from this world, and what must I rule out?

For more Mystaran goodies, including Thorfs wonderful recreations of the classic hex-maps, see the Vaults of Pandius.

1. Pseudo-Vikings as neighbours to mock-Arabia, which is right by fantasy Rome, is a feature not a bug. Variety is the spice of play. Every place should have a strong ‘theme’ – who wants to trek through umpteen ‘realistic’, barely distinguishable medieval towns? – and there need not be a ‘realistic’ logic to their arrangement [All the Gazetteers, essentially]. This complements onto point 3, 4 and 5 of the Titanic Lesson Plan.

2. The world is post-apocalyptic, and conceals hidden cities [B4 The Lost City] and lost valleys [B10 Night’s Dark Terror]. There were once powerful civilizations, and their treasures and secrets are waiting to be discovered, as well as their twisted, degenerate remnants [see also the DA Blackmoor series, and the Azcan, Oltecs, Nithians etc. of the Gazetteer prehistories and the Hollow World]. In Titan we have the War of the Wizards, Carseopolis, etc., but the more thoroughgoing the apocalyptic prehistory, the more dungeons there are in the world. See point 1 of the Titanic Lesson Plan.

3. Ships are cool. When, thousands of years ago, I moved on from the dungeon bashes of the D&D Basic Set and opened the blue box of the Expert Set, I was immediately excited by the idea that adventurers could not only explore the forests between the town and the dungeon, but they could buy, hire, or steal a boat and journey to the Isle of Dread. Or the Island of the Lizard King. Or explore the Seas of Blood. Sea travel, especially to islands, presents the possibility of filling the world with unexplored areas, and with cities and cultures that are radically thematically different. Again, this can keep the world small, varied, and civilization isolated (points 3, 4 and 5 of the Titanic Lesson Plan). Also, pirates.

4. If ships are cool, flying ships are cooler (but rare) [the Voyage of the Princess Ark, PC1 Top Ballista!]. These are present in Titan, too; there is at least one, the Galleykeep [Creature of Havoc, The Trolltooth Wars].

5. Mageocracies are fascinating. In small measures. Thus, Glantri > Alphatia. In a world of magic, at least some places will be the domain of wizards and sorcerers. Not all of these powerful magic users will be one of the multiple big bads of Titan. Indeed, given that the world is inherently fantastical, magic plays an important role in all societies, even those that are not ruled by magicians.

6. And finally, for now, adventurers are rock stars (see point 8 of the Titanic Lesson Plan). The only way I can fit something like GAZ 4 The Kingdom of Ierendi into a world that I could comfortably run is to combine Ierendi with Titan’s Fang [Deathtrap Dungeon and Trial of the Champions], maybe with a dash of Blood Bowl. Many adventurers are motivated by fame, more than they are by power, or even money. They are psychologically different from normal people, even ‘normally’ powerful people, the kings, generals, merchant-princes, thaumaturgic professors and bishops of the world. As an aside, in a world of magic, gods, and demons, it is entirely right that these non-adventuring powerful people are more often than not ‘high level’ (or game equivalent) people in their own right. The D&D standard of having all bishops  be level 9+ clerics, all kings as level 9+ fighters, etc. makes more sense (see counter-lesson 2, below) in this kind of world (while it certainly doesn’t in settings that attempt to emulate a historical period with a bit of magic glossed on top), as long as there is the XP mechanism for advancement other than by adventure. This path of non-adventuring advancement could be just for NPCs, though I dislike systems that mechanically differentiate PCs from NPCs, or from monsters even.

There are, however, two things that I cannot take from Mystara when building the world of Hammerstein!

1. Nations. The whole of the Known World is covered by nations. With borders, routes of communication, standing armies, etc., it is difficult to envisage that civilization exists as points of light amid fantastical peril, or that the world is small world but fantastical threats make travel perilous [points 3 and 5 of the Titanic Lesson Plan]. Cities might cast a civilizing shadow on the nearby countryside, but actual nations should be unusual and/or loosely bound.

2. A preponderance of high-level characters. “What? You’ve just written that high-level characters are justified.” Yes, I suppose this is a system rather than setting problem. It depends on the power scaling of the game. The power scaling of D&D works better in world where almost no-one is name level (which is always the impression that I got from AD&D1e, with the low demi-human level caps implying, to me, that even though humans could go further, only the superheroic did so). In Mystara, there are thousands of 36th level magic-users, and that’s just for starters. In a game world in which there are tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people with high-level adventuring skills, what is a PC to actually do? However, in a game where even ‘high-level’ characters are vulnerable (WFRP, AFF2e, or a BRP/RuneQuest game, somewhat like OpenQuest, say…), having 150% in close combat or knowing a vast array of sorcery spells is all well and good, but you’d much rather those crazy adventurers dealt with the dragon than risk your 15 hit points…

I’ll get round to what I want to borrow from the world of Warhammer soon.  

40K Space Fascists?

These are the boyz that will stop your little game.

Orks. The only hope for *life* in the universe against encroaching Chaos, ravenous Tyranids, and death-cult humans.

I started painting up a Rogue Trader-era Ork force a while back, courtesy of some donated old metal from Davey. I think the idea was that we'd play some kind of heretical mash-up of RT/40K2e/Necromunda. I only got five models into the project before other gaming projects (and real life*) intervened. Now that I hear that the new edition of Warhammer 40K is quite good, in ways that I might well appreciate, what am I to do? Well, maybe finish another five boyz before I inevitably pick up the big box of plastic that will shortly be unleashed...

*Scratch that. Gaming is a part of my 'real life'. Non-gaming aspects of my life intervened.

Titanic Lesson Plan

In order that my game world / PC graveyard doesn't meander off into boring quasi-historical mundanity, I thought I'd best make sure that I was clear in my own head what I am pinching from my influences when thinking about Hammerstein! I'm doing this in order to keep my imagination active and on message. Here's the lessons that I am taking from the first ten Fighting Fantasy books.

1. The [under]world has dungeons, lots of them. They are more than mere monster lairs, filled with a rich variety, including things that *appear* to make little sense - old dwarfs playing cards, random benches for weary travellers, ferrymen, and animated tools. [Warlock of Firetop Mountain] However, even though evil wizards build towers and populate them with a strange array of creatures and objects, there is a 'dungeon ecology', but it the rationale for and interaction between elements of the dungeon is fantastical rather than mundane [Citadel of Chaos].

 

2. The wilderness should be full of encounters that are mini-adventures in themselves. Stop thinking about mundane ecologies and economics - these forests are full of adventure. Indeed, the wilderness can be structured like a non-linear dungeon [Forest of Doom and Scorpion Swamp].

3.The 'world' can be small because travel is perilous. This peril is fantastical rather than grim.  Bandits should NOT make up the majority of random wilderness encounters [Forest of Doom and Scorpion Swamp].

4.The 'world' is geographically small; tropical islands are a short journey from temperate grasslands, and from there you can reach the icy mountains. All manner of adventures can be crammed into a small space. Mundane distance is not the problem - the fantastic is [Forest of Doom, Island of the Lizard King, and Caverns of the Snow Witch].

5. Pay no attention to real medieval settlement patterns. Civilisation exists as pockets of light amid the fantastical peril. Culture can vary tremendously within a short distance - European inspired fantasy can sit alongside fantastical names inspired by a trip to Thailand [Deathtrap Dungeon].

6. Urban life is no less fantastically adventuresome than the wilderness. Cities are great big dangerous dungeons. If you want a quiet life, live in a modest sized town. [City of Thieves].

7. The big bads of the game world are magically powerful. They cannot be defeated simply by saying 'I ht him with my sword', but require a quest in order to identify and exploit his weakness. Unicorn tattoos are optional [City of Thieves].

8. This world contains famous professional adventurers. Adventurers (that survive) are rock stars [Deathtrap Dungeon].

9. Horror is as good a source of inspiration as its sibling genre, sword and sorcery [House of Hell].    

10. Sci-fi gaming, despite all its promise, doesn't hold my imagination in the way fantasy gaming does [Starship Traveller].

Plenary: Forget subtlety - exaggerate! Don't drain the magic, the fantastic, and the adventure from the world by thinking about 'realism'.

[Addendum: an indiegogo campaign for a new edition of Blacksand? That is well worth £30]