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Modular: Who Would Win? John McClane and James Bond versus a Tribe of D&D Goblins

Modular: Who Would Win? John McClane and James Bond versus a Tribe of D&D Goblins

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Knights of the Dinner Table 142-smallI came across a fascinating piece by Noah J.D. Chinn in Knights of the Dinner Table issue 142 (August 2008). Chinn’s guest editorial for the “Gamer’s Pulpit” column is an intriguing analysis of how the realism bar for heroes has shifted radically from the days of our youth (us Gen Xers) until now.

The single most interesting fact he presents is a piece of data generated by Mike Hensley charting how many goblins a first level fighter could kill before dying across all iterations of Dungeons & Dragons (at that point there were 6 versions, 5th Edition not yet having debuted). He ran the combats at least 1,000 times for each fighter in a Javascript simulation program, with the fighter facing the goblins one at a time, producing an average for each version. This is what the data reveals:

  • OD&D: 2.7 goblins killed
  • BD&D: 4.1
  • AD&D1: 4.3
  • AD&D2: 7.3
  • D&D 3e: 10.1
  • D&D 4e: 23.4 Holy Crap!

(It would be interesting to further extrapolate from this data: Does it suggest that a 4e first-level fighter could, one-on-one, take out 4 or 5 OD&D fighters before succumbing? Or that a first-level 4e fighter is roughly equivalent to a third-level fighter in Basic?)

Chinn argues that this hero power inflation cuts across popular culture. He uses the Die Hard movies as an apt illustration:

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Modular: The New Mongoose Traveller RPG #0: Transported by Free Trader Beowulf!

Modular: The New Mongoose Traveller RPG #0: Transported by Free Trader Beowulf!

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Traveller First Edition-small
Like a ray of grit into my comfortable early teenage existence

This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone… Mayday, Mayday… we are under attack… main drive is gone… turret number one not responding… Mayday… losing cabin pressure fast… calling anyone… please help… This is Free Trader Beowulf… Mayday….

35 years and those words still send a chill run down my spine.

I can even see the shelf in the now defunct gaming shop on Edinburgh’s Forest Road. I was there to pick up Chivalry and Sorcery. Even at thirteen, I was a howling medievalist and that game seemed like it would be my game.

However it was a box of little black books — Traveller RPG! — that I came away with that day.

Sure, I’d played it before… briefly… with a kid in the year above and I’d liked firing pulse lasers and negotiating the mean streets of human space.

However, I hadn’t seen the possibilities.

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Take a Crash Course in the History of Computer Role Playing in The Ultimate RPG Handbook

Take a Crash Course in the History of Computer Role Playing in The Ultimate RPG Handbook

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The Ultimate RPG Handbook-smallI’ve been a subscriber to PC Gamer magazine for over 22 years, since it launched as a British “Euro mag” in November 1993 (back in the days when computer hobby shops here in the US would carry British gaming magazines for the Amiga and the PC, and the magazines had disks taped to the cover. And there was such a thing as computer hobby shops.) The magazine has long had a terrific stable of writers — including Editor-in-Chief Gary Whitta, who famously left the magazine to become a screen writer. And he did, too, writing The Book of Eli and Rogue One, among others.

The artifact at right is PC Gamer Presents: The Ultimate RPG Handbook; I found it in the magazine section at Barnes & Noble on Saturday. It sorta looks like a regular issue of PC Gamer, except it has no ads, and is totally devoted to my favorite video game genre. Sweet!

Much of it is composed of reprints from the magazine, but there’s new stuff too — like Richard Cobbett’s massive 28-page full-color history of computer RPGs, starting with Temple of Apshai and Beneath Apple Manor, through Wizardry, Bard’s Tale, the SSI Gold Box Games, Star Control 2, Deus Ex, Witcher 3, and half a zillion titles in between. Cobbett lingers on several of the major series, like Ultima, and particularly influential games like Elder Scrolls:Arena, Baldur’s Gate, and Fallout 3. He doesn’t cover everything, of course, but his breezy style makes the whole thing entertaining and highly readable.

There’s plenty more crammed into the issue, including a feature on the future of RPGs, a long article on Witcher 3, and reviews of major new RPG releases like Fallout 4, Dark Souls III, and Tyranny (maybe they didn’t fit in the regular magazine?) There’s also a few production glitches, like the invitation on the cover to “Flip For More,” and an arrow pointing to the inside cover… which is totally blank. Nonetheless, whether you’re new to the genre or an obsessive collector who (like me) has every single game they mention, this is a terrific way to spend a few hours. Recommended.

The Ultimate RPG Handbook was published by Future Publishing in December 2016. It is 98 pages, priced at $9.99 (US edition), and 148 pages for £9.99 (UK edition). There is no digital edition, though one is promised. Get more details at the website.

Modular: Oz’s Bag of Holding: Breaking Out Basic D&D for the Next Generation

Modular: Oz’s Bag of Holding: Breaking Out Basic D&D for the Next Generation

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D&D_Basic_Rules_1981I have here a bag of holding. I am going to pull some things out of it now…

Well, I’ve gone and done it. I’ve broken open the floodgates and moved my children on from Dungeon! The Board Game to the real deal.

This is fortuitous timing, as M Harold Page has launched a new series of posts (READ HERE) on Black Gate about introducing kids to tabletop role playing (which I have been reading with newly-relevant interest).

My daughter and son will soon be turning 8 and 6 respectively. Bringing the son in on things might have been a bit premature — he’s more apt to grab the miniatures and fight with them like action figures than to sit and patiently listen to a Dungeon Master try to paint a scenario in his mind’s eye.

To introduce these acolytes, I dug out my 1981 D&D Basic set (1981 edition). After decades of d20, revisiting this chestnut three decades later is kinda hilarious. D20 is so elegantly simple in concept: Hit a monster with AC 18? Roll a d20, add modifiers, and get an 18 or better. But with old-school D&D, no! You look at the monster’s AC and then have to consult a chart (I confess I’d forgotten what THAC0 even stood for). Cross-reference monster’s AC with character’s level to see what you have to roll. Basic? No, not really. Pretty damn cumbersome!

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Modular: The RPG Fusion of Dragon’s Dogma

Modular: The RPG Fusion of Dragon’s Dogma

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Dragon's Dogma-smallDragon’s Dogma is Capcom’s attempt at creating what could be considered Skyrim meets Monster Hunter. The game is an open-world RPG where you and your party fight giant monsters, and I do mean giant.

In their attempt to combine these two, they took one of my least favorite games and mixed it with one of my favorites; leaving me somewhere between the two.

A Dragon-Gone Day

The story of the game is that you are an Arisen; a being with the ability to lead beings called Pawns to battle. When your heart is eaten by a dragon, you begin a quest to get it back and save the world.

The game space is huge for a Capcom game, as you wander through a world full of monsters and really big monsters (but more on that in a minute.)

Unlike other RPGs where you’ll create one customized character, Dragon’s Dogma lets you create two. Your main pawn is your constant companion and you are free to completely customize them as you see fit. Pawns are the name of the game, and will determine whether you’ll succeed.

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Victoria II: When Peace Was Rare, and War Was an Old Friend

Victoria II: When Peace Was Rare, and War Was an Old Friend

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Victoria II-smallWhile seeking an escape from the distressing politics of the early Twenty-First Century, I decided to plunge headlong into the distressing politics of the Nineteenth Century and picked up a game I’ve long been meaning to try: Victoria II. It was a good call. This civ-building game is quite an achievement. I find it a good deal more engrossing than the Civ series (admittedly, I have a tough time jumping the mental hurdle of Abe Lincoln building pyramids). Something about the era just hits the spot.

You might wonder how good a Civilization-type game can be if it covers just a hundred years from the 1830-1930s, but think about all the key stuff that happened then. Industrialization. Rise of the nation-state. Colonialism. Marxism. Revolutions in science and industry. La Belle Époque and the Great War.

The challenges in the game are quite convincing, and there’s all sorts of matters to juggle with everything from the immigrant balance of your population to your tech tree (“I’m going to rush Freudian psychoanalysis”). The game is both broad and deep, broad in that you can play just about any nation-state (some require a little jiggering — if you wish to play Poland you first have to control it as a Great Power, then free it. The game allows you to switch nations if you wish every time you do this) and deep in that it allows you to micromanage your economy, if your political regime allows it, that is.

The different nations do have some realistic flavor built into them. You can take Japan out of feudalism, or try to hold Russia together, wake the sleeping giant that is China, unite Germany, or be those miserable fat Belgian bastards in the Congo.

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Modular: Three Viking Age Supplements and One Role-Playing Game

Modular: Three Viking Age Supplements and One Role-Playing Game

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GURPSVikingsWhen I first discovered the Yggdrasill roleplaying game, I had the understanding that that Vikings-specific system existed in near-isolation. Oh how wrong I was! As I have purchased, downloaded and read Norse-themed rpg materials from DriveThruRPG and other sites, I have discovered that interest in the Northern ethos has been quite lively for some time. When, either out of mere curiosity or out of design to add to my home game, I first thought to collect Viking Age supplements, my mind naturally went to I.C.E.’s Vikings supplement for both Rolemaster and the Hero System: this was because, in my coming-of-age in the late 80s/early 90s, I was an ardent GM of MERP (Middle-Earth Role Playing, a scaled-down version of the Rolemaster rules set) and passionate about the Hero System in the form of Champions, a super-hero roleplaying game. But in those years, a young gamer with limited funds, I never could justify a pragmatic purpose for purchasing the I.C.E. Vikings supplement.

That situation has changed, now that I’m older and I have extra cash, but I still don’t have that I.C.E. supplement. The reason? Because it’s out of print and only available in hard copy via third party purveyors. The process of obtaining this seems like needless trouble when there are so many instant-gratification products available as immediate PDF downloads.

Today I will be reviewing, in the order in which I discovered and read them, three of these: GURPS Vikings, Troll Lord Games’s Codex Nordica, and Vikings of Legend for the Legend RPG System. All three of these seek to evoke a Viking Age roleplaying experience while using an existing rules set, the second type that I outline in my last post. I’ll say at the outset, though, that Codex Nordica read a lot like Vidar Solaas’s Vikings RPG, and I’m certain this is because of the similarity of the two systems that were being adapted for the Viking Age feel. Both Solaas’s D20 system and Brian N. Young’s Castles and Crusades engine have their foundations in Dungeons & Dragons, which has enjoyed so many iterations now that most of them aren’t even called Dungeons & Dragons anymore. Last post I allowed Solaas the distinction of having created an “original” Old Norse game, since he had to “hack” the D20 system so much. I’m tempted to award Young this same distinction, since in my view he visibly wrestled with many of the inflexibilities that I perceive in D&D games. But ultimately it belongs in the rpg supplement group; the following observation shares only one reason for this designation.

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Modular: How to Introduce Kids to Tabletop Role-Playing #2: Actually GMing Kids

Modular: How to Introduce Kids to Tabletop Role-Playing #2: Actually GMing Kids

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stranger-things-netflix-dungeons--dragons
The munchkins at your table may behave remarkably like college-age players…

GMing for kids (read part 1) is pretty much like GMing for adults ; almost too much like.

Kids — especially geeky ones — don’t evolve into adulthood in a linear way. A 10-year-old can be like a 15-year-old and a 9-year-old sharing the same brain (and same bedroom, as Warhammer figures jostle with Lego). It’s very easy to GM to their more grown-up aspects and forget their younger ones, which can then throw a spanner in the works.

Obviously, it all depends on the kids and your relationship with them. However, here’s what I’ve learned…

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Ares Magazine 4 Now Available

Ares Magazine 4 Now Available

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ares-4-smallAres magazines, the Kickstarter-funded gaming publication that ships with a complete game in every issue, is now out with its fourth issue. The game this time is Extractors!, a 2-player game of mining and mech combat on a far-distant alien planet, designed by Karoly Szigetvari and Claudio De Pra.

Doriana, a Sol-like star system in the Sagittarius arm. Doriana-5, a medium sized planet barely suitable to life, is inhabited by bipedal intelligent creatures, organized in “hives.” Not as curious as us, their evolution has been slow, but they have now reached a technology level high enough to put a halt on the centuries-aged wars between hives. Dorians became aware that continuing these wars with weapons more and more deadly would lead to mutual extinction….

5 light-years away, the Avronians develop the ability to send non-living materials through space at effective speed faster than light. Carbophosphate composites, the main organic energy source on Avronia, has now become very scarce but, according to recent probe reports, it is common on Doriana-5.

Whilst most of the Avronian masters are still debating the best way to negotiate their energy crisis, groups of desperate peoples decide to send armed forces (huge semi-autonomous machines) to secure large extraction perimeters on Doriana-5….

Extractors! is a two-player game of medium complexity and medium solitaire suitability. One player controls a company of the Dorian Cellular Forces, consisting of Augmented Infantry Sections organized in cells and support vehicles. They face Avronian Machines whose AI is represented by the second player.

As always, there’s more to Ares magazine than just a game. Issue #4 comes packed with loads of original fiction and features.

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Modular: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The Temple of Elemental Evil

Modular: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The Temple of Elemental Evil

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the-village-of-hommlet-moathouse

Chainmail re-enactment of T1: The Village of Hommlet
at Garycon II, 2010 (click for bigger version)

Okay — maybe a bit of hyperbole there. About a month ago, I wrote about my favorite AD&D module, T1 – The Village of Hommlet. I mentioned that its follow-up, The Temple of Elemental Evil, was delayed for several years before Frank Mentzer completed it. Read on to learn about how Gary Gygax developed Hommlet and the Temple through play sessions and my deduction of why Temple was delayed for a few years.

Gygax and Rob Kuntz were constantly adding new levels and different environments to the dungeons under Castle Greyhawk as the players continued to eat up new content, always wanting more. Gygax began focusing his attention on developing a new region, with a campaign focusing on Hommlet and the Temple of Elemental Evil. With his game simply growing too big, Gygax split it, giving Greyhawk and its dungeons to Kuntz while he continued to work on Hommlet and the Temple.

Gygax’ son and a friend were starting to play, so Gary used the Hommlet campaign as a new, low level adventure for them, distinguishing it from the high level Greyhawk play. Gygax was busy developing TSR products and the Greyhawk Supplement (I) had come out for the Original Rules.

The Hommlet campaign was different than the Greyhawk dungeon delves. There was a village, with a smithy, an inn, a local elder, set in a rural environment. The party could role play in the village then move on to the dungeons of the Temple. It’s possible that Gygax ran players through some iterations of Hommlet and the Temple in late 1975 and into 1976.

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