The UGE Review: Basic Roleplaying 2023

The 2008 edition of Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying (BRP), a solid book with a bright yellow cover and distinctive cover design, is often referred to as the "Big Golden Book" or BGB. In terms of impact, it's one of the most significant RPG releases in the history of the hobby.


Often referred to as a systems tool-kit, it could also be thought of as a compendium, a collection of games. The BGB effectively contains RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer, and the outline of a system for sci-fi and supers, all based on a direct and highly playable system and a collection of spot rules that easily scales in complexity and detail. If the BGB has a weakness, the number of options can be overwhelming and there are a lot of choices to navigate from the idea of a game to play at a table. But as someone who had spent years with RuneQuest 3, applied as a generic base for fantasy, it was a seamless transition from the BGB to a successful campaign set in Middle-earth.


BRP in 2023 comes in a revised edition subtitled "Universal Game Engine" and so the UGE is the new BGB, though it shares the same iconic cover illustration. The virtues of BRP are are still fully present. The system is consistent and flexible. In practice, one of the most astounding things about a book the size of BRP is that it mostly stays behind you on the shelf. Once the characters are generated and the GM has prepared the scenario, everything you need to play is in the sheets and notes before you. Then you can close the book and put it aside. Since most checks are percentile, roll under against a given value, it's easy to glance down and assess the chances of success without a stack of modifiers; and since it's skill-based, there isn't a reference-sheet of special abilities and cases-by-case instances to consider. The rules fit together logically, and so it's easy to house-rule and adapt from a few basic principles.


Overall, any edition version of BRP feels grounded and believable. Hit points are tied to Strength and Constitution, so they don't keep escalating and soar above the level of stress and damage a person could conceivably take. Skill gains are incremental and tied to actions the character takes. The aim is not accurate simulation but verisimilitude, the sense that the fiction is credible and runs true to plausibility and expectation.


The revisions for UGE are well-chosen and necessary. Character generation is slightly streamlined and the options are better explained. The skill descriptions have less detail of the various levels of success (critical, special, etc.), which were not often referenced at the table. The bestiary section displays characteristic scores in a horizontal table, which saves space and is easier to read. The illustration style is more coherent and the images are generally interesting and evocative, although they tilt somewhat to historical settings.


The gains in layout make it all the more unfortunate that the tables are presented in a squintingly small typeface, which is hard to read even with sharp eyesight (or glasses on) and bright lighting. No one, for instance, is going to be able to roll and then quickly look up a result on the Major Wounds Table in the middle of play. The need for readable tables alone is a good reason to keep one's old copy of the BGB at hand during a session.


Apart from that, I have a few minor gripes: scope for changes in BRP that the UGE could have included. Given the "universal" tag, it would be nice to have at least one version of a fantasy or pre-modern character sheet that didn't list modern skills. Noting will knock you out of the moment than your elf character player sorting though a list of skills that include Psychotherapy and Heavy Machinery. And, given that the system is meant to be scaleable to different power levels, why is there no option for giving magicians more power to deal damage in combat? A single magic spell level which yields 1d6 damage costs a sharp 3 power points, which means that on average a magician is spending almost a power point per point of damage dealt.


Of course, the UGE gives you the tools to dial up and down the complexity of your game and transfer concepts seamlessly between settings – with a little work – but that's why it's so powerful as a base system. UGE is an "old school" system in that it doesn't present a pre-packaged and thematically pre-scripted world for you to start in, but a familiar, grounded, and conceptually coherent system from which you can build your own worlds and adventures.

Roll on the random notes table

 It's been a while: some random notes and impressions.

Roll a d6:

1. Warhammer FRP 4E

The Old World is still as cool, dark, and evocative as ever. This is the one "almost played" game that I've known of for years and never played a session. This edition is massive, detailed, comprehensive, wonderfully illustrated. But there are so many fiddly rules, stats, statuses to manage. XP converted to individual skill percentages! While there are plenty of enhancements to the original system, there are also too many gritty sub-systems.

• The map on the inside cover should be evocative, but the coloring is too green-grey, the detail too fine, to make it engaging, let alone readable.
• Years ago, I converted the classic WHFRP adventure "Night of Blood" to RuneQuest 3, and it was an easy conversion and an excellent adventure in play.
• All the classes and careers would make an excellent sourcebook to convert to Whitehack (see below).
• Even better, convert to BRP using the SRD (see below).

2. Whitehack 3E

A hack of the original "White Box" edition of D&D, Whitehack uses the familiar design elements: the same six ability scores, levels, accumulating hit points and Hit Dice (HD), armor class, saving throws, classes, and XP advancement.

But these original rules have been ingeniously adapted into a flexible, compact system of their own. The profession-like classes, Fighter, Thief, and Wizard, have been converted to true archetypes: the Strong, Deft, and Wise. You then assign your own groups—species, vocations, associations—and abilities to create professions and sub-classes that can be wholly unique. For the Wise, magic "miracles" are a free-form system to duplicate any powers. Sometimes, the slightly awkward generic phrasing—groups, slots, miracles—makes it hard to follow how these choices mesh together to make a character.

Although it's the version of D&D I'd play if I were to play D&D, it still has the same features of the original. Armor makes you harder to hit, but this doesn't scale much with your chance of hitting or your chance of hitting something else, so you gain an abstract reserve of hit points instead. Monsters have HD alone, so their chance to hit you is always proportional to the number of hits they can take. You chase experience points, and at certain points acquire levels that grant instant access to new abilities that you perhaps didn't have or even practice before.

On the other hand, Whitehack has some brilliant subsystems, like bases to represent patrons and other extraordinary adventuring party resources, and it's concise and clear and engaging. And it has some neat random tables that would work for solo play as well as in-game inspiration.

• There are a few intriguing pages in Whitehack about converting ability scores to use those of other systems. This means with relatively little work, you could convert content from almost any ability score and hit points system to run with Whitehack. I looked at the old ICE Middle Earth Role-Playing (MERP) modules and the idea was very tempting (Strength=St, Dexterity=Ag, etc.).

3. The One Ring 2E

I only have the PDF, but this is evidently a beautiful book. But you don't play the book design or the illustrations, you play the system, and the rules, though no doubt strengthened and improved, seem to me to have the same issues as with the first edition. As in my previous review, the rules are evocative, but my concern is that in trying to guide play through a Middle-earth experience the systems tend towards being prescriptive or procedural, with multiple conditions and narrative elements to track for every activity. When journeying, or in encounters with major NPCs, this ends up pushing the players' significant decisions away from their sense of the world and towards a series of dice rolls.

• On the other hand, the descriptions of cultures and locations, the way that Eriador is presented, is exactly how I'd like to play that old corner of Middle-earth. BRP would make a better fit, but also the freedom of XD20.

4. Basic Roleplaying SRD

Chaosium has published the core rules of Basic Roleplaying (BRP) as an SRD, and it's astonishing that there isn't more discussion about this. The BRP system in the SRD is truly basic, in that it's a base, a foundation, for any range of games. It presents only a compact version of the core rules. Sure, it lacks a detailed equipment list, bestiary, or magic system. But if you're a GM building your own campaign from your own sources, these are what you're designing or lifting from other sourcebooks already. 

• Download it, print a copy, decide on your skills list—you could run your game in the Old World or Middle-earth with this. (OK, for WHFRP you'll have to add the Consume Alcohol skill.)

5. XD20 2E

The original XDM: X-treme Dungeon Mastery was insightful, inspiring, and influential, but as I noted in my review, it was also hastily written, oddly organized, and not always adequately edited. So I was keen to join the second edition kickstarter. With the PDF of the page proofs in hand, I've confined myself to checking out the revised in-house system, or XD20, before the printed book arrives. 

It's a promising start. The second edition XD20 is now presented in one version, the simple rules for creating your character makes sense, and the core system—roll a d20, roll high to succeed and then roll again for effect—is elegant and flexible.

I still have no idea what the stat "WAH" means, but I know exactly what all the stats do. It's maddeningly unclear if the combat system means enemies would roll each round exactly like PCs or if it's all combined in the PCs' roll, but it would work either way. It's a system designed to wing it, but now you can wing it with elegance and speed.

• If TAC=Strong, PSYCH=Deft, and WAH=Wise, you basically have the means at hand to play any fantasy setting.

6. Roll a d100 instead

While reading a certain tome mentioned above, a compressed d100 system kept running through my head. For some actual rules tinkering, see below.

The situation:

• Grim 15
• Perilous 30
• Risky 50
• Uncertain 70
• Favorable 85

+/-10 for unusual circumstances

Roll d100 under the situation number to prevail.

Character can use a Quality to reprise a roll (reroll a single die) or change the situation (if feasible).

EXAMPLE: Linz, the boatman, find himself on the river as a possibly magical storm sweeps through. Suddenly, the situation is Perilous! Linz decides to try and run to shore. The first roll is 42! Linz can reroll the 40 die to try and reach safety, or use the next round to steer into the current to find a better course (roll Risky).

Your character has a Station in life (roll situation and read accordingly), a significant Characteristic (Strong, Quick, Smart, etc.) a current Career and two related Qualities.

A character has Toughness (3) points and sometimes armor points (1-3) with which to fend off wounds. Each wound taken then potentially makes their situation worse.

Hwaet! Review of Beowulf Beastslayer by Jonathan Green

The early Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, in particular The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, had a strong influence on both my gaming and my reading. Up until Firetop Mountain, I preferred science-fiction, and while the gamebook made it easier for me to imagine role-playing as a hobby, it also suggested fantasy as a genre, which lead me eventually to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien, as a scholar and writer, studied and taught Old English, and so by a curious confluence we find, years later, a gamebook based on the Old English epic poem Beowulf, and if you throw in illustrations by the inimitable Russ Nicholson, there's really no reason to resist.

Beowulf Beastslayer, by Jonathan Green, is the most fun and interest I've had in a gamebook since finishing Steve Jackson's magisterial Sorcery! series decades ago. Perhaps the reason Beowulf Beastslayer is so engaging is that by going back to the Old English heroic sources, Green is able to make the world of the gamebook fresh and fantastical again. The first time you read The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, orcs and trolls and ghouls and skeletons and underground mazes are new and intriguing; but after a while the tropes and inhabitants of the fantasy world become familiar, and therefore less exciting. Translating the Old English world-view and poem into gameable format refreshes the experience by creating that sense of the unfamiliar again. Monsters like Grendel, giants, sea serpents, even dragons take on a new immediacy. Riddles based on Anglo-Saxon sources present a new challenge.

To his credit, Green also adapts the Old English alliterative verse to his prose sections, which makes each passage of the gamebook poetic and even evocative of the sense of the source poem. The passages that one would usually skim to find the next fight or choice point are also a pleasure to read. And, the gamebook uses kennings – compact poetic figures from the period – as progress markers and resources: another evocative turn that makes each achievement more memorable.

Green uses the ACE system for the gamebook series, adapted from the original Fighting Fantasy rules, where the ACE scores Agility, Combat, and Endurance are used in a familiar fashion with standard dice, and includes a Hero Points score which functions much like Luck. It's a familiar and highly workable system, although if you're familiar with Fighting Fantasy in general, it's pretty clear where you should allocate your character points for maximum effect, and, if a criticism can be made of the mechanics, I've never felt in much danger during a fight, or worried greatly about missing a roll.

This, on the other hand, could be intentional. With the earning and spending of Hero Points to overcome key challenges in the book, and initiative providing a bonus in a fight, the best option is always to act like a big-darn hero. This is fun, but also, from the perspective of someone familiar with the Old English heroic mode, sort of educational. Playing the heroic values of Anglo-Saxon epics – bravery, boastfulness, generosity, cunning – is a way to immerse yourself in the mindset as well as win the best outcome.

In early 2021, Green also launched Heorot, a kickstarter campaign for role-playing in the world of Beowulf Beastslayer, based on the same rules as used in the gamebook. Given the ease and simplicity of the system, and the potential of the setting (with the chance that it could even fit Tolkien's view of Middle-earth), I'm following this project with great interest.

One Sheet Rules — Your Old School Experience

The OSR movement (the Old School Rules/Revival/Renaissance, etc.) has, over the years, brought to light a lot of interesting rules and ideas, but a recent instance, namely Bill King's One Sheet Rules, seems well worth the time to consider. 

Taking inspiration from early editions of D&D, The Black Hack, Knave, and other OSR and rules-light systems, the One Sheet Rules are an ultra-light, flexible system that takes many familiar OSR concepts and shapes them into a compact framework that would be just enough for any OSR style adventuring.

The simplicity of One Sheet Rules is outstanding. For example, almost every step in character creation is an easy to remember rule of "three": three points go to three abilities (STR, DEX, INT), you begin with 3d3 hit points, you choose three items of equipment or spells, and so on. The basic system, roll d20 and roll high against a target, is cleverly configured so that, if you choose, only players ever need to roll. To run an encounter, all you need to know is the level of the opposition, which serves rather like the HD rating of older systems. There is a experience system, but "advances", like experience rolls in RuneQuest, are based on rolls, not accumulated experience points.

Is it perfect? No. But it is imminently adjustable, and that's what matters. Personally, I would give characters slightly more hit-points in the beginning, like RuneQuest, but with a flatter accumulation and a maximum of about 18. And I would decouple Monster levels from hit points, so PCs could face a frail but deadly-swift foe, or a weak attack from a massive creature that takes considerable damage to drop. But both of these decisions are but a moment to make and easily ported to the rules.

With the Once Sheet Rules, it's possible to convert adventures and even whole campaign settings on the fly. I've sometimes wondered what it would take to pick up and run an old MERP adventure or start playing in the Old World or Warhammer without the cumbersome original rules. Although Basic Roleplaying is always an option, ultralight systems like One Sheet Rules are even faster to adapt.

Where to find them

The One Sheet Rules can be hard to find, and the Tinkerage only came across them by chance.

The One Sheet Rules by William King are available on itch.io: https://billk.itch.io/one-sheet-rules

You can also subscribe to the One Sheet Review mailing list (links in the rules), which allows you to receive the One Sheet Magic and Monsters edition, which includes a basic bestiary and spell list (highly recommended).

He do the NPCs in different voices

If you're interesting in the craft of the GM as much as solo gaming and its possibilities, then it's well worth your time to check out Trevor Devall's Me, Myself, and Die! channel on YouTube.

In his own words, "Voice actor Trevor Devall plays tabletop RPGs solo-style, fulfilling the roles of both player and GM." And while the Tinkerage has plenty to get on with other than watching other people play, Devall conducts his solo sessions with such tremendous verve and skill, as well as drama and humor, that they make for entertaining viewing for their own sake.

Devall, as it happens, is a talented voice actor, and not everyone will master the accents and tones he uses to build character, but it's worth noting how Devall makes every NPC unique with an accent, a description, a particular attitude or affliction that is simple and memorable.

The same goes for scene description. In his GM role, Devall doesn't layer in unnecessary or additional detail, but skillfully focuses on and repeats the key details that make the location distinct.

The last GM trick to borrow is what I as a writer would call "blocking". Me, Myself, and Die! is often very funny, but Devall alternates humor and drama, even pathos and moments of contemplation. Some sessions and games aim for a particular tone, be it comedic or grim-dark. Good GM-ing reminds us that varying the tone always hightens the contrasts and makes the action more memorable.

I'm not sold on Savage Worlds as a system, and prefer to Play All the Books for solo-inspiration, but Me, Myself, and Die! is a great illustration of what effective GMing can mean for any game session, and I look forward to the next series.

Review - Tales from the Green Dragon Inn

The two or three souls who occasionally wander into the Tinkerage will recognize both the "Green Dragon" as an establishment and the name of Eldrad Wolfsbane, or Chris Medders, who is also the author of the free-form RPG Dungeonpunk, which is reviewed here. Tales from the Green Dragon Inn is a "story telling game" inspired by the Tinkerage's thought experiment in Narrative Adventures at the Green Dragon Pub, which speculates how a scholar-author's RPG sessions might appear if they came to gaming without published rulebooks but plenty of creativity and care.

What are the hallmarks of a "Green Dragon" game?

• Free-form characters, created through description.
• Deep, immersive settings.
• Light, improvised rules that are steered by the game-world and its expectations, and rely on creative interpretation.
• Using common materials (notebooks, six-sided dice, counters from other games).

So how do the Tales from the Green Dragon Inn compare?

Character generation, using notes on a "character sheet", is exactly what it should be: descriptive, detailed, and encouraging imagination. The short sample characters are nice guides. The only point to make is that the Green Dragon Inn game seems very rooted in Dungeons & Dragons fantasy, such that the suggested classes and occupations are recognizably D&D, namely fighting man, rogue, holy man (cleric), and magic-user. This is fine as these things go, but one would hope that Green Dragon players would look beyond the regular character class stereotypes.

Players don't really need to know the rules before they begin, but the rules are perfect for Green Dragon play. Most tasks are resolved by a luck roll and interpretation. The target range is similar to that used by the "Powered by the Apocalypse" system, where a 6 to 8 is an "average" roll, higher is better, and the narrator can treat results as appropriate. Combat, as in the original post, is only slightly more complex, where more powerful creatures present a higher number to be hit. A nice addition to combat is a short chart of wounds, from scratches to fatal, which more or less matches the luck table. Armor is introduced as a way to soak up wounds, although in my opinion medium armor should be able to take more than a "scratch". All in all, it's a very light, easy system that encourages adjudication at the table.

It's fair to say that the text is riddled with spelling mistakes and other expression errors, and I hope the next upload corrects the spelling of narrative as "narritive" [sic] on the cover[1]. And there's no need to emphasize every other sentence, virtually, with an exclamation mark. But, with its simple type and layout, Tales from the Green Dragon Inn certainly conveys enthusiasm and the home-made creativity that encapsulates the ethos of the Green Dragon style.

Another quibble is that we find in the "Monsters" list references to "kids", "women", and "men". None of these are, of course, monsters, and I would hesitate to include items in a table that imply that kids are fair game for combat, or that women are for some reason less dangerous in combat than men.

But, while the world of Tales from the Green Dragon Inn is more strongly grounded in the familiar tropes of dungeon fantasy roleplaying than the professor's world (or Arihmere, we hope) the author is committed to fun and adventure in that world, and the simple rules and free-form procedures are a perfect example of Green Dragon style play in action. Let's hope that the Green Dragon Inn hosts many memorable games, and inspires even more.

DISCLOSURE: As above, Tales from the Green Dragon Inn was inspired partly by a Tinkerage post, and the author generously provided a free copy for this review.

Notes
1. Glad to say the cover has, in fact, been updated since this review was first posted. Good to see a quick response from the author.

This update May 15, 2018.

Stellar Adventures review

The author's bio note at the end of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain made mention of the "big three" roleplaying games of the time: Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller. With Stellar Adventures (Graham Bottley and Jonathan Hicks), the Advanced Fighting Fantasy (AFF) Second Edition rules makes the jump into science fiction, and just as AFF makes as good, or better, a fantasy game as D&D and RuneQuest, Stellar Adventures is an excellent, fast, flexible system in the mode of Traveller and other sci-fi systems.

Character generation is, if anything, slightly faster than in AFF. SKILL, STAMINA, LUCK, and PSI (the equivalent of magic) and TECH (the technology/engineering rating for android characters) are allocated from a pool of points. Then, the player selects special skills and skill levels from a list and a distinguishing Talent.

The rules of the game are the same as those for AFF, and very clearly explained. The small table on difficulty modifiers is a masterpiece of concise design. The basic system from AFF is simple and robust, it's just unfortunate that the "Roll over SKILL" option repeats an error from the original AFF book. The target number for a roll-over system for Skill tests should be 14, not 15, to duplicate the probabilities of the roll-under system.

Combat, of course, is a large section of the rules, and it's here that Stellar Adventures takes a subtle but radical step. In AFF, combat is resolved by opposed rolls, and this makes perfect sense because most combat is hand-to-hand, a series of sword blows, claw swipes, and so on. Stellar Adventures retains the opposed roll mechanic – but the majority of combats are firefights, with ranged weapons. To a Traveller player, this is strange indeed. Surely aiming and firing a weapon is a test of Skill rather than an opposed test? But, on reflection, Stellar Adventures really makes this work. The opposed attack total isn't about taking a single shot; it's an abstraction of dodging, taking cover, finding the nerve to aim and shoot accurately in a chaotic exchange of fire. It makes sense that the more skilled combatant gets the first hit out of all this action, and a single combat roll handles this. The opposed combat roll still introduces some oddities, however, and in particular there's no penalty to hit when attacking out of a weapon's range (the penalty applies to damage instead). Personally, I would apply a range penalty to attack totals, giving the edge to longer-ranged weapons, and stipulate that a ranged attack must total at least 14 to hit, so that it's possible to roll the higher attack total and yet miss due to lack of accuracy.

As befits a multi-genre sci-fi rulebook, there are sections on equipment (including cybergear), robots (with a player character option), vehicles, and starships. The sections for vehicle and starship design are remarkable for their scope and simplicity. Unlike more convoluted system (High Guard for Traveller for instance), one just selects basic vehicle options like size and speed, adds weapons and armor, and then options in the form of modules, and then calculates the total cost of all features. This is a fast system that allows you to design almost any kind of vehicle or starship. Of course, the GM will have to keep a close eye on the armaments and enhancements, lest the PCs quickly assemble an unbeatable vessel, but the system provides the ability to build anything appropriate to the setting, from a motorbike to an Imperial Titan to a free trader to the Liberator. And there's a somewhat free-form vehicle combat system that follows the same conventions as personal combat, making it easily scaled and interesting for all players.

Setting design is handled in a similarly descriptive fashion, with "place characteristics" such as Size, Tech, and Society given a 2-12 score (either by rolling or assigning directly), with the GM interpreting these scores depending on the context. There's also a dice-drop method for determining star maps and solar systems, which has a nice element of random inspiration.

Reading Stellar Adventures, the Classic Traveller system often sprang to mind, as Stellar Adventures shares many general ideas with Traveller. Indeed, Stellar Adventures would model Traveller's sprawling stellar empire, mercenary companies, meandering tramp traders, and morally dubious sci-fi adventure well. But with a little GM adjustment, I think Stellar Adventures could scale up to space-opera, and even grimdark science-fantasy, or down to hard sci-fi, and the nice part is that the rules permit, even encourage, this. The only genre it's less likely to accommodate is broadly speculative transhumanism, and since there are no rules for hacking, cyberpunk would be a stretch (though doable). Stellar Adventures isn't perfect – no game is – and there's certainly something in here that I would tweak or tinker with, but Bottley and Hicks have adapted the AFF framework with great success to provide an easy, highly adjustable system for science fiction gaming.

[This review is based on a reading of the PDF rulebook, and not actual play.]

Reviews - Tiny Dungeon and Dungeonpunk

Two low-cost games show the potential, and limits, of rules-lite and free-form RPGs.

Tiny Dungeons

Tiny Dungeon, by Brandon McFadden, Smoking Salamander Games, is a rules-lite, well-produced fantasy RPG that relies on an extremely simple dice mechanic. In fact, there are only three kinds of test, a standard test, a test with advantage, and a test with disadvantage, and consequently exactly three probabilities to roll for. Adventurer characters are also simple, having a race, a short list of Traits, a Weapon Proficiency, and a fixed number of Hit Points. Weapon Proficiencies and Traits confer advantage on tests, neither armor nor weapon type have any effect in combat (a hit is one Hit Point), and that's pretty much the game.

The Traits list is interesting and well-chosen, and would offer a variety of ways to make a character, although the race list is close to what you might expect of a generic fantasy. The low-key magic is interesting and essentially freeform. The Spell-Touched trait confers the ability to cast a variety of minor magics at the GM's discretion, while a Spell Reader can read spell scrolls to greater effect (though the scroll contents are also up to the GM).

Since there are only three probabilities, it's fair to ask why the system doesn't use the same dice roll with an "easy, standard, hard" target number, rather than adding or subtracting a die to generate advantage or disadvantage, but in such a simple system, this hardly seems difficult. One consequence of this system is that a standard test has a reasonable chance of success, which makes it harder for characters to hide effectively (since creatures have a fair chance of spotting them), and also more likely that combats will be decided not by skill but the higher Hit Points.

The PDF is well-designed, with engaging, somewhat cartoon-style artwork, and there's room in the short document for a scenario, as well as some GM advice. Given the scope of the rules, the system might not carry you through a long campaign, but there's certainly enough there for a few adventures, with few barriers to engagement or fun.

Dungeonpunk

Dungeonpunk, by Eric C. Medders, is a free-form system that presents itself as fun and easy, but lacks coherence when it comes to figuring out how you actually play. The tone and approach are intriguing, but sometimes the details matter.

Dungeonpunk, much like Sword & Backpack, takes a freeform approach to the rules. Characters have a class and a brief description, and are backed by 5 all-purpose Destiny Points. The essence of the system is: roll high good, roll low bad, 1 fumbles and 20 crits. There's a lot to like in a system with no modifiers, ever, where the roll is considered "'outside' the game itself." But what is a "high roll" or a "low roll"? There are no guidelines, not even something like the rough chances, to help eyeball the probabilities. Furthermore, some rolls are against a Difficulty Class (DC), a target number, whereas in other situations you simply look at the number on the D20 and take it from there. So when do these apply? In combat, there's mention of an attack and defense roll, but then the result seems to be a matter of comparison: highest roll wins. In which case, why does the scenario at the end use a system by which the players score so many hits per points rolled on the D20?

Now, in line with the punk aesthetic, the Game Master section advises you to "Make the game up as you go", but although punk is brash and anarchic, it's also tight and fast, and this approach comes close to getting bogged down in a mix of GM say-so and uncertainty. On the one hand, it's liberating to be able to write instead of roll a character, but what we're looking for with freeform is a set of clean procedures and mechanics that can serve the moment and also provide a flexible frame for resolution, and Dungeonpunk isn't quite there yet.

Unlike Tiny Dungeon, the Dungeonpunk PDF is a simple text document with a handful of stock-art images, and its clarity further suffers from a lack of proof-reading and consistency (at one point, for example, the text mentions a "Plot Roll", which sounds fine, except the term is never explained). Nevertheless, if Dungeonpunk was tighter and clearer, it could potentially offer a lot more depth of play over time, because freeform provides space for elaboration and development from a simple set of rules.

Looking at BRP Worlds of Wonder "Magic World"

Recently, the Tinkerage has been looking at the original "Magic World" supplement from the Basic Roleplaying Worlds of Wonder (WoW) set (Steve Perrin and Gordon Monson). This is not to be confused with the later Magic World (2012) by Willis, et al., although both titles share the same BRP roots. But the earlier Magic World is well worth considering, especially as an excellent, light version of the BRP ruleset for fantasy gaming.

Magic World extends on and requires the core WoW Basic Roleplaying booklet, but the system is a minor masterpiece for quick, ready-to-play rules. These days, it's hard to find in print, and the gamer inclined to research this online will have to dig into the wayback machine archives.

Magic World has about the quickest character generation I've come across in the BRP line, almost as fast as Basic D&D. A player can choose to simply roll the characteristics and then start play with the default BRP skills and scores. Or, they can select from one of four professions: warrior, rogue, sage, and sorcerer. Each profession provides some prior experience and skills, which are usually a sum, or multiple of the average, of several characteristics (for example, warriors pick up three weapons at the average of STR, CON, and DEX x 5%). Although these may seem like class descriptions, there are no restrictions on eventual cross-training, and each profession suggests a variety of possible backgrounds. Even the sage is a viable scholar-adventurer, who may be anything from a healer, to a merchant, to an elf-friend. One can imagine rolling-up a Magic World adventurer in relatively short order, selecting a few professional skills, and filling in the default skills as the game goes on. A character will be relying on good initial rolls for good skills, but that's where a little player skill, a willingness to play a character rather than an optimized build, comes in.

Compared to a modern system the line between skill and skill description is sometime blurry and requires some interpretation. The "Cut Purse" skill, for example (DEX x 5% for rogues), includes "skill to Pick Pockets, Cut Purses, Remove Brooches, etc.," which could all be rejiggered as "Thievery" or "Sleight" on the character sheet.

The magic system is compact but robust, with each spell having its own percentile chance to cast (like one of the magic systems in the BGB). Unlike the BGB, Magic World spells are relatively effective (dealing1d6 damage per magic point/level, for instance), so starting sorcerers don't feel under-powered.

Finally, the combat system, although simple, includes scope for critical hits and fumbles.

Recently, reading through Roan Studios' The Bay of Spirits setting book, which is beautifully illustrated but lightly stated out only for D&D, the thought occurred that the ideal would be a compact, robust ruleset that would make it easy to generate characters and play in (almost) any fantasy setting. WoW Magic World seems to fit the bill, and it's interesting to speculate what might have been if this version of Magic World, revised and clarified, had been the basis for Chaosium's later releases.

Sword Peddler's Sword & Backpack - mini review

A while back, the Tinkerage attempted an XD20-style hack of the minimalist d20 RPG Sword and Backpack.

The Sword Peddler has, without a doubt, done a much more elegant and concise job.

For the purposes of a review, the Sword Peddler's Sword & Backpack rules can be summarized as:

• To do anything, roll higher than a target number (or your opponent) on a d20.
• If the roll relates directly to your job, add 5 to your roll.
• A PC can take up to 5 "hits" – failed rolls – in combat. NPCs and Monsters can take more or fewer "hits" or "rounds" to be defeated.

There's more color and guidance than this, but that's as minimalist and flexible as an RPG can be, while providing a systematic framework for play. 

On Magic World

Chaosium has now reclaimed the rights to RuneQuest and Glorantha, and we're given to understand that these combined will become their banner fantasy RPG product, while a new BRP Essentials becomes the root system for a loose constellation of BRP inspired games. This leaves the Basic Roleplaying book (BRP) as a sort of attic collection of rules, and Magic World, previously the core rulebook for the nascent BRP fantasy line, is left out in the cold.

We have plenty of time for RuneQuest as a rules set, but Glorantha is not our fantasy lozenge floating on an infinite sea. Its massive timeline, overlapping pantheons, entangled myths, and cultural melange are fascinating but too hard to buy in to, like a club whose rules are too obscure to encourage joining, especially when we're looking for a world of our own to create (which is probably a slipstream version of Middle-Earth and the world of Firetop Mountain, illustrated by Russ Nicholson). Consequently, it might be time to take a closer look at Magic World before it slips out of view.

In many ways, Magic World exhibits the strengths and weaknesses of the recent BRP era at Chaosium. Its rules are a compilation of some of the best of the BRP percentile, skill-based system: smooth and easy to pick up, especially if you're familiar with any other iteration. Character generation in particular is probably one of the easiest tasks in the BRP family: roll Characteristics, calculate secondary scores (HP, MP, damage bonus, skill category modifiers) and then add set percentiles (60% at most) to a specified number of skills. Combat, once you decode the wonky presentation, is also quick and intuitive (there are no location hit points to slow you down, and only one kind of special or critical). Overall, it's a highly playable system and probably an excellent place to get into your own version of Middle-Earth or Allansia.

On the other hand, the rules are clearly recycled from earlier systems: the Chaosium Stormbringer RPG in particular and RuneQuest III. This leaves us reading some eerily familiar passages, and tumbling over rules that don't apply, such as references to fatigue in the bestiary. Of course, there are errata, but the point is that the errata are too long. And the wider point is that the presentation suffers from this copy-and-paste approach. The BRP combat sequence, for example, has a fair few steps but they all flow fairly cleanly: declare intent, set initiative, roll, compare attack and parry/dodge, assign results. But the "Combat" chapter is unnecessarily long, and the effect is somewhat scattershot. Skimming headings, you see "Actions in a Round", then "Resolving Combat", then "Order of Actions", then "Actions", then "Resolution" and yet the next section resumes "Hand-to-Hand Combat" with "Game Procedures" – how many times are we told about actions and resolution? Compare this to the tight presentation in the BRP Quickstart, and you realize that the whole chapter should have been thoroughly adapted and revised, especially for new players.

The reused artwork, a mishmash of styles and settings, similarly does not always capture the intended feel of the game, and although the sorcery magic system is serviceable, since it's based on the spells from Stormbringer, which were themselves added on to a system mainly designed around summoning and binding Moorcockian demons, the spell selection is not particularly inspiring. To play a sorcerer, your choices revolve mainly around spells that enhance or diminish effects (such as damage, armor, or characteristics) or a number of nasty offensive magics, reflecting the chaos influence of Stormbringer magic. That's not especially a problem if you want a low-magic campaign (there are no fireballs or lightning bolts here) or to grab your spell ideas from other sources, but the book is called Magic World after all, but offers only a few interesting or engaging spells.

The sample setting, the Southern Reaches, is more like Roman Britain than medieval Europe, a former frontier where first supernatural powers ruled before retreating, and where an empire has now replaced the roaming tribes of humans and orcs. It's effectively a colonial province, and designed with plenty of built-in conflict, with the return of the shadowy, shape-shifting fay and tensions between the two ruling houses presenting the most potential for adventure. The Southern Reaches are therefore an excellent sample setting, but they sit only lightly on top of the main rules. The rules for Allegiance between Light, Shadow, and Balance, for instance, would work nicely in heroic fantasy but it's not clear how they apply in the Southern Reaches, or to the fay. It might have been better to explore how the Magic World rules could be used to run a variety of different fantasy settings with varying themes and tones, as per the excellent guidelines in the "Settings" chapter of the BRP rulebook.

Given time and more design and editing, Magic World could have been an excellent product, but it now sits uncomfortably between being the "Fantasy BRP" and a minor game due to be eclipsed by RuneQuest and Glorantha. Depending on the quality and design of the new BRP Essentials, it could remain a fine go-to game for fantasy adventure, but its chance to capture the high ground among fantasy RPGs has passed. Not a fumble by any means, but a hit, parried.

Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2E review

This is a long review, as befits an interesting and playable system with genuine appeal.

Overview

The Fighting Fantasy gamebook series has long been the first, most memorable step into fantasy RPGs for many players, and the Tinkerage has long thought that SKILL, STAMINA, and LUCK, and two dice, can encompass an accessible, rules light RPG system. So a true Fighting Fantasy RPG carries a lot of promise. The Tinkerage still has the books of the first version of Advanced Fighting Fantasy, and though the system is fundamentally flawed, the books are a great resource and a strong introduction to roleplaying. So how does the second edition in one volume from Arion Games, substantially rewritten and revised by Graham Bottley, compare?

Well, for starters, Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2E is an eminently playable RPG, with a fun, evocative setting that can be broadly adapted and simple, direct rules which nevertheless enable plenty of options. The rulebook, however, looks and read more like a dedicated fan project than a professional publisher's product. Though this is part of its charm, that the core book could also stand to be significantly edited only points to its inherent potential.

Characters

After a brief introductory adventure in the spirit of the original Fighting Fantasy rules, with incompatible creatures lurking in a magical dungeon complex, the character generation section is the first substantial revision of the rules, and some of AFF 2E's best work. Bottley was absolutely right to make character generation points-driven rather than random (which led to hugely unequal characters in the first edition). The system allows players to select and customise their characters, but the limited pool of points drives some interesting decisions, as well as quite flexible design (as the sample characters demonstrate). Skills, or special skills, have been rationalised and cover a variety of character approaches and pursuits. Although I doubted the value of Talents at first, Talents, as particular character knacks or abilities, allow another level of individualisation. And since they fit within a page and a half, they are hardly challenging to scan and select from. Overall, the character section gives players the power to imagine, build and run a character that fits their intentions, and I can see this working for any number of fantasy styles, from High Fantasy to gritty dungeon-delving.

Rules

The rules of play are simple, based on the roll of two dice with modifiers where appropriate. That tests require a low roll under the governing ability (usually SKILL) and contests require a high roll over the opposing ability (as in combat) does not seem inconsistent as much as a clear way to distinguish the two basic sorts of action (although there is an optional rule to make all checks roll-high). For a rules light system, there is an extensive set of guidelines for the use of skills and special situations, such as sneaking, traps, trickery, hazards, and so on.

Combat is simple and fast, based on an opposed roll. The only weakness in this section is that damage and armour effectiveness are based on a die roll where the results are read from a table. Although it is easy to roll all the dice at the same time, this requires an awkward look up, and the weapon damage lines are the most fiddly part of an otherwise clean character sheet. While it is clear that the designers have wanted to keep weapon damage and armour protection fairly bounded, there is perhaps a more elegant way to do this. Despite the quick resolution of combat, there are several combat options which encourage a tactical approach and situational awareness, and some interesting tactics implicit in the Combat Situation table for GMs and players to explore.

An oddity buried in the combat rules is that shooting attacks with bows and arrows are also an opposed roll, rather than a test. This means that, correcting for range and size and so on, your chance to hit also depends on the SKILL of your target!

Magic

In the spirit of light rules with many options, there are three magic systems: wizardry, a very workable system based on Magic Points and learned spell; the flavoursome sorcery system, based on Steve Jackson's Sorcery series, where magic is fuelled by STAMINA; and priestly magic. Priestly magic uses a new system, which no longer draws on the same spells as wizardry, and introduces unique powers based on allegiance to certain gods. It's an elegant system that gives priests unique powers, and is an excellent addition to the rules.

Setting and adventures

There are the usual sections on equipment, encounters, world, and notes for designing adventures. The advice on adventures is refreshingly straightforward, running over hooks, locations, enemies, and possible subplots. There is also a random dungeon/location generator system. Shifting focus to locations and encounters, a little like the old gamebooks, means that adventures feel less scripted. The world of Titan is a glorious patchwork: it's meant to be a world of monsters and magic and strange places, not an exercise in faux-Medieval realism.

Other matters

Since the rules are so good overall, it's disappointing that the text is riddled with errors that should have been caught with proof-reading. There are also some larger mistakes in the expression, such as labelling the villain or antagonist in the scenario section the protagonist. And although the layout is attractive overall, with good use of the illustrations from the original AFF series, the justification is a mess, with distracting and erratic spacing between words on almost every page – which makes the text look like it was set in Microsoft Word, even if it wasn't.

Finally, there are some oddities or inconsistencies in the rules which could stand some clarification. For example, the target number for the optional roll-high method is 15+, which is actually harder to reach than the same combination of SKILL and Special Skill for roll-under. And the rules suggest in several places that it is possible to substitute LUCK for SKILL in certain rolls, including attacks in combat, but there is no plain statement or example of this rule. Of course, with such a simple set of base rules, it is easy enough to patch or house-rule the right option, and AFF 2E encourages this. But because AFF 2E really is an ideal introductory game, this is a potentially puzzling to new players.

All this means, though, is that there is an excellent system and game-world here, with genuine scope for a revised edition (not a new edition) that addresses some issues, and gives AFF an even better foothold as the favoured system for beginners or players who first picked up a sword and lantern in the shadowy passages of Firetop Mountain.

The One Ring RPG - a review

The One Ring Roleplaying Game, from Cubicle 7, the latest game that aims to create a roleplaying experience specifically for Tolkien's Middle-earth, is a fine game: well-designed, beautifully produced, closely and thoughtfully integrated with the background material. It is also one of the most restricted and procedural games in the Tinkerage collection.

Character creation, for instance, shows a lot of thought. Characters are deeply rooted in their cultural background, and character traits are evocative and interesting. But creating a character is largely a question of choosing options from a list, and although the cultures of Wilderland (Woodsmen, Beornings, Bardings, forest elves and dwarves) are represented, there's no option to play, say, a roaming Gondorian knight or a Rohirrim tinker – although in honour of The Hobbit, halflings are perfectly plausible player-characters. Now, other cultures are slowly being added as new sourcebooks are produced, but this restriction of the scope of character creation in the core rules to the types of the area represents the game's aims: narrow focus with exceptional depths, leading to guided play.

The core mechanic is elegant and nicely evocative, combining a single linear roll for effort on a d12 (with a "Sauron" face for automatic failure and a "Gandalf" face for automatic success) with a pool of d6s for skill and extra levels of success. These dice are rolled against a simple target number (with a nice fatigue mechanism to boot, meaning only the upper digits of skill dice are counted if the character is weary). But with this simple mechanic, there are procedures for almost every aspect of play. There are procedures for encounters with potential patrons and allies, based on a "tolerance" rating and multiple rolls. There are detailed procedures for travelling – one of the strengths of the game is this journeying system. And the abstract combat system requires a multistage approach from surprise to initiative to combat advantage and positioning. All this means that new loremasters will, unless very familiar with the rulebook, find themselves skipping or forgetting many of the stages of play. Speaking of which, there are even procedures for abstracting adventuring play (the adventure phase) from experience and character development (the fellowship phase).

If this weren't enough, there are points for everything. Attributes aren't just standing values, you need to spend a point of Hope to add an attribute score to a roll, unless it's going to a favoured skill, in which case you add the attribute's favoured value. Along with Hope, you spend Endurance; just keep it above Fatigue, or you become Weary (and keep Hope above your Shadow, or you end up Miserable). For encounters, you get Valour and Wisdom, and there are also your Fellowship points, and your Standing, which you keep up by spending Treasure points, and so on. To be fair, all RPGs have their lists of tallies and expendable hit points and fatigue points and so on, but play in The One Ring feels like a great big character points economy with a lot of interdependent values always in flux.

All of this helps to encourage deep, considered play with a detectable Tolkien theme, as characters are pitted not just against external dangers and weariness but the influence of the Shadow and personal corruption as well, but there is a fine line between rules that encourage a particular style of engagement and rules that force a  structure onto player choice, and the shadow of TOR's game design is this sort of prescriptive approach to play itself. Overall, TOR does a fine job of evoking and instilling a sense of Middle-earth and Tolkien themed roleplaying, but one can't help but think that a lighter hand on rules and sub-systems and more evocative and entertaining setting detail could have made this game into a true classic.

[This review is based on a reading of the core rulebook in PDF format, and is not a report on actual play.]

Is there an RPG in this dungeon?

Looking through the beta rules for Dungeon Robber (the solo, pen-and-paper random dungeon-delving game), the tinkereage wonders if there is not a viable multi-party RPG hidden within these rules.

Dungeon Robber is now online in flash-format as a sort of hybrid rogue-like/OD&D dungeon crawler. It's a fun, often frustrating game, but the thrill of random dungeon creation and solo resource management in the face of arbitrary death by statistical misadventure does not last long.

But looking through the 'rules' behind the browser game, there is enough content to forge a working RPG which would resemble a streamlined version of the original dungeon-crawling system. Take the character generation rules, the classes, and the very compact method for creating monsters based on 'home level', add a simple task resolution system based on the saving throw (with modifiers for hard/easy tasks) and one would have a simple, workable system ready to go.

The only drawback is that combat would have the swift and deadly feel of OD&D. But then, wouldn't raising the threat of monster encounters bring a new feel to the old game?

XD20: an appreciation (and thoughts for Dungeons and Dragons)

Since this year is the 40th anniversary of the Dungeons and Dragons system, this year's first post takes a quick look at an obscure off-shoot of that famous game, XD20.

XD20 is an extremely free-form, rules-lite system included in XDM: Extreme Dungeon Mastery, a guide to DMing and RPGs by Tracy Hickman and Curtis Hickman. XDM as a book shows signs of hasty development and editing, as well as containing considerable filler in the form of mostly unusable stage-trickery and dice prestidigitation, but at its core there is also a sound and interesting guide to bringing fun, action, humour and interest back into roleplaying games, as a reaction to the slow, overly-cautious, procedural style of dungeon-crawling play that D&D games can slip into.

This review on RPG.net is a pretty good summary of the XD20 system, and interested me enough to buy the e-book version through Kindle.

In brief, the 'advanced' version of XD20 generates characters with three scores or stats: TAC (Toughness and Constitution, the only acronym that is explained), PSYCH (intelligence and skill), and WAH (luck, willpower, and magic specifically). There is also a Health score, based on a combination of the other scores. Characters have a few notes regarding skills and abilities (based on their character Type) a Level, and any equipment the DM deems reasonable at the time.

The three scores combine ability scores, bonuses and saving throws, and so lower numbers are better (except for Health, oddly).

The mechanics are even simpler. The player describes an action, and the DM may ask for a related stat and apply any modifiers that seem relevant or entertaining and sets the target number. The player then rolls greater than or equal to the target number on d20 to succeed. If the success or failure has some effect, like damage or magical strength, then another d20 is rolled and the higher the roll, the better. In essence, the DM estimates the chance of success based on a stat or the situation, and sets the target number accordingly.

Combat rounds are unstructured. The only rule is that everyone gets a chance to act in a single round, and damage is fudged – you can roll, or apply a fixed number, or the DM can make something up.

The mechanics may seem sketchy and rather arbitrary, and in a sense they are. But XD20 captures a deep truth about RPG systems which has influenced my thinking considerably: there are only 20 digits on a d20, and most rules in all their calculations, modifiers and tables are ultimately aimed at proposing a number that seems fair given the situation: so why not just cut to the chase, pick a reasonable target, and roll?

The handling of magic has a similar elegance. A magician describes a spell, the DM sets a target number, the roll is made and the effects decided. The Hickmans point out that magic should be consistent with the rest of the rules of the game and the nature of magic in the game-world, not based on exceptions and special cases. This of course requires inventiveness as well as consistency and a great deal of judgement, but it also pushes players and DMs to treat magic as, well, magic, rather than a sort of special in-game munitions in prepackaged units.

Finally, although characters have a Level, there is no material benefit from gaining a level (which happens whenever the DM thinks it should happen). Instead, characters simply face challenges and opponents consistent with their level and the general difficulty of play remains the same.

XDM is clearly based on playing and revising D&D, with its vast lists of specialist classes, optimal "builds", spells, special abilities and feats, and countless modifiers, options and case-based exceptions. After all, everybody knows what a fighter or a barbarian or a wizard should do, what equipment they carry, what they can face at first level or tenth level. XD20 urges players and DMs to cut away the detritus and focus on the action, puzzles, roleplaying and story. With a few scores on the character sheet for fighting, skill and magic, some health points, a few dice, a few equipment tables to adapt and plenty of imagination and judgement, what could be closer to the original spirit of the first fantasy RPG?

Of course, the XD20 system is not perfect, and even some of its very few rules (in particular, how Health is figured) run against common-sense, which can hamper engagement. But its core ideas present a huge amount of flexibility, and I'll be looking at these options in an upcoming post.