The Fantasy Trip Kickstarter: A Good Deal?

After 35 years, Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games has finally re-acquired the rights to The Fantasy Trip, the tactical fantasy combat and light roleplaying game he developed in 1977.

The Fantasy Trip is comprised of a number of game books:  Melee, a game of tactical man-to-man combat; Wizard, a game of wizard duels;  Advanced Wizard, additional rules for Wizard characters; In the Labyrinth, role-playing and world building rules; Advanced Melee, expanded man-to-man combat rules;and 11 or so setting and pre-programmed adventure books.

The rights to The Fantasy Trip were owned by Howard Thompson, the President of Metagaming, and when Metagaming folded in 1982, Howard demanded an outrageous price from Jackson for the rights to the game, which Jackson refused to pay.  Thus, the game ceased to be published or officially supported after 1982.

The game retained a cult following, however, and people continued to play and support it.  Dark City Games even developed its own similacrum of The Fantasy Trip, called Legends of the Ancient World, and published numerous additional pre-programmed adventures, including The Dark Vale, which I previously reviewed on this blog.

Jackson recently took advantage of a copyright law that permits a creator to re-aquire the rights to their intellectual property after 35 years.

Steve Jackson Games is currently running a Kickstarter to fund the production and distribution of a revised version of the game.

In considering whether the new Kickstarter for The Fantasy Trip is a good value, I looked at the original price of the various game books, and applied the inflation incurred during the intervening period.  The original publication years, price and the inflation based on the US Consumer Price Index are indicated below.

The basic pledge for The Fantasy Trip is $60, and it included, as of the Kickstarter launch, the material from all five of those publications. Using the above amounts, you are paying less, in today's dollars, than the cost to buy the original five game books when they were published back in the day.

Of course, this price is before shipping, but then you also need to factor in the extras that are being provided with this new printing, including dice (not included in the original game), a box to hold the game in, melee character pads, two sheets of mega-hexes, proper indexes in each book, and Tollenkar's Lair, Death Test, and Death Test 2 pre-programmed adventures (which are an additional $10 each of added value).  All of those extras add $40 of overall value, and more stretch goals are yet to come.

If you have never played The Fantasy Trip before and are interested in the game, or if you have the gamebooks and want a cleaned up version of the game to play again, you should check out the Kickstarter.

But Is It A Roleplaying Game?

I feel no shame in admitting that for the last three years, my free time has been largely filled with the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game ("Pathfinder").  The remaining hours have been spent playing various board games with family and friends.  I have yet to participate in a paper & pencil roleplaying game since moving to St. Albert.

Pathfinder has filled the space normally reserved for roleplaying games.  I play with two groups, one on Wednesdays and the other on Sundays.  One of things I enjoy about the game is that we can complete a five-to-six player Pathfinder adventure in under two hours.

Coming soon, but not soon enough ... Mummy's Mask Base Set, October 2016

With Pathfinder, no on acts as Dungeonmaster.  After someone reads, aloud, a two-minute scenario outline, we collectively build the adventure locations in under 10 minutes.  From there, the game essentially runs itself.

I've been writing about card-based roleplaying games on this blog for the last six years.  One of the earliest card-based games I became interested in was Dungeoneer, a competitive fantasy adventure game from 2003.

Designed and illustrated by Thomas Denmark, each player competed to be the first to finish three quests.  Atlas Games released at least 8 different Dungeoneer adventure decks, but no new content has been published since 2007.  Would I love to see this game resurrected as a cooperative game with new content?  You bet.  If you can still find Dungeoneer in your FLGS, I recommend buying a large 110-card pack and giving Dungeoneer a try.

Pathfinder, by contrast, is a cooperative game, and was first published in 2012.  Although other card-driven fantasy games have since been released, Pathfinder still comes closest to what I imagined a card-driven cooperative RPG would look like.

Of the many advantages of a card-based fantasy adventure game, one of the chief-est is a similar decksize for all characters. Pathfinder starts with a decksize of 15 cards for each character.  That permits characters to be balanced against each other,creating a mechanical way of allowing everyone their moment in the spotlight.

But is Pathfinder a roleplaying game?

I don't take credit for the following definition of a roleplaying game (and you may disagree with it) but here are some characteristics they all seem to have in common:

(1) Freedom: Players have absolute freedom to pursue any activity or attempt any action within the confines of the game world.  That does not mean the pursuit or action will be successful: it just means the player can choose it, and the referee, with or without the participation of the Players, will adjudicate the results.

(2) Immerson: the player defines, develops and breathes life into her character, and inhabits the world that surrounds her, seeing the world through the eyes of her character.

(3) Purpose: the referee and the players determine the purpose of the game, what has brought them together, why are they participating, what goals are they pursuing.

(4) Consequence: there must be some consequence to the results of the players actions.  Perhaps the consequence is simply the gaining of experience, levels,wealth or social standing within the game world.  Perhaps it is an emotional catharsis, or a deeper appreciation for the plight of people inhabiting that imaginary world.  Perhaps failure comes with an game-world cost.

I considered adding avatar persistence to the list, but there are roleplaying games that are played as one-shots, so an avatar's persistence from one session to the next would not be a defining feature of that sort of roleplaying game.

Given the definition above, I doubt that Pathfinder would qualify as a roleplaying game:

(1) Freedom: Pathfinder players do not have total freedom to do what they want within the game world.  The Player cannot send their character to the town square, if that location is not part of the scenario.  The Player cannot try to negotiate with a monster, as the only action the monster card allows is combat.

(2) Immersion: Pathfinder provides predefined, iconic characters for game use.  Other than in specified ways, I cannot develop my character as I see fit.  I direct the character, but I don't become the character.

(3) Purpose: the purpose of the Pathfinder scenarios are pre-defined.  There is no room for the players, individually or collectively to define the purpose to the game, other than what the game has already prescribed. Every adventure completed will lead, inexorably, to the final, pre-determined adventure.

(4) Consequence: there are few consequences, other than those imposed on the final scenarios, to success or failure.  Characters can die, and will restart the next game with a completely fresh deck of cards, but in general, failure to complete a scenario simply results in having to play the scenario again, until success is achieved.  Failure does not have any upstream impact on future scenarios.

I like Pathfinder.  A lot.  For people who are looking for a fantasy adventure game, I can think of few I would recommend more highly.  But if you require your gaming experience to be fully rpg-like, you will probably be disappointed with Pathfinder.

Paizo: Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box

It's unlikely you'd ever catch me playing Paizo's Pathfinder RPG. Roleplaying being what it is, I can't say never: social will always trump system. But as the natural heir to Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, Pathfinder holds little allure for me.

It's the granularity. Like its cousin DnD 4.X, character generation and development is far too detailed, and i'm predisposed to viewing Pathfinder RPG as too much determined by character skills, scores and abilities; too little by player skill and role-playing.

So, given my obvious pre-disposition and therefore lack of interest in this game system, why bother purchasing and reviewing the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box? Two reasons. First, the shallow one: with certain exceptions, I really like the art of Pathfinder. I am a big fan of Wayne Reynolds, and the stable of other Pathfinder artists seem to maintain the same high standards. Second, I wanted to see if this Beginner Box set would moderate my pre-disposition against the Parthfinder RPG.

The Pathfinder Beginner Box retails for $35, compared to $20 for the DnD 4E Red Box starter set that was published by WOTC roughly a year ago. The Pathfinder box is 9" x 12" x 2.5" deep, and includes a one-page welcome page, a single-page advertisement for Pathfinder RPG and Pathfinder Society, a 64-page Hero's Handbook, four pre-generated characters (corresponding to the four characters pictured on the side of the Beginner Box), four blank character sheets, a 96-page Game Master's Guide, a 24" x 30" fold-out battle mat, a complete set of polyhedral dice, and 90 cardboard monster and character stand-up pawns.

Considering the breadth of contents, the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box compares very favorably to the DnD 4E Red Box Starter Set. Add to the above the following: the Pathfinder set allows you to go from levels 1-5, while the 4E set only allows you to go to level 2; Pathfinder includes another 64 pages of gaming material; Pathfinder includes stand-up, rather than flat, pawns; and the Pathfinder box is sturdier and more visually interesting.

With 64 pages of game material in The Hero's Handbook, Pathfinder goes into far more detail than Red Box regarding character creation. Paizo provides a solo pick-your-path adventure and an example of play in the Hero's Handbook.

The game mechanics suffer from the same malady as 4E: too many rules and too much dice-rolling. On the other hand, the art is amazing, and there's so much of it that it almost becomes a distraction from learning the rules. Paizo has gone all out here, though I couldn't say whether some or all of this art is recycled from other Pathfinder products.


Four pre-generated character sheets are included in the Beginner Box: Ezren, Valeros, Kyra and Merisel. The Beginner Box includes four cardboard standup pawns for those characters, but you can instead buy a set of pre-painted miniatures, which, at $12 for the complete four figure set, has higher production values and is more modestly priced than any pre-painted plastic figures heretofore produced by WOTC.

The 96-page Game Master's Guide delves into areas completely ignored by the equivalent Dungeon Master's Book found in the 4E Red Box. Most startling is significant page count devoted to gamemastering, building your own adventures, environments, magic items and random encounters. Pathfinder is noted for its prolific publishing of pre-scripted adventure path products, so devoting page count in the Game Master's Guide to building your own adventures is laudable. Like the Hero's Handbook, the Game Master's Guide is heavily illustrated: I will hazard to say that every page has some manner of illustration.

The Pathfinder battle mat is superior to the 4E Red Box effort. It feels heavier and is plasticized to stand up to more wear. And the cardboard pawns in the Pathfinder Beginner Box can be slipped into round plastic bases so they stand up. The Red Box equivalent are poker chips with pictures on them.

If you are playing DnD 3.5 or 4.X and looking for something just a little bit different, the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box may be just your ticket. This is good value for $35. Indeed, the gorgeously illustrated cardboard pawns are almost worth the price of admission alone.

For those that prefer old-school gaming, there is little here to convert you to the dark side. But if you're like me and have more money than sense, or want to support the underdog, you might consider buying the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box. While i'm unlikely to play Pathfinder, I don't regret this purchase.

Review: Red Planet RPG

There are several things that I feel very strongly about.

One is that "hobbyist" game designers are producing games and game accessories that are just as ground-breaking and note-worthy as those produced by the so-called "professional" game designers.

Another is that people deserve to be recognized and compensated for their work.

Which brings me to Red Planet RPG. That game was written in 1990, and updated in 2005 (presumably to add the OGL, accompanying the current version of the game), by Clovis Cithog of Jasoomian Dreams. The cover illustration is by Elton Robb of The Atlantis Blog, with interior illustrations by Kris Todd and Patric Moore.

While not the first role-playing game to be based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian Chronicles (arguably, that honor goes to TSR's Warriors Of Mars), this early implementation of rules for a Barsoomian role-playing game is equally true to the source material, and will cost you significantly less to purchase.

For those of you familiar with the John Carter of Mars series, all of the recognizable Barsoomian elements are included: the races (red, green and yellow martians, therns, and black pirates); measurements (tals, xats, zodes, sofads, ads, etc.); weapons (radium weapons, rapiers); fliers; and, monsters (apts, banths, and white apes).

Red Planet RPG appears to be a very faithful adaptation of the Martian Chronicles, going into great detail regarding the setting, the peoples, culture and history of Barsoom.

Clovis has elected to utilize both class and skill systems for character generation and differentiation. I have no fatal objections to that approach; after all, that approach is basically how Traveller works, and Traveller is beloved by many old-schoolers. The classes and skills in Red Planet RPG are well-suited for the setting: classes include scientist, trooper, criminal, warrior and priest. The skills are likewise well-suited to a science-fantasy setting, with both fantasy and high technological skills included in the list.

Red Planet uses six abilities as the basis for character generation. Those abilities (Strength, Agility, Tenacity, Reason, Intuition and Persuasion) are roughly analogous to the six abilities in D&D. Hit points are also employed, along with saving throws and levels. Therefore, those familiar with the basic workings of D&D will have no difficulty grasping and employing this game almost immediately after digesting the flavour and setting of this game.

The combat system is more elaborate than what you will find in early iterations of Dungeons and Dragons. The combat system includes, for example, four separate critical hits tables, for blunt, energy, piercing and slashing weapons respectively. Though the combat system is a bit more detailed than the one I typically employ,this certainly adds some interesting cinematic (for lack of a better word) elements.

Red Planet includes spells for Priests, despite the fact that the author acknowledges that most priests in the Martian Chronicles are either frauds or charlatans. But what would a fantasy role-playing game be without spell-casters!

At 72 pages, Red Planet RPG is a lot of game, packed in a small package. As a hobbyist game-designer and publisher, Clovis Cithog is humble about his creation, and offers it at the bargain price of $10 to US residents. As I said at the start of this review, I feel strongly about trumpeting the remarkable achievements of the hobbyist game designers in our midst, and seeing them fairly compensated for their efforts. This game is a steal at $10.

If you are, or are contemplating, playing an RPG based on Burroughs' Martian Chronicles, this is one ruleset you should give serious consideration to.

Cunning, Comedy, Casual Cruelty?

If your answer to this question was The Dying Earth RPG, you'd be right.

The Dying Earth RPG is a role-playing game intended to emulate the world -- and words -- contained in Jack Vance's Dying Earth series of novels and short stories. You'll note that I did not include "Combat" in my alliterative title. I did this for a very simple reason: The Dying Earth RPG actively discourages you from engaging in mortal combat, and the game system reinforces that by making combat very deadly. You only need to take a couple of blows before your character is out-of-commission, or more likely, dead.

What then is The Dying Earth RPG about? It's about clever repartee, social combat, cunning subterfuge, laughter, and casual cruelty.

Clever Repartee

The principle game mechanic of nearly any role-playing game is the system governing the accumulation of experience points. Experience point award mechanics are important in role-playing games, as they are the mechanism permitting character upgrades. The experience point mechanic of an RPG is thus a powerful communicator of what is expected of a Player. In The Dying Earth RPG, experience points are ONLY awarded for clever repartee. No experience for combat. No experience for treasure. Just witty dialogue, elegantly framed in the Vancian style, and delivered with impeccable timing. Therefore, The Dying Earth RPG is a game like no other: it is a role-playing game to its very core.

Social Combat

I'm not a big fan of social combat systems. My reasoning is that those combat systems either encourage conflict between players (PvP conflict typically happens as a matter of course, but i'm not interested in encouraging it) or govern the interactions between player and DM (in which case, as a "fair" DM, you should be able to judge when you have been verbally bested and concede defeat, without having to resort to a die-roll). The Social Combat system in The Dying Earth RPG is based on dice pools. Each player (and any encountered NPCs) has a dice-pool made up of d6's, and can continue spending dice from their pool until they or their opponent has exhausted theirs. Scoring a 1-3 means failure, while a 4-6 means success, with the 1 and 6 being catastrophic failure and incredible success, respectively. Depending on your roll, your opponent may have to expend more, or fewer dice, to respond to your success or failure. This mechanic feels artificial to me, as I would rather engage in the actual role-playing, of two combatants trying to convince the other of the superiority of their position, but the dice-pool is a reasonable substitute, for those who are uncomfortable "talking with funny voices".

Cunning Subterfuge

Like the characters in Vance's Dying Earth books and short stories, each of the Player's characters are lazy, self-absorbed, covetous, avaricious, and arrogant. So are most of the NPC's they encounter. Therefore, the game resolves around the planning and execution of cunning strategems to gain wealth, comfort, power, prestige, fineries, and delicious food, with as little effort and risk as possible.

Laughter

As was mentioned earlier, experience points are awarded for clever repartee. This is accomplished through a mechanism whereby the DM provides several Vancian phrases to each player, prior to the start of the game session. They must weave those phrases into the game at some point during the session. For those who deliver their line, at an innapropriate time, no experience points are awarded. For those lines delivered when appropriate, but eliciting no positive response from the other game participants, one experience point is awarded. But when the line is delivered, and elicits positive responses, propels the adventure in a humorous or unexpected direction, or garners laughter from the other players and DM, two or even three experience points are awarded by the DM. Therefore, Players are encouraged to ham it up, directing the in-game conversations in such a way as to allow for the delivery of their appointed lines.

Casual Cruelty

Casual Cruelty, or "man's inhumanity to man", is a common theme in the tales of the Dying Earth. You see this in the Liane the Wayfarer stories, or in Cugel's treatment by, and of those he encounters in "The Eyes of the Overworld". The author of The Dying Earth exhorts the DM to insert scenes of casual cruelty (sparingly), establishing the nature of the cruelty, and allowing the imaginations of the players to fill in the horrifying details. He opines that a successful scene of casual cruelty will nag at the players after the game, as they think more fully of the implications.

The Dying Earth RPG allows you to run the full gamet of emotions during a role-playing session, from hilarity to horror. The Dying Earth RPG is clearly not for your typical hack-n-slasher, and is more appropriate for your more cerebral gamer. What I love about this game is its respect for the Vancian source material, and its overt discouragement of mortal combat, which is a refreshing change from the direction Dungeons and Dragons has recently been drawn to.

Wilderness Alphabet: A Review

James Pacek, of Carjacked Seraphim, recently published The Wilderness Alphabet, A Collection of Random Charts, Tables and Ideas for Use With Various Games of Imagination. As I had previously purchased Michael Curtis' well-regarded and commercially successful The Dungeon Alphabet, An A-Z Reference For Classic Dungeon Design, I was intrigued by Pacek's foray into similar territory. But while I was interested in purchasing The Wilderness Alphabet, its availability only through Lulu was a barrier, since Lulu is notorious for charging exhorbitant Canadian shipping fees.

Thankfully, Pacek came to my rescue, selling me a copy of The Wilderness Alphabet from his personal stash, only charging me the $9 Lulu fee for the book, plus a paltry $5 for Canadian shipping.

The Wilderness Alphabet is a 6"x9", 65-page A-Z reference booklet for wilderness adventure design. Amply illustrated with over 21 pieces of black & white art from the public domain, including liberal watermarking behind the text, Pacek's reference book is also filled with random tables to populate your wilderness environment. The sub-title of this book, "for use with various games of imagination" is, of course, code for "this book is system-neutral". Indeed, you won't find any reference to specific rule-sets or stat-blocks. Instead, you will find page upon page of intriguing wilderness landmark generation tables, around which to build interesting and surprising adventures -- for both the players and referee!

Among the interesting random tables: A is for Archway, C is for Chasm, E is for Edifice, G is for Graveyard, I is for Intersection, Q is for Quagmire, R is for Ruins and Residences, S is for Spring, and Z is for Ziggurat. In addition to 26 random tables, some of which allow you to generate 1000's of results, Pacek gives you several bonus tables, such as "colorful NPCs", "strange sounds", and "Mines". Pacek also provides his own "Appendix N" of additional sources of random table inspiration.

The Wilderness Alphabet is a handy little resource. Like The Dungeon Alphabet, this booklet provides you with both immediate inspiration for generating unique wilderness landmarks (when you are short on preparation time), but also provides the fodder to inspire the creation of your own random wilderness tables.

Considering how attractively presented the material is, and the booklet's utility and reusability, the $9 price tag on The Wilderness Alphabet seems quite reasonable.

2010 WOTC 4E Red Box: A Review

Would it be vain to suggest that the old school community is having a measurable impact on the marketing efforts of Hasbro and Wizards Of The Coast? While its certainly comforting to imagine that the design and distribution of the new 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons Essentials Starter Set (4E Red Box) is a reaction to the blossoming of the old school community, it is just as likely that the look of the new 4E Red Box is simply a clever marketing ploy by WOTC, to get those parents who fondly remember D&D to buy a copy of this new D&D game for their kids.

Whatever the reason, the announcement of a new 4E Red Box several months ago provoked old-school and new-school fingers to race furiously across keyboards. Those groups alternately predicted that the 4E Red Box heralded the end of civilization, or a new golden age of role-playing.

Having recently purchased a copy of the 4E Red Box, I thought some might find it useful if I shared my thoughts regarding this product, now that the game is "in-hand."

The 4E Red Box is $20, is 9" x 12" , and is 2" deep, but don't let the depth of the box fool you into thinking you are getting 2" worth of gaming materials. WOTC could have made the box 1" deep and still have provided all the materials in the box. A 1" high, sloped, cardboard boxliner (sloped so the dice fit inside) reduces the interior depth of the box, so the enclosed materials won't flop around. Inside, you will find two 8.5 x 11" booklets (a 32-page players book and a 64-page dungeon masters book), a set of black dice with white numbers, a sheet of cardboard counters representing characters and monsters, a double-sided battlemat, four character record sheets, and several sheets of power cards.

The production quality is top-notch, as one would expect from Wizards of the Coast. The booklet artwork is full-color and bleeds to the edge of the pages. The cardboard character and monster counters feature art typical of 4th Edition D&D. WOTC has recycled the crossroads battlemat, appearing in other 4E products, but the reverse battlemat reveals a dungeon, designed specifically for the 4E Red Box. While only four character sheets are provided with the game, WOTC gives permission to photocopy the character sheets for personal use.

The Players Book is simply a two-column choose-your-own-adventure book consisting of 100 entries (with the manual being 32 pages, that works out to 3 entries per page). In making several adventure decisions, those 100 entries take you through 4th Edition D&D character creation. For example, your first choice, upon being ambushed, is to determine whether you wish to cast a spell, heal a comrade, sneak around the attackers, or confront them in mortal combat. Depending on which choice you make, this determines your starting character class. During three in-book encounters (two combat and one information gathering), you make additional choices about your alignment, starting weapons and equipment, ability scores, healing surges, and powers or spells. Once you finish the Players Book, you are encouraged to gather three or four friends, and have them walk though the included adventure to create their own characters.

There appears to be very little resource management in the 4E D&D. Neither the Players Book nor the Dungeon Masters Book provide any lists of equipment for purchase. Every character is assumed to have all of the materials he or she needs for adventuring (rope, torches, etc.). The resource management in 4E is all in about your hit points, healing surges, and powers.

The 64-page Dungeon Masters Book provides additional encounters and advice on how to run encounters. By the end of the encounters outlined in the Dungeon Masters Book, each of the characters should reach 2nd Level.

Is this boxed set worth $20? If you are interested in playing 4E D&D, and have never played Dungeons and Dragons (or any role-playing game) before, it is, and may be the product for you. But, while the contents of this boxed set are quite nice, if you have played role-playing games before, you don't need to buy this product. The character generation in the Players Book is oversimplified, and you don't need 32 pages and 100 entries to accomplish this exercize. It should take someone, with even a passing familiarity with role-playing games, no more 2-3 minutes to make the choices that might take 15-30 minutes following the examples in the Players Book.

If you are someone who played D&D 20 years ago, and want to get back into the "most recent" version of the game, this product is still probably not for you. Wait for the other more comprehensive D&D Essentials game materials. Understand though, that this is not the D&D you played in the 1980's, or even the D&D you played in the 1990's. 4E is an "encounters-based" game, with experience doled out for completing quests assigned by the referee, battling monsters, and participating in "skill-challenges", where you roll dice against a certain skill, in order to continue the adventure.

Did the 4E Red Box convince me to play 4E? No. It reminded me why I lost interest in 4E to begin with. But that doesn't mean that it is not right for you. If your favorite part of D&D was engaging in combats, participating in heroic quests, and obtaining magic items, and least favorite was role-playing your character, solving puzzles, exploring abandoned ruins, and managing your material resources effectively, then 4E is worth checking out.