I'm A Wealthy, Wealthy Man ...

If the Troll And Toad webstore is to be believed, that is. According to the prices on their website, my metagaming and microgame collection is worth several thousand dollars.

To wit:

Ogre ... $70

Chitin:I ... $40

Melee ... $80

Warp War ... $20

Rivets ... $35

Wizard ... $55

Olympica ... $20
G.E.V. ... $30

And on and on and on it goes. Based on the prices Troll And Toad is quoting for those metagaming titles, i've made anywhere from a 5 to 10% annualized return on each of the items in my microgame collection over the last 30 years. Not a bad little investment!

Sadly, after checking out eBay, I've discovered that a punched version of Ogre went for only $16 at auction, rather than the $70 that Troll And Toad is asking. There go my dreams of selling my microgame collection, buying one of the Thousand Islands, and retiring in style.

LotFP Weird Fantasy RPG: Rules Review

In my estimation, Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing is yet more proof that there is still life in the original Dungeons & Dragons ruleset. Within Weird RPG's 48 page rulebook, James Raggi has married the OD&D ruleset with weird tropes and his own particular brand of lunacy, to create a game that feels like OD&D, yet is also vaguely unsettling and unfamiliar.

Right off the bat, Weird RPG re-arranges our familiar six prime abilities and places them in alpha order (Charisma, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Strength and Wisdom), making us re-think our assumptions about the relative importance of each ability. Abilities are generated with six 3d6 throws, in ability-order, and Weird RPG employs the traditional B/X ability modifiers, ranging from -3 to +3. Weird RPG considers your character unsuitable for play if the sum of your ability modifiers is less than 0.

Another somewhat unconventional choice: no experience-bonuses for high prime requisites. In fact, no prime requisites at all. While you have the standard four classes (Fighter, Magic User, Cleric and Thief/Specialist) and demi-humans (Dwarf, Elf and Halfling), none appear to need any minimum ability score to be playable. So a Fighter or Dwarf with 8 Strength is possible.

The Fighter (and I presume Dwarf and Elf, though it is not explicitly stated) are the only characters who can improve in combat ability. This is a marked departure from OD&D where all classes improve in combat, albeit at different rates, but one that I do not strongly disagree with, since Fighters in Weird RPG no longer possess the ability to inflict multiple attacks on multiple low-level monsters. This rule change certainly encourages the Clerics and Magic Users to focus on their strength, spell-casting.

The re-imagined Thief, named the Specialist in Weird RPG, uses a novel mechanic to resolve the traditional thief skills. A d6 system has been instituted, with each specialist skill converted to a certain chance in 6 of succeeding at a task, whether it be picking locks, finding traps or climbing walls. As the character advances in level, the players spread an additional 2 pips between all of the specialist skills, gradually increasing them over time.

Weird RPG uses a three alignment system (Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic) but assumes that most characters (other than Magic Users and Elves who both tend towards Chaos) will fall in the Neutral camp.

The Starting Equipment section occasionally slips into Gygaxian excess. For those who want to get on with playing, the Weapons section is mercifully short: most weapons are smartly grouped into four classes, of minor, small, medium and great weapons, with each weapon within the class priced the same and inflicting the same damage. No more min-maxing based on cost and the best damage within a given class! And nine specific weapons possess additional characteristics, with each profiled in its own paragraph. Sadly, the much-maligned d12 is once again left out in the cold, as weapons do anywhere from a d3 to d10 damage.

On the other end of the Gygaxian-excess scale, there are nearly 70 miscellaneous equipment items, 17 unique ship types, 14 food items, and four sizes of tents. Since I am a fan of Gygaxian excess, I felt like Scrooge McDuck rolling around in his vault of treasure when I looked at those item lists. The relative pricing of items is always a tricky business, and depending on how you approach your game economics, you may want to fiddle with Raggi's prices. In Weird RPG, livestock is priced at 50 gp a head, while a riding horse is 15 times that, at 750 gp. A warhorse comes in at 7,500 gp.

Weird RPG has nine pages of adventuring rules, such as opening doors, foraging and hunting, the effects of disease and falling, light and vision, the passage of time, and so on. Some interesting insights and approaches can be found in these pages. Of particular interest to me was Raggi's approach to encumbrance. Rather than tracking weight, you simply track number of items, with each 5 items moving you up to the next level of encumbrance. While i'm not sure that I am completely satisfied with this approach, it is a novel and simple way to handle the issue.

Considering that Weird RPG includes 17 unique ship types, it is only fitting that it should also have its own set of Maritime adventure rules. Finding a way to boilerplate subsystems like maritime adventures and combat to a role-playing game has always been a challenge for RPG designers. Weird RPG provides its own travel, water-bourne chases, combat, damage and boarding rules. I'd be tempted, instead, to find a board or hex-and-chit game and simulate ship-to-ship combats and chases that way, but the maritime rules provided in Wierd RPG will certainly fit the bill.

What better way to pay homage to OD&D, than to include a comprehensive and detailed section on retainers? You will find four pages of rules and information on hiring and using retainers. This is one of my favorite sections of the book, if only because it revels in more Gygaxian excess, with 24 different types of retainers, along with rules for determining their upkeep, maintenance and loyalty.

Weird RPG also includes rules for purchasing and maintaining property and investments. The mechanics are relatively straight-forward, because, let's face it, its more interesting to go adventuring than paying attention to how well your estate is doing.

Finally, we reach the section on Combat. Weird RPG has a very rules-light combat system, but gives you several interesting options, such as pressing (a vigorous attack that costs you AC to employ), holding (waiting to see what the other side does before intervening) and parrying (where you gain an AC bonus but lose any chance of hitting your opponent). I presume your Strength modifier can be used for both a bonus to your chance to hit and added to the damage you inflict on your opponent, but I had difficulty finding the reference to same.

The last page of the Weird RPG rulesbook provides you with instructions on how to complete your character sheet. The instructions are useful, even to old-hands like me, and I marvel at how effectively the character sheet was laid out.

Overall, I am very impressed with the Weird RPG ruleset. I did not find any rules that seemed particularly jarring or out of place: they all seemed to fit together rather well. And the art is in keeping with the weird theme of the game.

Lamentations Of The Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Role-Playing

I had a pleasant surprise waiting for me in the mailbox on Friday. James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing game! With my wife away on a business trip for the weekend, i'm only, now, getting a chance to open up the box and have a look at its contents.

Here's the box, which is about the same size as the original OD&D collectors edition boxed set, or the Swords & Wizardry boxed set. Actually, it appears to be about a 1/4" shorter and an 1/8" wider than those OD&D and S&W boxes, presumably to accommodate booklets printed on European A4 or A5 paper, rather than the North American letter or booklet-sized paper.

And here are the Referee and Rules booklets. All of the basic rules you need to play Weird RPG are in the Rules booklet, while the Referee booklet contains advice on running a campaign. For the next printing, James may want to white-line the text at the bottom of front-covers, or print the text in white, to make it easier to read. The box itself is a clamshell style with corner tabs to keep the lid secure, rather than separate box and lid.

The compete contents of the Weird RPG boxed set is pictured above (not pictured is a small pencil and set of mini-dice that also come with this boxed set). The box is crammed full of booklets and materials. There are four booklets (Rules, Referee, Magic and Tutorial) an introductory adventure, sample campaign world, a "recommended reading" booklet, character record sheets, double-sided graph and hex paper, open game licence and adverts for Dragonsfoot and Expeditious Retreat Press. The best recent analogy I can use to describe this boxed set is that it is a weird version of the Swords & Wizardry boxed set, on steroids. At 60 Euros, I paid about twice for the Weird RPG boxed set as I did for the S&W Whitebox set, but i'm getting at least twice the value. I love my S&W boxed sets (I bought two sets, plus several extra Character booklets), but, to give you an example of the additional value, the Character booklet for S&W is 24 pages; the Rules booklet for Weird RFP is twice that, at 48 pages.

Similar to the S&W boxed set, Weird RPG has a separate Magic booklet. I like this publishing choice, as it permits the Referee to decide whether or not the Magic booklet will be available to the players. My choice would be to keep this booklet out of the hands of the players, and thus maintain some mystery regarding how magic operates. The Magic booklet contains all of the standard clerical and magical spells you would find in an old-school RPG: missing is a list and description of illusionist spells, but perhaps James has decided to exclude the illusionist from the Weird RPG game. Again, the word "Magic" at the bottom of the booklet could have been white-lined, to improve legibility.

The addition of a Tutorial booklet is an interesting feature of Weird RPG. It assumes that the game will be marketed to and purchased by those unfamiliar with, or uninitiated into, the world of paper and pencil role playing games. I applaud James' optimism, and hope that Weird RPG does indeed attract new players to the traditional PnP RPG hobby. But this Tutorial booklet is also valuable to those of us who are already well-acquainted with RPGs, as it provides some interesting insight into how James sees the role-playing game process occurring.

The Weird RPG boxed set also included an introductory booklet-sized adventure, Tower of the Stargazer. Stargazer is a 16-page adventure booklet, with a separate, unstapled cover, with the maps printed on the cover's interior, similar to those early TSR modules. While Stargazer is the same number of pages as another excellent introductory adventure, found in the S&W boxed set, The Vile Worm of the Eldritch Oak, Stargazer has 26 detailed locations, while Vile Worm has less than a half-dozen. Stargazer looks like another excellent adventure, in the unique style of James Raggi: this can be a profitable adventure for the cautious and attentive, but not everything in the tower is meant to be touched or taken.

A complete wilderness adventure framework is also provided in the Weird RPG boxed set, and is appropriately entitled Weird New World. Like Stargazer, Weird World had been published as a separate 28-page booklet and unstapled cover, although the cover folds out to reveal a 4-page wilderness map featuring an arctic climate. Weird World is broadly designed in the sandbox style: James Raggi has designed and chronicled a few adventure locations to get you started, but the world is large enough that the Referee and players can participate in a long-running wilderness hex-crawl without ever leaving the map.

Another pleasant surprise: James' version of Appendix N, entitled "recommended reading." Among those appearing on James' list of recommended authors are Clive Barker, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Clark Ashton Smith, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jack Vance, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells. Each author receives a detailed biography by a guest biographer.

I can honestly say that this is the closest anyone has come to publishing my dream old-school boxed set. Once I have a chance to delve deeper into the Weird RPG booklets and supplementary material, I will provide some additional comments.

Dungeoneer Reprint In The Works?

This according to a post on Boardgamegeek.

Here is the text of an email sent to one fan of Dungeoneer:

Hi Joe,Thanks for your interest in Dungeoneer and Atlas Games! Den
of
the Wererats and the Haunted
Woods of Malthorin are currently out of stock -- we
have no copies left
in our warehouse at all. We do, however, have plans to
reprint these two
expansions and make them available again. At this point, we're
negotiating
quotes with some printers but have no fixed date as to when they
might be
available. Essentially, we'd like to have them yet this year, but can
make
no guarantees.When they are close to release, we will announce it on our
homepage, http://www.atlas-games.com/.Thanks again!~Bobbi

Roberta
A. OlsonAtlas Games

Count me enthused! I have been searching for these two Dungeoneer card decks since I first became aware of this game.

Settlers Of Catan Supergame

In addition to playing a half-dozen Dungeons and Dragons sessions during my vacation, we played several Settlers of Catan games.

Here's one game, with a photo taken from the second floor loft of my Aunt's cabin. Starting on the left and going clockwise, a brother-in-law, a nephew, brother, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, brother, sister-in-law, and myself (the empty seat) are playing an eight-player game of Settlers.

My wife was playing, but she had to step away from the table as three of her nieces (from her side of the family) had just arrived and she was getting them organized and oriented into a spare bedroom, so one of my brothers-in-law took over her spot at the table.

We had two more relatives who wanted to play in the game, but there were only 8 sets of game-pieces. We have since rectified that situation, buying two more sets of game-pieces since my return home from the cabins. We can now play a 10-player game if the interest is there.

More Scenic Views

Several weeks ago, I posted pictures of the cabins. Here's another picture --this picture is taken from the road that leads down to the lake. Following the road, the lake is to the left, while to the right, the road curves and goes up a hill, bringing us up, and to the far side of the cabin. Along the stairs you see, going up to the cabin, grow blackberry and thimbleberry bushes. Having eaten my fair share of thimbleberries in my youth, they now hold little attraction to me, but my children seem to enjoy them. The blackberry bushes are very thorny, but will yield some delicious fruit later in the summer, provided we get sufficient rain.

And here is a photo, taken from cabin. The dock, on the far right, is from where I snapped the earlier 'scenic views' photos. Sadly, the vacation ended too early, but don't they always?

Dungeon Masters Screen For AD&D

I've been looking for one of these AD&D Dungeon Masters Screens for several months, and was fortunate to recently come across one in the used gaming section of The Sentry Box. Score!

This artwork was produced by one of my favorite old-school artists, David Trampier, and features the golden idol from the cover of the original Players Handbook. It also gives a nod to the old TSR Lizardman logo (look where the dragon is breathing fire, and you will see a Lizardman with a halberd).

I find it interesting that the warrior in the bottom right corner of the screen has blue-tinged eyeballs. Did I notice that 30 years ago?

Appendix N: Knocking Down The Titles

I`ve had several Appendix N titles on my `to buy` list for some time. One is The Face In The Frost, by John Bellairs, published in 1969. The other: Swords Against Darkness, an anthology series that commenced in 1977, edited by Andrew Offutt.

I went to Salmon Arm, BC yesterday (a town 20 minutes from the cabins) and decided to poke around in the used bookstore there named the Book Nook. I picked up another twenty or so paperbacks, for a dollar each, including some Zelazny and Leiber, and the two above-named books. As I went to the till to pay for my books, the owner asked me, "Are these valuable?" Like most things, they`re only valuable to the people who value them ... so I told her that I recently became interested in the old pulp fantasy and swords and sorcery tales, and wanted to see what the fuss was all about. No point in telling her that I would have paid four or more times what she was charging, was there?

I`ve already breezed through the first two Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser anthologies, and had a great time doing so. I tried to read those tales more than a decade ago, but could not get past the florid language. Having this time plunged in with both feet, I found myself laughing out loud, in answer to which I was shot puzzled stares by my family. Reading the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser tales was like re-living those heady days, discovering Dungeons and Dragons again for the first time.

Next on my list is The Face In The Frost. I have made it through the preface and first chapter, and am beginning to understand why this appears in Appendix N: it seems to capture the comical, danger-laden, image-rich atmosphere of those early D&D games.

Running Stonehell Dungeon

I posted yesterday that our Dungeons and Dragons sessions began with B2, Keep on the Borderlands.

I realized, after five players experienced seven PC deaths in the first session, that an exploration and problem-solving adventure Keep on the Borderlands is not. Several of the players are used to a hack-and-slash game anyway (two of them play 4E when they are at home in Victoria, BC) and the monster-laden Caves of Chaos only encourage them to employ the same approach, while using the Swords & Wizardry rule-set. Because characters are far more fragile in old-school D&D, a different approach is required, both from the players and the DM.

Through what the players suppose is the magic of time travel, the players have been transported back in time, with the box canyon of the Caves of Chaos replaced with the canyon housing Stonehell Dungeon. The Keep on the Borderlands is now just a lonely grass-covered hill, with no evidence of recent civilization to be found in the immediate vicinity of Stonehell.

So far, there have been only two combats in each the two subsequent sessions. The remainder of the time has been in exploration and speculation on what each of the discoveries could mean. Questions on what the hell is going on, that has resulted in such an abrupt change in scenery, have been met with shrugs by me -- I tell the players it is as much a mystery to me as it is to them as to what has happened. But they are speculating that something within the Dungeon will provide clues on how to get back to their own time.

They have already discovered a statue of Sir Vispera, the founder of the Knights Imperious within the box canyon of Stonehell Dungeon. Since Vispera died some 300 years before they were born, this has led them to believe that they have been transported several hundred years into the past. They also found an abandoned temple, dedicated to some snake-demon, which they have linked to the Serpent Wars and Sir Vispera.

It will be interesting to see what happens in session four. They have just now entered Stonehell Dungeon proper, having spent two sessions exploring the box canyon itself.

Well, i'm heading back to the beach. I will try to blog some more photos, and another session recap, later today or early tomorrow.

Scenic Views And The Meat-Grinder

We arrived at the cabins several days ago, but I have been enjoying the time with my brothers, sisters and the extended family, so have been somewhat remiss in updating my blog. Here is a view of the cabins: most of them are obscured by foliage but you can see three cabins in this photo. There are three more cabins to the right (hidden by the trees) and two more to the left.

And here is a photo showing the lakeshore, taken in the opposite direction to the photo of the cabins. It has been a lovely couple of days, though the it has been cool and cloudy. Nevertheless, a cool day at the cabins beats a warm day in the city!

We have played three Dungeons and Dragons sessions so far. We are using the Swords & Wizardry white-box rule-set, and played B2, Keep on the Borderlands for our first session. The result -- five players, seven PC deaths. Among the clues distributed to the players was the need for hirelings and the avoidance of the caves further into the canyon, both of which were ignored. Even with those clues, it is clear that Keep on the Borderlands is not a module in the old-school tradition of exploration and problem solving. This is hack-and-slashery personified. Every player has lost at least once character to this D&D meat-grinder. As a result, I have switched over to Michael Curtis' Stonehell Dungeon, for our subsequent sessions, as it seems to be more conducive to an old-school approach to adventuring.