DW Companions as PCs: Vicki

The Doctor's original companion, Susan, left the series early on in the second season, the first indication that the cast wasn't as fixed as it might have appeared from watching the first season alone. Unlike many other stories of the time, Susan's last episode doesn't end with the first few seconds of the one following it, giving a possible slot for continuity-minded GMs to insert stories with only Ian and Barbara as the companions. (On the flip side, the fact the Doctor temporarily forgets about Susan's absence at the start of 'The Powerful Enemy' suggests that it can't be a very long gap, if it exists at all).

At any rate, the very next episode introduces a new companion for the first time since the show started.

It's hard to come up with a role-playing analogy for what's going on here. That's because, having decided, for whatever reason, to ditch the Susan character, her player comes up with a new PC that's essentially the same idea. Perhaps she likes the character concept, but wants the chance to smooth off a few rough edges with a second attempt.

DW Companions as PCs: Susan

Of the initial set of characters in the first season of Doctor Who, it's Susan who is the hardest to see as a typical PC. That's because one of her key roles on the show is to be put in peril, to be the young, attractive, woman, menaced by the monsters. Equally important, from the show's original perspective, is that she's an audience identification figure, based on the intended age of the viewers. Neither of these functions makes much sense in an RPG context.

Precisely because she's an audience identification figure, however, she is often a viewpoint character on the show. Furthermore, unless there's only three players available (which, admittedly, is not impossible) it would seem odd to run a game based on this era of the show and not have her as a PC. But doing so, while trying to stay faithful to the ethos of the time, presents challenges that don't really crop up if you're only emulating Nu-Who.

If we look at her suggested character sheet in DWAITAS, though, she doesn't look all that bad. True, she is the weakest of the initial four characters, and the only one who is actually under-powered for a starting PC using the rules-as-written. But not, if we're honest, by much, and giving her the Inexperienced trait (and, thus, more story points) would bring her level with Barbara at least. In other systems, of course, trying to stat her up might have different results, but she's still unlikely to look rubbish.

DW Companions as PCs: Barbara Wright

Continuing from last time's look at Ian, let's turn to another of the original trio of companions: Barbara Wright.

Imagining that the first two seasons of the show had actually been an RPG, what can we say about Barbara? Knowing that the game is going to be about time travel, Barbara's player has decided that History skill will be particularly useful, and has built her character around this idea. However, clearly that won't be enough, since History is likely to be even less usable on alien planets than Ian's science skills will be in the past. So she saves plenty of points to round her character out with social skills.

As the campaign proceeds, this turns out to have been a good idea. They're particularly key in The Aztecs, in which she not only manages to carry off her masquerade as a goddess for most of the story, but, at one point, talks the bad guy out of revealing her secret when he sees through it. They also become more relevant when the show begins to focus more on the science fiction elements than on time-travelling into the past (as had been the original idea). From an RPG perspective, her History skill, good though it is, isn't always terribly helpful: it's fine for providing exposition in the TV show, and sometimes in working out what's going on, but, once the scene is set, it doesn't tend to move the plot along.

DW Companions as PCs: Ian Chesterton

Having recently begun re-watching some of the Hartnell era episodes of Doctor Who, reading a couple of books reviewing them (I recommend TARDIS Eruditorum as the more interesting of the pair) and, of course, the DWAITAS guide I reviewed in March, my mind has naturally been turning towards how the era would work in an RPG. Most of what needs to be said already has been in the sourcebook, and said better than I can do here. But it still leaves me pondering a few issues.

As I said in my review, a game based on this era would feel very different to one based on Nu-Who. That's not just because of the 50-year gap between then and now, but because that era told, on the whole, a quite different kind of story. In a way that, for example, Troughton's era didn't. So I'm not actually planning on running a campaign set there, interesting though it might be. A one-off game, though... yeah, that's a possibility. For a con, maybe. We'll see.

Still, one of the things that strikes me, re-watching these old episodes, is how much like a role-playing game they do feel. More so than the new shows, in fact. I think a lot of this has to do with the pacing. In more modern TV shows, a lot gets elided that doesn't if you're playing it out. That a lot this was kept in in the 1960s style of show does sometimes make it easier to view things through an RPG lens.

For instance, there's a scene in 'The Dead Planet' (that is, The Daleks #1) where our heroes come across a mysterious box, and cautiously prod it with a stick from a distance a few times before convincing themselves it won't go boom. This is the sort of thing that PCs do, but one expects Matt Smith would, at best, wave his sonic screwdriver over it for half a second, and probably wouldn't even do that. Heck, that entire episode basically consists of the characters wandering around trying to figure out where they are, something that PCs tend to do a fair bit of, but that would be rather out of place in a single 45-minute TV episode.

DWAITAS: 1st Doctor Sourcebook

A bit of a departure as far as my sparse and occasional reviews are concerned, I know. Not least because I haven't got round to reviewing the actual game. That's largely because I haven't yet had the chance to play it, and it's not really fair to review a game system you haven't actually used. I mean, it looks good, but how do you know until you get the dice out and give it a whirl?

But supplements are a different matter. I can't comment on how well the stats have been balanced, or whatever, but I can at least comment on what's provided. Also a bit odd, perhaps, that I'm starting with this one, given it's the fourth supplement to come out (although one of the others was a bestiary, where the utility of the stats is kind of crucial). But, hey, this is the way it is, so there!

Obviously, the reason for me buying this is that I'm hoping to get some use of it. I have some ideas for a DWAITAS game, and hope to put them into practice in the none-too-distant. Then I guess I'll know how well the rules work. The reason for me starting with this in particular, apart from the fact that it's hot off the presses, is that I have been going back through some First Doctor stuff of late, including reading volume one of TARDIS Eruditorum, which I reviewed here. As I was reading that - before this book was even announced publicly, I was pondering how DWAITAS would handle that era, and what material a (then hypothetical) sourcebook would cover. Now I know.

And, you know, the great thing is, this is almost exactly what I would have wanted. Pretty much everything that my random musings had thrown up along the lines of "they ought to do this" is here. It's a really excellent RPG sourcebook for this era of the show's history.

Pavis: Gateway to Adventure - Review

By now, Moon Design has a tradition of producing expensive, but hefty, sourcebooks for Glorantha. The latest offering, Pavis: Gateway to Adventure is no exception. At $60, it's two to three times the price of urban sourcebooks such as the Zobeck Gazetteer or Pirate's Guide to Freeport. But there's clearly a reason for that: those books are 116 and 256 pages, respectively, whereas this one is over 416. And, for that matter, the price compares well with the monumental Ptolus: City by the Spire, which weighs in at 808 pages and $150. (I'm ignoring PDF versions here).

Pavis is billed as the third part of the Sartar line, with the other two parts being Kingdom of Heroes and the Sartar Companion. Like those two books, it is divided between source material and adventures, with about two thirds of the book being taken up by the former. As the third in a line, it isn't intended to be stand-alone, and the nature of Glorantha would probably make it harder to port into other settings than, say, Freeport would be. As such, it's probably fair to say that this is aimed at existing fans, rather than the casual RPG purchaser.

Indeed, that's probably more true with this volume than the previous two, since, it is, of course, an update of the RQ2 supplements Pavis: Threshold to Danger and Big Rubble: the Deadly City from the early 1980s, and has obvious old-timer appeal. The new version is written for HeroQuest 2, although, frankly, that's such a rules-lite system (and most of the setting-specific rules are in Kingdom of Heroes, anyway) that, assuming you're willing to put the work in, the book is almost equally useful to someone playing some version of RuneQuest. Or whatever else your system of choice might be, come to that. (Well, okay, so something like Pathfinder might be a lot of work, but you get the idea).

Continuum 2012

It's been several months since my last post here, and it will probably be at least as long, if not more, before I do so again. (Although, on the other hand, I've got to review the new Pavis book at some point, so who knows?) Anyway, having just returned from Continuum 2012, it's time to post a review of that. Or, if not so much of the con as an entity, of the games I played, and what I thought of them.

To briefly look at the con itself, not only was it enjoyable, but, from my perspective, everything went without a hitch. I have not one complaint about the con, or its organisation. (I know some people moaned about the food, but I had no problems with it... one doesn't expect top notch catering in a student hall, and it was perfectly adequate for my needs. I'm there to game, not eat). So full kudos to everyone for pulling it off. The only negative points you're going to see in this post concern my reactions to individual game systems, and the like.

So, slot by slot through the con, here we go:

Kingdom of the Flamesword

Some of you may recall that, in addition to the Book of Glorious Joy, I was also commissioned by Issaries to write a similar book on Seshnela and the Rokari. That fell through, as ideas of what Seshnela should be changed. In the none-to-distant future, Issaries/Moon Design will be publishing the Guide to Glorantha which will include the new, canonical view of Seshnela, and we both agree that it's important for any release of my material not to clash with that.

There was a hope that it might be published in some dead-tree format, but that's all stalled, and I've had no reply to e-mails. So, since I do have permission from Issaries to post the material free-of-charge to my website (so long as certain legal disclaimers are included), and in the interests of not clashing with the release of official publications, that's what I've done.

If you liked the Book of Glorious Joy, and wondered what I made of Seshnela, you can find my thoughts in Kingdom of the Flamesword. As always, the non-canonical nature of the work must be stressed, and no challenges to copyrights or trademarks are intended - this is just fan material, nothing more and nothing less. It will certainly be contradicted in official works, and, if that matters to you, this won't be of much use. It's also worth noting that at least some of it was written for HQ1, which was the current edition at the time, and may put some people off.

But otherwise - well, hopefully it will be useful to someone.

Update: Kingdom of the Flamesword, updated to the current version of what is now QuestWorlds, is now available for purchase at DriveThru RPG, along with Forged in Blood and Snow, which does the same for the Kingdom of Jonatela.

Loskalmi Canonicity

One of the questions I have seen more than once with regard to the Book of Glorious Joy (well, all right, the only question I've seen more than once) concerns its canonical status. As one questioner put it:

what is the relationship between the Book of Glorious Joy and mainstream Glorantha? Are they letting you define Malkionism in Loskalm?

The simple answer to this question is "no".

But it may deserve a slightly more detailed explanation than that.

Book of Glorious Joy

In case you haven't heard (and its hard to believe that many people reading this haven't), after nine long years, The Book of Glorious Joy has finally been published. Seeing it in print at last is, indeed, both glorious and joyful.

You can buy it, in paperback, hardback, or just as a PDF, here. I don't get royalties, but, obviously, I'd like to encourage you all to do so nonetheless!

This is the book that would have been Lords of the West 3, and the first three chapters of Lords of the West 1: Heroes of Malkion added at the beginning for good measure, and in order to set the scene. It primarily serves as an overview of the magical and idealistic Kingdom of Loskalm, one of whose valiant wizard-knights you can see riding through perilous lands in the superb cover by Jon Hodgson.

I'm not sure there's much more to say here about the book that I haven't said already, so I'll gloss over that. I will say that I actually don't know what has happened to Lords of the West 2: Kingdom of the Flamesword, which would have covered Seshnela and the Rokari in the same way as BoGJ covers Loskalm, and would have also included the full write-ups for the more widespread saints and wizardry schools from LotW1. The last I heard it was still due to be published - but not in a single standalone volume - but more recent attempts at communicating with the publishers have not been successful, so that may no longer be the case.

Commoner Cults of Jonatela

So, in my last post I discussed the reasoning behind the rule mechanics I used for Jonating commoner caste magic in the recent piece at my home page. As I said then, I can think of two other questions the piece might have raised in the minds of readers, and I'll discuss them now.

To begin with, if the Elmoi are supposed to represent a denuded form of Ernalda worship, and they really are theistic, which gods are we talking about here? I see no reason to stay being mysterious about that, and people might wonder, so that's something I can quickly deal with. It should be said, though, that I think it's more important that the cults are distinct, than whether or not the beings behind them are, so I don't think it really matters much. Which means that anyone else's interpretation is as good as mine - if I thought it was important, and made a meaningful difference, I'd have put it in the article, not here.

At any rate, Frona is, I think, fairly clearly some sort of aspect of Ernalda the Great Goddess. She's mentioned as a grain goddess in RQ3, and Thunder Rebels reinforces that the grain goddess cults are different ways of worshipping the great earth mother. Frona, clearly, is the mother goddess and land goddess for Fronela as a whole, and will have her own, regular, theistic cult elsewhere.

Uryana and Vilecha are also aspects of Ernalda, and remember, we're told in Genertela: CotHW that the Jonating commoners worship Ernalda as their main goddess, so it makes sense that she gets the key roles. I don't think of Vilecha as a Chalana Arroy, incidentally, because she's just not powerful enough.

The Magic of Malkioni Commoners

Yes, it's been several months since I've posted here. Not that I haven't been busy writing in the meantime, of course. For one, I have managed to write weekly posts at my mammalogical blog, Synapsida - and those do require quite a lot of preparation. There have been many other bits of writing besides, some of which may eventually appear somewhere for public perusal. But, on the Gloranthan front, I have also continued to write some fan material on Jonatela - what would have been LotW4, had the series not been cancelled.

The latest instalment has taken a while to appear, because its quite a big one - ten new cults, in fact. The next will focus on the wizardry schools and that, too, may take a while because of its complexity (I predict early September). But I think the latest one will likely raise a few questions that I think its worth answering here, rather than in the more formal outlet of the web page itself. The questions are:

1. Why did I treat the commoner caste cults as I did?
2. What, if anything, is their relationship to the Orlanth cults?
3. Why did I even bother?

Taking the first question first, we have to go all the way back to the days of RuneQuest 3. That was the first rules edition to address Malkioni magic in general, or Jonating magic in particular. The RQ3 publication Genertela: Crucible of the Hero Wars says, in the Players Book, that about 75% of Jonatings follow the Orlanth pantheon and gain "the benefits of a barbarian initiate", while the remainder follow the Malkioni religion and receive, unless they are professional wizardry adepts, some limited sorcery magic. There is no indication that - priests and adepts aside - this is anything other than random. That is, parts of Jonatela are Orlanthi, with all the magic that implies, and parts are Malkioni, with all the implications of that.

d101 Con

I've just returned from the d101 "convention" in Matlock, Derbyshire. It's not really a con in any meaningful sense, just a group of people renting out a cottage to do some gaming for a weekend. It was a pretty enjoyable weekend away, and it seems to have been popular enough with those who could attend that we may do it again next year, possibly renting out a second cottage to allow a larger group of players. My thanks go to Newt Newport for arranging it, but my main purpose for posting here is to ruminate on the games we played.

We started off with Action Castle, which, is basically a fun party game for those old enough to remember 1980s computer RPGs. This means we are all now "King of Action Castle"! Cool...

Being too tired from travelling to do anything more taxing on the Friday evening, we kicked off the RPing proper on Saturday morning with Savage Worlds. I've played this once before, but the game is a flexible one not tied to any particular genre, so it's not surprising that the experience was very different. That time, the setting was the old Captain Scarlet TV series, but this time it was a rather more serious sci-fi setting, with distinct Travelleresque overtones. I gather that d101 is planning to release this as a more formal setting at some point, possibly using the easy-to-obtain Savage Worlds license. The setting was a crumbling interstellar empire, with various different factions vying for control, including mad cyborgs and sinister telepaths.

Because the Captain Scarlet game obviously used characters from the TV series, those were all pre-gens, but this time we all made our own characters up on the day. Considering that few of us had any experience with character generation in this system, this seemed a remarkably quick and painless process, which suggests that Savage Worlds would be a good system for use at conventions where you don't want pre-gens. In general, its a pretty simple system, and plays quickly, and has fairly straightforward mechanics, perhaps with something of an emphasis on pulp style excitement. Here for example, is the character I came up with:

Lady Corinia

Agility: d6                    Guts d4                        Psionic Background d8

Strength: d4               Healing d6                  Psionic Resistance d4

Vigour: d4                    Investigation d8

Smarts: d8                   Notice d6

Spirit: d8                      Shooting d4

Psionic Powers: Obscure, Stun, Pyrokinesis

Edges: Mentalist, Rich, Alertness

Drawbacks: All Thumbs

Weapons: Engraved laser derringer (carried in handbag)

...which was enough to give me a reasonable overview of the character, without over-complicating things, or making it seem all overly generalised and simplistic.

In the afternoon, time for a game of HeroQuest, using the Call of Cthulhu setting. Obviously, I'm very familiar with both the system and the setting, although I've never seen the two used together before. In this instance, it seemed to work very well, with, for example, lingering penalties being used to reflect the inevitable loss of sanity that accrues as one continues investigating. The scenario, created by Newt, had the wonderfully appropriate title of "Normal for Norfolk" (unfortunately, if you're not British, the meaning of this reference may not be obvious). Since it was set in the 1970s, and the PCs were all members of the Flying Squad, the inspiration we ended up using was, perhaps, inevitable... Our characters were perhaps, not entirely serious, and we never really got to the end of the scenario, but I won't give out any more details, in case d101 should choose to publish it some day. At any rate, this was my character:

DC Bob Bawdsey

Drive Like a Lunatic  18       Boozing                 13

Shooters              13       Hate Scroats            13

Ignore Procedure      18       Plant Evidence          13

Streetwise            13       Blag Way Out of Trouble 15  

Boxing                13       Look Hard               4M

The actions of our DS (another PC) perhaps got a bit too extreme towards the end, but, being a con game, that was easy enough for me to ignore.

On the Sunday, there was only time for a single game of Burning Wheel, using the introductory scenario from the rulebook. Burning Wheel was once recommended to me (I won't say by who) as a flexible, rules lite, modern system with plenty of options for different ways of resolving things. Most of that seems true, but what would make anyone think it's "rules lite" is beyond me. Indeed, in an age where RPGs seem to be getting simpler, it has to be one of the more complex new systems on the market - although there are plenty of older ones of similar complexity. It's fun enough to play in, especially as a one-off, and it does seem to be very good at describing characters and fleshing them out, but its way too complex and detailed for me to want to ever GM it. I've run a version of GURPS in the past, but that was stripped down so far, that I consider it an entirely new system. Still, even that was more than I'd be happy with today, so while I have no doubt that Burning Wheel is very good at what it does, as a GM, it's not my cup of tea.

But, as a player, I had no problem with it, and it seemed to work fairly smoothly. I certainly had fun with the pre-gen character, who was a somewhat snooty and sinister sorceress. The scenario worked well, and it was an enjoyable game. I'm certainly glad to have tried it, and I wouldn't object to playing it again - so long as I don't have to run it!

The rest of the time was spent relaxing, chatting, watching old movies, etc. making it all a pretty enjoyable weekend, mostly with gamers that I haven't played with much before. Since this was a d101 event, I'll also add a brief update on Book of Glorious Joy: about two thirds of the interior artwork is in (and more came in over the weekend), all of which looks pretty cool. Things are stepping up, and I don't think its going to be too much longer now.

On similar lines, there should be further updates to my unofficial Jonatela material soon - the next one is quite large, which is why its taken longer than usual for it to appear. And, for my ponderings on mammalian biology, there's Synapsida, which has been updated fairly regularly of late. I'm not fully happy with all of the latest posts there, but its something I'm learning as I go along, and I think its getting better.

Just possibly, most likely if I can get something to run put together, I might attend Concrete Cow 11, but no promises there. As for cons later in the year... well, we'll see.

Thoughts on Ratings in RPGs - pt 2

So, earlier I posted about my recent experiences on providing ratings guidelines for an online RPG, and how they might (or might not) be more generally applicable. I touched on general issues of theme there, and I'll now look at how we implemented more specific guidelines, and what those might indicate.

Language
The use of strong language is naturally something that might concern both film censors and anyone involved in text-based RPing. Among a group of friends RPing together over the table, its likely that it really doesn't need to be spelled out, but when you have a larger pool of players, perhaps from different backgrounds, it can be a different matter. As with theme, this can be an important aspect of simulating a particular written or filmed genre - Harry Potter should not, it seems to me, sound like Pulp Fiction.

On the other hand, that cuts both ways. I recall a few years back commenting on a mailing list about someone planning a Torchwood campaign. Now, in Torchwood, especially the first season (which at the time was the only one released), there is quite a bit of swearing. Is that an inherent part of the genre? Arguably not, but equally it wouldn't occur to me that a campaign might have tighter restrictions than the source material on which it is based, so I said - to the shock of other posters - that, unless someone told me otherwise, I'd assume that strong language was permissible. The characters in the series do it, why would I assume a PC should be different?

In the case of our Hogwarts RPG, we went with a 12-certificate. We didn't have to follow the full guidelines for that, of course, but we mostly did. At 12-certificate, only the strongest words are outright forbidden, although the use of others should be limited. Deciding that Americans are more offended by the F-word than we are, we banned that one (specifically permitted at 12-certificate), along with discriminatory words (e.g. that one that begins with "N") and terms relating to the reproductive anatomy.

This, in fairness, allows considerably more leeway than actually appears in the books or films. It means that we allow some moderately strong British swearwords - possibly because many of the Americans don't know what they mean, and consequently aren't offended - that Harry & co. certainly don't use. In general, our players haven't take much advantage of this, and I think that's a good thing. Writing swearing so that it seems natural, rather than being inserted for the sake of it, isn't always that easy. Going back to Torchwood, strong language is still found in the later seasons, but after the first one, it wasn't so noticeable, largely because the writers seemed to be using it only when it made sense, rather than "ooh, I can have a character say 'f***'".

Which probably means our players are showing more restraint than some professional writers. Good on 'em.

Drugs & Alcohol
Speaking as a European, it has often seemed to me that Americans in general have a fairly odd attitude to alcohol. That may be unfair, but its notable that one of the rules we had on the site for some time was "no alcohol". This, despite the fact that alcoholic drinks are clearly mentioned in the books. On the castle board, where the characters are all underage, that's sensible enough, but it felt slightly odd to me on the board for Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade - which, notably, have pubs. I used to get round it by having characters at the pubs "have a drink" without specifying what it was they were drinking, but it still felt a bit strange.

Now that we've relaxed that - albeit with specific restrictions on underage drinking - I've noticed that it's actually the most popular of our new, expanded guidelines, to see use. To begin with, a lot of that revolved around players tormenting their own adult characters with vicious hangovers (some of which were, in fairness, pretty good to read in a black humour kind of way). More recently, it seems to have extended to scenes where characters drown their sorrows, or just the casual mention of the stuff that I missed not being able to write. So its being used to develop emotional plotlines, and just to have your character feel more realistic.

Fantasy RPGs usually have a quasi-medieval setting, and in the real world, medieval folks tended to drink a lot of wine or beer, not least because it was safer than the water. Taverns are a staple in such settings, being such good meeting places, and its hard to think of a teetotal fantasy RPG (I'm sure there must be one, though, especially if it's based on medieval Arabian culture).

Other drugs tend to be a different matter, especially where we're talking about anything that exists in the real world. Particularly in a text-based game, it's probably wise to avoid real details, or to portray harmful drugs in a positive light, if there's any risk of younger players reading. So far, that one's not cropped up for us, unless one counts mind-altering, but non-addictive, magical potions, but one can see it possibly being relevant in a modern game, or something like Call of Cthulhu.

Violence
Violence of some kind is pretty endemic in tabletop RPGs. You may be only inflicting it against foul monsters, or whatever, but, at some level it seems to be integral to almost all of them. (I actually can't think of a system that doesn't have at least some rules for combat, although there probably is one somewhere). But, when it comes to violence as an indicator of a more "adult" game, we aren't talking so much about "I hit him for 5 points of damage" as whether or not the descriptions are graphic.

I'd suggest that, in tabletop games, this probably makes little difference unless you're planning on being really gory in your descriptions - which would suggest a horror game, anyway. Text based games may rely more heavily on description, and the issue here would be how much the text dwells on blood or mutilation. For our 12-certificate game, that meant no dwelling on detail, and its a game setting where much of the violence will be in the form of zapping people with spells rather than hewing at them with axes, that's a pretty easy guideline to keep to. There is some mild gore in the books, but not much, and that seemed a fair limit for us, too.

In point of fact, there seems to have been no demand to use the relaxed rules on our site at all. Contrary to the likes of D&D, it seems our story lines do not generally focus on combat, outside of tightly regulated practice duelling.

Sex
So we come to the area that's probably most touchy. The British Board of Film Classification treats nudity and sex as separate topics, the former being of more significance in a primarily visual medium than it would be in tabletop or text-based RPGs. Merely saying that your character gets undressed, or has a shower, is somewhat different from showing full frontal nudity on the screen. If there is an equivalent to the latter in a text-based game, it would be going into a lengthy description of your character in the buff, which seems a slightly odd thing to do, especially in a supposedly non-sexual context.

But, if nudity doesn't matter in itself, sex is different. People do, rightly or wrongly, get concerned about that kind of thing. There's nothing further than snogging in the HP books, and, since most of the characters in our RPG are going to be underage anyway, that's a good place to draw the line. Adult characters in the game had previously become pregnant, although never with any indication of how they got that way! It could be argued that that was quite sufficient, and that this was an area where we could be stricter than the 12-certificate guidelines.

My own attitude is that, if we're going to allow nastier things to happen to the characters, we should also allow them to have a bit more fun, too. So, for adult characters outside the school, we instituted a rule that allows story lines that make reference to "off-screen" sex, without describing it. Barring mention of nudity in a sexual context also makes it clear where you should be "fading to black", even if, as noted above, nudity per se isn't much of an issue. This, I think, allows a wider range of story possibilities without showing anything that's not strictly necessary for the story to work - it's the consequences that are more likely to be key to a story, after all.

There are also gradations between that and "insert Tab A into Slot B", which might be appropriate in other games. I can certainly see how character development might be enhanced by exploring that side of a character's life and personality in more detail, for instance. And, if there's any area where ratings of proposed campaigns might be relevant, other than horror (which is usually implied by the setting, anyway), it's probably this one.

Thoughts on Ratings in RPGs - pt 1

As some of you will know, in addition to face-to-face RPing, I have, for many years now, also been helping to run a message board RPG based on the world of Harry Potter. It's effectively a parallel universe, and doesn't feature any of the characters from the books, but the background and locations are the same (or at least very similar), and the general theme - wizards in a boarding school - is, naturally, also the same. I mention this because I've been reflecting on the effects of a change we went through recently in the rules for RPing on the board.

A message board RPG is different from a face-to-face one in that it has a large number of players, most of whom will not know each other in real life, and may come to the game with different expectations. It's also a 'sandbox' setting, which means that a wide range of different themes could crop up in different story lines, and the admins (GMs) can't possibly keep a track of them all, let alone read and vet all of them. As a result, the site has rules for what sort of stories and descriptions are considered acceptable - a rating system of sorts.

I'm not really suggesting that such things are easily extendible, or even relevant, to most face-to-face games, or e-mail games, for that matter. Certainly, its unlikely they'd be required in face-to-face games among a small group of friends, unless, perhaps, there is some intention to have different ratings for different campaigns, and the players need to be clear on what those are in advance. But, nonetheless, the fact that we recently reviewed, and changed, our ratings strikes me as something of general interest in RPing.

Our previous rules on this particular subject were fairly simple. Essentially, we said that the site was intended to be PG certificate, and mostly left it at that. The choice of PG made some sense at the time, since the first two films had this certificate (in both the UK and US) and were pretty close to the books they were based on. It seems to me, if you want to simulate a particular literary source, you'll want to follow its conventions, and the rating is part of that. (There are, of course, sites on the internet that are ostensibly based on the HP books but allow all manner of hardcore material - that's a perfectly valid approach, but I think there is very much a place for following the theme of the books. After all, if somebody likes the books, the absence of such content might be part of their reason).

However, with time, it became clear that there were a couple of problems with this. The more obvious one, perhaps, is that the later films, once they came out, had a higher rating. In general, they had a PG-13 rating in America, and a 12-rating here in the UK - and, by implication, the same could be said of the later books. Since the message board we host on does not permit members under the age of 13 anyway, there was a good case for raising our rating to match that of the later films. I think, in practice, a number of players had done this anyway, without us jumping on them, and it made sense to formalise that.

So, when some players raised the issue with us, we polled the members of the board, and agreed to switch to a higher rating, one more in line with the later films and books - which are darker in tone than the first two. However, there is another problem with stating "this site is considered PG certificate" - what does that actually mean? The rating system of the Motion Picture Association of America is fairly vaguely defined (although the website linked to there is actually rather more informative than it was at the time) often boiling down to "if we don't think its appropriate, it isn't". And that was pretty much our rules at the time, as well. So, when we updated it, we instead used the system of the British Board of Film Classification, and went with a 12-certificate.

By adapting the rules of the BBFC to writing, rather than film, and spelling them out in detail, I think we made it much clearer what was and was not acceptable. This means that, hopefully, everyone knows where they stand, and I think that, in addition to allowing a greater freedom for players to explore their own story lines, it also makes it much clearer what we won't accept. Once again, I'm not suggesting that such detailed guidelines would be of much use in a face-to-face game, but I think there is some interest in looking at them.

One point to make here is that we run the game over a number of different boards, reflecting a wide range of different in-universe locations and activities. For example, there are separate boards for quidditch, magical duelling, and for magic lessons, in addition to the main one at the castle. Most of these have the same rules. However, the board that deals with the world outside the school is mainly populated by adult characters, and we felt that that made a significant difference to the sorts of stories that would be appropriate. Thus, it has the same general rating, but the actual rules are slightly more relaxed, reflecting the fact that a story in which an underage character does a particular thing may be very different from one in which an adult does the exact same activity. In practice, if one were going to extend these rules more generally, there could be a lot of changes like this, depending on the particular genre and expectations of the players.

Theme
The general theme of an RPG is the sort of thing that is normally included in a campaign description, whether any more specific ratings are needed or not. If you're playing Call of Cthulhu, its fairly obvious you're going to have a horror theme, and something that would be at least the equivalent of a 15-certificate were the game a film or video. Its also a reasonable expectation of a game like Vampire, although there is a fair degree of leeway there in just how dark the game could be (depending, for example, on how you portray the feeding).

Many other RPGs have an inherently dark theme, and this is the sort of thing that I feel it is generally useful to spell out when proposing a particular campaign, especially if it's radically different from what the group have been done in the past. In the case of our message board Hogwarts RPG, it seems to me that keeping a theme generally in keeping with the books is  good thing to do. I suspect that the inclusion of dementors, and later, of zombies, was the main reason for the 12 (or PG-13) rating the later films got, and this shows that mild horror is certainly acceptable within the genre.

There is, I think, something to be said for writing within a particular genre, and selecting limits for oneself based on that. That doesn't mean that taking a particular world and exploring some of its implications beyond what the source material covers doesn't also have its place. For instance, that the Potterverse has vampires and so on in it has some fairly dark implications that aren't explored in the books because of their target audience. I find it interesting to note though, that on our site, there seems very little demand for horror stories, although there have been some darker themes with respect to, for example, murder. Plus, we recently opened a Necromancy class, which is proving popular - and will, I suspect, lead to something a little darker than our usual fare.



In part 2, I will ponder on some more specific aspects of ratings an "adult" gaming.

Sartar Companion - Review pt 2

The Sartar Companion includes six scenarios. They are not linked together by any common theme, and can be run in between sessions of the Kingdom of Heroes scenario, or separately. The first of these is "Return to Apple Lane", which is a sequel to the original Apple Lane scenario, first published in the late '70s, and later, for RQ3 in 1987. Its hard to avoid the feeling that this is a nostalgia-fest for those whose first experience of Glorantha may well have been this introductory adventure way back when. However, no knowledge of the original is required, and the scenario will work just as well for those new to the hamlet.

Details of Apple Lane itself have been changed to fit the new rules, but most of these changes are fairly minor, and the majority of the original NPCs are present - albeit five years older. The only ones who are obviously missing are the Humakti weaponmasters; their building is shown on the map, but they appear to have left the hamlet at some point, perhaps to prevent them offering too much assistance to the PCs. The scenario itself is also reminiscent of the original, with the heroes once again finding themselves defending Gringle's Pawnshop, this time from the Lunars.

The conclusion to the scenario is fairly scripted, although it feels natural enough, rather than railroading the players. Suffice to say that "Return to Apple Lane" is also a bridge between the original RQ version and "Sheep, Clouds, Thunder" from the Gathering Thunder scenario book for HQ1. That received some criticism for the way it treated the hamlet; at least this time the heroes get to salvage something first, and the ending isn't as downbeat as might be expected.

The second scenario, "The Hero and the Grove", is a short heroquest about strengthening the magical pact between the Colymar Tribe and the local wild lands. It's a fairly average heroquest, but does have the advantage of being a good introduction to the concept of re-enacting myths in the Otherworld. If possible, it would probably be a good idea to run this (or something like it) before the more dramatic otherworldly adventure in Kingdom of Heroes, at least if your players are new to the concept. A nice touch here is the description of how the myth was enacted first by Orlanth, then Heort, then Colymar, showing a common historical theme in heroquesting.

"Treasure of Two-Face Hill" is an expansion of a plot hook provided in the background section of the book. There's a good chance the players will need to spend some hero points just to have their characters survive the first part of the scenario (although its also possible to side-step this entirely, if they're more sensible than your average PC), but from then on it turns into a question of how to defend your clan from something that's essentially unbeatable in combat. This is one of those areas where the HQ2 habit of rating opponents as "Nearly Impossible" to defeat, or whatever, really does make sense - if the enemy wasn't significantly tougher than the heroes, there wouldn't be a scenario.

For my money, the best scenario in the book is "Ghosts of the Ridge". Here, the players are presented with a problem that can be solved in numerous ways, all with their own pros and cons. The judicious use of extreme physical violence is certainly one of the options, although perhaps not the best one. While the heroes are certainly free to try that, and other possibilities besides, the scenario nudges them towards seeking a legal solution to their situation, and undertaking a rather cool heroquest to recover an item of considerable magical power. Characters following Lhankor Mhy, god of knowledge, will probably get as much chance to shine in this one as the warriors, if not more so. The heroquest can also be run as a stand-alone scenario, should the characters choose another way of dealing with the central issue in this one.

"The Gifts of Stone" starts out fairly scripted, with some obvious scenery-gawking, but later turns into a return visit to another old RQ scenario, in this case the Sazdorf tunnels from Haunted Ruins. The nature of the heroes' mission makes this feel somewhat different from the original, and there are a few reminders that you're not here to just steal treasure from the trolls!

The final offering isn't so much a scenario as a bit of scenery setting. The Crimson Bat arrives in Sartar, eats a bunch of people, and then buggers off to Whitewall. This can be used as an opportunity to do all sorts of things, and is rather more dramatic than it may sound. If you already know what the Crimson Bat is, 'nuff said... if not: "scary" about sums it up.

So, the actual narratives of the scenarios are, on the whole, pretty good. Where they fall down is for the same reason as in Kingdom of Heroes: the lack of any stats. This was, to my mind, a significant drawback in that book, and it hasn't been fixed here, either. This flaw naturally extends to the encounters, and, to some extent, the background material, as well as to the scenarios.

To be fair, the writers are quite up-front about it - literally so; they mention it in the introduction. Their argument is that stats "aren't necessary" in HQ2, which is technically true, but doesn't mean that they aren't highly desirable, at least for some GMs. Instead, anyone who thinks such things are useful is just told to go away and do all the work themselves, which isn't terribly helpful.

Now, one of the problems with HQ2 as a system - if you like the style of gaming I do - is that you couldn't give numbered stats to NPCs if you wanted to. The system doesn't work that way, and sometimes (as in "Treasure of Two-Face Hill", mentioned above) that's an advantage, and sometimes it isn't. Either way, nobody can blame the writers for leaving out the numbers, since they just wouldn't make sense.

But that isn't to say that you can't give a clearer idea of what the NPCs and other encounters are capable of. A listing of significant abilities is all that's required. In fact, this is done for one particular being (p226), so why not the others? You're presumably supposed to infer any stats you might need from the text descriptions, but this really isn't very satisfactory, especially for the more important characters, like the villain in "Return to Apple Lane". Yes, you can do all the work yourself, as you're advised to, but you shouldn't have to.

A rather sour note to end on, then, although it has to be acknowledged that many people won't find the lack of stats a problem at all, and some will doubtless rejoice in the freedom it gives them. But, really, it's my only major criticism of the book, which in every other respect (except maybe the proofreading) is of high quality, and eminently useful for any Sartar-based campaign. If you don't mind going only PDF-only, you can even get it for almost half price, which is pretty good value, all things considered. There's a lot of really good material here, and the book deserves to do well.

Sartar Companion - Review pt 1

The Sartar Companion is the follow up to Kingdom of Heroes for HeroQuest 2. The book has the same format as the earlier volume, weighing in at 296 pages, for a rather steep €40 price tag. Still, given the size of the book, and the volume of material in it, that doesn't seem an unreasonable price, and the alternative would presumably have been two books at rather more than half the price each - economies of scale being what they are. The book also includes a couple of full page, full-colour maps, one of the whole Dragon Pass area, and the other of the Colymar lands.

One negative point is that the proofreading does not appear to have been done to a very high standard, with a number of jarring typos throughout the book. Having said that, its not as bad as it was in the early Hero Wars books, or some of the Mongoose books, for that matter. I've seen much, much, worse in other published RPG products, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. Perhaps the instance most in need of an erratum or clarification is the description of the walls of Runegate, which manages to contradict itself within the course of a single paragraph! Other than that one example, however, the intended meanings are usually clear.

The contents of the book are something of a random assortment, which is only to be expected in a "Companion" volume. That is, the book includes all the bits they couldn't squeeze into the already large Kingdom of Heroes. In a similar vein, as the title implies, the book is of little use if you don't own the previous one. Unlike KoH, though, virtually everything in this is GM-only information, with only the 40 or so pages dedicated to cults being of much use to players. Character generation and general background were, after all, fairly well covered in KoH.

Broadly speaking, the book can be divided into four sections: background, encounters, scenarios, and cults.

The background section describes the city of Jonstown and the towns of Runegate and Clearwine, along with several other locations, such as the Old Wind Temple and the Starfire Ridges. Much of this is directly linked to the scenarios later in the book, and a few "For more information, see p. XX" tags might have been helpful as a result.  Some locations, such as Two-Face Hill, are therefore described into two different parts of the book, with neither making reference to the other. Having said that, everything in this section is stand-alone, and much of it serves as detailed background for gaming.

Places such as Jonstown are described in some considerable detail. Town plans in the style of those in the first book are included again, but here there is more emphasis on individual characters within the city, and the material is even more directly relevant to play. There are some oddities here and there, where NPCs are described as "very hard" to defeat in combat, or whatever - apparently regardless of who the player characters are. This is the sort of thing that makes perfect sense in a scenario, but putting such things into a background description that doesn't have a specific narrative feels rather odd. Of course, its easy to ignore, and is doubtless useful information for someone, so its a little unfair to actually complain about it.

The emphasis in the locations is fairly strongly on the Colymar clan and their local geography. For some reason, the Colymar have never particularly interested me, but given the scenario in the previous book, it does make sense to expand on them here. It can also provide useful ideas for anyone wanting to strike out with their own tribe, and gives groups the opportunity to feel that a particular corner of Sartar is more "theirs", without official publications contradicting it. And material on large and important places like Jonstown should be useful to everyone, regardless of their choice of tribe.

In addition to what is really some very good location writing, the background section of the book also includes a section on dragonewts, which is useful but adds little to what long-time fans already know, and a bumper section of 100 rumours in the old True/False/Mostly True/GM Choice/Meaningless format from the RuneQuest days. Nostalgia aside, a good GM can get a lot out of this section, and its a welcome addition.

The next major section focuses on encounters. There is an actual random encounter table, rolling percentile dice against the terrain type to generate possibilities, although, of course, its use is entirely optional. (As an aside, there is no explanation of what percentile dice actually are - since they are never used in the HQ2 rules, its apparently just taken for granted that you already know. On the other hand, one might well argue that that's not an unreasonable assumption for Glorantha players!) There is also a table showing the typical weather in Sartar throughout the year which, if you'll pardon the pun, should help set the atmosphere.

The book includes 42 typical encounters, and 31 special encounters. The typical encounters include things such as merchants, Lunar patrols, dwarves, and broos. Each has a description covering at least a page - it is, however, slightly confusing to discover that, for example, the page with "Encounter: 17b" at the top in large bold letters is not a variant of Encounter 17, but simply the second page of that encounter description.

Each encounter type also includes at least one specific group or NPC in detail, and, in a nice nod to the past, these include such familiar characters as Biturian Varosh. These help put a face to a general encounter such as "Sartarite Farmers", illustrating how they can actually be used in play. Many are detailed enough that they serve as plot hooks that could lead to short GM-written scenarios.


The special encounters are somewhat different. These are unusual events, such as odd meteorological phenomena, or finding mysterious ruins, as well as meetings with unique NPCs, such as the Puppeteer Troupe. Most of these are relatively briefly described, as strange bits of scenery one might come across, with some entries being as short as a single sentence, while others go into more detail. As a result, most aren't really plot hooks, but rather ways of showing off the unusual environment.

After the scenarios, the book concludes with write-ups of six cults not included in KoH. These include Heler, Eurmal, and Odayla, all of which were previously seen in Storm Tribe for Hero Wars; Argan Argar and Babeester Gor, who haven't been properly written up since RQ3 days; and Kolat, who has never had an official cult write up at all until now. Taken together with KoH, this is all of the regular deities of the Sartarites, although the Tarsh exiles also worship Maran Gor, who we've yet to see, and Yelmalio is popular in some places, too. The latter, though, belongs more properly in the Pavis book, which will be the next one in the series, so his absence here is entirely expected.

The cult write ups follow essentially the same format as in KoH, at least for the four relatively normal deities on the list. Eurmal, being a god of the occasional outcast nutter, doesn't quite follow the usual scheme, and the writers do a fairly good job of pointing out all the huge disadvantages of worshipping him. Playing an Eurmali is, as it should be, therefore something of a challenge, and they're much better suited to being sidekicks who can get the PCs into trouble rather than heroes in their own right.

Kolat is the first proper look we've had at a shamanic, spirit-based cult. The book expands on the information in the appendix to the HQ2 rules, as well as listing numerous types of spirit on which the Kolating can call. The write-up gives the impression that Kolatings are rather more limited in their magic than followers of theistic cults, with their abilities generally being narrower, as well as giving them what could be quite a complex series of taboos that they must not break. This may well be intentional, emphasising that the Heortlings are predominantly a theistic culture, with little room for strange spirit wranglers. On the other hand, a Kolating does have magic that's different from everyone else's (at least in an all-Heortling campaign), and that difference alone can be an advantage.

It's perhaps worth noting that Serdodosa, Kolat's female counterpart, gets no more than a passing mention. Doubtless there wasn't room for two spirit cults in the book - Kolat's is the longest cult write up here - but hopefully we will see her described properly at some point, along with Maran Gor, and perhaps some of the more obscure options.

In part 2, I will look at the scenarios included in the Sartar Companion.

Lords of the West: Update 3

As many of you probably know, if you follow the Gloranthan mailing lists, my Facebook page, and so on, progress on Lords of the West has definitely been picking up recently.

Having said that, I should begin by saying that I have, as yet, no further news on LotW2: Kingdom of the Flamesword. It has a publisher, but no release date or further information. There is no reason to suppose this won't happen at some point, but for the moment, you'll just have to wait.

Progress on the Jonatela material that could potentially have formed LotW4 is slow but steady. The material currently available at my website deals with the more mundane aspects of Jonating life, the workings of the government, and what can laughingly be called the justice system. Obviously, Jonatela is not a very nice place, especially if you're a peasant, and this inevitably colours the material, but it's still enjoyable to write, so I'll keep on doing it. This background stuff will soon be finished, and I'll then move on to starting to compile a gazetteer of interesting places to visit across the kingdom, emphasising some of its magical power as well as its murky peril.

But what's really cool, of course, is the news about The Book of Glorious Joy, which incorporates bits of LotW1 with most of LotW3. As you can see, the cover has been completed - and a very fine piece of work it is, too, showing a valiant Loskalmi wizard-knight charging through a dark and chilly landscape so typical of many parts of Fronela. The interior artwork is well under way, and you can see a sample at the d101 Games product page. Proofing and editing are all completed, and the publisher is aiming at a release in January or February. As always, these dates can slip, but in this case, I doubt it will be by very much.

Triceratops Really Did Exist Shocker!

Yes, folks, the famous three-horned dinosaur Triceratops did, in fact, actually exist.

I can tell you're shocked. Because you wouldn't know it, if all you had to go on was this article.

The short story is that it turns out that the skeletons we know as Triceratops were (probably) immature versions of a rather similar beast named Torosaurus. As Triceratops aged, the shape of their frills and horns changed, until they ended up looking like the animal we previously called Torosaurus. The two "different" dinosaurs are, in fact, the same thing - it's just that one is older.

The question is, if the two are the same animal, what do we call it? After all, you can't go around calling the same thing by two different names, at least not if you need to be scientifically precise. One of the two existing names has to be the official name, and the other must be "wrong" (or, at least, out-dated). But which is which? The gizmodo article linked above is quite clear about the answer: Triceratops never existed, and from now on we all have to call them "Torosaurus" instead. This is, to be blunt, utter bollocks.

Gizmodo got its story from an earlier version at boing-boing. You'll note that the writer of that piece has the honesty to say that he doesn't know which of the two names is now the correct one. The gizmodo writer obviously leapt to the conclusion that would give the most dramatic headline, and continued from there, without bothering to check further. This sort of thing is, sadly, not unusual in journalistic reporting of science stories.

The boing-boing writer may be honest, but he doesn't get off the hook, either. He got his story from a New Scientist article here, but he either didn't read it all, or didn't understand it. Because they got it 90% right: "Torosaurus will now be abolished as a species and specimens reassigned to Triceratops". The only bit wrong in that sentence is that Torosaurus is not, and never was, a species - it's a genus, or group of closely related species.

Tracing this tale of Chinese whispers even further, we find the original paper that sparked it all off, which is here. Okay, so you can't read the full article without putting up some money, but the title makes it all pretty obvious - and is the exact opposite of the gizmodo article. But "Torosaurus never existed, it was just an older version of Triceratops" sounds less sexy than what they came up with, and who cares about the facts? Even if I hadn't already known that it wasn't true (and, more importantly, why - which I'll get on to in a minute), it wouldn't have taken me more than a mouse click and a couple of minutes reading to find out.

So you can't believe everything you read on the internet. Who'd have thought, eh?

I suspect this 100% reversal of the story may have something to do with the fact that, superficially, it sounds plausible. If scientists can decide that Pluto is no longer a planet, why mightn't they decide that something else we're very familiar with isn't real either? Indeed, it wouldn't be the first time. The name Brontosaurus really did bite the dust, and those animals were re-assigned to the genus Apatosaurus, which is now the official name of the beasts we all used to call "brontosaurs". And, let's be honest, brontosaurs were well up there among the list of best-known dinosaurs, just as Triceratops is. Chances are, only Tyrannosaurus and Stegosaurus are likely to come close in terms of public familiarity.

Now, if your favourite dinosaur was, in fact, Torosaurus (fairly unlikely, I know), you are out of luck. That name has, as the New Scientist and JVP articles make clear, genuinely been given the boot. Or, at least, it will be if this study is properly confirmed and agreed to be correct - which, by the looks of things, it probably will be.

So, why is it that way round? It obviously isn't because of simple common sense, or Brontosaurus would still be with us.

The rules on how animals get their scientific names are laid down by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. These include, among other things, a rule on what to do when two animals you previously thought were different turn out to be the same. And it's quite a simple rule: you pick whichever name is the oldest.

This can, it must be said, sometimes produce some odd results. Sometimes the older name turns out to be more obscure than the newer one. Presumably, you didn't find very many specimens of the animal you gave the older name to, or they just weren't very good specimens (which might explain why you didn't realise that the newer one was the same thing). This is, more or less, what happened to Brontosaurus.

But the first scientific description and naming of Triceratops was in 1889, a full two years before Torosaurus in 1891. As it happens, they were discovered by the same man - the famous American palaeontologist O.C. Marsh; but that's by-the-by, and its hardly surprising that he thought they were different. The point is that Triceratops is the older name, and it therefore has to be the one that's kept.

You wouldn't be allowed to have it the other way round even if you wanted to. Triceratops is real. Them's the rules.

(Top picture is of Triceratops, lower one is of Torosaurus. Both from Wikimedia Commons.)