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.

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.

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.

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 2

I thought I'd post an update to clarify exactly what is happening with the Lords of the West books. As most of you probably already know, the books will no longer be published by Moon Design, but have been taken up by other publishers. One of those publishers has not made a formal announcement yet (that I know of), although it's probably not desperately hard to work out who it is! So, to summarise what has been announced:

The Book of Glorious Joy
This will be published by d101 Games, and will be a bumper volume including most of the material from both LotW1: Heroes of Malkion and LotW3, the book that would have covered Loskalm. We're working to make it self-contained, although many of the cults from LotW1 will lack detailed descriptions or rules sections, since a "book of cults" wasn't considered very desirable. There is no definite release date for the book as yet, although we're hoping to have it out by the end of the year, and work is already underway on art and layout.

One chapter of LotW3 has, in fact, already been published. It is available in Hearts of Glorantha #4, available from d101 Games via lulu.com. This is the chapter covering Junora (which does, unfortunately, to some extent make reference to the as yet unpublished remaining chapters). It is graced by some wonderful artwork by Peter Town, and, of course, is accompanied by articles by many other great authors - it's well a worth a read. The magazine is available both as a hardcopy, and as a (cheaper) PDF file.

Kingdom of Heroes - scenario review

You may have noticed in my main review of Kingdom of Heroes that I said there were a few things missing that I would have liked to see more of. Given that, at the same time, I pointed out how unusually large the book is for a RP supplement, you might quite reasonably have wondered what I would get rid of to fit this extra information in. The answer, quite simply, is the scenario.

This isn't, I hasten to add, because it's a poor scenario - it isn't. It's just that I don't feel a scenario belongs in this sort of book, or certainly not a scenario of this length (70 pages). Removing this section, perhaps along with the material on the Colymar tribe that supports it, would not only have made the book shorter (and cheaper), but, perhaps more importantly, might have made it more attractive to players as well as GMs. The scenario deserved to be published, no doubt about that - but it could have had its own book without any real problem.

Nonetheless, Moon Design chose to publish it here, so the question is what is the scenario itself like? To begin with, it provides some information (most of it new, so far as I can tell) about the PCs' suggested base, the Orlmarth clan of the Colymar tribe. There is no particular reason why a GM would have to use the Orlmarth, though, and the scenario would work just as well with almost any Sartarite clan that isn't pro-Lunar - including, obviously, one that the players might have created themselves. Of course, it would require more work to do that, so the detailing of the Orlmarth as a typical clan is very welcome here.

The scenario itself concerns the PCs' attempts to acquire three things of great importance currently in the possession of hostile forces. I've heard it claimed that the scenario is rather 'rail-roading', but I really can't agree with that at all. There is one bit of rail-roading, which I'll return to later, but only one that I can see. For most of the rest of the scenario, multiple different options are frequently spelled out, often in some detail. This is partly why the scenario is so long, in fact.

The heroes have multiple different ways to resolve the problems in front of them, and the scenario won't break if they decide on the "wrong" approach, although choices made earlier on will most definitely have differing repercussions later. This, I think, is really the way to do it, and the authors have made a good job of it.

Oddly, though, I can see why it might not feel like that. In part one, for instance, the authors clearly hope that the PCs will take a specific, and fairly convoluted, path to acquiring the first item. That this path gets so much detail makes it appear quite rail-roaded even though, actually, you don't have to take that particular approach to succeed at the task.

Perhaps worse, there's a suggestion that the GM should, effectively, take over one of the PCs at critical points in the scenario, ensuring that he responds to challenges in the way that will best further the scenario. This is supposed to represent involuntary hero-forming, but the irony is that, in most cases, the players will probably do what they're supposed to do without the prompting. And if they don't... well, it might be a little more work for the GM, but the scenario won't break. In other words, you're giving them the illusion of having no choice in affairs, when actually they have free will. I'd recommend ignoring those bits, and let the players extemporise their own hero-forming, if they must.

There are also a few minor quibbles here and there. On a couple of occasions, the writers seem to forget that some of the PCs may well be heterosexual women, and there's an NPC with a background so mysterious, even the GM isn't allowed to know what it is - beyond the fact that, whatever it is, it's significant!

I had to read the description of one of the challenges three times to make head or tail of it, since it looked as if even a Complete Success would result in the hero failing abysmally. It turns out the stake wasn't what I thought it was, and the writers had made an unstated assumption that the heroes would be trying something that hadn't even occurred to me. That could have been made clearer, and alternatives provided. And the snippets of poetry get a bit tedious after a while, so that some groups might prefer to ignore or paraphrase them.

But these quibbles are, indeed, minor. Any experienced GM can sort them out with a minimum of fuss if they look likely to raise a problem in his game. Slightly more of a problem is the one bit of rail-roading, which occurs right at the beginning. Essentially, one of the PCs makes a decision that kicks off all the events in the scenario, and if he doesn't make that particular decision, you're screwed. Moreover, it has to be a PC who meets certain requirements; the scenario doesn't work if the "wrong" PC is the only one who takes the course of action in question.

Fortunately, the requirements aren't especially onerous, and I'd guess 95% of groups will have at least one PC who fits the bill... but how the other 5% are supposed to cope isn't at all clear. Given how far the rest of the scenario goes to account for varying PC actions, something more than the advice "you must ensure one of the PCs does X" would have been a very good thing here.

If the beginning of the scenario is a bit iffy, the ending is spectacular. It takes the form of a heroquest, with all of the good points of the Boat Planet scenario from Gathering Thunder, and none of the bad points. This time, the heroes really are the ones in charge, the ones that the legends will be written about - and, make no mistake, what they're doing is pretty legendary stuff, enmeshed with a key event in Gloranthan history. This really is "HeroQuest", not the HenchmanQuest of the Boat Planet. Yes, it's fairly linear, but then heroquests often are, and so long as the heroes get to come centre stage, that's fine by me.

All in all, I think it's a great scenario, one worthy of the Gloranthan canon. It's fun, exciting, and heroic, and most of the problems that might come up can be easily fixed by a competent GM.

The big let-down, unfortunately, is not the fault of the writers, but of HQ2: the scenario has essentially no stats. Not just no numbers, but no real stats at all, even in outline - opponents are described as "Very Hard to overcome", or whatever, and that's it. I'd hardly expect fully worked character sheets for the NPCs, because that would take up too much space, but I found that the absence of anything at all to get my teeth into detracted from something that should otherwise have been excellent. It feels empty and bland, only partially offset by the grandeur of the narrative scenery.

I can already hear some people moaning "but the stats never worked in HQ1". Perhaps not - although I remain unconvinced that there was no way of fixing that - but, for me at least, that's not the point. Perhaps I'm in a minority, but I very much having prefer stats that are "wrong" to having no stats at all. Bad stats I can adjust; missing stats require a lot more work than that.

But, as I say, that's not a fault of the scenario per se. It is written for the system as it is, not as I'd like it to be. With that caveat, it's one of the better HQ scenarios to be published. Even if I think it would have been better in a book of its own.

Lords of the West cancelled

Or at least, the version(s) of it I produced have been; Moon Design may well decide to produce their own version with a different writer at some point in the future. Obviously, having worked for seven and a half years on this, this is pretty disappointing for me. In the end, Moon Design's vision of what they wanted shifted too far from the original agreement (which was not, of course, made by them) for continuing on the project to be worthwhile, and they chose to pull the plug.

Indeed, in general, I have a feeling that since the production of HeroQuest 2, the whole Gloranthan project has shifted from something I enjoy to something that's less so. This is not, of course, to blame any of those directly involved in that change. Change does happen, and whenever it does, people get left out in the cold. It happened before with RQ3 with respect to RQ2 fans, and again with HW with respect to RQ2/3 fans. It's inevitable to some extent, and more so when there is a major change in gaming philosophy involved.

It's hard at times like this, when one is on the losing end, not to feel abandoned or rejected by the Gloranthan 'tribe' that they keep talking about. But that's probably largely unfair. I certainly intend to go to Continuum this year, and hopefully have a good time, overcoming the doubtless unavoidable tinge of disappointment and regret. Heck, after seven and a half years of repeating cycles of hard work and frustration, I was hardly on my most diplomatic behaviour by the end. So, if anyone reading this feels that I have offended them over the course of the last year or so, I offer my sincere apologies.

So, enough moping; where do we go from here? Well, the good news is that I am currently negotiating for publication of at least some of the material through other channels. In fact, some of it may even appear earlier than might otherwise have been the case. I can't give further details yet, as nothing has been definitely agreed beyond an expression of interest from one respected source in the Gloranthan community. Stay tuned for updates as they become available.

HeroQuest 2 review - pt 1

The second edition of HeroQuest was launched yesterday, and, since the first edition is what I've done most of my game writing for, I immediately picked up the PDF. I've had the preview edition for about a year now, but I didn't want to write a review of it until I'd seen the final, published, version. On the other hand, since my opinion seems to be different from virtually everybody else's, I think that some commentary will be useful now that it is out. Because differing viewpoints are always a good thing.

But let's begin with the positive stuff, and get on to the differences of opinion in later posts.

Perhaps the most obvious difference from earlier editions is that HQ2 is a generic system, not wed to a specific setting (namely Glorantha). You don't need to do more than flip through the book to realise that the intention is that HQ2 will work with any setting you can imagine; it's about general rules for resolving dramatic situations, not about modelling a specific world. And that, to my mind, is a good thing. I have no idea how many people will pick up this edition when they avoided the earlier ones because they didn't fancy the setting - but I am sure there will be at least some. And because the system does work with a wide range of settings, that's a useful thing to do. The downside is that I get less of the specific stuff that I'm after, but I think that's a price worth paying for the ability to do all sorts of other things with the rules.

Of course, it's not really true that HQ2 will work beautifully with any genre imaginable; no system can do that. Any system, as a result of the way it is constructed, will favour certain game styles and genre conventions over others. In the case of HQ2, what it favours is dramatic, cinematic, often larger-than-life genres. It would be good for action films, superheroes, high fantasy, space opera, and many more besides. (It would probably be quite good for soap opera too, were one so inclined). Which isn't to say that it can't do grittier genres, since it's open enough to fit anything, but I suspect it's going to be somewhat unsatisfactory for those. Grim danger just isn't something it does well - just as some other generic systems won't do the cinematic stuff very effectively.

This isn't a criticism, since no game can be all things to all people. In fact, I'd say that HQ2 is about as generic a game as its humanly possible to construct, and that's a good thing. In this respect, then, HQ2 is a clear improvement over HQ1.

And the improvements don't end there, because once you do get a chance to properly read the rules, it becomes clear that they are chock full of advice. And much of it is very good advice, at that. The resolution system in HeroQuest was always a little different from that of most other RPGs, so the addition of even more examples than in the previous edition (which had quite a few) is certainly a welcome feature.

A particularly significant change, in terms of the nuts-and-bolts of the system is the new Extended Contest system. In previous editions, this worked by a bidding mechanism, which, in my experience, never really worked well. In its place we have a much simpler and easier-to-grasp system that relies on a series of simple contests to generate a final outcome. This really is a big improvement, and seems to have been successful the few times I've managed to try it. Moreover, the chapter explaining contest resolution is the biggest in the book, being chock full of varying ways the system can be used, and examples of how to do so. This is, from my perspective, pretty neat stuff. If I used nothing else from this book, I'd use that.

But, aside from a nice rule on p. 57 ("Catch-ups"), is about as far as the improvements over earlier editions go. Still, it's not a bad start, and many of the good features of the earlier editions, such as the scaling, remain more or less intact. It's still a fairly good system, but... well, we'll get to "but..." in Part Two.

Three True Way-ism

There is a term sometimes encountered when discussing roleplaying, of “One True Wayism” – or some variation on that theme. It refers to players or GMs with a very specific idea of how an RPG should work, and an insistence that this is the only right way of doing things. Often, the very idea that someone might prefer a different style is considered “Hurting Wrong Fun”, and any attempt at gaming in such a style must be quashed lest it infect others with its perversity. Few, if any, people identify themselves as One True Wayists, but the concept is often encountered under some guise or another.

Unsurprisingly, few people who really think about the theory behind gaming espouse such a narrow-minded view. But it seems to me that a rather more insidious version of the same sort of general idea has become quite popular. I refer to this as “Three True Wayism”. It arises from the theoretical discussions on The Forge website (now, I gather, somewhat curtailed) that classified RPGs into one of three categories: narrativism, simulationism, and gamism. The first focuses primarily on the needs of the story, the second on the demands of verisimilitude, and the third on the establishment of fair game mechanics and reward mechanisms (or such is my understanding). The argument seems to be that all of these three approaches to RPing are equally valid, and if you happen to prefer a different category than I do, then so be it (they prefer to use the word “agenda”, but then much of their terminology is somewhat opaque).

Which sounds fair enough, so far as it goes. The problem is, it seems to me, that it acknowledges only these three approaches, and, more to the point, claims that they are mutually exclusive. The theory says that a rule set can only effectively support one approach of the three, and it even seems that they have pretty narrow definitions of what those approaches are. Hence, “Three True Wayism” – the contention that there are only three possible ways to enjoy a roleplaying game, and if your approach isn’t one of them, you’re doing it wrong. It’s insidious, because the people who adhere to this attitude (and, believe me, I’ve met some) believe they are being open-minded and fair, and accepting of all other approaches, even if they differ from their own. But – unless you accept their thesis that there are only three possible, and mutually exclusive, “agendas” – I don’t think this is the case at all.

This seems to manifest in two different ways, either or both of which can be problematic to those who do not fit into their neat little pigeon-holes. The first is an overly narrow definition of what the three agendas mean. Simulationism, for instance, is supposed to be about verisimilitude, and the obvious conclusion therefore seems to be that any system that supports it must be detailed and relatively rules-heavy, to reflect the various different aspects of reality (or, at least, a particular genre's version thereof). One thinks of systems like GURPS and Hero in this category, and a great many others that were popular in the 1980s.

This attitude seems to have stifled the development of rules-lite “simulationist” systems, which, to my mind, is very much to be regretted. Three True Wayists, when pressed, may not deny that a rule-lite simulationist system is possible, but they certainly don’t seem to spend any effort in encouraging the creation of such a thing. And that, I suspect, is because it lies outside the comfort zone of their theory. I dare say there are other examples of this narrow thinking stifling creativity, but the absence of much in the way of rules-lite simulationist systems, from where I’m standing, seems a particularly striking example.

The second problem is arguably worse, because it's more explicit. And that’s the contention that there are three, and only three, mutually exclusive approaches. Assuming that one defines the three approaches broadly enough, the first half of that statement – that there’s no fourth agenda – might well be true. (One could, of course, argue that rules-lite simulationism is, itself, distinct from, say, the GURPS approach, but let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that we accept that it isn’t). The problem comes from the ‘mutually exclusive’ part.

It seems to me self-evident that a system can provide a good mix of at least two, and possibly all three, approaches at the same time. A narrativist game does not have to be ‘narrative above all else’, for instance; it could allow a proportion of some other “agenda” in. Realistically, any game has to strike a balance between the three approaches – a narrative won’t work if it’s completely implausible, a simulation won’t work as an RPG if it never has any dramatic challenges, and so on. Surely it’s obvious that that balance does not have to be strongly weighted in one particular direction for a rules system to work?

Yet, while the Three True Wayists do have a term for a system that tries to balance two (or more) agendas, that term is, so I’m told, “incoherent”. Now, you can’t convince me that that was intended to be a value-neutral term to refer to a gaming style just as valid as the three they espouse. It’s pretty much explicitly saying that this style of play is inferior and somehow wrong – really no different to the attitude of the One True Wayists. Was this term deliberately coined so that anyone trying to say “I prefer incoherent games” would sound like a loony, Orwellian Newspeak style, or did it generally not occur to them that anyone would prefer it? I don’t know, although I rather suspect the latter.

But, when you poke beneath the bonnet, it’s ridiculous to assert that an “incoherent” game can’t be just as good and valid and worthwhile as one that follows a single "agenda" more or less exclusively. And, even if it weren’t, it would hardly be accepting of alternative styles of play to deride it. The Three True Wayists are here, it seems to me, falling into the very trap that their theory seeks to avoid.

Obviously, such a system could be done well, or done badly – that’s true of anything. But surely it’s possible to strike a balance? How could it not be, if you really look at things with an un-blinkered attitude? And this, of course, gets me to the point: I believe that 1st edition HeroQuest was such a system. It’s not that it didn’t have faults – it had a number – but the balance between narrativism and simulationism was done superbly and, so far as I know, has never been bettered. Yet that, it seems, had to be sacrificed on the altar of orthodoxy, because surely nobody could really like a game that worked that way? After all, no matter how much common sense said it worked, the theory said it couldn’t, and that was surely that?

But, to quote Robin Laws – who, despite having written the new 2nd edition of HeroQuest, seems to be no friend of Three True Wayism – there are more than three types of art, so why can’t there be more than three types of RPG? In fact, isn’t that just obvious?

The sad thing is, not so much that this happened – games change editions and approaches all the time – but that there doesn’t seem to be anything else available today to fill that niche. Because gaming theory says that that the “incoherent” approach must automatically be a failure that nobody could really, deep down, actually prefer to the alternatives.

Because Three True Wayism says that I don’t exist…

Magic in the West

You may recall that, at Tentacles and Continuum, I (among others) said that Heroes of Malkion would work just fine with HQ2. You may also recall that, in this blog, I was unclear as to how that would be the case. Well, it turns out that it isn't the case; the rule sets are not really compatible at that level. (This, incidentally, doesn't mean that, for example, Blood Over Gold or Thunder Rebels can't be used with HQ2 - just that you'll also need a copy of HQ1 to make full sense of the rulesy bits).

But, fear not! I've spent the last weekend going through the draft of HoM, making sure that, when you get to see it, it is fully compatible with the new rules. There was quite a lot more to be done than at first appeared to be the case. This is because the HQ2 rulebook has very little information on Glorantha and its workings - understandably, because it's a generic rulebook, not a worldbook. There are a lot of things about the West, and Glorantha in general, that were in HQ1, but won't be in the second edition. All of that information had to be repeated, for the book to be stand-alone with the new ruleset.

However, all of that is now done, and what I suspect many people will be interested in is how Western magic works with the new rune-centred approach of the second edition. Here's the quick run-down:

• Knight, noble, and to a lesser extent, commoner heroes, typically gain their magic by following a saint. This gives them access to one rune and one grimoire (spell book) associated with that rune. For example, a follower of Saint Xemela has the Harmony rune, and a book containing healing spells.
• Members of the clergy practice their magic through holding religious services. This gives them access to one rune, and a set of community-based spells contained in one or more holy scriptures with that same rune. For example, a Rokari vicar has the Law rune, and uses the communal blessings and curses found in the scriptures of his Church. Bishops, incidentally, can further boost their magic by accessing the total devotional energy of their diocese.
  
• Professional wizards use exactly the same magical rules as followers of saints, but they have up to three runes, and at least one grimoire for each rune.
• It is generally possible to follow more than one saint, or be both a clergyman and follow a saint; but you cannot have more than three runes in total.
• The majority of non-heroic people gain magical benefits from the blessings of the clergy, and use individual spells learned from folk wisdom, or the like. They usually don't have specific runes.

Note that 'adept' and 'mage' are now magical levels, not professions. Whether you're following a saint, a scripture, or a school of wizardry, you're still an adept - and, with study, you can become a mage. Your Church might not want to let you do this, of course, but the option is there. Basically, the same rules apply to everyone, and those of you confused by the first edition wizardry rules will hopefully find these easier to follow.

In short, quite a lot of work for me, in updating it all, but the end result should be simpler magic rules that are easier to use.

Made in Sartar from Gyrdas

(Appalling pun stolen shamelessly from Stu Stansfield).

As I write, there is currently a debate on the World of Glorantha mailing list about, essentially, whether anybody else can understand a word we're on about. Or more precisely, how difficult to understand are books about Glorantha, and, if the answer is 'very', should we care anyway? The debate began when someone questioned whether the word 'gyrda' (meaning, if you ask the people I've been writing about recently: "some pagan bint that claims to talk to false gods") should be used as is, or replaced with something more easily understood[1].

Myself, I'm inclined to use the simpler term, if I can get away with it. The late Ken Bulmer (who I had the privilege of gaming with for a number of years) used to say, of made-up names in science fiction, "if you can use the real world word instead, do so." I think this is pretty good advice. It doesn't take away from the richness of the world, but it does make it easier for other people to understand.

Of course, there's more to the approachability of a book than the author's choice of words. Not to mention that are many words in any fantasy world that won't have an even approximate equivalent in English - "Rokarism" and "broo", for example. And then there's a whole bunch of proper nouns. So, making allowances for all of that, I wonder how comprehensible my books are, and if they are readily comprehensible, whether that means they're too dumbed-down to get across the richness of the setting.

Some have singled out Thunder Rebels as a book that's too complicated for newcomers to understand. I can't say that I felt that myself, and I think it's a great book, but then I'm not a newcomer. At any rate, whether it is or not, I would have guessed that LotW1: Heroes of Malkion is about on the same level. Which means that if you didn't like the former, because of its level of detail, you aren't going to like my next book, either. So fair warning to you on that front.

This is partly because LotW1 covers a lot of ground. It's not that I didn't try to make it readable (obviously), but the subject requires a lot of detail, and, even then, it's going to be obvious that there's a lot more detail out there beyond that. Which is why there are other books in the Lords of the West series at all, of course.

However, LotW2: Kingdom of the Flamesword is written much more for the beginner. Now, it's not totally self-contained, because there are certain details, especially of the rules, that you'll need LotW1 for. But, as a description of the culture, I think it's fairly comprehensible. It may help that the West is easier to understand than the Heortlings, because it's closer to our own society, and the generally weirder culture of Loskalm may make LotW3: Wizard-Knights a more difficult proposition.

But then, again, there is a lot of detail in it. And there's not much in the way of ready-to-play scenarios, which may not help. It's a culture book... but I'm not sure it's any more complicated than, say, this (which, for all I know, sunk like a stone - but was at least published by a company with a pretty good track record for selling RPG books that people want to buy).

So I don't know, really; I tried to make the book easily accessible, but I'm not myself in a position to know whether I've succeeded. Or if, in so doing, I've wiped out the depth that makes Glorantha as interesting as it is. But I do generally think that the balance of detail and usability of recent HQ books has been about right, and I'd point to Blood Over Gold as a case in point. The Stafford Library series is a different case, but it doesn't pretend to be an easily usable gaming resource in the way that the other books are. To be honest, if I can be on a par with Blood Over Gold, I'll be pretty happy. If you were looking for something more like the old Apple Lane book, with its keyed locations and scenarios, you're probably going to be disappointed with most of what I write, anyway.


[1] Such as, say, "some pagan bint that claims to talk to false gods". Or you could use "wise woman" or "god-talker", I suppose.