If you're reading this, you might be interested in a solid and fairly wide-ranging batch of discussions going on at Thuloid's latest post at the House, all assisted by that gleaming new Disqus plug-in.
The post looks at what makes a game interesting and the comments cover D&D and old school art, the aesthetics of GW's Age of Sigmar, the Iliad, Vampire, The World's End, Frozen, roleplaying the life enlisted, milking in the industry, and character history tables.
If you don't already know and you're a blogger, the House is a network you can join here.
My post at theHouse this week got a bit out of hand, trying to cover just a little too much. I did manage an approach to going inside the big kits, a look at character infection as a way to offset combat, and the idea of living delves and spaces.
But I had a lot more, so as a start on it, here are three related tables, for weird infections to replace more ordinary ones, for living landscapes, and for wargaming inside creatures.
I'm still wondering how it might work in wargaming. Maybe the forces would be set up based on likely unit activity, and the terrain simultaneously? Each force could be divided into a few categories, say Special, Scout, Column, Support and Patrol, which already happens to some degree in various games, with organisational charts, special rules etc.
So we've lived to see a fifth D&D and a seventh 40K. Who'd have thought it, back in 1974 or '87?
I've been reflecting. The more editions, the more I think the magic, and the truer quality, was in the first, in OD&D and Rogue Trader; and the more I think that after any new thing appears, if we love it, the way to honour what it represents is to carry on truly developing, to push the limits in corresponding ways, not just rework.
I'm going to finish the Arcane Dwellings table at Gorgonmilk entry by entry. This is the first. If you want to jump in, no need even to ask: post here.
Here it is then, weird and maybe a little gross. If it's a mealtime, you might want to stop right now.
If you wanted to out-DCCDCC and recapture the magic and disorientation of early D&D with a new set of die shapes and ranges, what dice are left?
The classics of course are the d4 and d6 - the d2 and d3 included - the d8, d10, d12 and d20, plus the d100. Most are fairly useful, for the spread of factors. DCC uses the d5, d7, d14, d16, d24 and d30, which are still solid. We covered the d1 here.
The d9, d15, d18, d21, d25, d27 and d28 could all be useful, the d18 and d28 most of all, and maybe the d22 and d26 as well, but the rest up to 30 less so: the d11, d13, d17, d23 and d29. The d31 has a certain cracked old school charm, but does it exist? And of course, when rolling with larger ranges, extracting smaller factors can slow the reading.
At first I was generally positive about the idea of the so-called 'background' - the personality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws. Now I'm not so sure. It seems more gimmicky as time goes by, more predetermining of narrative as if establishing the characters for the first chapter of a novel, a set narrative, rather than supporting an exploration of another world - and ourselves - wherever it leads; and a shortcut avoiding the need for fuller player engagement, or further restricting player freedom.
Why play to someone else's prewritten background if you can decide one for yourself or start vague, as light as in a DCCfunnel, or with a single word or less, and let specifics emerge in play, based on choice and the elaboration of the world in the interaction between players and GM, and characters, factions and landscapes? I'm genuinely curious as to the justification. Surely not just to save more of that increasingly precious time..? If so, I've got a suggestion - do less. None of us have to do everything we're sold.
But how do we know how important they are, or more importantly when they've fallen off? In mass wargames, who cares? In skirmish games many might, and in tactical roleplay it could be critical, not least becausethere could be things under them. But where's the rule, or rather that option?
And what about wigs, bandannas or weirder, grimdarkling-ish things? The navigators of 40K have a third eye with an effect that in D&D and related games could be save or die: if it slips, we really need to know. They might be the season's must-have accessory - or not - and affect reactions.
Here's a simple approach:
I wonder how different the world would look today if 'D&D' actually stood for 'Dragons & Dungeons'?
Maybe no different. The typical module might be creature-focused rather than site-based. But the cascading consequences of even that fine change, in minds across the lands and down the years, could have done odd things.
This particular thread is one of the more useful discussions on the aesthetic trends in 40K that I've seen in a while, going beyond level of detail, phwoar factor and producer ranking. It's at BoLS believe it or not, on a more or less ephemeral post.
One of the arguments corresponds to that idea that D&D is now its own set of reference points, which came up again with the nods to past fiction in fifth edition. A couple more:
Have you seen this? While I was in stasis, Hereticwerks released a first shortform module, GL-1, Taglar's Tomb.
It's a revised and expanded take on a site they posted for Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day last year. If you're a regular reader, you know what I think of Hw, and this is as accessibly weird and as dreamily expansive as ever.*
If you play a tabletop game, or like a speculative genre, you can probably do something with the contents. If you play a rules-light roleplaying game, like D&D or a game inspired by it, like S&W, you can probably do even more.
Even for wargaming, and not just for Oldhammer. For an unusual scenario, the tomb could be set in a hill in the centre of the field, with a scaled up version of the map on a side table and troops entering moving between. The objective would be to get in, hold the line while the diggers go to work and get out with more goods. Assign a tolerance to the surrounding slopes and walls, agree a rule for collapse and let the madness commence.
The trek with the guide could also work as a rolling road, with one side deploying hidden.
It's PWYW so you can get it for free and if you like it go back to pay what you think it's worth. They've also got a page of extra material, developing some of its vaguer elements.
First go read this. Epigenetics focuses on the idea of meaningful genetic change being passed down the generations by means other than DNA. Lamarckism is the supposedly discredited thinking that change to an organism in a single lifetime can also be inherited.
The article suggests that life has developed methods to transfer by reproduction not only genetic information, but even the experiences of the parents, a form of actual knowledge.
The significance of this is difficult to downplay, and the ramifications are going to keep people occupied for a long time. This is something traditionally fantastical, hard sci-fi at best. Before I come back to what this could really mean, a quick detour through gaming.
I don't do enough reviews these days so I've decided to post my thoughts on intriguing things as I find or revisit them. Anything relevant to the blog that seems worth looking at.
One man leads two others into a mysterious, militarily quarantined Zone - an overgrown ruined landscape, possibly struck by a meteorite, possibly the site of an extraterrestrial stopover, a form of roadside picnic - hoping to reach a chamber believed to grant wishes.
This is one of the most old school D&D films I've seen, without being related to D&D in any overt way, and it has a rich, dense terrain that might surprise and inspire wargamers too. The central location - the landscape of the Zone - is arguably at the heart of the film.
Tzeentch book has a table on every page. You start by rolling a d6 per
page number and comparing it to the table. Your army then takes that
many hits. Your opponent gets that many models back. If you roll an even
number, you go back a page, odd, forward a page, roll more dice and
then your opponent gets the special rules haywire and feel no pain.
It's a joke of course, presumably aimed at GW and a certain thinking on randomness and fun, but there's a radically conservative idea in there. Wargaming and roleplaying have long used tables for resolution, but they've fallen out of favour in the mainstream even if a business model based on large books of rules hasn't. Games like DCC still get good mileage, and there are the funky system-neutral tables at the The Dungeon Dozen.
Imagine this: a choose-your-own-adventure-style book of tables for use at the table, for gaming without randomisers like dice, but with more potential effects and less linearity, at least as many outcomes as table entries. Choose your action, check for contexts and apply the results, maybe jump. But not Student's-t-like distributions: there could be nested tables, option trees and 2D or 3D charts, even close-the-eyes-and-point pictures.
Picture the scene. Late '80s, the UK, a temple of gaming near a rambling common. A creature looking rather like a Womble elopes with one looking a bit like a Citadelambull into the folds of what could be a BECMI box. They dig a lair and start a character class.
If I was going to write up that character class - and why would I? - I might do it like this...
WOMBULL
MotivationLikes holes in the ground. Drawn to the intolerable waste in forgotten spaces; prefers not to steal, but will to put a thing to better use.
Requirements Strength and Wisdom of 13+
Nature Wisdom is the prime, with dice, saves and levels as per the dwarf.
Equipment May use any; has jaws and claws (1d4 dam.), and paws only a little clumsier than human hands (-1 with missile weapons and devices).
Abilities Digs twice as fast as a human. Has infravision, the dwarven feel for structure and a 1-in-6 chance of identifying inconsistencies or later changes in the contents of a space. May combine suitable items into a new form given that form's gp value in minutes; the new form is one degree poorer for its type and has a 1-in-3 chance of failing with each use.
Knowing the creativity of the people round here, someone's already done it, but I think I'd be happy to play any version. Now, where could a party with a wombull go adventuring..?
Not sure what a 40K OSR? is? If you know what a 40K is, and an OSR, you're pretty much there.
If you're part of it, feel free to use Colonel Kane's logo, here to the right, and consider linking to a superb example: their Tales from the Maelstrom.
Lots of readers of the Expanse will know what S&W is - a rules-light tactical roleplaying game, and more especially an Original D&D'retroclone'.
But quite a lot of people reading have probably never even heard of S&W: this is for you.
I'll look at what I appreciate about it, then what you might, then finally a way of using it to do something it's not explicitly designed to do: run 40K. There's a discount today too.
