So four of us (Bryan, Brian, Will, and me) sat down and created a cluster. Bryan and I had read the book a few times before the session, but Brian and Will joined based on our descriptions and hadn’t had a chance to read the rules in advance.

What is Cluster Generation?

In some ways, cluster generation is like the Dawn of Worlds minigame that Matthew reviews in the linked article, but with much less system. Because it has fewer rules for resolving conflicts, it requires more social consensus to make everything link up.

Cluster generation is collaborative setting building, with some random prompts and structure to guide you. We came up with an interesting setting that accreted through our contributions; none of the us would have created an environment like this on our own!

I started to say that cluster generation is collaborative world building, but since we’re in space, we’re actually generating several solar systems, all linked together along jump paths. System generation begins with each player rolling four fudge dice three times in order. Fudge dice have 6 sides: 2 marked minus (-), 2 plus (+), and 2 blank (0). You add them up, with + equal to +1, – equal to minus one, and blank equal to 0. So ++-0 = 1.. The first total is the system’s technology, the second is the system’s environment, and the last is the system’s resources.

Bryan generated the first system, given his greater familiarity with the game. He rolled a technology of -1, an environment of -3, and resources of +2. We recorded this as T-1,E-3,R+2.

We went around the table twice, generating a total of eight systems. As we rolled the dice, we kicked around ideas about what circumstances might result in such a system. It’s incredibly open ended; a system might have an environment of -3 for many reasons–in Boulder’s case, it turned out that it was because the solar system was just a collection of rocks like our asteroid belt, not a planet at all. One dangerously unstable moon might have been an alternate justification of a -3 environment.

We ran into a hiccup for our star system–none of the systems had a technology of more than 1! Since it takes a technology level of 2 to make ships that can hop between the stars, that’s an problem for a space game. Fortunately, the authors foresaw the issue and have a catch-all rule; if no systems are generated with a tech level of 2 or more, you take the two systems with the highest total and lowest total of all stats, and change them to a tech level of 2.

After we finished rolling up our systems and implemented low technology override, these were the systems in our cluster: Austeria(T1,E2,R-1); Boulders(T-1,E-3,R2); Creche(T2,E-1,R-1); Desolation(T0,E-1,R-2); Pilgrim’s Rest(T-1,E1,R0); Solace(T-1,E3,R1); Wheeler(T2,E2,R3); and Xori(T-3,E-1,R1).

Linking Systems Together

Now that the 8 planets had their stats, we rolled to see how they linked together. This is a cunning little system, generating hubs and branches, making some places central and others remote. After rolling the dice a few times, we came up with a cluster that connected like the picture below.

We wound up deviating from the process the book lays out, with real consequences. Instead of giving each system its own two Aspects, then adding a third Aspect about its relationship to its neighbors, we leaped ahead and assigned Aspects to the systems to cover both inherent and relational traits. That was a mistake–the worlds were too fluid and incomplete, and it took a lot longer to stitch things together, trying to do it all at once. If we generate a new cluster in the future, I’ll definitely pay attention to the rules and assign two inherent Aspects to each system first, and worry about relational aspects after the worlds are more coherent.

Developing the Cluster

In our game, the first system generated was Boulder. Bryan described a giant asteroid field–a wide belt around the sun, without significant planets anywhere in system. It’s a hard scrabble, unpleasant place to live, a mining colony with a lot of prisoners doing the labor, but it’s a lucrative place–with resources of 2, it has valuable exports.

In conversation, we sketched out a rough history of the cluster. It paralleled our discussion of the worlds and their relationships, but it might have benefited from waiting until we had eight solid system concepts, instead of the half-sketched system ideas that we prematurely linked.

Creche is the homeworld of the cluster, and is completely dominated by bickering corporations. (The details swung throughout the session; one giant mega-corp was initially proposed, and different corporate/government blends were considered along the way. In the end, it was Will’s planet–while he appreciated us chiming in and snowballing ideas, his was the final word.) The corporations ruined their homeworld in their push to space and competition to found colonies. One corporation, Wheeling, found a jump lane from Desolation and began covertly investing resources in the lush system at the far end. They confronted the corporate council on Creche and negotiated outsized political power, much like the veto wielding members of the UN. We waffled a bit on the scope of the conflict/secession of Wheeling from Creche; originally talking about Wheeling/Creche as similar to the US/Britian relationship shortly after the American Revolution.

Assigning Aspects

Aspects are one of the trickier things to get right in FATE systems. You want something descriptive, pithy, and interesting. Interesting aspects are one of the hardest things to get right–and it can be one of the easiest things to miss when boiling table talk down into a record/stat form. The book gives great examples of how one set of system values can be interpreted and written up in four compelling ways. These are our rough notes and proto-aspects; I suspect that we’ll refine them when we turn to character generation–or just take a day or two to let things simmer and settle.

We also noticed the widespread limited technology and decided that that’s probably a result of their history; Creche limits what other systems can develop and maintain to prevent future breakaways (like Wheeler). Wheeler seems to buy in to the same “keep the natives ignorant” arrangement, which seems to contradict their anti-tyranny claim. That fit the feel were were aiming for; this is no white-hat versus black-hat setting, with a lot of sketchy but valid justifications.

Austeria(T1,E2,R-1):
- Playground of the rich and famous.
- Large Ag plantations.
Boulders(T-1,E-3,R2):
- Life is hard and short; most who come here want to leave.
- Mining colonies are scattered across the system-wide asteroid fields.
- Many miners are prisoners from Creche, sentenced to hard labor.
Creche(T2,E-1,R-1):
- Corporate bureaucracy stifles everything.
- Struggling to maintain its colonial empire.
- The world is like a downtown; the place you go to work and make money, but not where you want to raise kids or retire.
Desolation(T0,E-1,R-2):
- The desert makes them strong
- They fight to earn what they lack
- The contract is king
Pilgrim’s Rest(T-1,E1,R0):
- The “quaint” first colony–nothing goes on here.
- Ihose with skills or ambition are drawn to Creche
Solace(T-1,E3,R1):
- One gas giant is orbited by several lush moons
- It’s a balkanized neutral zone, with the moons divided between various corporations (including Wheeling)
- Temp World: Employees are only permitted to serve for four years before they’re shipped out
- It’s the gateway to Xori
Wheeler(T2,E2,R3):
- Wheeler II is lush, ripe for exploitation; with factories concentrated in domed outposts on Wheeler I and III.
- “We’re close knit, cunning rebels, resisting Creche’s tyranny”
- Striving members of the Corporate Council
and Xori(T-3,E-1,R1):
- We drive out men into the forest; only the strongest return
- Only the priestesses know how to refine the anti-aging drug
- The spice must flow
- It’s a matriarchy, led by ancient but physically youthful women, who practice the old ways.

In The End

It took us surprisingly long (about 4 hours) to knock out our cluster. [We had hoped to complete both cluster and character generation in a session, but we should have figured in the learning curve.] I like the setting that we came up with. It’s nothing I would have come up with as a GM, but it has enough of my influence that I already want to see how things develop–and that’s before I have a character to go exploring!

It will be interesting to see how we flesh out the cluster–and doubly interesting to see what characters we come up with to explore this place. I enjoyed it as a stand alone “game” [though cluster generation is more a series of creative prompts than a game], but really want to see if it makes for interesting, involved characters. We’ll see!

Patrick and I made a pre-Thanksgiving weight loss bet with the stakes that the loser had to interview the winner. Patrick lost 3.07% of his starting weight. I lost only 2.77%. In a way though, I feel like the winner because this interview was a fun and easy article to write. Plus, I still lost 11 lbs.

For starters Patrick, why don’t you tell us a little about yourself, your home life, family, job, etc… Who’s the man behind the gnome?

Sure.  I am 35 years old. I have been married to my wife Karen for 10 years, and we have a daughter (Calen, 7) and a son (Liam, 5).  Karen and the kids are really the best aspect of my life.  I’m lucky because I married my best friend.

Currently I am the Senior Systems Engineer in the Information Technology – Infrastructure department for a software development firm in Chicago.  My role is to design the systems used to deliver services with, and so I research available technologies and propose designs.  If approved I refine and finalize the design and then assist others in implementing that solution.

What are your favorite systems to run and why? You’ve mentioned your work with your own variant of Fudge several times now, and You’ve discussed several games of Dread you’ve played. Is it fair to say they’re in your top five?

Fudge is my favorite system because it is so simple to learn that I can start a game of it for non-gamers with no prep work.  My variant of Fudge is called Budge, and it is short for “Benson’s Fudge”.  All I am doing with Budge is streamlining Fudge even further so that I can develop settings for it.

Dread is another game that I love to run, and that is because players really become immersed into the game world with that system.

But a top five?  I don’t know.  I don’t think in terms of lists like that I guess.  I have always enjoyed the Top Secret /S.I. system, and I loved the setting for the Mutant Chronicles RPG.  Savage Worlds is a great system with awesome settings.  I enjoy less traditional games like Dogs In The Vineyard, Fiasco, and Don’t Rest Your Head.  Villains & Vigilantes is a wonderful and crunchy supers game that I love making characters for.  I play and run D&D 4e too.  Who knows what games I will be playing a year from now?  I usually find something that I like in any RPG.

How do you like to run your games? You often discuss your love of improvisation. What other common traits do your games have?

I do love to improvise, but now I am learning to enjoy prepped games again.  I am constantly trying to find a “challenge” for myself as a GM.  So how I run my games is not set in stone, but more like a process in development.

The common trait in my game is this: The PCs will change the game world.  I hate playing in a game and having my character have no impact on the game world.  When my players interact with the game world they will influence it.  The PC’s actions will be significant, and eventually the PC’s themselves will become significant people in the game world.

How did you get started with the Stew? What’s your “origin story”? And since we’re in the right genre, what’s your gnomish super power?

I was active in the community surrounding Martin’s last blog – Treasure Tables.  I wrote some guest posts for Treasure Tables and I was asked to be a moderator on the forums.  When Martin decided to close down Treasure Tables and to start a fresh blog with Gnome Stew he asked me to be one of the authors and I gladly accepted.  I took over the Treasure Tables forums and spun them off into You Meet In A Tavern, and began writing articles for the stew.

My gnomish super power is that I am blind to the presence of sacred cows.  I just see steak.

If someone were to take a look at the abstracts for your 61 articles you’ve written for the Stew, there are some common themes. One such theme is the “hard look at the social situations of the hobby” theme. Why is this theme so important to you, on both sides of the screen?

RPGs are a great form of escapism, and everyone needs moments of escapism.  Our minds are wonderful things that occasionally need a break from reality.  So we give it to them in the form of fiction.  RPGs are socially interactive fiction.

Think about that for a moment.  What is the key part of an RPG?  You have a fiction that is shared.  In order to share that fiction you must interact with others.  In order to have the fiction be interactive you must enter into a social situation.  The whole foundation of our hobby is the social interaction that occurs between gamers.

It is not always nice.  At times that social interaction is arguing with each other, but anyone who wants to have fun gaming has to realize that he or she is taking part in a social situation.  The rules, the characters, the dice, and the game itself are all meaningless without that social interaction amongst everyone in the group.

That is why I write about that theme so often.  I believe it is crucial for all GMs to think in terms of “Social situation first, and game second.”

Talk about your new article series “Video Gnoments” for a minute. Why a video format for these articles instead of a text format? What are some new things you’re learning as you explore this medium?

I am learning that I need a better web cam and that I am never going to make it in television.

Seriously though, I wanted to expand what Gnome Stew had to offer.  That is all.  I am also working on starting a podcast for Gnome Stew.  Blogs can be incredibly rich with their content, so why not take advantage of that?  The worst thing that could happen is that our readers do not like the content.  I will risk a failure in my attempts to deliver better content to the fans of the stew.

We mentioned your personal Fudge variant already, but what are some other projects you’ve worked on in the past or are currently working on?

I contributed to Eureka, and I am working on the next project from Engine Publishing as well.

I am also working on a book for GMs about how to improvise that is based upon a seminar that I give at Gen Con every year for about three years now.  Every year I improvise the seminar as a way to sort of put my money where my mouth is.

I have the Budge framework scheduled for a January 31st release date, and two settings that will be released as follow-ups (one of which is the SinisterForces setting that I have taken far too long to develop).  I am also trying to arrange a local RPG convention where I live.

Thanks for agreeing to this interview Patrick. I know our readers will enjoy hearing more about you and your current projects.

Actually, thanks for agreeing to the bet that led to this interview Matt.  It was fun having a little friendly competition, and it was a very close finish.

And if I might have one last say here: I hope that Gnome Stew readers read this interview and share their own personal projects with all of us in the comments section.  One thing that I love about the RPG hobby is that there really is no barrier-to-entry thanks to the Internet.  You can share your ideas and your own original content with everyone in the world, and if your stuff is good enough to earn you a buck or two more power to you.  Myself, I just want to share some ideas for right now.

Should you buy The Hidden Kingdom?  What are its selling points?  What are its flaws?  To find out read on, as I give you a brief tour of the world that is The Hidden Kingdom.

Full disclosure: Nevermet Press’ staff approached Gnome Stew’s authors to review The Hidden Kingdom, and for doing so I received a free PDF copy of the product and will be sent a print version as well.

What is “The Hidden Kingdom?”

The Hidden Kingdom is an organization of monks who wear red robes, gloves, and golden masks that hide all traces of their flesh.  They travel to cities in need of aid and work tirelessly to help the poor, sick, and downtrodden masses in whatever way they can.  When the monks of The Hidden Kingdom enter a city it is usually with the blessings of the local government and with the gratitude of the people.

Yet the secret of The Hidden Kingdom is that its members sacrifice everything to its service, including their very lives, to serve without question their founder – Brother Ptolemy.  Brother Ptolemy, who is indistinguishable to outsiders from the other monks of his order, hides a horrible truth from the world.  Brother Ptolemy desperately wants to save everyone not just from the pains of hunger, disease, and poverty but from the very cruelty of life itself.

Which is why Brother Ptolemy created a horrible magical plague that he unleashes onto unsuspecting people, so that when the monks of The Hidden Kingdom arrive to help them the people are more inclined to join The Hidden Kingdom’s ranks.  Brother Ptolemy puts a whole new spin on the phrase “Kill them with kindness.”

I could reveal more details behind Brother Ptolemy and The Hidden Kingdom, but this is such a well written product that readers will enjoy discovering those details for themselves.

Best Qualities

Overall The Hidden Kingdom is a good product that delivers exactly what it promises – a setting and an adventure.  I have read plenty of setting books that were more about maps and locations.  That is not a true setting, but merely a travel guide for a fictional world.  A true setting is a smattering of characters served up with a dash of dramatic tension and a side of plot potential which is what The Hidden Kingdom focuses upon.  The maps and the locations are a much smaller part of what a complete setting is, but you get that too in the form of the city state of Corwyn to which chapter 3 is dedicated.

Chapter 4 is the adventure and it is the bulk of this product consuming 64 of the 110 pages.  Titled “Uncovering the Kingdom” it is a strong blend of skill challenges, combat encounters, and role playing opportunities.  The combat encounters are tough and will challenge the players, but the opportunities to role play and investigate will provide plenty of challenges where dice are not needed.

Even after the players have finished the adventure a GM will have plenty of hooks and material to build more adventures with where Brother Ptolemy and The Hidden Kingdom can challenge the PCs again.  The Hidden Kingdom has the key ingredients needed to build an intriguing campaign with.

Throughout the product you will find plenty of interesting and inspiring artwork that immerses you even deeper into the setting of The Hidden Kingdom.  Some of it is rather simple, but none of it is what I would consider bad artwork.  None of the artwork appears to be generic fluff or filler either.  Every piece of artwork helps to define the setting and to illustrate the potential of the adventure.

Worst Qualities

Unfortunately there are some things about this product that I do not like, and while I appreciate that Nevermet Press is a small organization made up of RPG enthusiasts I would be letting fans of Gnome Stew down if I did not address two flaws in particular.

The Hidden Kingdom’s PDF has no bookmarks and no index was included in the text.  The lack of an index can sometimes be overcome with a more detailed table of contents, but the table of contents provided for The Hidden Kingdom will only help you find the start of a chapter or the single appendix within the product.  You will be flipping through this product quite a bit come game day.

Perhaps the lack of an index and keeping the table of contents short helped to reduce costs for the printed product, but no publisher of PDFs should skip the process of providing bookmarks for their product.  When you consider that the adventure is over half the product not having bookmarks to the individual encounters really limits the usefulness of the PDF if you run your games from a laptop.

The other big flaw of this product is that it has several typos and simple errors.  None of these errors make the product unusable, but they stick out like sore thumbs compared to how well written the product is overall.  An updated version of the PDF was released when I was halfway through reading my copy of the product that did correct some errors, but I did not have a chance to read that version from beginning to end and what I did read still had errors.  The errors that I found are excessive for a product of this page count.

Conclusion

Despite its flaws The Hidden Kingdom is still a good product overall for its price ($9.99 for the PDF, $14.99 for the print version).  For their money GMs will get a good challenging adventure with a rich setting that is intriguing and easily placed into any Dungeons & Dragons 4e campaign.  A GM could also adapt the materials provided to be used with other systems and even other genres to use in their game of choice.  In the end I say buy it if you like games full of political tension, conspiracies, and good old fashioned challenging combat.  Nevermet Press is also giving the PDF for free to those who purchase the the print version by November 30th and post a picture of the product to the Nevermet Press Facebook fan page.

Do you have a copy of The Hidden Kingdom?  Need more information before deciding to buy a copy?  If so, share your own review or questions in the comments section below.

Later, I played a pair of games on Halloween Eve and Halloween. We weaved around some of the same problems, but managed to avoid a few more. The third play included several players who had played at one of the prior sessions, so some of the opening jitters and system tests weren’t as much of an issue. As other reviewers have commented, the game takes practice.

Preparation

Preparing for the session was the easiest experience I’ve ever had. Read through the book– the whole thing or just the Treatment Procedure. (I read the whole thing, then reread the Treatment chapter.) Grab some old business cards, a pencil, box, and a bowl full of pennies and you’re ready to roll.

During the session, the GM can just be a guide– reading the book and staying separate from the group as Dr. Tompkins– that’s how I ran the first time. The second session I took a seat as a fellow patient, treating the prompts read out of the book as Dr. Tompkins addressing us all. I probably wouldn’t have thought of doing it that way until Kevin pointed it out. It made for a more interesting session for me; I was taking the test with them, not just proctoring it.

What happened

For the first session, Dr. Peter Tompkins guided the three patients through their treatment. Their strange histories were revealed; one woman had escaped to Mexico fleeing her domineering wife, but couldn’t leave things there; a young man landed in prison after puking on a judge and punching his mother– years later, he blackmailed his old cellmate and boss on the dude ranch; and the third patient smashed his head after horrific loss.

The group involved three players who had never seen the game before, guided by me as Dr. Peter Tompkins. We used the standard questionnaire and played it straight. Only one rule tripped us up– and that only briefly– so it was an excellent first performance from a new system.

On the other hand, the narratives that came out were strained– fun, but disjointed and with a real sense of player level conflict. One player liked to spike the story with hard adversity– ignoring the choices the patient had made and continued to make in their stories. This led to a strange dynamic, where the choices (in a 3 player game) usually weren’t choices– they were a brief pause before accepting the only “not horrible” answer. So the “gonzo” concerns mentioned by the advice text cropped up in a strange way. (Well, directly too; we had 10 year time jumps, hit men hirings, and other far from normal events.)

The Halloween stories used the Cthulhu/Mythos worksheet and ran more smoothly. Well, somewhat more smoothly…

I sat in as a patient for the Halloween Eve game and kept the instructions light, like a third person. This resulted in much stronger stories. The stories all involved a conflict between two alien(?) races; one a race of giant mutant cockroaches that enslaved families and pounced on explorers, and a second, “gray” alien that handed out rune-tech, but couldn’t be counted on in the end. Unfortunately, while these stories did work better, the timeline got confused when the patients wrote themselves into each other’s histories. It did make for quite a conclusion, however!

On Halloween itself, we used the Mythos worksheet again, and created some creepy and complete stories. Sheila’s skill as a storyteller made her tale compelling, haunting and disjointed, much like a disturbing horror novella. (The scene with her entering the haunted stone tableau and losing her way home was very well done; the details she added made the scene pop.) The other tales were also more successful; coherent narratives emerged with a sense of progression.

System

The meat of the system is simple– very simple. Prompted by a short memory trigger (written at the beginning of the game), the traveller (the person whose memories we’re currently investigating) sets the scene by receiving a guiding question from each other patient. The guiding questions build the scene– and all have to be answered “yes, and…”, which makes everyone’s “questions” true statements and leads to everyone creating your history [or its context] alongside you, the PC’s player.

After the guiding questions, the traveller advances the story to a decision point, where two paths forward are laid out by two patients– one path must be selected. The traveller repeats this process a few times (anywhere from 2-8 per memory being recovered), until they have exhausted the memory.

That’s it for system– there are no die rolls, just accepting the guiding questions as true then embellishing, and picking between proffered paths. It makes for a fascinating, very different play experience. After playing, a couple of players mentioned that a session of Penny would make a great character generation session for many other games. In fact, the Shadowrun GM mused that for such a game, he’d make up the character sheets for the players, depending on what was established during the Penny game…

Improvement

While the extra experience was beneficial when I returned to run the game the second and third times, not much of the game is in Dr. Peter Tompkins’ hands. What really seemed to help was getting a mix of players who wanted to be challenged in similar ways, who were interested in helping each other build compelling stories.

Some players let me know that the Mythos questionnaire helped quite a bit– the standard questions are vague and don’t have inherent drama, which might be part of why the “extra difficult” contributions cropped up– to make the stories clearly compelling. The Mythos questions also guide the patients into recalling more “traditional character” like activities– exploring, getting caught, and tangling with evil.

Conclusions

I thoroughly recommend this game to your group for a very different session the next time a few people can’t make it, or between campaigns. It has many of the virtues that a board game or card night replacement have– it’s self contained, doesn’t depend on GM prep, and provides a contained experience.

Advice is provided in the later half of the book, where the author talks about the skills that the game helps to develop and the experiences that led him to craft the resulting book. It was amazing how concrete an image some players could conjure when they weren’t worrying about advancing the story via action. That’s a valuable lesson you can take with you to any game.

KQ is the brainchild of Wolfgang Baur, one of the most famous game designers around, and among the many other irons he has in the fire he publishes the Kobold Guide to Game Design series. Volume III came out in print last Friday, and Wolfgang asked if I’d like to write a GMing article about this volume, which is subtitled “Tools & Techniques.”

There’s a lot of crossover between GMing and game design, and, expecting great things from the KGGD3, I was happy to take him up on it. He sent me the PDF, and I tucked into it.

If you’re interested in game design, whether as a dabbler, a Forge-style indie designer, someone trying to break into the mainstream RPG industry, or for other reasons, you’ll enjoy this book. It’s a good book — and on top of that, it’s also a good book for a reason entirely unrelated to its title or primary focus: It’s got a lot to say about good GMing.

So Game Design = GMing?

Well, no — but they do have a lot in common. GMing nearly always involves an element of game design, whether it’s creating or vetting house rules, coming up with new mechanics, creating an adventure, or building up the storyline behind your campaign. And game design, with its combination of art, craft, and science — the exact three terms I usually use to describe GMing — is a discipline that bears a lot of resemblance to game mastering.

So although writing an article about a game design book from the perspective of applying it to GMing is bending things a bit, it’s the same kind of bending things that GMs do every single day during prep and at the gaming table.

Design Is…

Right up front, Wolfgang spells out what game design is, and it’s hard not to read this list and also think about GMing. Here are some highlights that apply equally well to game design and GMing:

• art
• geography and history
• the building of a field of play
• a fusion of exploratory play and mastery over time
• the study of player psychology and the conscious manipulation of behavior

A bit later on, Wolfgang says: “Go big if you can.” This is another design/GMing parallel: When it comes to GMing, going big and just seeing how things turn out is almost always the right thing to do.

Similarly, there’s a solid section entitled Heightened Play Experience that discusses ways to punch up the gaming experience through design, but reading this as a GM, I found myself nodding.

Wolfgang highlights conciseness (saying a lot with a little, often by showing), escalation (making things that matter tie to other things that matter), and saturation (pulling out the stops and avoiding subtlety) as key ingredients of good game design, and I’d say those are three great guidelines for writing an adventure or running an improvised session, too.

So: I think this is also a GMing book, and an excellent read from that perspective.

Great GMing Advice

Every essay in KGGD3 isn’t directly applicable to GMing, of course. Some, like Colin “Planescape: Torment” McComb’s piece entitled “Designing RPGs: Computer and Tabletop,” are interesting reads without being easy to port over and apply to GMing. (Which makes sense, since despite how applicable a lot of KGGD3 is to GMing, it’s not technically a GMing book!)

So which ones stand out from a GMing perspective? Here’s some of what jumped out at me (apart from the opening essay, “What is Design?”):

• The Process of Creative Thought: Thinking about how to think, at least when it comes to a craft like GMing in which being reflective features heavily, is surprisingly productive. Considering the origins of creative ideas (the topic of this essay) is one good way to do that.
• Creative Mania & Design Despair: Another one from Wolfgang, this essay looks at how the design process changes over time. What stood out for me was the piece on adapting to new demands: When your exquisitely crafted campaign actually hits the table, meets your players, and becomes something you weren’t expecting. This is awesome, but can also be tough to deal with.
• Seize the Hook: Rob Heinsoo lays out how he designs games, and again there’s a great snippet here for GMs: matching the mechanics to the experience. Considering the ways in which game mechanics dovetail with the things I enjoy about GMing has made me a better GM, and discovering the mismatches — for me, those games where the mechanics don’t dovetail with roleplaying at all — has helped me become better at choosing which games to play and run.
• Crafting a Dastardly Plot: 1. Ed Greenwood. 2. Seriously, you can tell from the title that this applies perfectly to GMing. 3. Ed Greenwood. From a GMing standpoint, this seven-page essay alone is worth the price of admission.
• Location as a Fulcrum for Superior Design: Wolfgang looks at how important location is to adventure design, something I’m often bad at when it comes to designing my own adventures.
• Myths & Realities of Game Balance: Monte Cook on social contracts, roughly: Everyone is responsible for everyone’s fun, and the GM should deliver a fun, balanced play experience.

This was my first look at the KGGD series, and it made me want to go back and check out the first two volumes. If you dig game design, adventure design, productive self-reflection, or learning about non-GMing topics to make yourself a better GM, I highly recommend this book.

It’s only 96 pages, but man does it pack a lot into those pages.

You can find the print and PDF editions of the Kobold Guide to Game Design, Volume III in the Kobold Quarterly store.

The sci-fi plots chapter has come back from layout, so without further blathering, here’s the second sample: Eureka sample PDF #2.

This time around, you’ll see a different group of authors — all of the gnomes contributed 55 plots apiece to Eureka, give or take a plot or two.

You’ll also see the tools we’ve included to make these plots crazy-easy to use in your game: the theme (“The Enigma,” which appeared on the page just before the first sample page), genre, genres you can adapt each plot to, and tags.

Our next sample will either be from the GMing chapter or the horror plots chapter. In the meantime, other Eureka news will be posted on the Engine Publishing blog (which features a handy RSS/email feed, if getting news delivered to you sounds good).

In trying to strike a balance between a) turning the Stew into a giant ad for our book and b) never mentioning it and having no one buy it and crying ourselves to sleep on our wee giant pillows, I’m going for “big meaty stuff is posted here, and big stuff plus smaller stuff is posted there, on the Engine website.” I hope that approach is a good one.

Got questions or comments? I’d love to hear them — after eating, sleeping, and breathing this book for the better part of a year, talking about it with anyone but my Beagle mutt is a real treat.

Oh, and happy Towel Day!

Now the license has changed hands again, this time heading over to Fantasy Flight Games — and they’ve produced the single most sumptuous, extravagant, viscerally awesome roleplaying product I’ve ever seen: the WFRP 3rd Edition core boxed set.

This isn’t a review, I haven’t played it, and I know very little about it. This article is a pure geek-out: an unboxing featuring oodles of large, hi-res photos of every aspect of this awesome piece of gaming history.

And may I just say, the boxed set is back.

If you cut your teeth on gaming back when everything came in a boxed set, then, like me, you probably miss the hell out of them. I couldn’t NOT buy this game, even if just to show my support for that shift back to one of gaming’s best formats.

Enough blathering! Let’s drool over some WFRP, shall we?

Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Drooling!

A quick note: Every picture is clickable, and will open a full-size image (straight from my camera, cropped appropriately).

Holy shit, this is a big box. It comes shrinkwrapped, with a wraparound cardstock slipcover over the actual box.

The slipcover has a front flap (attached with velcro) that opens to preview the sexiness inside.

Same height and width as an old school boxed set, but VERY different depth. This puppy is deeper than any board game I own. (Did I mention how BIG this box is?)

More preview material on the back. The slipcover is a clever idea, since you can’t browse this set at retail and it’s too expensive to be an impulse buy (MSRP: $100).

With the slipcover off, here’s the actual box lid. Gorgeous — and surprisingly understated. It looks like an artifact from the Warhammer world, which is awesome.

The edge of the actual box. If this is the edge, imagine what’s inside? This entire set oozes style, and the attention to detail in terms of components is insane.

For comparison purposes, here’s the box with a traditional boxed sit on top of it (the old Forgotten Realms gray box), and the hardcover U.K. first edition of WFRP stacked on top of that.

This is the first thing you see when you slide off the lid (and release that delicious boardgame/RPG smell!).

With the books removed, you can now see some of what’s inside the box — the rest is hidden under the cardboard tray.

This core set is designed to support one GM and three players — a number that may or may not match your group. From what I’ve heard, you’ll run out of some things pretty quick, and if there are only X of something in the box and you need X+1, it’s time to buy a supplement. But as a GM, I love the fait accompli that this set presents: “Here’s everything your entire group needs to get started — no, really, EVERYTHING.”

Everything that comes in the core set. The rest of the shots break out all of the individual components (except the standee bases — they’re just standee bases).

Two of the game’s four books. I love single-volume RPGs, but part of me also loves split-up sets like this. So many good memories!

Books three and four.

What do the books look like inside? This is an FFG product, so no surprise there: they’re gorgeous.

Two sets of thick cardboard standees for characters, monsters, etc. These are used to represent abstract combat positioning. Instead of a battle mat and minis, you just need to know roughly where people are during a fight.

…and a sheet of cardboard counters. My favorite bits are the ones that look like puzzle pieces. These are interlocked to form stance meters for each character; the further you commit to a stance (conservative or aggressive), the better the dice you can roll.

And for the GM? You can build progress tracks for abstract concepts, like chase scenes, outrunning an oncoming storm, or pretty much anything that involves reaching a goal or competing against someone. It’s a bit like skill challenges in 4e, with different actions moving you up/down the track, and events triggered by hitting certain GM-determined points.

This is another example of how WFRP takes something that GMs can already do, codifies it, and attaches a slick visual and tactile element to it. (Think about how much tension a little progress track could generate at the table.)

This is where you’ll start to get a feel for how different WFRP is from a traditional book-based RPG: The careers. These are designed to fit next to your character sheet, and they include spots for career-related goodies — little cards you “attach” to the sheet.

A close-up of the front of my favorite career, the troll slayer, and the back of another.

Another neat innovation: party cards. Your players choose a theme for their party, and their choice has mechanical effects throughout the game. For example, you can attach an ability to the party that benefits everyone in the group, and parties accumulate tension as intra-party conflict increases. I love this concept both as a GM and as a player.

Another divergence: In a hobby already known for weird dice, WFRP makes them weirder. Every die has a few different symbols, plus blank faces.

In the game, most rolls are treated as one big pool: You pull together the kinds of dice you need (red for being in the aggressive stance, for example), and then the GM adds modifier dice; you roll them all together, and one success means you succeeded.

A pad of character sheets. These are designed to be very visual, just like everything else in the game, with spots for counters, ability cards, etc. Your play space will include lots of little bits that give you a quick visual indicator for many aspects of your character.

I suspect that minimizing written notes and emphasizing visual, physical bits — cards for your powers, cards for wounds, chits for fatigue, etc. — will make this a very accessible game for new players.

There are two sizes of cards in WFRP; these are all of the larger ones, the action cards. What action cards you have available determines what special things you can do, much like powers in D&D 4e — the only real visual/component analog to this edition of WFRP that I know of (and WFRP takes the concept MUCH further).

The action cards are all two-sided, with different effects based on your stance: red for aggressive, green for conservative.

Close-up of the front and back of the power cards.

All of the small cards included in the game. They’re about half the size of the others, a size that will be familiar to board game players, especially folks who’ve played FFG games.

These cover all sorts of things, from special abilities granted by your career to spellcasting mishaps. And again, what’s in front of you is what’s impacting your character.

An overview of the various types of small card — there’s a lot of variety.

It wouldn’t be Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay without critical hits, and there’s a whole deck of them. Delish!

Not only that, but wounds are visual as well: How much damage you’ve taken = how many face-down wound cards are in front of you. Face-up cards count as critical wounds, and the text on them then applies.

So as a player, where are you going to put all of the stuff you need for your character? In one of the three included tuckboxes, of course!

Want to Know More?

I can’t help you there — this only just arrived in the mail, and I haven’t read much of it yet!

But luckily it’s been out for a little while now, and there are plenty of solid reviews floating around. Try Shannon Appelcline’s RPGnet review or Critical Hits’ first impressions review as starting points.

I hope you enjoyed this unabashed geek-out as much as I did. If you have questions about the game, I’d be happy to try and answer them.

Jason, let us start by having you tell us a bit about yourself, how you got into RPG’s and what you are playing right now.

I’m married to a wonderful librarian who specializes in teen services. I work for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a departmental Webmaster. My roleplaying began in 1977 or 78 with white box D&D. The games I played the most, that sort of chart the evolution of my interests, are AD&D, original Traveller, The Morrow Project, The Fantasy Trip: In The Labyrinth, Bureau 13, GURPS, FUDGE, and many, many small press games. The games that get the most play at my table these days are Prime Time Adventures, Solar System/Shadow of Yesterday, and lately Archipelago II.

I’m in two weekly groups and occasionally podcast as one of the Durham Three. The company I co-founded, Bully Pulpit Games, has produced The Shab Al-Hiri Roach, Grey Ranks, Drowning and Falling, and most recently Fiasco. We have two additional games in development: Cowboys With Big Hearts and Medical Hospital.

What themes from OD&D do you think are missing in more modern RPG’s?

In terms of themes, I sort of miss the wide open sandbox play that was the presumed mode of OD&D – not only in game play, but also in the wide open nature of the very sketchy rules. You really had to make it your own and it was without precedent. Although my games are much more sharply constrained, I hope that they evoke some of that DIY aesthetic from a different angle.

Do you prefer a rule set with a strong central mechanic, but is open enough to take that central mechanic and apply it to different situations?

I am a big proponent in games that incorporate system in a meaningful way. Rules have to inform play, so I don’t want to see encumbrance rules in a game that seeks to emulate a Jane Austen novel. I prefer a game that is ruthlessly focused on its theme, is luminously clear and functional, and is a joy to play. How those things are integrated is going to depend on what the designer is trying to do. I think you can do all these things and still have a free-wheeling sort of game, and The Shadow of Yesterday would be a prime example of this. The game is essentially an exploration of what it means to be human, and no matter how you drift it (and I drift it a lot), the system effortlessly reinforces this.

So you have played a pretty wide range of games from OD&D to GURPS to Prime Time Adventures.  What kind evolution have you seen your GMing style go through from your first time behind the screen to today?

I love to GM, and I love the various bits of authority the GM role provides. My games atomize this and spread it around, and this impulse stems from my enthusiasm for the role and the fun and satisfaction it brings. I still really enjoy the traditional dichotomy of players and GM, although these days I am very permissive and relaxed about things like scene framing, endowment, and player agency in games that don’t necessarily presume those things.

Of the games you have listed, as well as any that were not on the list, what were the three games that have been the most influential on your own GMing style, and what did they contribute to your GMing skill set.

As far as influential games go when I look at my own GMing, I’d say FUDGE, Prime Time Adventures, and The Shadow of Yesterday.

• FUDGE because its toolkit nature encourages experimentation on both the mechanical and social levels.
• Prime Time Adventures because it requires a deep level of cooperation and flexibility on the part of the GM, who has to work hard to support the player character’s issues within the fiction and encourage interesting conflict.
• The Shadow of Yesterday because it was the first game I played that actively called out the things players were interested in and rewarded them for pursuing those, and because, like PTA, it was generally impossible to plan ahead.

So one thing I have noticed about Bully Pulpit is that you cover a lot of different settings: Grey Ranks to Fiasco to Medical Hospital. There does not seem to be a setting that you are unwilling to explore.  Would you say that that is part of the small press spirit, or is that more of a Bully Pulpit philosophy?

My friend John Stavropolous, who is really brilliant, pointed out recently that a key divide is that at small press scale (small print runs, nimble development, focused distribution) a designer/publisher can afford to ignore the larger market somewhat. I don’t need to have an open-ended fantasy product and a line of supplements, I can take risks with unfamiliar themes, genres, mechanics, approaches, ways of distributing content. It’s not a value judgment, because obviously there is a huge audience whose needs are being met by larger companies. But if the idea of a game about teenagers coming of age during the Warsaw Uprising and nothing else excites you, that is a weird project and a huge risk that makes no sense for a big company to sign off on.

Taking a moment to talk specifically about Fiasco, can you tell us how you came up with the concept?

Fiasco started out as a game about the founding, evolution and growth of a town, sort of a Raymond Carver-like look at people across generations in a slowly changing setting. The killer app of that idea was the way it privileged relationships over characters during initial setup, and while the “build a town” thing didn’t really work well, the procedural elements were obviously very strong. I looked to my own unhealthy interest in movies that embrace a certain dark tone and saw a natural match. I had a couple of very specific design goals that it also accommodated well – no prep play, a complete, satisfying experience in a single session, and minimal overhead.

In Fiasco, I thought it was brilliant how you allow the player to either frame the scene or complete it, but never both, and how the dice played into that mechanic. Was that mechanic the result of your recent atomization of the GM authority, or did that come about by the creation of the mechanic in Fiasco?

You are referring to the central resolution mechanic in Fiasco, which allows a player to establish a scene (defining everything about the location, the circumstances, who is there, what it is about) or resolve it (deciding if the outcome is positive or negative for his character) but never both. This evolved over time, through playtesting and conversations with smart friends, from a pretty standard “frame the scene, define what is at stake, resolve the conflict” through “divide stake-setting and resolution” to what it is in the published game – something much more subtle and open. This was strongly informed by my experience with structured freeform, particularly the Nordic Vi åker Jeep school of game design, which I am a big fan of. I’ve been playing with different ways to distribute authority for years and it continues to evolve. The establish/resolve and positive/negative outcome thing puts a lot of trust and responsibility on the players to find a way that works well for them.

Can you share any detail about your two games in development: Cowboys With Big Hearts and Medical Hospital?

Sure! Cowboys With Big Hearts is my experiment in making a “GM-heavy” game with centralized authority – it is a very focused one-shot (with lots of replayability) that tells a sort of spooky story about dying cowboys, at the death of the romantic west, going on one last ride.

Medical Hospital is the medical game of medical melodrama. You play over the top surgeons caught up in lust, greed, and ambition and resolve your interpersonal conflicts by actually performing surgical procedures. It is super weird, and you will learn way more about gastroenterology than you ever thought you would in a roleplaying game.

Before we conclude, the great Gnome Martin Ralya created something called the GM’s Naughty List , a list of things as a GM that you could improve upon.  What would you put on your naughty list?

Interesting question! You’d have to ask my friends to be sure. I think I am weak at reading players and incorporating their contributions, in systems that don’t do this automatically. I tend to over-prep in a way that might over-focus the game’s theme or tone, because I love research, and all my background stuff may end up being suffocating or ignored.

Wrapping Up

Thank you Jason for your time and for the great work you and Bully Pulpit are doing.  Fiasco, Grey Ranks, and the rest of the Bully Pulpit’s games are available now on Indie Press Revolution, DriveThruRPG, and on the Bully Pulpit Games.

The game we selected is Aces and Eights. We have played around with it a couple of times in the past– a couple of one shots and character creation sessions.

Character Creation: The Process

Character creation in Aces and Eights is detailed and proves to be an interesting mix of random with lots of options. The easiest analogy for character creation complexity, for me, is to older editions of Shadowrun. (It feels particularly like Shadowrun when you’re going through long equipment lists.) But the randomness makes Aces and Eights a unique beast. Let’s dive in and look a little closer.

Characters are built off a platform of seven randomly rolled stats: the six you expect from D&D, plus looks. Each stat is the normal 3-18 range, but is also given a decimal percentage that is often truncated, but occasionally has a significant impact. So a character might roll a strength of 11.77, an intelligence of 6.12, and so on. Character creation is predicated on rolling 3d6– no funny business– but if you’re looking for a more talented bunch of characters you can reroll ones, roll 4d6 and drop the lowest, or whatever methods you’re familiar with from years of AD&D and similar systems.

Our game is intentionally less heroic [we just finished with high level D&D and wanted a change], so we rolled characters straight. Well, mostly we did. Kev’s dice were cold, and he wound up generating four sets of raw statistics before finally coming up with one that looked fun to play. The other characters… would have been challenged by life on the Savage Frontier. Probably too challenged to enjoy playing much.

Once you generate the raw stats, you can improve them a couple of ways. You can trade stats down to raise others– usually at a 2:1 or worse ratio, unless you’re improving sub-seven stat rolls. We avoided the trade system, and instead purchased incremental improvement. At the start of character generation, you’re given a pool of 75 build points. You can improve your stats by 0.05 per build point*, which is primarily used to cross the threshold to the next whole number when you’re close. So, for 5 BP, I could raise my 11.77 Strength to 12.02.
_{* Subject to diminishing returns; after 20 BP [1 full stat point], each BP buys you less.}

Once your stats are all adjusted, you’re ready to move on. (Don’t spend all of your BP on stats– you’ll need them for skills and talents later!) Copy over your stat bonuses for your skills. Now roll up an age, roll to see if you’re right handed, and decide where you want to come from. (If you’d like inspiration, there’s a random table of birthplaces.)

If you like, you can take a detour and generate your family history and circumstances. We did so; it’s a chunk of additional rolling, but can really help settle a character in your mind. If you do so, be sure to use the amended Chapter 6.5– there are a few troublesome errors in the printed books. (Among other things, the first print run omitted the table laying out the chance for characters to be legitimate…)

From here, you calculate your Reputation, which is an average of your seven stats, modified by your looks and Charisma. The more naturally talented your character is, the better their reputation, and the more build points you gain. This is common throughout the system; good rolls early improve things for your character all along the line. It can lead to a rich-get-richer problem, but that’s reality, right? Speaking of rich, it’s time to roll up starting cash. [It doesn't matter what you roll-- it won't be enough. There's a lot of expensive gear that's awfully nice to have... like horses and guns.]

Now you can roll or pick quirks and flaws. Much like older White Wolf games, quirks and flaws are flatly negative, but reward you with additional build points. If there’s a flaw you’d like to play you can pick it off the list– but for only half value. If you roll, you get full value, but results range from amputee to a love of food. If you want multiple flaws, you can take a second or third… but the build point reward descends by five for each additional flaw. This is useful for strongly discouraging a big pile of flaws. A quick d4 roll for HP and you’re essentially done with the easy part of character generation. Hopefully you have a big stack of BP at this point… you’re going to need them.

The next step is purchasing skills. Interestingly, none of the purchasable skills are combat skills; for combat, you’re rely on your stats and a talent or two, if you have the BP to purchase them. Skills are everything else: spotting things, chemistry, sewing, and so on. These are a little tricky; different skills have different costs, ranging from 1 to 10 for one tally of skill. What’s that? Well, each time you buy one tally, you reduce the skill percentage by your stat plus a die roll. The die sizes vary; highly regimented skills like medicine are often a d4, while physical and social skills are often a d8– all the way up to a d20 for drover. The law of diminishing returns is here in full force: the second tally of a skill costs twice as much as the first (so 2 BP for a 1 BP skill; 20 BP for a 10 BP skill), the third triple, and so forth. So becoming an expert in a skill can quickly drain your BP… unless it’s a low BP skill and your high stat gives you a discount. The process is a little tricky, and with die rolls for each skill level, it’s not something you can do independently. The skill list is alphabetical, which makes it easy to skim right over useful skills. Fortunately, a detailed writeup is available in the back of the book for each skill– skimming that chapter often reveals an oversight, or you find that a skill doesn’t quite do what you imagined on reading the title. It’s pretty easy to fix at this point, as long as you haven’t run yourself out of BP.

Now that you have your skills, you can buy talents, which are 10-50 BP. You probably can’t afford many, if any, but it’s good to look. (You should probably look before you pick skills, really, to ensure that you save enough BP for any talent you find necessary.)

You’re almost at the end! Now you can take that starting cash you rolled, augment it with your leftover BP converted into cash, and can buy equipment. There is a lot of equipment; 8 pages of small type with few descriptions. Not including the guns, which are 20 glossy pages earlier in the book. You can buy all kinds of things, from pencils and notebooks, to wagons and mules, to fishing line and a canteen. It’s a very extensive set of lists– and provides good insight into the relative value and rarity of items. When a horse is 3-4 months of wages for an average cowboy, you can see why they take such good care of their mounts.

Character Creation: Who Resulted?

While it took a while, we came up with three interesting characters that we’d never have come up with on our own. The combination of random stats (that you can ameliorate a bit), random quirks and flaws (encouraging you to play beyond your comfort zone), and a limited number of BP made some interesting characters. Here’s a thumbnail sketch of our three hombres.

Kev created Dr. Emerson Brown, a wealthy son of a doctor and landlord in New York City. He had a great upbringing, but wants to escape dad’s shadow. He just turned 21, and is headed out west with a few guns and a medical kit. He’s known for his doctoring and has a few other white collar skills. He’s impulsive, short tempered, and has high standards. He also has a terrible bedside manner. He should be interesting to be watch.

Mike created a orphaned kid of 15, who is an excellent scout and outdoorsman. He hopes to be hired on as the trailblazer for the wagon train. He is headed out west hoping to start up a ranch, capture some wild mustangs, and turn a tidy profit. He’s terrible at lying, prejudiced against the Irish, and carries a number of big guns.

I created Bob Cassidy, from rural Tennessee in the CSA, now 19. He’s got a lot of natural talent [high wisdom], leading to good cooking, fishing, and observation type skills, a lot of experience handling a wagon, and some good gossip and talking skills. He won’t say no to food, and can’t lie to save his life. If you hear rustling at midnight, it’s probably just Bob looking for a snack.

Character Creation: Was it worth it?

It took a lot of steam to grind through character creation, particularly through the thick list of skills. A lot of the rolls added personality, the family backgrounds suggested a lot of context, and quirks and flaws are great for a shorthand description of a character.

Skills take some effort to add, and I don’t see how much adding the die rolls [versus a fixed number] improves the process, but they aren’t too bad, really. The hard part is making sure you haven’t missed an “of course” skill– the first time we played, we all missed “observation” on the list and groaned when it was time to spot enemies. I think there are over 100 skills in the game… it’s very easy to miss one.

Worse than skills, however, is purchasing equipment. Making the first pass of purchases is pretty easy– but then, when you want to erase a few vials of ink and add a hunting cap and three shirts, it can get messy. I’m going to use a spreadsheet, mostly because our setting concept means purchasing is important. In other circumstances, I’d beg for handwaving equipment.

Character and Setting

This is not a game with a set “what characters do” like Dogs in the Vineyard. It’s the west, and you can be any reasonable person with a reason to wander. “Let’s play Aces and Eights” isn’t really a pitch. It has to be narrowed down so the characters have something to aim at and some interaction.

Our specific pitch, worked out last week, is that we will be members of a wagon train headed west. We’re going to start in St. Louis and head out to the Oregon territory. We laughed about it being an analog version of the Oregon Trail computer game from 5th grade, but it’s a great pitch. We know there are a variety of struggles in the future of our characters: the challenge of getting there, then the challenge of joining a settlement or forming a new town. Mr. Brown is already contemplating the position of mayor, and Mike has mentioned that his character might make a good sheriff… but it’ll take play to see how the rest of the wagon train reacts. Annoy the wrong person and you might get dumped in the wilds.

Questions? Pointers?

I was surprised when I began searching the web for resources; I remembered the excitement when Aces and Eights was first announced, but I didn’t find many resources for the game outside of Kenzer’s dedicated site. Arc Dream’s The Gang With No Name was one of the few play threads I found. Fortunately, the thread has neat resources like PDFs he built for his group, that will work great for ours.

What great resources have I missed? Have you played Aces and have warnings or encouragement to pass on? I know that I’m eager to play and find out how Bob is going to deal with the rigors of the trail. If you have questions, please ask!

Katana Geldar wrote a nice post about the recent announcement by Wizards of the Coast, where they declare the end of the Star Wars RPG line. Geldar then asked us the following in the suggestion pot:

I would like to see something about Star Wars Saga written up, there seems to be very little critique of the system on the Nets outside message boards and my own blog. And given that the current publishing run is ending rather soon, perhaps someone could take a look back at the system as a whole and what could be done in the future.

Saga in Time

Saga Edition came during an interesting period, with an interesting pedigree. It was released a year ahead of 4e, was widely viewed as a bridge to 4e, and introduced many mechanics and conceptual changes from their earlier Star Wars Roleplaying Game.

Bryan says: Saga Edition, in my opinion, was a huge improvement over the previous d20 incarnations of the game. If I could choose one thing about Saga Edition that was the greatest improvement I would undoubtedly say it was The Force rules. This was the first Star Wars RPG that seemed to get the Force right both mechanically and still stay within the spirit of the movies. I ran D6 Star Wars for nearly twenty years and while it played well enough for non-Jedi characters, the Force rules were just not what I was looking for in a Force system. The loss of vitality to use Force abilities in d20 RCR was a major complaint that I had under that edition as it didn’t fit what I saw as displays of the Force on screen. Saga Edition ditched that idea and went with “Uses” instead; uses that could be refreshed with a Force Point or completely refreshed with a minute break or a natural 20 on the “Use the Force” skill check. It works very well.

Fourth edition D&D players can find their way around a Saga character sheet pretty easily– stats, defenses, ability modifiers and feats are all quite similar. Many Jedi talents resemble encounter powers, as do some talents for each of the classes.

Saga Edition developed alongside 4e; it doesn’t remain locked in 2007 anymore than 4e is locked in 2008. Still, many 4e changes that might make sense in Saga Edition were never implemented. For example, minion rules were never brought across– so hordes of Stormtroopers soon have a lot of hit points if they hope to hit high level PCs, and can be a chore to bring down (since damage doesn’t increase much). Similarly, Saga NPCs are designed like PCs, rather than using the shortcut formulas that make 4e monster and encounter preparation such a snap.

Bryan: Minion rules are some thing that I wish had made it into Saga Edition. They will be added as a form of house rule to any future games I run using Saga Edition. Key NPC’s are created with the same rules as player characters. Minor NPCs can be taken from a non-heroic statblock provided in the books or custom created by the GM as a non-heroic template. While running the games mentioned, I often found it necessary to steal an existing statblock and modify it because there was so much bookwork to do when creating statblocks. Minor NPCs are easier than major NPCs (less to deal with) but you must still figure out the purchase of feats and trained skills (minor NPCs and/or beasts don’t normally have Talents). Other than modifying a stat block or using one as is, a GM doesn’t have the ease of preparation that 4e apparently provides and this can be a time sink in game prep. Saga Sheet (a player created aide) is helpful but it has bugs that you must be aware of such as weapons needing to be re-equipped to have the modifiers calculate correctly (not sure if it is fixed yet or not).

The Saga Core

The rules in the Saga core book were all we used at the start of our first series. It was a solid game engine, with many of the proper components, but with limited feats, equipment, and talents– clearly a good enough start, but designed to be expandable.

Our game was set soon after the Knights of the Old Republic video game. The technological stagnation of the Star Wars universe was a big help– even though specific equipment for the era was missing, it was easy to pick up a similar piece of equipment from the core book and rename it to match the setting.

At low levels, everyone contributed relatively equally, and niches were well protected. First level Saga characters are much closer to 4e than 3e in terms of durability– and the explicit decision to allow PCs to save their lives by spending a force point made a lot of sense for the setting. (It also resulted in Doumar enjoying time in a bacta tank after getting clotheslined by a wookie…)

Alternating talents and class specific feats on leveling helped maintain the unique feel of the classes. Those talents and feats added to design that ensured that characters gained something at each level combined to make each level rewarding. Multi-classing was handled closer to 3.x style D&D, which worked well when our noble’s Jedi heritage was revealed.

Bryan adds: There was a good deal of balance with the corebook. The Jedi did not seem to overpower the other classes initially. Each class contributed to the group’s success. The Noble and the Scout had very useful talents. The Scout seemed to have more talents that helped himself and thereby helped the party, while the Noble had more that helped the party and thereby helped himself. The Jedi seemed to compliment the Scout and the Noble well, rushing into melee while the Scout and Noble broke out the blasters. Our Noble character was able to multi-class seamlessly and Saga Edition handles Multiclassing very well in my opinion. What made it more fun though was that our Noble player came up with a creative slant on the multi-classing, wanting to bring it out through role-playing more than just mechanically (which we followed as well).

Now with Splatbooks

Speaking of changes… we took a several month break between the first and second storylines. When we returned in September of 2008, a number of supplements had been released (including the very useful to us Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide), and several more books were in the pipeline.

The game’s additional complexity made keeping track of characters a little more difficult; we moved to SagaSheet for the even the PCs– and the GM began suffering from the long enemy build times, even with aids like SagaSheet.

Bryan: I have found numerous game aides that help with Saga Edition crunch, but there is still an incredible amount of stuff to remember. No one item is hard to comprehend but it can get quite hard to recall every little detail with so many feats, talents, and force powers added to just about every book. One doesn’t need to use it all, I suppose, but most of it is very good stuff and part of the fun is in choosing cool new elements to add to a PC’s arsenal of capabilities. If we had a weekly game instead of a twice monthly game, we would have had a sharper grasp of the mechanics. The additional abilities also required that I be very prepared with Major NPC capabilities. The additional information released by the supplements does add to the variety of PC and NPC builds though. You can have many different variations on the five classes.

Characterization and roleplaying continued to be fun, but balancing got wonky. The decision to hold on to the different BAB advancement rates made it trickier to provide foes that could challenge Soldiers and Jedi, but still be shot by classes with slower advancement rates. For most classes damage output plateaued early on, leaving only Jedi high damage area of effect abilities.

Bryan expressed frustration with the book’s CR calculations; the fights were difficult to predict and could range from underwhelming to tough at the same CR. He tried out the 4e inspired encounter budget system (pdf, homebrew), and found it worked a little more consistently.

Bryan: My players did a great job with characterization. You can’t be thankful enough for pro-active and engaged players.

Balancing encounters in Saga Edition might as well be non-existent as written in the core rulebook. It is one of Saga Edition’s greatest flaws. Early on, it was guesswork as to how much a group of PCs would be able to handle. Like D&D 3.5, there were many times where I would design conservatively, hoping not to kill the whole group, but also able to bring in reserves if the fight was going too easily. Gauging the CR for the encounters was a real stinker. I discovered a link to a Budget system for Saga Edition that was based on that found in D&D 4e. While it was not perfect, it was a far better solution than offered by the design team in the errata. I consider it essential to use the budget system. Having a fairly reasonable guideline is far better than having useless or no guidelines at all.

All Tied Up

Saga Edition Star Wars has been the favorite game of our young group; soon after the first series ended we pressed the GM to work on a sequel. A year later, at the end of the sequel campaign, our rallying cry became “Star Wars comes in Trilogies”.

Bryan taunts: I suppose it will happen sooner or later. A third “movie” seems to be a near requirement. I’ve been sorely tempted to run it using FATE or Savage Worlds though.

Despite our joy in the characters and campaign, a few annoyances mean that the GM needs a good break before he will be able to look at a sequel. The lack of a shortcut NPC math means that custom NPCs take a long time to build, and that you have to trust your spreadsheet keep track of the math.

NPC “grunts” can have a lot of hit points if they have attack bonus enough to hit, which can be a pain to track. I strongly suspect that if we play again, minions and minor enemies will get tracked by number of blows rather than strict damage counting (like John’s 10 good hits system).

It has become quite clear that Jedi are the heroes, just like in the movies– particularly at high level. This doesn’t take mechanical adjustment, but the group has to be comfortable with spotlight balance instead of a combat effectiveness balance.

Bryan: It became difficult, after 9th level, to keep everyone in the spotlight because it did seem like the Jedi were beginning to dominate combat with Force Slams and other useful powers. One thing was apparent though, and this is likely true for many games: the Sith Lords the group were fighting would focus on the Jedi PCs while having their minions deal with the non-Jedi of the group or using the minions to add to the Jedi’s problems. More often than not, it was the Jedi that were dealing with the Sith Force Users while the Scout, Soldier, and Scoundrel were dealing with Sith Troopers, thugs, and the like.

An advantage, pointed out in Geldar’s linked post, is that the system will be complete in a few months. At that point the expense of the system drops to zero, and books become something to review at your leisure instead of scrimping to purchase and cram this month’s supplement. I hope that the system keeps its fan base and players continue to actively play, even with the official support coasting to a close. I know that I have some dice ready for another Saga campaign.

Bryan: Indeed. The line is coming to an end but the games go on. Some of the late supplements have been very good. Galaxy at War adds much information about military campaigns and military organizations. Galaxy of Intrigue adds much about political and espionage operations, along with a Skill Challenge system appropriate for those types of activities. I’m not sure that they could have added that much more to the rules of the game without turning it into a bloated mess. There is quite enough to work with as it is. About the only book I will miss will be one about Riding Beasts and Creatures. This is one area of the rules that could surely have been expanded upon.

The Future

The future of Saga is unclear– much of it is in our hands. Without a corporation and a steady stream of new product the game will fade from some players’ minds. Others will continue to find the game and their way into roleplaying when they encounter the books in the store. Star Wars is a great universe that we enjoy imagining and it will remain on people’s minds with TV shows, expanded universe novels and comics, and other merchandise.

From a player’s point of view, they are releasing the last class book before they wind down the line, so there aren’t any obvious holes. (GMs and players will continue to homebrew feats and talents particular to their characters and campaigns, but there isn’t a crying need for more.)

For GMs, most eras have a book that provides some information, but requires additional work. Fortunately, much of the missing information is easily adapted from the movie or expanded universe sources– if you need the Sun Crusher, the novel provides a strong springboard. A network of premade NPCs, ships, and worlds could make the lives of GMs easier. Those contributions are easier to make knowing that an official version won’t come out two months later. The future is in the community’s hands.

Now every year I run a very simple RPG for non-gamers around Halloween time. In the past I have used games like Fudge, or Savage Worlds. Both are simple and wonderful systems, and each can do horror well with a few tweaks.

Not this year. Probably not ever again. Nope, I will still play other RPGs but  when it comes to running a Halloween game for anyone it will be Dread from now on. Why? Because there is no other game out there that can compare to the perfect blend of mechanics and design, easy to follow rules, and lack of typical RPG jargon that makes other RPGs less than appealing to most non-gamers.

Why Dread?

I am not saying that Dread is the perfect game for everyone, but I do not praise a game like this often. I am friends with some of the people behind the game, but I was a fan long before I ever met them. The truth is that Dread is that good at what it does: provide you with an experience akin to watching a great horror movie. Your heart beats faster when you play this game!

You Probably Already Have Everything You Need

Dread uses a tower of blocks, the most successful commercial version being the game Jenga, and a questionnaire as a character sheet. So if you have a tower, some paper and pencils to complete questionnaires with, and this easy to follow quick reference you can run a Dread game.

Now I hope that you buy the actual Dread book and the Dread: Tales of Terror supplements, but you have to admit that games that you can play for a small investment are awesome to begin with.

Character Creation Is Easy Yet Precise

The questionnaires have twelve questions like “What have you been doing since you quit your job?” or “Why did you steal from your family?” and always end with the thirteenth question “What is your name?” That is all there is to it. Players just answer the questions in order and then hand them to the GM upon completion.

Non-gamers will not be confused by charts, tables, dice rolls, skill picks, etc. They just answer some leading questions and in no time they have a completed character that is as detailed as you need it to be as a GM. Yet the player has customized that character to their vision as well. There is an elegance to this character creation process that should be appreciated.

The Tower Provides The Fear

The tower is used whenever a character takes a risk within the game, needs to do something beyond his or her normal abilities, or attempts to take an action against another player character. A player makes a “pull” according to the rules of the tower game, and if the tower collapses that character is out of the game.

That is it. You as the GM simply describe the scenes to the players and ask for a pull, or perhaps several pulls when appropriate, and the tower does the rest. In several games that I have played, ran, and observed the result is always the same:

One hour into the game your players do indeed DREAD having to make a pull from the tower.

Hands shake. Sweat appears upon brows. Players hold their breath with terror when that tower starts to sway.

When was the last you played a game of D&D that had the same effect on everyone at the table?

Best Quality? Anyone Can Play!

We say this about a lot of RPGs, but the truth is that many complex rules system require a certain level of savvy with common RPG lingo and practices to really enjoy them upon first play. Without an experienced group a newcomer can often feel lost and bored while playing the game.

Dread is like the Wii of RPGs. Your grandmother can play it within 10 minutes of being introduced to it. Combine this with the openness of people to enjoy a good scare and the pitch of “It is just like playing Jenga, but with a horror story!” and you can easily launch a game of Dread at any Halloween party. Even the people who are not playing will get goose bumps!

This is the best part of a Dread game. Players, GMs, and observers alike become immersed into the story emotionally. Yet it does not matter if you have been playing RPGs for years or if this Dread game is your first RPG ever – everyone just naturally starts to play in character because of this palatable tension. You have to experience it for yourself.

Call Me If You Think I’m Bluffing – Play Dread

I rarely endorse a game so strongly, but when I realized at “Con on the Cob” this year that I was enthralled by every Dread game that I played and observed that singing Dread’s praises was warranted. In the interest of expanding our community of gamers, and because I love a good Halloween game, I wanted to be clear that Dread is the game that you should be playing this Halloween.

My special thanks to all of the Windmill Games Co. staff for explaining what they liked best about Dread, and to John Arcadian for his part in helping to shape this article. You all rock!

Have you played Dread? Do you have questions about the game? Maybe you know of a worthy adversary to Dread for the title of “Best Halloween Game Ever”? Leave a comment below, and remember that the GM is a player too. Have fun with it!

 Crafty Games is best known for its stewardship of Spycraft after Alderac Entertainment Group ceased supporting it. Originally published in 2002, Spycraft was the d20 Modern of its time, offering gamers a modern supplement to the Dungeons & Dragons system. A few years later, Spycraft 2.0 was released as a standalone system using the Open Game License (code for “using the D&D rules but without the need to lug around a copy of the Players Handbook or d20 Modern”). Fantasy Craft was conceived of as a way to do for the fantasy gaming what Spycraft did for modern gaming.

With Wizard of the Coast’s official abandonment of the OGL, a few games have stepped in to feed the cravings of gamers that prefered the Third Edition rules of Dungeons & Dragons. Some have been around for years, such as True20 and Anime d20, while others, such as Pathfinder and now Fantasy Craft, were born out of the ashes of D&D3.5 (although, to be fair, I believe Fantasy Craft began development before the announcement of D&D4e).

Today’s article takes a look at Fantasy Craft from the POV of a D&D3.x and Spycraft GM. What does it bring to the table that makes it distinct from D&D3.5? Does it still have a Spycraft feel? I like D&D3.5 just fine, why should I give this a look? I’m a D&D4e convert; does Fantasy Craft have anything to offer for me?

1. All-in-One

Unlike D&D3.5 (or D&D4e, for that matter), Fantasy Craft contains everything you need to play in one 400 page book. It includes all of the rules for character creation and advancement, adjudicating conflicts, Game Master advice, and monsters. You literally don’t need anything else to play (although a grid and miniatures is almost a must).

I was pleasantly surprised by this, especially as most of the “all-in-one” RPGs that I’ve read give short shrift to monsters, spell lists or GM advice. Fantasy Craft includes 12 races (including multiple “subraces”), 12 classes (not including 6 more expert classes), 288 spells, and 94 unique monster entries (with multiple versions in some of them and not including monster templates). At a glance, it doesn’t feel like Fantasy Craft gave any section the short shrift.

2. Lights, Camera, Action (Dice)!

Like Spycraft, Fantasy Craft is designed to be a fast-paced cinematic game with lots of story-telling in between the monster-bashing. One of the ways it accomplishes this is through Action Dice (also familiar to players of d20 Modern and other games that have hero points and the like).

Action dice enable a player to negate a bad roll or otherwise manipulate a scene. She can boost an attack roll, her defense, confirm a critical hit, force a critical miss, or heal herself). And yes, GMs get Action Dice, too.

One benefit of Fantasy Craft‘s Action Dice over d20 Modern is that spending Action Dice is encouraged. Rather than give each character a pool of Action Dice at each level, Fantasy Craft gives you a pool of Action Dice for each session and they don’t carry over. You have every incentive to burn through your pool, which supports a cinematic game.

Optional rules allow a GM to gain Action Dice for offering hints, or allow players to have greater narrative control of the game, including avoiding a character death.

3. Familiar Terms, New Meanings (Character Options)

Fantasy Craft is not just a retread or update of the D&D3.5 races and classes. Everything has been broken down and rebuilt from the ground up. This is not to say that you couldn’t build an elven barbarian or a halfling rogue, but their Fantasy Craft versions are going to look very different from their spiritual predecessors.

Let’s start with the basics. In D&D3.5, we’re used to thinking in terms of race and class. Fantasy Craft adds a third, “specialty.” A specialty describes what your character did before the campaign (similar to d20 Modern occupations). This species (race)-specialty set-up should be familiar to Spycraft fans, except that talents are now grouped under the human species description.

Races are given an overhaul and offer more options than the “traditional set.” In addition to the usual dwarves, elves, and halflings (now called “Pechs,” which keeps making me think of the movie Willow), there are more unusual choices such as drake (essentially a “large” quadripedal dragon), rootwalker (living trees), and unborn (animated matter- anything from Frankenstein’s Monster to steampunk). Each race has options for splinter races (or what we old-schoolers call “subraces”), which are created through the selection of a species feat.

Obviously, this website has a gnomish bias, so it was initially alarming not to see gnomes listed as a playable race. Upon closer inspection, however, I realized that they are now a splinter race (a demotion, to be sure, but hey, at least they’re still in the corebook) of pech rather than the dwarf (sigh…).

One immediately noticeable thing about the races is the number of playable large races. Fantasy Craft offers four (and several more than that if you count splinter races) which will certainly change up the tactical habits of PCs used to parties made up exclusively of small and medium creatures.

Another immediately noticeable thing is the lack of cross-breeds. No half-elves or half-orcs are listed. While I haven’t read anything that explicitly rules them out, they aren’t supported in the core book. You could easily house-rule them in, though, perhaps as new splinter races.

Moving on to specialties, the first thing that strikes me is that most of the D&D classes are now specialties, including the iconic four (cleric, fighter, rogue, wizard).  This means that the traditional “I think I’ll play a human ranger” still leaves you with a class choice. Interspersed with these are more background-y (I know that’s not a word) specialties such as Aristocrat, Artisan, Merchant, and Tribesman, along with other “would be playable classes in other d20 games” specialties like Archer, Corsair (Ahrr!), Gladiator, and Shaman. Each specialty grants the PC a bonus feat and other abilities.

Curiously, given that the Introduction states that PCs “can go from stable hands,” many typical backgrounds, such as farmers, fishermen, and stable-hands, aren’t offered as choices. To be fair, most players aren’t going to choose “farmer” over cooler choices like “criminal” or “dragoon” (or substitute a specialty like “corsair” for “fisherman”), but I’d like to have that option.

Also, many species have “iconic” restrictions that bar a race from getting the specialty bonus feat if particular specialties aren’t chosen. This has a chilling effect on “thinking outside the box” for certain species/specialty combinations. Again, this is only a house rule away from not being an issue.

Moving on to classes, they are about what you’d expect from a later D&D3.5 or OGL variant product. There are no empty levels and there’s a considerable amount of variation within many of them (a Courtier, for example, can choose abilities from a class menu every third level).

None of the old D&D3.5 core classes are represented (having been incorporated into specialties), although many follow similar niches. One might say that the “iconic four” are largely represented by Mage, Priest, Scout, and Soldier. Other classes include the Assassin, Burglar, Captain, Courtier, Explorer, Keeper, Lancer, and Sage.

One interesting point is that, unlike D&D3.5, the majority of classes are non-spellcasters. This makes “sword & sorcery” campaigns more diverse in terms of class selection as, absent house rules, D&D3.5 limited you to three non-spellcasting classes (or four, if you’d still allow the monk).

Fantasy Craft also includes a number of “Expert Classes,” which can be multi-classed into at 5th level, so long as prerequisites are met. These include the Alchemist, Beastmaster, Edgemaster (essentially a martial specialist), Paladin, Rune Knight (arcane warrior), and Swashbuckler. Expert classes only have 10 levels. “Master Classes,” which PCs can start taking at 10th level, are explained but none are provided. In d20 Modern terms, Expert and Master Classes are akin to Advanced and Prestige Classes.

Each class contains a core ability that can only be gained if the class is chosen at first level (similar to both Spycraft and True20). Expert classes and Master classes also have core abilities, which you only gain for your first Expert or Master Class chosen.

Players of Spycraft will also notice a few familiar columns on Class Advancement tables. Each class offers a defense bonus (as in d20 Modern) that adds to your character’s Defense (Armor Class). Each class also offers an Initiative bonus, a Lifestyle bonus (see point 4 below), and a Legend (or Reputation) bonus.

There are a couple of expert class design choices that I found a bit jarring. First, the Paladin, Rune Knight, and Swashbuckler have worse Base Attack Bonuses than the Beastmaster and the Edgemaster. While the downgrade of Rune Knight doesn’t bother me, I felt that the Beastmaster should have a lower BAB while the Paladin and Swashbuckler should have a better BAB.

Second, of the three “rogue” classes, Assassin, Burglar and Scout, only the Scout has multiple increases for Backstab. I’d assume that the Assassin would have the best backstabbing capabilities of the three, but that’s not the case here.

That aside, Fantasy Craft gives you a much better developed character than D&D3.5 out of the gate, and throwing specialties into the mix offers some intriguing combinations, such as a giant tribesman courtier or an unborn wizard captain (boy does that just sound disturbing!). The choices could be a bit overwhelming for a quick pick-up game or beer-and-pretzels style game.

4. Skills, Feats, and Proficiencies?

As in Spycraft, weapon proficiencies are separated from feats and new proficiencies are gained separately.

Skills are also given a different treatment. Like D&D3.5, characters receive quadruple their number of class skills at first level and a fixed amount each level thereafter. Unlike D&D3.5 (or Spycraft, for that matter), you can no longer purchase cross-class skills. At any given level you can only put points into class skills or origin skills (two skills that you select at the beginning as well as any gained through species or specialty).

One of the more intimidating sections of Spycraft was its highly detailed skill system, which included 30 skills that had multiple uses. Fantasy Craft cuts this down to a more manageable 20, although I’m not sure why Blend (which includes Stealth rules) and Sneak had to be separate skills.

Like in Spycraft, feats are grouped into themed feat trees, such as Basic Combat Feats, Ranged Combat Feats, Gear Feats, Species Feats, and Terrain Feats, making it easier to find an appropriate feat when you’re leveling up. The only thing that I found missing in this section was a master list of feats. Given that every other section includes a handy reference chart, this seems a bit like an oversight.

5. It’s a Kind of Magic

One bugbear about D&D3.5 is that it treats arcane magic and divine magic as essentially the same, with the only significant mechanical difference being the arbitrary grouping of spells as arcane or divine (this bugbear also rears its ugly head when a new power, such as psionics, doesn’t use the same system).

Fantasy Craft addresses this rather well. Spells are spells, and a mage can cast a Cure spell as easily as a sleep spell. The difference is how paths are treated. Each priest learns a certain number of paths that grant special abilities or spells as the priest increases in level (in essence, making it a stronger version of D&D3.5 domains).

The spell list is pretty extensive and covers all of the common spells found in most fantasy games. Spell descriptions are kept brief and don’t take up a lot of space, but occasionally crucial information gets left out (magic stone, for example, gives no guidance on damage).

6. Clean Living and a Good Cup of Coffee

Those of us who are in the old school (fine, I didn’t get started until 1982, but that’s “old school” to you young ‘uns!) remember how we spent a lot of time picking appropriate gear for our PCs, largely to overcome the many traps and obstacles that we might encounter in the dungeon. As the hobby rolled forward, these lists tended to get stuffed into “adventurer packages” or otherwise glossed over. I also remember the days when my treasure hoard would be chipped away by training fees and castle-building (although D&D3.x gave us something new to spend our cash on: magic items).

Once again, Fantasy Craft borrows from Spycraft and makes gear important. Your character’s wealth is divided into two pools, cash in hand and stake. Cash in hand is what your character carries and Stake is what’s socked away at home. Your PC also has a lifestyle stat, which improves with level and allows you to upgrade two stats, panache and prudence. Panache enables you to gain bonuses on Charisma-based skills (provided that your appearance is higher than your opponent’s) and cash on hand, while Prudence enables you to actually sock away more of your money at the end of an adventure (Fantasy Craft presumes that PCs, just like their owners, tend to fritter away a lot of their income on frivolous things).

Spycraft’s influence is also strong in the Gear lists. In addition to the usual weapons (including early guns), armor, and common items, Fantasy Craft offers some interesting stuff. Don’t want to buy a standard horse? The Mounts list includes elephants, llamas, pegasi, mastodons, war-raptors, and giant turtles. Are you a thieving type? The Locks & Traps list includes crushing traps, explosive traps, fear traps, and jaw traps.

One of the more interesting tables is the Food & Drink table. What you put into your body actually has a game effect. Having a cup of coffee with breakfast will grant you a +1 on Reflex saves for 8 hours, while a hearty meal will knock out a fatigued condition (I should note that PCs are limited to the benefits of one food and one drink per day, which is good, as otherwise PCs will spend more time planning their menus than delving through dungeons).

The Services list provides similar benefits. A bath and grooming will grant an appearance bonus for a single scene, while purchasing the services of an <ahem> consort will help a PC relieve stress damage.

All in all Fantasy Craft really brings shopping and downtime back to the fore and makes it interesting. It adds an extra layer of complexity, but Spycraft fans will certainly appreciate that gear gets its due here.

7. The Fifteen-Minute Workday Abolished

One of the largest concerns about D&D games in general is how to get around the “15 minute workday.” After three or four encounters, most spellcasters tend to be low on spells and the characters need time to heal their wounds. This often ends up in bizarre situations such as barricading the group in the room of a haunted house or creepy goblin lair for the night.

Traditionally, the cure has been to pile on the magic items (or, in D&D4e‘s case, create at-will and encounter powers). Fantasy Craft offers a different solution. Spellcasters get a certain number of spell points to fuel their spells, but these spell points refresh every scene. Thus, a spellcaster is theoretically at full power at the start of every battle, depending on how you define a “scene.”

This is an elegant solution as it simulates fatigue while allowing the PCs to continue delving through dungeons. It also places less of a reliance on magic items.

There are some gray areas with this system. How the GM defines the scope of a scene will make spellcasters more or less effective. For example, if a GM declares that the aftermath of clearing a few rooms is a “scene,” and he won’t change scenes until the PCs enter the next room, can the priest only heal each PC once? What if they hunker down and refuse to move until they are healed? If the GM declares that each room is a “scene,” then you’ll have the bizarre circumstance of the PCs stepping back and forth between rooms until the priest is able to fully heal them. Similarly, does a castle siege count as one “scene?” If so, mages are far less effective in large battles than in clearing out dungeons.

8. Combat streamlined-Battlemat Still Required

Like Spycraft, Fantasy Craft places an emphasis on cinematic combat and one of the ways that it does so is by abolishing Attacks of Opportunity (second only to Alignment in terms of D&D gamer nerd rage). I’ve never been a fan of Attacks of Opportunity as they essentially made battlemats an integral part of the game (I’d played without battlemats in earlier editions of D&D).

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that you can roll up your battlemats. Fantasy Craft still requires you to know your positioning for purposes of determining who you’re adjacent to and flanking bonuses. Also, part of choosing a large race is the reach benefit you get in combat, which would be negated in a purely narrative combat.

Fantasy Craft also does away with iterative attacks, so fighting types don’t get three or more attacks at higher levels. Instead, every character gets two actions each round. You can move and attack, move twice, or even attack twice.

Like Spycraft, Fantasy Craft divides hit points into Vitality and Wound points (as did early versions of the d20 Star Wars rpg). Vitality is essentially the PC’s skill at avoiding getting hurt, while Wounds is his ability to soak damage. Vitality is much more easily recoverable than Wounds.

A fun treat is the Table of Ouch. If you score a critical hit and do more damage than your opponent’s Constitution, then you can spend two action points to roll on the Table of Ouch, which can cause things like broken limbs and brain trauma. Critical misses, or Errors, can also affect a character.

9. Taking the Pain out of Creature Creation

One of the greatest GM time-savers to come out of Spycraft was its NPC creation rules, which enabled GMs to quickly generate adversaries and have them scaled against the PCs. It also uses a Damage Save mechanic for “standard characters” (read “minions”), that eliminates the need for tracking Vitality or Wound points.

NPCs don’t use the same rules characters do. Instead, the GM gives NPCs competency ratings in a few areas, picks some special abilities and attacks, cross-references his ratings with the threat level, and he’s basically finished. While not quite as fast as the D&D4e rules, it’s still a major time-saver for the GM. To illustrate the point, the new rules enabled the bulk of the D&D3.5 Monster Manual to be crammed into just over 40 pages. This section is helpfully followed by a section on converting OGL monsters to Fantasy Craft.

The beauty of this section is that it addresses the differing priorities of players and GMs. Players can use the character creation rules to develop complex and nuanced characters, while the GM can quickly churn out NPCs (and, of course, nothing is stopping her from using the full character creation rules for her important NPCs if she wants).

10. Customizability

One question commonly asked when evaluating fantasy rpgs is how well they do sword & sorcery as well as high fantasy, or whether its mechanically feasible to run a “no magic” game and still have plenty of options.

Fantasy Craft covers this pretty well. It gives advice on determining genre (do you want Dark Fantasy or Political Fantasy?) and setting your era (sword and sandal versus dueling pistols and rapiers).  While you probably don’t need to be told this, you can trim the race list and kick the others back into monsters-only territory.

There are also rules for Alignment (ah, you just knew it would be in here somewhere!) and handling Miracles. There are guidelines for eliminating PC spellcasters (to run something more purely historical or even horror, where only the insane NPCs have the kewl powerz).

11. Modularity, or Can  I Use My Old d20 Stuff with Fantasy Craft?

The beauty of the OGL is that games built with it tend to share a common base. While different in many ways, at it’s core Fantasy Craft is still recognizably D&D3.x and many elements can be swapped with little or no conversion. Like Action Points or bonuses for drinking coffee? You can add them to your D&D game with no trouble. The same goes for the NPC generation system. In this sense Fantasy Craft is a very useful optional rules toolkit (like Unearthed Arcana).

Similarly, you can port in elements from D&D to Fantasy Craft. Not a fan of Wounds and Vitality? Port in Hit Points. Still want Vancian magic? With a few tweaks you can bring D&D clerics and sorcerors back into the game.

Equipment is more problematic. Fantasy Craft uses a silver piece standard, but it doesn’t track with D&D silver pieces (it’s closer to gold). Also Fantasy Craft weapons tend to do more damage than their D&D counterparts. Armor is also treated differently, as it offers Damage Reduction and, in most cases, imposes a Defense penalty.

12. Should I Buy Fantasy Craft?

If you’re a fan of Spycraft and have been looking for a fantasy game that largely imitates it, then yes, Fantasy Craft is definitely the game for you! It melds the best of Spycraft with D&D3.x to provide a fantasy experience with a Spycraft feel.

If you aren’t a fan of Spycraft, then Fantasy Craft’s usefulness largely depends on your reason why. If you’d felt that Spycraft had too many rules and options, Fantasy Craft seems to have cherry-picked the best ideas, cleaned them up and slimmed them down. That said Fantasy Craft is still close enough to Spycraft that, if a lot about the latter bothered you, then you might want to test the waters with a pdf first or give it a pass.

If you enjoy D&D3.5 and other OGL games then Fantasy Craft‘s usefulness depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re pretty happy with D&D3.5 then you might find a few optional rules to mine here (and may want to consider the pdf over the print product). If you like D&D3.5 but are looking for a fantasy game that scratches the same itch while providing a fresh play experience, then Fantasy Craft is a worthwhile purchase.

If you’ve sworn off D&D 3.5/OGL games then, again, Fantasy Craft‘s usefulness depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re happy with D&D4e (or another system altogether), then no, you probably won’t get much out of Fantasy Craft. If you’d discarded D&D3.5 for a potentially fixable reason, such as less emphasis on the “crawl,” ease of creature creation, or discarding Vancian magic, then Fantasy Craft is definitely worth a look.

Overall, Fantasy Craft is a well-written product that benefits from lessons learned in Spycraft and holds together well. The artwork is black and white but well-done, and the upper and lower borders harken back to the 1e Dungeon Master’s Guide (although, sadly, it’s the same image on each page, rather than the “mini-comic” of the DMG). It’s a great addition to any OGL gaming shelf.

Want to learn more about Fantasy Craft? Read on…

• Atomic Array: Fantasy Craft (Atomic Array 032)
• Game Cryer: Review by Chris Perrin
• Questing GM: Questing with Fantasy Craft
• allgeektout: What Fantasy Craft Has to Offer
• Campaign Mastery: Mine Fiction for Campaign Qualities
• Emerson’s Bookshelf: Fantasy Just Got Crafty
• Critical Hits: Critical Review
• Fear the Boot: Fear the Review
• Uncle Bear: Fantasy Craft Chargen
• Flames Rising: Dark FantasyCraft Review

Drop by Crafty Games today!

(Fair warning…I co-authored the Tome of Secrets, which is the first third party supplement for Pathfinder. I also received a free copy of Pathfinder for this article, courtesy of Paizo Publishing and Atomic Array.)

1. All-in-One (well, minus the Monster Manual)

Whether you consider it a feature or a bug, the Core Rulebook is essentially The Player’s Handbook and The Dungeon Master’s Guide mashed together in one. While D&D4e took some flack for printing the magic items in the PHB4e (I hope you understand that; I’m getting tired of referencing abbreviations), I’ve always preferred having all of my rules in one book, especially since, as a GM, I’m more likely to be leafing through the PHB rather than the DMG during a game.

D&D4e took a lot of flack for removing some races and classes that were in PHB3.5. While the loss of the gnome was, of course, inexcusable (no, I don’t want to hear about a weak write-up in the Monster Manual or the $35 investment in Player’s Handbook 2 for a full treatment!), I’d be remiss in pointing out that Pathfinder excludes some classes as well. The snips were from prestige classes, specifically the Archmage, Blackguard, Dwarven Defender, Heirophant, Horizon Walker, Red Wizard, and Thaumaturgist. While Paizo has their reasons for not including them (as Wizards of the Coast did with D&D4e), it’s small comfort if you really enjoyed those prestige classes.

In spite of smashing two books together, Pathfinder has a more eye-friendly table of contents, basically by chopping out the chapter subheadings. While the D&D3.5 Table of Contents almost does double-duty as an index (which is redundant, as it has a good index), Pathfinder’s Table of Contents does the job satisfactorially and it also has an extensive index.

2. What’s Old is New Again with Little Competition

Unless you were a ruthlessly draconian D&D3.5 GM, your last or current D&D3.5 group probably resembled nothing like a party generated with only the PHB. With the Complete series of supplements, it was possible to replace the old “cleric, fighter, rogue, wizard” dynamic with their Asian counterparts (shugenja, samurai, ninja, and wu jen, respectively) or shake things up with a number of alternate classes (spirit shaman, swashbuckler, scout, and warlock, in keeping with the theme). The Tome of Battle offered an entirely new subsystem for fighting classes that looks suspiciously like the prototype of D&D4e powers.

I haven’t even touched the races, but let’s just say reptillian humanoids (of various names) and tieflings were popular choices before 4e made them core. Like the classes, D&D3.5 had dozens to choose from by the end and that’s only looking at WOTC products. Third Party products utilizing the Open Game License multiplied that several times over.

Pathfinder wipes the slate clean and introduces a new philosophy. Whereas D&D3.5 actively encouraged multi-classing, Pathfinder endeavors to make each class interesting enough that a player would want to stick with it through 20 levels. Empty levels have been virtually eliminated; every class grants you something at each level. Each class has also been given new abilities that help distinguish one member of the class from another.

Pathfinder also rebalances the classes. Attack bonus progressions are now tied to hit dice (with the barbarian exception), with 1d6 being the lowest. Both the Bard and the Rogue get upgrades to 1d8, which, in the latter’s case makes wading into combat for flanking and sneak attacks more attractive.

The concern of the “15-minute work day” has been addressed by increasing the utility of some abilities. Cantrips and orisons are now at-will spells, ensuring that the sorceror and wizard have unlimited magical attacks (albeit at 1d3, but that’s about what you could expect a dagger-wielding wizard to deal anyway, assuming that she manages to hit with it). Clerics can use their Channel Energy ability to heal several allies at once rather than turn undead. Clerics, Sorcerors, and Wizards also get additional spells and spell-like abilities that increase their utility beyond the usual daily allotment.

Races have also been given a revamp (sorry, Martin, Pathfinder gnomes also look like anime hairstylists). Each race grants a net +2 ability score bonus. The concept of favored classes has been reworked; each race gets to pick a favored class at first level.  Favored class grants a +1 hit point or skill point per level. Gone are XP penalties and shoehorning each race into a particular favored class.

Pathfinder has also made multi-classing easier. If you want to play a 1st level fighter, 4th level rogue, and 8th level sorceror, then go for it. No need to worry about -10% XP accounting for uneven levels (which I suspect was ignored at a lot of campaign tables anyway. Players are sneaky bastards!). Monks and Paladins may now freely multi-class as long as they remain faithful to their alignment restrictions. Like the Druid, there are opportunities for second chances if they do violate their alignment.

In addition to all of the above, with Pathfinder as the new shiny it’s easier to keep the players happy playing classes and races straight out of the core rulebook. While this isn’t likely to last, for now classes and races have been given a back-to-the-basics reboot.

3. Rules Tweaking (or, Did they finally fix grapple?)

Make no mistake, Pathfinder is 95% D&D3.5 in terms of rules. That said, Paizo took the opportunity to fix a few complicated, broken, and vague rules to streamline play (sorry, theatrical types, Attacks of Opportunity and grid movement are stull intact).

Skills have been consolidated. Among my gaming circle, there were a lot of complaints that characters simply didn’t have enough skill points to cover the basics, and the whole “class/cross-class” skill mechanic was a little unwieldy. Other games using the OGL mitigated this by combining skills, increasing the number of skill points per level, or eliminating the “cross-class” skill distinction. Pathfinder has consolidated the skill list (as examples, Listen, Search, and Spot have been rolled into Perception, while Balance and Tumble have become Acrobatics). it has also simplified skill point distribution. All class skills automatically provide a +3 and you don’t lose this bonus if you multiclass. You can now only put as many skill ranks into a skill as you have character levels.

Cleric channelling gets a revamp. Under D&D3.5, a cleric attempting to Turn Undead had to make two rolls; first, he rolled to see the maxium hit dice of creature that he could affect and then he rolled for the total of hit dice he actually affected. Under Pathfinder, a cleric does a set amount of damage to all undead within a 30 ft burst. Undead can save for half damage. The cleric could instead choose to heal himself and/or his allies with the same ability (also, rogues can now sneak attack undead, making flanking with a rogue while channelling a potent combination).

A running joke amongst my gaming buddies is that the worst thing a GM can hear in D&D3.5 is “I attempt a grapple.” Every combat maneuver had its own subsystem, which made running a monk or other flashy combatant an arduous process. In Pathfinder, all of these maneuvers are brought under the same mechanic.  Every character and creature has a Combat Maneuver Bonus (usually equal to the old grapple modifier) and a Combat Maneuver Defense. If you attempt a bull rush, disarm, feint, grapple, overrun, sunder, or trip, you simply roll 1d20 + your CMB. If you beat your opponent’s CMD, you succeed.

Moving through threatened squares without provoking an attack of opportunity also uses CMD as the DC, rather than a straight 15 or 25. No longer can an 8th level rogue with an 18 Dexterity (and what rogue doesn’t?) run free around the combat area without worrying about attacks of opportunity.

Some spells have been tweaked as well, generally to fix easily-abused effects. “Save or die” effects have been replaced with large damage amounts, while the polymorph spell has been significantly limited in terms of what a wizard can become and the abilities she gains (power word, kill however, remains as potent as it always has).

4. Encounter Design (the GM’s time sink)

One of the things that D&D3.5 took a lot of flack for was the tediousness of creature and encounter design. One of the things that D&D4e excels at is its simplified encounter and creature design. Pathfinder is somewhere in between.

Pathfinder offers an “encounter budget” system that is similar to D&D4e, with the added bonus of already figuring individual XP awards. So, for example, if your PC party averages 3rd level and you want a challenging encounter, then you need a challenge rating of 4. Looking that up, you need 1200 xp worth of monsters. Flipping through your creature book of choice, you’d need three 400 xp creatures, two 600 xp creatures, one 800 xp and two 200 xp creatures, or any other combination.

Creature design will have to wait until the Pathfinder Bestiary releases next month, but the previews indicate that the stat blocks still resemble their D&D 3.5 counterparts. Whether it is as complicated remains to be seen.

5. Portability (Do I really need to lug this doorstop around?)

While Pathfinder might be the biggest RPG book on my shelf (at 576 pages, it’s 76 pages larger than Spycraft 2.0), there’s no reason to take it with you if you have a laptop with an internet connection. Paizo has provided a free online version of the game on their website.

Unlike the 3.5 OGL, this version contains all of the rules needed to play, including character advancement. It is also much easier to navigate, if not quite as user-friendly as the Hypertext d20 SRD (although a fan-made version comes close). You can easily use either site to look up rules on the fly.

I travel to my Pathfinder game, which means I can lighten my load a bit and still have the full rules with me. Even if I do have the book, it essentially allows me to have another copy at the table.

6. Support

One of the best things Pathfinder has going for it are its support products, all set in the world of Golarion. As a family man in his late 30s, I don’t have time to design my own adventures, and I have to say that Paizo’s adventure paths and other adventures/supplements are top notch. It’s great to have a monthly line of adventure paths that span the length of an entire campaign, especially when the storylines are so compelling.  Pathfinder enables me to run these adventures as-is, with little or no modification (more on that below). Also, the Paizo staff surf the message boards and post regularly (I’ve seen them on Paizo and ENWorld), promptly answering questions and concerns. 

7. Backwards Compatibility

One of Pathfinder’s design goals was to maintain backwards compatibility with D&D3.5 and other OGL products. In fact, the reason for spicing up the core classes and races was to bring them more in line with later D&D3.5 classes and races.

I believe they succeeded admirably. For the last year, I’ve been running Paizo’s  Rise of the Runelords adventure path (which was written for D&D3.5) using the Pathfinder Beta Playtest Rules. All I needed to do for creatures and NPCs was figure out the CMB (which, as I said, is essentially the grapple bonus) and boost hit points to 75% or 100%. The challenges feel about right. As the Beta goes a bit further than the final product, I’d expect it’d be even more painless using the new rules.

Okay, I’ve been listening to you ramble through 7 points. Will this help me as a D&D GM?

If you’re running D&D4e and are happy with the new rules, then I’d have to say no. Pathfinder is still D&D3.5 at its heart and unless D&D4e is your first RPG then you probably have issues with D&D3.5 that are likely still present in Pathfinder. As my friends across the Atlantic would say, the core rulebook “is what it says on the tin.” It’s a book of rules crunch that will be of little use to a D&D4e GM. If you’re interested in the world of Golarion, you’d be better off purchasing other Paizo products that contain more useful fluff.

If you’re running or considering D&D3.5 then I’d say yes. Pathfinder will enhance your game, speed up play, be fully supported, and allow you to use most of your D&D3.5 library with little modification. The book is well organized and looking up rules is a snap. Encounter design and XP awards are also much easier to calculate. Also, it brings the core classes and races back to the game in exciting new ways. Paizo plans a lot of future support for the line, whereas the D&D3.5 support has stopped and related OGL support is dwindling.

Even if you aren’t planning on replacing D&D3.5 entirely, Pathfinder offers some excellent house rules that can be incorporated piece-meal. Like the skill consolidation or cleric channelling? Splice them in. Alternatively, you could play Pathfinder and pull back in the original versions of rules, if you prefer. Happy that Listen and Spot were consolidated but like having Search as a separate skill? Throw it back in. Don’t want rogues backstabbing zombies? Cut it out.

In any case, Pathfinder is a well-written refreshing of the D&D3.5 rules and a valuable addition to a GM’s shelf (the artwork is excellent too…same cover artist as D&D4e). Unless you love D&D4e and never plan to look back, Pathfinder is definitely worth a look.

Want to learn more about the Pathfinder RPG?

• Atomic Array: Pathfinder RPG (Atomic Array 029)
• Pen & Paper Games: Final Rules Review
• Atomic Array: Episode 011: Pathfinder
• Mad Brew Labs: Lost the Dragon, but Found my Path
• Nerdage: Pathfinder Adventure Path
• Questing GM: Path Finding Into Pathfinder
• RPGAggression: Interview with Greg Vaughan
• The Tome Show Presents: Second Darkness (Chapter II)

Drop by Paizo Publishing today!

Hey! The Wiki, um, Wikis!

My number one complaint about EpicWords was that “The wiki not having an easy method for the creation of new linked material is a serious drawback.” The staff at EpicWords recognized this problem and addressed it. Now you can easily create a link to new material on the fly by enclosing the text in double brackets (“[[ ]]”), or by clicking on the “Wiki” button while editing an entry.

You can also create a Reference link which creates an entry in the Reference Wiki. This special wiki serves as a campaign dictionary. Again you can code this into your entry as you type (use double braces – “{{ }}”) or just click on the “Reference” button while editing an entry. The nice thing about this type of entry is that users will get a mouse-over tooltip for when that phrase appears anywhere else in the campaign’s wikis. With this functionality there is no need to click on a link in order to remember what was so special about the “MacGuffin of Plot Point #3”. The definition in your reference wiki will be automatically displayed in the mouse-over!

Another nice new feature is Character Name Linking which automatically links any instance of the character’s name back to its EpicWords character page. All of these features make me feel that the designers are taking feedback very seriously. Not only has the EpicWords crew addressed the forward linking issue, but they have gone an extra step with it and added a feature like this and the Reference Wiki linking system, and I can see both as being a real time savers.

A Calendar For Us Gaming Geeks

EpicWords now has a calendar for group to arrange their game sessions with. A great feature of this calendar is that it not only gives you an easy way to keep track of when the next game session is amongst all the members of your group, but it also sends out an email notification 3 days before, 1 day before, and 1 day after that scheduled session. Not only is everyone reminded that there is a session to attend, but they also will receive a reminder to update the site following that session.

I’ve used Google Calendar for this, but it just isn’t as friendly as the EpicWords solution is for a gaming group. Most calendars online are tailored to business users, and the feel just does not seem right for our beloved hobby. The EpicWords solution feels more appropriate and that is because their designers are gamers. Do not ask me how, but to me this sort of thing shows in the overall design of the site and its tools.

Still Just a “C”?

The EpicWords site has improved, but I still feel that the speed of the site could be much better (something that the EpicWords staff is already working on). Yet I will change my original grade of a “C” to a well deserved “B+”. In less than 6 months the site has eliminated a major drawback and added great new features. That is real progress and it should be recognized.

The EpicWords site is definitely a wonderful value, because despite all of the improvements and the continued efforts of its designers to deliver new and useful tools the service is still easy on your wallet. You can choose the free account service to a host small campaign with (3 characters max), or pay the dirt cheap price of $12 a year for a premium account and host up to 10 campaigns with 15 characters and 1GB of storage space. $1 a month is a really hard price to beat, and it sure seems like you are getting more than what that dollar is worth in return.

I’m heading off to Gen Con Indy tomorrow, and you can meet the EpicWords crew at Gen Con as well. Tabletop Adventures is handing out literature as a favor to the EpicWords crew at booth 402. Be sure to checkout Tabletop Adventure’s products while you are there (I highly recommend their Deck O’ Names generator products) when you go to get a handout on Epic Words. You can also attend a one hour seminar hosted by the EpicWords staff where they will demonstrate their product and answer your questions (6pm this Saturday, event SEM0902945).

Whatever you do, give the EpicWords free account service a spin. I’m betting that it will be worth your time.

Are you an EpicWords user, or are you interested in becoming one? Do you agree or disagree with this review? Leave your comments below for others to hear what you think. And remember that the GM is a player too, so have fun with it!

So what are Dogs and what do they do?

The characters that the players make up are all Dogs. [No, not the animal.] Dogs is a convenient shorthand– they are officially members of the Order Set Apart to the Preservation of the Faith and the Faithful. With a mouthful like that, it’s no wonder people came up with nicknames for them.

The Dogs are an elite group of highly trained, divinely called characters. In a medieval setting they might have been Arthur’s Knights, but this is a western, so they are holy gunslingers. The Dogs are trained at the temple at the heart of the faith. When they graduate, they ride a circuit, visiting towns of the faithful and solving the problems that crop up. Some of those problems are traditional small town problems like jealousy and adultery, while others are the dark work of demonic cults and evil sorcerers. In either case, it’s up to the characters to investigate and solve the town’s problems, backed by all of the authority of their faith.

Patrick Benson writes: Dogs In The Vineyard is a fun game, and you will do yourself a favor by playing it at least once. The setting is built upon a sliding scale, so that the GM can have actual demons in the game or the characters in the game merely believe in demons. This sort of freedom can keep the game fresh if you decide to run multiple campaigns with it. One session is pure supernatural horror, and the next can be a psychological thriller where faith and desires collide. Be prepared though, because despite what the hype has been the game does not “tell you exactly how to GM it”. Yes, there is the “say yes or roll the dice” rule, but you need to keep tabs on the traits players come up with to make sure that the players are cooperating within the spirit of the game. A good min/maxer type of player will quickly exploit this type of system.

General Play

Players start by showing up to the table with only an appropriate character name and a sketchy concept. They discuss their characters and work through character creation together. Players assign pools of dice (based on character background and upbringing) to traits, skills and relationships. [This is something like a Shadowrun's priority assignment system, where each set of abilities is assigned separately, and picking a background implicitly sorts the number and size of dice in each category.]

After those basics of character generation are complete, each character picks an accomplishment they’d like to achieve during their training at Bridal Falls City. This is like a mini-prelude for White Wolf games. The accomplishment is played out with the full conflict rules (save escalation by the GM). It’s a great chance to try out the conflict system– which is somewhat complex and very different from other RPGs– in a structured way. It does a good job of teaching the system and helps everyone to start seeing the likely outcomes when the dice hit the table.

With the characters established and cloaked in their coats, the Dogs ride from town to town. The setup is strongly episodic– each town is a new collection of people and problems to solve. Other than the characters and their personal stories, very little carries over from one town to the next.

The characters ride up and start investigating, trying to figure out what’s wrong with the town. While there are elements of investigation, the GMing advice strongly encourages throwing the problems at the characters instead of hiding them. After all, these traveling young people are empowered to fix all of their problems– who wouldn’t try to bend their ear and get the Dogs to see things from their perspective? Of course, the problems aren’t always love triangles and crying beaus; sometimes the very fabric of the faith has been disrupted by sorcerers spreading false doctrine. These villains rarely rush forward to confess their sins; instead they stir the town’s passions and obscure their role in the current misery. If the Dogs start snooping too close to their comfortable situation, out come the guns.

Eventually the Dogs have the information they need. They decide among themselves how to solve the town’s problems and go do it. Often they’ll call a town meeting and make shocking revelations, or even string up the malefactors right in the town square. Other times they’ll marry a couple, remove the town’s steward, or do whatever else they feel is necessary to heal the branch.

Then they mount up and ride on to the next town. As they leave town, the reflect on their actions [with a game effect of granting additional skills, like spending experience or leveling after an adventure in other games], and prepare themselves for the next town on their list. This overall pattern for the game– on the campaign wide and specific adventure levels– is recapped over three pages at the end of the Structure of the Game chapter.

Book Structure

The book is organized into several chapters, beginning with a quick roleplaying overview and very quick setting background. After this introduction, the book follows a very structured pattern. Each chapter covers a new concept that builds on the previous material. At the end of the chapter a one or two page recap of the chapter’s contents is provided for quick reference.

As a GM, this is a very handy system for guiding the players through the game. For example, the summary at the end of the character creation chapter includes the dice for each background, includes reminders about the two die minimum for stats, and brief instructions for traits, relationships and belongings. The last instruction is a reminder to ask what they hope their characters accomplished during training. The summary ends with a quick list of four questions the GM should keep in mind during character creation.

This system of introducing a topic and covering it extensively for the chapter, then summarizing the key elements at the end of a chapter is a boon to the GM. During character creation, the GM can guide all of the players for 90% of their tasks from the one page summary, with the remaining elements covered in detail in the chapter’s heart, back in the last few pages.

Kurt “Telas” Schneider notes the following. Caveat: I have limited exposure to DitV; I read the book a few times, and played the game once with a novice GM.

DitV is a good book, but (with 20/20 hindsight) I didn’t find it to be as revolutionary as proclaimed. There was a sense of the game being written primarily for the “how far will you go to win?” morality question, which seems to be a very limited scope. If I wanted to have fun while testing my moral limits, I’d go to a strip club…

That said, I definitely got something out of the “say yes or roll the dice” and “lose = XP” concepts.

The Life of a Dogs GM

The Dogs GM is in an interesting position. The book lays out her duties and very clearly states that its distribution of power and expectations is non-standard. For example, unlike most game systems, the GM is not arbiter of whether there is a bottle of whiskey behind the tool shed, or a fence to duck behind in a gunfight. The rules clearly indicate that if there’s a question as to whether an item would occur, the GM should ask the players. It’s a very interesting approach to ensuring that the game world picture syncs in everyone’s mind.

Strong mechanical guidelines exist for creating adventures, a simple step by step process for creating the next evening’s play. Someone with no knowledge of the game could create a good town by reading the town creation chapter alone, never reading the system. As the GM you know the PCs and players, so you can design a town that fits the characters better, but walking through the procedures alone is enough to generate an interesting evening’s play. That’s handy for the preparing the first session; you can create the first town before you know who the PCs are.

Similarly, statting up NPCs is very different from almost any system I’ve ever tried. As you create the town, you create and identify interesting NPCs, but you don’t stat them out. Instead, there’s a very quick procedure for generating batches of 6 proto-NPCs [his term]– basically, bunches of stats just waiting for a personality. When a conflict comes up in game, you pick the set of stats that matches the character’s strengths and assign traits on the fly. The system sounds unusual, but does a great job of keeping the GM focused on the personality of the NPCs during town creation and roleplay.

The book instructs GMs on procedures, but also on focus and approach. Throughout town creation, the GM is reminded that their goal is to create a situation ready for action– but not to imagine outcomes or try to anticipate the character’s actions. Similarly, the GM never judges the characters from the position of god– the real relationship between the King of Life and the character is up to the player, and is often reflected in the traits and relationships that they pick. That doesn’t mean there are no consequences for action; the GM reacts in character as the townsfolk. If your Dogs have settled the last few towns’ problems by stringing up half of the men, they should expect terror– or armed resistance– when they ride into the next.

The Dice

One of the most distinctive elements that sets Dogs apart is its conflict resolution system. Like many games [from PTA to True20], it uses a unified resolution mechanic for all conflicts of any type. However, the Dogs in the Vineyard resolution system accomplishes its goals in unexpected ways.

At the beginning of a conflict you state your goal. The book’s recurring example is of a Dog intent on stopping his brother from murder. If you win the conflict, you get your way. (Many D&D fights could be viewed as having the conflict goal of “kill the enemy”, with each round of attack and damage rolls stacking up to sway the overall conflict.) Each conflict is made up of many actions, each specifically called out and made concrete in the game world. Other conflict resolution games, like PTA, often resolve conflicts in one quick card draw or roll of dice. Dogs takes a different approach, breaking the conflict down into a series of events, with each component event requiring narration and dice.

Another interesting element of the resolution system is that both sides roll their dice for the conflict upfront and openly. All of the abilities on the character sheets are rated in terms of dice. I might have a 4d6 body, a 2d8 crackshot skill, and a d4 relationship with the bandit I’m tracking. When I get into a conflict, I roll the appropriate dice and leave them on the table. The die results signal the tone for the fight– if you roll poorly, you can narrate your character’s actions and effort to match.

Fights undergo a pattern of “raises and sees”. Each time you describe an action that moves you toward your goal, you “raise” by pushing forward two dice. Your opponent then has to “see” [push forward dice totaling your raise] from their own pool of dice and describe how they respond to your action. Since they saw your raise, you haven’t accomplished your goal for the conflict yet. Now they raise and you have to see or lose. This repeats, back and forth, until one side gives up and the conflict’s goal is completed or prevented.

Since the dice are all on the table, you can map out how the conflict is likely to go. You can see that your Dog is going to lose to the footpads well before it happens. There are a few twists on the resolution that kick it up a notch. First, you roll dice based on the type of conflict you’re having. If you chose to escalate the conflict (by turning a shouting match into a pushing match or a shooting match), you get to roll more dice. Similarly, if you use your traits and tools, they also allow you to roll their associated dice. So when you’re looking at your pool of rolled dice and they’re telling you that you’ll lose… the temptation to escalate is there.

As the raises and sees go on, each time you had to use 3 or more dice to match your opponent’s see, you took a blow. Depending on how your disagreement was expressed at the time– gunshots, punches, or searing words, you’ll take different amounts of fallout (basically damage). So you might win the overall conflict, but take a gutshot accomplishing it.

Another interesting effect, mentioned by Telas above, is that you sometimes learn from taking the blow. When you roll your fallout (damage taken) after the conflict, you learn, improve, or change if at least one of the dice comes up a one. This is a nice lure for players and can encourage mighty heroes to take a wound once in a while.

John Arcadian says: “Dogs In The Vineyard is the best story narrative intensive game of poker played with dice that I’ve seen. The setting itself doesn’t pique my personal tastes, but I’ve seen it run well in other story rich settings (Serenity, Italian Diplomacy). Dogs shines in its use of an interesting game mechanic and the fact that players wager dice on their actions. I don’t see it holding out in a long term campaign, or for a standard fantasy dungeon crawl, but it is an excellent diversion for a night. It will certainly get your group thinking in different ways about your game, and that is always welcome.”

Managing Dogs over the Long Haul

I run and played in a few one shots, and ran a campaign that lasted through four sessions including character generation. That wasn’t long enough to see any real abuses of the system crop up– in fact, while the Dogs were more interesting after play and interesting trait advancements, they weren’t a lot more powerful. Now, given another five sessions, I can imagine that the additional trait dice would be getting to the point that the PCs wouldn’t have to escalate much anymore… and that would be a drag.

Have any of you played Dogs for many sessions? Any advice on how to handle it long term, or is it somehow self correcting? Or do characters just tend to stake their life on unwinnable conflicts before the tide of advancements and reflections strips them of the need to work for their victories?

Useful Resources

• John Kim has a great support page for Dogs, including strategy notes, character sheets, handouts, and a one shot adventure.

• If you’d like to look over fifty or so towns, Doyce’s Randomwiki has a huge Directory of Example Towns.
• The Lumpley Games forum on the Forge is a great place to talk over towns with other GMs. The towns I ran improved significantly when other GMs brought up points I’d overlooked, mentioned characters that needed more fleshing out, and generally improved our games with their sage advice.
• The Dog’s sources website has links to lots of interesting setting details, some nifty play aids, and features some excerpts from the game. A few links are broken, but many still work.

Want to learn more about Dogs in the Vineyard? Read on…

• Atomic Array: Dogs in the Vineyard (Atomic Array 026)
• Game Cryer: Review by Chris Perrin

Drop by Lumpley Games and order Dogs in the Vineyard today!