Random Generation Tables: Ultimate Toolbox

I visited my local FLGS, The Sentry Box, today, to see if my order of Otherworld Miniatures Orcs had arrived. Sadly, they had not.

In chatting with one of the long-term employees, I mentioned my desire to purchase the Dungeon Alphabet, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, Dragon Warriors' The Prince Of Darkness adventure, and Diaspora.

It's frustrating when you want to give your FLGS your money, but they don't have the items you want to buy. It's not that The Sentry Box lacks product: but most of the stuff I am looking for is either just recently published or might be available only through Lulu.

The Sentry Box employee lamented the fact that he can't keep "Ultimate Toolbox" on the shelves. Everytime they get a couple of copies, they are quickly snapped up. I am one of the guilty parties in that regard. A buddy and I both purchased the last two copies of Ultimate Toolbox a couple of weeks ago.

I purchased Ultimate Toolbox based on Berin Kinsman's positive review. In this case, he didn't steer me wrong. I was particularly interesting in purchasing Ultimate Toolbox, as "Uncle Bear" claims in his review that this book is system neutral, as there is no assumed game system for this product.

The Ultimate Toolbox consists of random generation tables. Lots of random generation tables. 400 pages of random generation tables. That's a lot of tables, folks. And while some pages have at least two tables, many have four.

There are seven broad categories of tables within this book, plus an appendix. The chapters are Characters, World Building, Civilization, Maritime, Dungeon, Magic, and Plot. The Chapter on Characters consists of 25 pages of tables on such things as character backgrounds, motivations, hobbies, pets, and battle cries. The World Building chapter is roughly 40 pages, with constellation names, map features, mountain names, river names, weather, calamities, roads, plants, bugs, churches and so on. The Civilization chapter has city names, gatehouse designs, government types, population sizes, legends, flags, achitectural styles, foods, coin names, adventurer's packs, bribes, sewer encounters, and on it goes, for roughly 90 pages. The Maritime chapter is 30 pages, the Dungeon chapter is roughly 50 pages, the chapter on magic is another 50 pages, and the Chapter on Plot is another 60 pages. The last 40 pages is an Appendix consisting of a plethora of character name tables, and other tables that they couldn't shoehorn into any other chapter.

While the random generation tables are really useful, and I do mean really useful, the true utility of this product is as a spark to the imagination. You could use this product as-is, but the best use of Ultimate Toolbox is to come up with your own interesting sewer encounter, unique plant-life or character motivation. Of course, this book can be used, in a pinch, if you have a game that night and need to come up with some colorful information to spur the creativity of the players, or provide some local color that will make the game session that much more exciting for them.

Uncle Bear compares Ultimate Toolbox to the old Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets. I have no experience with the Ready Ref Sheets, but I do recall the amazing range of tables that appeared in another Judges Guild product, I believe it was the Fantasy Cartographers Field Book. Any particular table in the FCFB puts an Ultimate Toolbox table to shame, however, the sheer volume of tables in Ultimate Toolbox eclipses FCFB's by a wide margin.

Considering that the Ultimate Toolbox is 400 pages, and has a wealth of creative ideas for the old-school (and modern) gamer, this book is more than worth the $50 sticker price. And it will satisfy your hunger for random generation tables, while you await the arrival of the Dungeon Alphabet.

The only issue I have with Ultimate Toolbox being characterized as 'system neutral' is that the chapter on Plot is very much of the new-school bent. The authors even provide you with a "Plot Outline Form", so you can pre-plan the plot of your game. I still think you can use this chapter on Plot, in the old-school style, but be cognizant that this does include such tables as story goal, patrons, villain triggers, plot complications, and campaign hooks.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day

I'm not sure if wishing someone a 'Happy Guy Fawkes Day', and encouraging the celebration of same, is entirely appropriate. It makes me wonder how one "celebrates" September 11th, and whether Guy Fawkes Day is used as a day of remembrance in Britain, to reflect on the causes of modern terrorism.

Remember, remember the 5th of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot;
I can think of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason
should ever be forgot.

The Hobbit Movie: Script Given To Ian McKellan

I have tried hard to keep my Lord of the Rings geekiness from bleeding over into my blog. After all, I started blogging to comment on the rules-light games that I enjoy playing. While that includes The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, I intended to limit my comments to the game itself, not on Lord of the Rings generally.

I'm sure you can see where this post is going...

I am excited to hear the news that Ian McKellan has been given an advance copy of "The Hobbit" movie screen-play. This strongly suggests (confirms?) that Ian will, in fact, be playing Gandalf in The Hobbit Movies.

I couldn't be more pleased.

Nice Crisp Morning on the Heath

This is the thing I love about Calgary. You never know what kind of weather you're going to enjoy, from week to week.

We've seen a foot of snow fall in August, followed by 90F weather a day later. And we get blizzards in February, with chinooks the following day that result in people changing their attire from parkas and toques to t-shirts and shorts.

SPI's Deathmaze: Random Generation Tables

The Deathmaze rules consist of a 24-page booklet. Of those 24 pages, 8 pages provide random generation tables, treasure type tables and a monster characteristics table. On closer inspection, some of the random generation table pages, in my copy of the rules, appear to be duplicates, so the actual rulebook consists of fewer pages.

Above is a sampling of two pages of tables from the Deathmaze booklet. As you can see from the sampled pages, there were random tables for negotiation, fountains, trap doors, statues, wandering and room monsters and combat results, to name just a few.

Not pictured here, but an innovative feature (at the time) was the magic weapon and armor tables. Those tables were simple, but allowed for the generation of weapons and armor with high bonuses, as the tables were constructed thusly:

1-3 +1
4-5 +2
6 roll twice

You could theoretically have magic weapons and armor with infinite bonuses, as long as you continued to roll at least one six.

Deathmaze also had a rather controversial feature, being the "Spices" treasure table. That table had the following spices that could be found as treasure, which had similar effects to potions.

Mustard
Sesame
Spinach
Red Pepper
Cloves
Cannabis

I believe there was some controversy at the time, regarding the inclusion on the last item on the list (it acted as a 'haste' potion, although I cannot comment on the accuracy of that in-game effect, having no experience in that regard, officer).

Dungeoneer: Tomb of the Lich Lord Cards

To give you an idea of what I am talking about, regarding the cards used in Dungeoneer, here is a sample of the dungeon cards that are in the Tomb of the Lich Lord set.

I have not put them together properly (I think there are a couple of doorways that are illegally configured) but it gives you an idea of how nice these cards really are.

The cards themselves are your standard playing card size, so you need some room on a table to set up the dungeon. You also need room for the various decks that you draw from, and for the cards that you place in front of you, while you play the game. But it requires no more room that you would need for any other boardgame you might play.

Unlike Deathmaze, Dungeoneer is a competitive game. You are competing with the other players to complete your quests before they do, and you play monsters and other cards against them, to stop them from achieving their goals.

Dungeoneer: Tomb of the Lich Lord

I've been pestering Thomas Denmark, the designer of Dungeoneer, regarding the re-print of his original Dungeoneer: Tomb of the Lich Lord game. Back in August 2009, Atlas Games announced their re-print of this card-game set (originally released in 2003) and I have been visiting my FLGS every week since September to see whether it has been delivered.

Tomb of the Lich Lord finally arrived last week. Staff at my FLGS had already stocked it on the top shelf of the card-game section of the store, but I had little difficulty locating it and hurrying to the front-counter to buy my copy, and afterwards frantically tearing the wrapping off to enjoy my lastest acquisition.

The cards are terrific, and I love the rules-light gaming that this card-set and related rules provide. As I was reminiscing about Deathmaze, it occurred to me that my appreciation for that old microgame may be part of the reason I like Dungeoneer so much: it has the same rules-light dungeon-crawling feel that appealed to me all those years ago.

Dungeoneer only has six pages of rules, so it doesn't take long to set up and give this game a spin. The background is interesting, but light enough that you don't get bogged down in the backstory. And while SPI's Deathmaze 'room and corridor chits' provided little color or visual interest, Dungeoneer room and corridor cards that have both, in spades. Dungeoneer features room cards that are beautifully illustrated, and even the corridor cards are nice.

Dungeoncrawling in SPI's Deathmaze

Deathmaze is THE quintessential dungeon crawl microgame.

There are no town adventuring rules. There are no lists of dungeoneering equipment to purchase. In fact, there are no rules, other than the ones that govern your activities within the Deathmaze.

Your goal: explore the Deathmaze, kill or parlay with the monsters, gather 75 experience and 100 gold pieces each, and exit the Deathmaze with at least three of your original party members still alive. If you do that, you win the game.

Deathmaze is not an RPG, at least in the sense that most of us view RPG's. You can certainly imbue your character with personality, if you like. But the game neither requires it, nor is there any mechanism to reward you for doing so.

After creating your party of dungeon-crawlers, you explore the Deathmaze by drawing cardboard chits, one at a time, and moving your party from chit to chit, as you explore a random dungeon.

A plethora of old-school random generation tables govern what monsters and dungeon features you encounter, how much treasure is discovered, and how the monsters react to you. There are a limited number dungeon features, principally corridors, rooms, statues, fountains, traps and trap doors. Playing the game does not require a game-master, although it speeds up play if there is one, or if one of the players also acts as the game-master.

Combat is also based on a table, with each player rolling a d6, adding any bonuses for special abilities or magic weapon bonuses, and consulting a combat table to determine the resulting wounds inflicted.

There is little in the way of strategic combat. You typically have a front-rank of three Heroes, backed up by Thieves and Wizards. The monsters are arrayed against you, up to three abreast, with additional monsters in a second and third row, ready to fill the ranks as the monsters in the front row fall. The only strategic decision for the players is to replace one of your heavily wounded characters with a healthy character from the second row.

Deathmaze is not a game for those that want an immersive role-playing experience. I can't imagine that this game was designed for that kind of play. It was designed as an old-fashioned dungeon crawl, an amusing diversion when you only have an hour to "get a game in", which is specifically what microgames were designed for.

The Deathmaze rules anticipated that you may want to play the same characters, multiple times. We did just that, all those years ago, and had loads of fun.

Microgames: Deathmaze by SPI

If my estimation of a microgame is measured by the number of copies I possess, then Deathmaze sits atop my microgames list.

I own two copies of Melee, Wizard and Death Tests 1 and 2. I also own two copies of Starfire. But I own three copies of Deathmaze.

Deathmaze was designed by Greg Costikyan, and was published by SPI in 1980. Deathmaze truly is rules-light, eclipsing even Melee and Wizard in that regard.

The character record sheet for Deathmaze can fit on a playing card, and consists of the following information:

Name
Class (Hero, Thief or Wizard)
Wounds
Magic Resistance
Weapon Skill
Weapons
Skills/Spells
Magic Items
Experience
Gold

That's right. No character stats whatsoever. Part of the beauty of the game is that you can create your character and be ready to play in 5 minutes. And the game is designed for solo play, meaning their is no prep time necessary for a game-master, assuming there is one.

Microgames: Transylvania by Mayfair Games

In preparing for Halloween, I wanted to take one of our horror microgames for a spin. Of course, there are only a handful of "horror" microgames from the early 1980's. TSR published Vampyre. Task Force Games published Intruder, an "Aliens" knock-off. Steve Jackson Games published Undead. And Mayfair Games published Transylvania.

Transylvania simulates the conflict between a vampire, holed up in his Transylvanian castle, and the terrorized village below. The background to the game is that the villagers have gathered enough courage, and a sufficently large force, to confront the Vampire, and have decided they must either defeat the Vampire or die in the attempt. The villagers have knights, men-at-arms, clerics and angry peasants at their disposal (the blue units). Arrayed against them is the Vampire and his minions: skeletons, wolves, bats and rats (the red and black units).

My children and I took the opportunity to play this game the day prior to Halloween. They played the Vampire and his minions while I played the villagers. My clock was cleaned each time we played.

Though on the surface the game appears to be a rather straight-forward "attrition of forces" game, the Vampire has the special ability of bypassing the villager's forces and flying directly to the village each night. If the Vampire eliminates the forces defending the village, he wins the game, notwithstanding that the villagers still have units "in the field." I lost every game, due to the Vampire's successful attack on my village. The difficulty for the villagers is that the only way (for them) to win the game is to occupy the castle, and it takes many turns travelling by foot to reach it, while the Vampire can attack the village each night without passing through the intervening territories. For the villager player, there is tension between fully defending the village, and sending a sufficiently large force to fight its way through the Vampire's minions.

Transylvania was a lot of fun to play, despite (or perhaps because of?) my repeated losses. The rules fit on two pages, so this game is easy to learn and teach -- in my mind, a requirement for any successful microgame. Each game took about 15 minutes, although the games would have been longer, had I done a better job of balancing my forces between the defence of the village and the attack on the castle.

The children had great fun beating their dad. We'll be retrieving this game from storage again next Halloween.