Find Room in Your Pocket Book for Steve Jackson's Pocket Box Games

What is old is new again because Steve Jackson Games is republishing their classic Pocket Box Games from the 1980s. Do yourself a favor and check them out.

Way back in the before times that are the not now (1977), a young game designer named Steve Jackson created an entirely new genre of games when Metagaming Concepts published a small game called OGRE. The game was deceptively simple to play and remarkably deep for its price and size. This combination of low price and small components were the central features of what came to be called "Microgames." Metagaming Concepts published a significant number of Microgames during their tenure, including OGRE, G.E.V. a sequel to OGRE,  and the MELEE/WIZARD games to name a few. These games were a huge financial success for Metagaming, but creative differences led to Steve Jackson leaving that company to form his own company Steve Jackson Games.

When Jackson left Metagaming, he took a couple of things with him that he used to launch his company. These were the SPACE GAMER magazine that Metagaming had been publishing and his OGRE and GEV designs. For a variety of reasons, he was unable to take MELEE/WIZARD with him and would not be able to publish those under the Steve Jackson brand until approximately 30 years later. As a Steve Jackson publication, SPACE GAMER went from a journeyman publication that had a significant "house" focus, to one of the leading hobby gaming news magazines of its era. Though it had its share of house content, the pages of the Jackson published SPACE GAMER were filled with articles about games like D&D and TRAVELLER and its coverage of the CHAMPIONS role playing game contributed to that game's larger success.

But the magazine was only a small part of what would help to transform Steve Jackson Games from a small game company to one of the most successful privately owned game companies in the business. To be sure, it's no Hasbro or Asmodee, but it is a company with gross incomes around $5.5 million. It's still classified as a small business, but it's a cornerstone in the gaming hobby. One of the key reasons the company was able to grow was its swift publication of the OGRE game and a series of new games based on the microgame model, games that came in sturdier plastic pocket boxes.

While there are several games in the pocket box series, the two best known are OGRE and CAR WARS and these are the games that helped to secure Steve Jackson Games' future success. Both of these games, in their early print runs, had short and easy to understand rulebooks, counter sheets, and maps to be used for play. They contained months of deep game play for a very inexpensive price. Both OGRE and CAR WARS became individual product lines, but some of my favorite pocket games are lesser know and equally robust games that cover a variety of themes. These themes ranged from a post-apocalyptic future where a kung fu death cult fought against the evil clone masters to to hunting for Dracula in London, and from the small tactical operations of a Raid in Iran to the massive strategic challenge that is the Battle of the Bulge (simulated with only one page of rules in ONE PAGE BULGE). The games were fun and inexpensive when they were published.

A typical example of a Pocket Box game is UNDEAD. The game was published in 1981 and recreates the battle between Van Helsing's vampire hunters and the dread Count Dracula. The game also includes the ability to expand play by including the possibility of playing a certain consulting detective in a variant scenario. It can be played as either a two player game, or as a mini-role playing game. The box for the game was a medium hardness plastic that had the ability to hang in a store display. 

Inside the box was a double printed poster sized sheet that contained the rules and two maps that could be used in play. The first was a map of the city and the second was a tactical map. In addition to the poster sheet, there was a counter sheet that included all of the counters one needed for play. Players would have to carefully cut out the counters, but they featured engaging and colorful artwork.

Until recently, the only way to get these games was to track them down on eBay and pay a potentially exorbitant price. That all changed this month with Steve Jackson Games' launch of a Pocket Box project on Kickstarter. Now you can get them for $20 a piece, less if you take advantage of some of the pledge levels. Most of these games are absolute gems, and it's nice to see them in print again...this time with upgraded components.

A Look Back at CHAMPIONS 1st Edition.

With the recent announcement that Ron Edwards was teaming up with Hero Games to produce CHAMPIONS NOW, a game that hearkens back to the first three editions of the game, I thought it would be a good time to take a look at those older editions.

The CHAMPIONS super hero role playing game is one of the best super hero role playing games ever designed, and the game to which all super hero rpgs are compared.  CHAMPIONS wasn't the first role playing game in the super hero genre, that honor goes to the game SUPERHERO 2044 which I discussed in an earlier blog post.  CHAMPIONS even builds upon some of the ideas in SUPERHERO 2044.  CHAMPIONS used the vague point based character generation system of SUPERHERO 2044 -- combined with house rules by Wayne Shaw that were published in issue 8 of the Lords of Chaos Fanzine-- as a jumping off point for a new detailed and easy to understand point based system.  CHAMPIONS was also likely influenced by the melee combat system in SUPERHERO 2044 in the use of the 3d6 bell curve to determine "to-hit" rolls in combat.

While CHAMPIONS wasn't the first super hero rpg, it was the first that presented a coherent system that allowed a player to design the superheroes they read about in comic books.  The first edition of VILLAINS & VIGILANTES, which predates CHAMPIONS, did a good job of emulating many aspects of comic book action but the ability to model a character in character design wasn't one of them.  CHAMPIONS was released at the Origins convention in the summer of 1981, and it immediately captured the interest of Aaron Allston of Steve Jackson Games.  Allston gave CHAMPIONS a positive review in issue #43 of the Space Gamer magazine, wrote many CHAMPIONS articles for that publication, and became one of the major contributors to the early days of CHAMPIONS lore.

Reading through the first edition of the game, can have that kind of effect upon a person.  The writing is clear -- if uneven in places -- and the rules mechanics inspire a desire to play around in the sandbox provided by the rules.  George MacDonald and Steve Peterson did more than create a great role playing game when they created CHAMPIONS, they created a great character generation game as well.  Hours can be taken up just playing around with character concepts and seeing how they look in the CHAMPIONS system.

There are sites galore about CHAMPIONS and many reviews about how great the game is, and it truly is, so the remainder of the post won't be either of these.  Rather, I would like to point out some interesting tidbits about the first edition of the game.  Most of these will be critical in nature, but not all.  Before going further I will say that though CHAMPIONS is now in its 6th edition and is a very different game today in some ways, the 1st edition of the game is highly playable and well worth exploring and I'm glad that Ron Edwards has picked up that torch with CHAMPIONS NOW.

• One of the first things that struck me reading the book was how obviously playtested the character design system was.  This is best illustrated in the section under basic characteristics.  In CHAMPIONS there are primary and secondary characteristics.  The primary characteristics include things like Strength and Dexterity.  The secondary statistics are all based on fractions of the primary statistics and represent things like the ability to resist damage.  Where the playtesting shows here is in how players may buy down all of their primary statistics, but only one of their secondary statistics.  A quick analysis of the secondary statistics demonstrates that if this were not the case a "buy strength then buy down all the secondary stats related to strength" infinite loop would occur.  
• It's striking how few skills there are in 1st edition CHAMPIONS.  There are 14 in total, and some of them are things like Luck and Lack of Weakness.  There are no "profession" skills in 1st edition.  To be honest, I kind of like the lack of profession skills.  Professions in superhero adventures seem more flavor than something one should have to pay points for, but this is something that will change in future editions.  
• There are a lot of powers in CHAMPIONS, but the examples are filled with phrases like "a character" or "a villain" instead of an evocative hero/villain name.  It would have been more engaging for the folks at Hero Games to create some Iconic characters that are used throughout the book as examples of each power.  The game does include 3 examples of character generation (Crusader, Ogre, and Starburst), but these characters aren't mentioned in the Powers section.  An example using Starburst in the Energy Blast power would have been nice.
• The art inside the book is less than ideal.  Mark "the hack" Williams has been the target of some criticism for his illustrations, but his work is the best of what is offered in the 1st edition book.  It is clear why they decided to use his work in the 2nd edition of the game.  Williams art is evocative and fun -- if not perfect -- while the work Vic Dal Chele and Diana Navarro is more amateurish.
• The game provides three examples of character generation, but the designs given are less than point efficient and one outclasses the others.  The three sample characters are built on 200 points.  Crusader can barely hurt Ogre if he decides to punch him (his punch is only 6 dice), and his Dex is bought at one point below where he would receive a rounding benefit.  Ogre has a Physical Defense of 23.  This is the amount of damage he subtracts from each physical attack that hits and it is very high.  Assuming an average of 3.5 points of damage per die, Ogre can resist an average of 6.5 dice of damage per attack.  Yes, that's an average but the most damage 6 dice could do to him would be 13.  That would be fine, except Crusader has that 6d6 punch, and Starburst...oh, Starburst.  All of Starburst's major powers are in a multipower which means that as he uses one power he can use less of the other powers in the multipower.  The most damage he can do is 8d6, but only if he isn't flying and doesn't have his forcefield up.  Not efficient at all.  One might hope that character examples demonstrate the appropriate ranges of damage and defense, these don't quite achieve that goal.
• The combat example is good, if implausible.  Crusader and Starburst defeating Ogre?  Sure.
• The supervillain stats at the end of the book -- there are stats for 8 villains and 2 agents -- lack any accompanying art.  The only exception is Shrinker.  
• Speaking of artwork and iconics.  Take that cover.

• Who are these people?!  I want to know.  The only one who is mentioned in the book is Gargoyle.  It's pretty clear which character he is, but I only know his name because of a copyright notice.  Who are the other characters?  Is that "Flare"?  The villain is named Holocaust, but that cannot be discerned from reading this rule book.  If you know, please let me know.  I'd love to see the stats for that guy punching "Holocaust" with his energy fist.

CHAMPIONS is a great game, and the first edition is a joy.  If you can, try to hunt down a copy and play some old school super hero rpg.

This is an update of a post from 2012.

CHILL 1st Edition is an Underrated RPG. #RPGaDAY2017 -- Day 5

You are about to enter the world of CHILL, where unknown things sneak, and crawl, and creep, and slither in the darkness of a moonless night. This is the world of horror, the world of the vampire, ghost, and ghoul, the world of things not know, and best not dreamt of. CHILL is a role-playing game of adventure into the Unknown and your first adventure is about to begin -- CHILL Introductory Folder

 "What RPG Cover Best Captures the Spirit of the Game?"

For me, the answer to that question has always been CHILL by Pacesetter. It's a highly underrated game that captures the tone of my favorite horror films, those of Hammer Studios.

In 1984 a group of former TSR Employees -- including Mark Acres, Troy Denning, and Stephen Sullivan -- formed Pacesetter Ltd. Games and released the Chill role playing game. Chill wasn't the first horror role playing game, nor was it the best, but it has long held a place as a "cult" favorite in the role playing game world. Where other horror role playing games sought to capture the dark nihilistic material horror of H.P. Lovecraft, or the gruesome horror of many films, Chill tried to capture the tone of Hammer and AIP productions.

Because of its focus, and because its creators were former TSR employees, Rick Swan reviewed the game quite negatively in Dragon magazine and in his Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games. He described the game as, "A horror game for the easily frightened...While most of Chill's vampires, werewolves, and other B-movie refugees wouldn't scare a ten-year-old, they're appropriate to the modest ambitions of the game...Chill is too shallow for extended campaigns, and lacks the depth to please anyone but the most undemanding players. For beginners only."

Swan was correct that the game was simple, and appropriate for beginners, but he was far from the mark when he claimed that it lacked depth that could appeal to demanding players who want extended campaigns. The game has solid underlying mechanics that encourage a loose style of play that encourages storytelling over combat and reduces the dependency on die rolls that so many role playing games often overly promote. Like many Pacesetter games, Chill is innovative and slightly ahead of its time -- nowhere is this more the case than with their Chill: Black Morn Manor board game -- but like many things ahead of their time there are some flaws to the mechanics. Nothing too big, but definitely things that might make some gamers reject it out of hand. The game is simple enough that a group of players can pick up the rules and start to play within 15 minutes...from scratch.

Let me repeat that. This game, made in 1984, is easy enough to learn that a group can open the box and begin playing within fifteen minutes. Given how complex rpgs seem to the non-gamer, this is quite a marvelous achievement in and of itself.

The most comprehensive review of Chill -- during its era -- was the review in Space Gamer 75 by Warren Spector. In the article, Spector provided a balanced review -- not all of it positive -- but described the game as follows:

You won't find better, more consistently entertaining writing in any set of game rules...
Chill is the first to include an introductory folder advising players to begin playing that adventure before they've read the rules of the game! To begin, players have only to read a four page READ-ME-FIRST! introduction to the rules, pick up the 16-page adventure booklet and begin playing! And, sure enough, the cockamamie scheme works!

Spector's final word on the game is that it "falls somewhat short of the mark," but his analysis is clear and he seems to understand that he is looking at something new here.

There are many games from the 80s that -- mechanically and tonally -- seem extremely dated by modern gaming standards. Chill -- the first Pacesetter edition -- isn't one of them. It has a kind of classic feel to it, just like all the Hammer and AIP movies it was inspired by. It isn't a dark and serious horror game, but it is an adventurous one. If you want to experience existential horror, you can do no better than Call of Cthulhu, but if you want to pretend to be Peter Cushing's Van Helsing hunting Christopher Lee's Dracula you want Chill.

A hand touched his face, but he felt no warmth of human reassurance in that other hand, no sense of comradeship against the dark foes of the night. Boulton shrank from the touch. Then scrambled back. Then shouted. For now he could see the hand, rising like a pale, icy plant, from the churning soil of a grave. -- Chill Campaign Book

Finding Out About NEW RPGs is Easier and Harder Than Ever... #RPGaDAY2017 Day 3

In the before times, in the not now, it was pretty easy to find out about what role playing games were coming down the pipeline. All you had to do was pick up a copy of The Space Gamer, Different Worlds, White Dwarf, The Dragon, or one of a host of magazines dedicated to the role playing game hobby. Some of those magazines predate me as a gamer, but they all covered new game offerings during a portion of their run.

Prior to the existence of these magazines, it was harder to find out about new games. You had to rely on word of mouth and the distribution chain providing advertisements to your local game store. One of the figures who made it easier back in the day, according to Shannon Appelcline's excellent Designers and Dragons, was Lou Zocchi who began including advertisements for games in his own published games. This service led to him becoming one of the first distributors in the hobby. Other than Zocchi though, it was rough going in the early days, but as the industry grew so too did those magazines.

In the early days of the intarwebs, there was a wonderful GO TO location for gaming news called gamingreport.com. It had everything you wanted: press releases of upcoming games, industry insiders leaking the games they were developing, and articles by Kenneth Hite on obscure games. It was a one stop shop for all you needed to know. Sadly, it disappeared for a variety of reasons and since that time we have returned to a digital form of the pre-magazine era in many ways. We are largely reliant on word of mouth and solicitations from distributors to game stores. It seems that we are reliant more and more on our communities for information, much as earlier gamers were reliant on 'zines from their communities.

I know what you might be thinking, "but this is the internet era and there is information EVERYWHERE!" That's exactly the problem. There is information and product solicitation scattered everywhere, almost at random. There are Kickstarter RPGs, there are indie press rpgs that sell at Indie Press Revolution but not on Kickstarter, there are strong independent publishers like Evil Hat Productions who have a core fanbase that keeps up to date with their newsletters, there is io9, Nerdist, and ICV2, but as good as these sites are they are too much shaped by their editorial preferences to cover a wide portion of the industry in a useful way to consumers. ICV2 is more a service for retailers than fans, so its stories tend to have underlying assumptions about knowledge of solicitations.

The fact is that I find out more about upcoming RPGs from the independent blogs I read and my Twitter and Facebook feeds than I do from any other source. There are too many distribution methods Kickstarter, Self-Publish, PDF only (where I find out by just looking at what's new at RPGNow/DriveThruRPG more than from an informative source), traditional hobby store, large retail exclusives, the list goes on and on. There is more information than ever, but it isn't centralized and that makes it challenging for a "broad interest" gamer like me. Were I only interested in games of a particular niche, then my searches and sites would be limited, but my interests range from Apocalypse World to The Zorcerer of Zo, okay bad example because those are both indies...how about...D&D to Apocalypse World to Zombicide to Karthun to the Protocol Series to Swords & Wizardry to Rotten Capes to Hero Games to GURPS? I missed the last Rotten Capes Kickstarter because it appears that I was the only of my friends who knew about it.

We need a service/place to cut through all the noise and get to the signal. We need a new GamingReport.com or a great generalist magazine like Different Worlds or The Space Gamer at their prime, but I don't see one coming unless someone launches a Patreon for one.

Psst...I'm one of the Essayists in the Official Companion to the Munchkin Card Game

I've been vaguebooking about this for some time, but I finally get to announce that I am one of the authors in an upcoming Munchkin product. That's right, I've been given the chance to write an essay on what makes Munchkin such a great game and have been given the honor to work with James Lowder and to receive positive feedback from Steve Jackson himself.

Talk about an achievement unlocked. Working on this project was a dream come true and I cannot wait for you to read the essays that my fellow authors and I have put together for you. There are a number of great writers on the project, as you can see from the Table of Contents:

• Foreword: “Why I Love to Dance in Pants Macabre” by Ed Greenwood
• Introduction: “The Space Between the Cards” by James Lowder
• “Munchkin by the Numbers” by Steve Jackson
• “To Backstab or Not to Backstab: Game Theory and the Munchkin Dilemma” by Andrew Zimmerman Jones
• “Madness in 168 Easy Steps” by Andrew Hackard
• “Monty Haul and His Friends at Play” by David M. Ewalt
• “Monster Grievances” by Jennifer Steen
• “Screw You, Pretty Balloons: The Comedy of Munchkin” by Joseph Scrimshaw
• “On with the Show: Confessions of a Munchkin Demo Pro” by Randy Scheunemann
• “Munchkin as Monomyth” by Jaym Gates
• “From Candy Land to Munchkin: The Evolution of a Young Gamer” by Dave Banks
• “The Emperor of Fun: An Interview with Phil Reed” by Matt Forbeck
• “How Playing Munchkin Made Me a Better Gamer” by Christian Lindke
• “Flirting 101: Throwing the Dice in Munchkin and in Love” by Bonnie Burton
• “The Charity Rule” by Colm Lundberg
• “Munchkin: Hollywood” by Liam McIntyre
• “My Favorite Munchkin” by John Kovalic

 The book will be available for purchase on February 23rd, but you might want to pre-order it from Amazon now.

Classic Horror RPG CHILL Rises from the Dead with New Kickstarter

Before I get into the details of what my ideal new edition of the CHILL role playing game is, I'd like to take a moment to thank Matthew McFarland and Michelle Lyons-McFarland for taking the time to acquire the license to this classic game and put together what looks to be a very solid horror role playing game. 

If you are a fan of horror role playing games and want to help small press publishers succeed, then you should back the brand new Chill 3rd Edition Kickstarter. I'm a backer and I will be blogging about the game's playtest rules very soon.
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Now that I've cleared the air and made it clear that I am excited about the game that Matthew and Michelle are putting together, I'm going to gripe. That's what we obsessives do when things aren't perfect, we gripe. But I'm not going to gripe in an non-constructive manner. This isn't about what I think Matthew and Michelle are doing wrong, it's about what I wish they would ALSO do.

If you were to ask me what my favorite genres of film are, I would without hesitation tell you that they are romantic comedies and horror movies. You are probably wondering what When Harry Met Sally and Hostel have in common that I would rank the genres of these two films so highly. I would tell you that I don't think Hostel is a "horror" movie. Being pedantic, I'd try to convince you that it was splatterpunk or back track and change the word horror to weird. When it comes to weird and fantastic tales, my heart has two great loves Ray Harryhausen and Hammer Studios. It is the horror of the kind that Hammer Studios made, and now makes again, that I love. Give me stuffy Victorian/Edwardian era investigators encountering terrors from the unknown with a skepticism that is fueled by emerging scientific discoveries, and you have warmed my heart to know end. If you add to that a romantic element - which can either be of the courtship or familial variety - and I'm all in. Films like Horror of Dracula, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, and The Woman in Black are rich in mood and capture the imagination and are perfect for adaptation to role playing. The original Chill role playing game attempted to emulate this kind of storytelling, and I loved it because of it.

The rules for the original Chill role playing game were easy to learn and perfectly designed for new gamers. It was the combination of ease of play and Hammer Horror that I believe led to Rick Swan's negative review in The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games. Other publications like Space Gamer and Different Worlds gave the game much higher praise - I'll share those reviews in a future blog post - and seemed to understand that Chill was the introductory game in a series of games that became increasingly complex as their genre required. The Goblinoid Games blog has a great description of the original Pacesetter system and they are the publisher of some of the other Pacesetter System games. Goblinoid Games has also designed their own horror game inspired by the horror movies of the 80s which I blogged about at Blackgate Magazine.

When I read the description for the new edition of Chill, it was immediately clear that the game would not be my idealized version of the game. The description referenced the Mayfair edition of the game, a game that tried to be "edgier" in order to compete with Call of Cthulhu. I've also seen Matthew's Facebook discussion of the game and he mentions how his version will treat mental illness. I'll be the first to admit that Call of Cthulhu doesn't do a good job representing actual mental illness, but neither does the fiction it is emulating. Lovecraft's fiction is about a descent into a particular kind of madness as understood at a particular time. Having said that, my idealized version of Chill would have no rules for insanity. It would only have rules for fear and shock. Hammer stories aren't about protagonists who are slowly driven insane as their world view is shattered. Instead, they are about the success and failure of the rational to engage with the supernatural.

The new Chill's artwork hints that it is inspired by many of the horror films currently on the market, with no small touch of American Horror Story. This is not a bad thing. In fact, if one ignores the shifting of time period that's pretty close to the Hammer tone...and films like Mama have demonstrated that the classic Ghost Story has legs. That's my longish way of saying that I'd like Matthew and Michelle to release a Victorian/Hammer supplement for Chill and that I hope their game system is quick easy and intuitive. My first read through the quick start rules gives me reason to believe at least half of that will happen...the rules part.

Cancelling AD&D? RPG Rumors Circa 1986 -- Different Worlds #44

I'm a big fan of Tadashi Ehara's now defunct gaming magazine DIFFERENT WORLDS. Over its tenure, the magazine was published by a couple of companies including Chaosium and Sleuth Publications. According to a pre-publication solicitation letter (available here), the magazine was originally slated to be entitled DM. The change was likely due to concerns over TSR's trademark of DM/Dungeon Master. Regardless of the reason for the change in title, I think that DIFFERENT WORLDS better suited the content of the magazine than DM ever would have. The magazine was a gem. Like Steve Jackson Games' magazine SPACE GAMER, Ehara's magazine covered the entire roleplaying game hobby. As I've written before, issue #23 of the magazine is maybe one of the most important magazines ever written about the origins of Superhero Roleplaying games. For those who want to understand the history of RPGs, DIFFERENT WORLDS, SPACE GAMER, and ALARUMS & EXCURSIONS are three of the most valuable resources that the aspiring historian can find. They really help to cut through a lot of the community gossip about a transitional era in the hobby.

Speaking of Gossip, DIFFERENT WORLDS featured an excellent gossip column written by the pseudonymous Gigi D'arn (clearly a Gary Gygax/David Arneson reference). I've written speculation about the identity of this columnist before, and I'm still pretty sure that she was a real person and that the Chaosium staff added to her actual letters. There are just too many little tidbits of SoCal culture, which was booming at the time as an RPG hub, for me to believe otherwise. The column was filled with a great deal of speculation, some true, some pure fiction, and all fun to read.

There are a couple of pieces of gossip/rumors in issue 44 that stand out and need attention. In fact, they are rumors that I'd like to hear more from the gaming community at large about, and I'll be asking around to see if there is any merit to them.

First and foremost - actually quite shocking - really is a claim about ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. According to Gigi, "Rumour thinks TSR is unhappy with the ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game line and is considering dropping it. GARY GYGAX meanwhile is starting his own company, Infinity Games, in New Jersey. Will he take the license with him?"

I wonder if this is true. 1985 saw the publication of UNEARTHED ARCANA and ORIENTAL ADVENTURES for the AD&D game, but the mid-80s was also the era of the publication of the Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortals rules for D&D. It was a time when the D&D brand was divided among two sub-brands and a time when there was great potential that one brand was cannibalizing the other. From my experience, the D&D brand was putting out a lot of great material at this time. According to GROGNARDIA 1986 saw the release of a number of BECMI products and 1987 saw the production of the first Gazetteer products for the D&D brand - some of the best products ever released for D&D.

If I were to guess, I'd say the rumor was true and that core rule book sales for AD&D had dropped. I would argue that this is why we saw a 2nd edition of AD&D released in 1989. An edition that may not have happened at all if not for the success of the Forgotten Realms Setting. My thought is that the Forgotten Realms setting, written for AD&D, was so successful that management decided to do a new edition of the game for increased sales. I'd like to know if this is correct or not though.

The second interesting piece of gossip/rumors is that J.D. Webster, the creator of the Finieous Fingers cartoon strip, was a carrier fighter pilot. This is apparently true.

Tim Kask: A Tale of Two Magazines

 

Back in July of 1981 Tim Kask launched the first issue of ADVENTURE GAMING magazine. It was a magazine dedicated to the entire gaming hobby. The magazine launched just as two of the largest "Industry Magazines" (DRAGON and WHITE DWARF) were beginning their slow migration from magazines that covered the entire hobby and into house magazines that covered primarily the products offered by the company publishing the magazine. Tim Kask had been the editor of DRAGON for the first 34 issues of the magazine, so if anyone was qualified to launch a new magazine for the growing hobby he was certainly on that list. Unlike the two previously mentioned magazines, and magazines like Space Gamer, Tim's new venture wouldn't limit what kinds of games it covered. To quote Tim from his "Off the Wall" editorial:

Do you really plan to cover it all? You betcha, Buffalo Bob! The lines that used to separate the types of gamers are becoming more blurred. The amount of crossover interest and participation has never been greater. There can be no disputing the fantasy phenomenon erased a number of those lines, as well as gave the industry an incredible boost in interest in sales. Fantasy remains the dominant force in the industry today, but all areas are showing increased interest and sales. We plan to accurately reflect the hobby whatever direction it may take.

 The words that Tim wrote in 1981 were true, but they weren't sufficiently true for him to launch a successful magazine that lasted years. ADVENTURE GAMING published only 13 issues. As a fan of the hobby as a whole, I find this to be a great loss. Magazines are one of the best ways for modern fans to learn the history of the hobby. They are the primary way we can cut through the "common knowledge" and assumptions about the history of the hobby we so often encounter in conversations across fandom. If you read the article in FIRE & MOVEMENT magazine about the TSR/SPI merger you get quite a different picture than what you hear from former SPI employees. That merger doesn't look to be a clean merger from either side, and one wonders if TSR's attempt to acquire IP while avoiding debt obligations that would have been demanded during bankruptcy wasn't poorly communicated. It certainly created bad blood, and TSR may have been being too "creative" for their own good. Add to that the state of nature-esque competitiveness of that growing market, and modern gaming historians are poorer for the fact that magazines like ADVENTURE GAMING, SPACE GAMER, and DIFFERENT WORLDS didn't do better outside their regional spheres of influence.

Let's just have a look at what ADVENTURE GAMING #1 had to offer:

1. Scepter & Starship -- A Traveller Variant article. Note that Traveller recently had a very successful Kickstarter over 20 years after this issues publication.
2. Starting Over: Some Points to Consider Concerning New FRPG Campaigns -- A good how to start a campaign article.
3. The Joys of Napoleonic Wargaming -- Here you begin to see the breadth of the magazine's coverage.
4. Reflections -- A "Gamer POV" article about the hobby.
5. The Adventures of space Trader Vic -- One of the obligatory cartoons.
6. Campanile -- A column by Kathleen Pettigrew that was a gamer opinion column.
7. CIVILIZATION: A Game Review -- What it says.
8. What Makes a Player Good? A DM's View -- An article that looks at a topic that is often under evaluated, that of what players can do to make a better game experience.
9. Heroic Combat in DIVINE RIGHT -- A cool variant rules article by one of the designers of the game.
10. Away to the Wars! -- A variant for the KNIGHTS OF CAMELOT game.
11. Cangames 81 and Canadian Gaming by John Hill -- Yes, that John Hill of SQUAD LEADER fame.
12. NPCs are People Too! -- An article on how to give more personality to NPCs.
13. On Being a Gamemaster -- A GM advice column.
14. Any News of the Questing Beast? -- An overview of KNIGHTS OF CAMELOT
15. Whither Boardgames -- A column dedicated to the discussion of boardgaming and about how RPGs are hurting boardgame sales and how boardgaming still has value.

It's a pretty interesting lineup and one that would be fun to see in a modern publication. Speaking of modern publications, Tim Kask and his merry band of adventurers are at it again. Late last year/early this year saw the launch of GYGAX Magazine, a quarterly "adventure gaming" magazine. A magazine with a distinctly familiar mission:

We've go material that reaches back to some of the earliest role-playing games, and some of the absolutely newest. Virtual tabletops, fantasy miniatures rules for toddlers, complicated mathematical answers to simple questions, even a city in a swamp...we've got it all here. If there's one question that's come up more than any other while we were making this magazine, it's been "what are you going to write about?" From here on out, we would like to direct a similar question at our readers. What would you like to read? Drop us a line and let us know. With your help, we want to see tabletop gaming thrive and expand.

 While the wording is more "marketing" oriented than the older editorial, the message can be said to be very similar to the older quote, "We plan to accurately reflect the hobby whatever direction it may take." The first issue of GYGAX features the following:

1. The Cosmology of Role-Playing Games -- An incomplete but interesting look at the role-playing game hobby as a cosmology. It has a lot of important games, but it misses a few games I would consider highly influential. Not to mention that it just ignores 4e completely.
2. Still Playing After All These Years -- An editorial by Kask. A very good one.
3. Leomunds Secure Shelter -- An article by Lenard Lakofka, of Bone Hill fame, that looks at the math of AD&D.
4. The Ecology of the BANSHEE -- With the demise of Kobold Quarterly, it's nice to see an ecology article.
5. Bridging Generations -- An article by Luke Gygax discussing the continuation of the hobby.
6. Gaming with a Virtual Tabletop -- What it says.
7. Keeping Magic Magical -- An article by Dennis Sustare the designer of SWORDBEARER a game that very much kept magic magical.
8. Playing It the Science Ficiton Way -- A discussion of METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA and its origins.
9. DMing for Your Toddler -- Cory Doctorow's less useful version of Highmoon Games RPG KIDS. Do yourself a favor and buy RPG Kids.
10. Greate Power for ICONS -- Steve Kenson article for the supers RPG.
11. The Future of Tabletop Gaming  by Ethan Gilsdorf -- The second "celebrity" article. It's a good article, but I'm wondering if Shannon Applecline couldn't have done a better job.
12. The Gygax Family Storyteller -- What you might imagine, in the best possible way.
13. Talents OFF the Front Line -- An article for GODLIKE by Dennis Detwiller.
14. D&D past, now, and Next by Michael Tresca -- A good article that none the less falsely states that 4e is the "first edition to explicitly require an objective environment." No, that would be 3e and both Line of Sight rules and Flanking rules.
15. Gnatdamp -- A city in a swamp. Good article.
16. The Kobold's Cavern -- Wolfgang Baur!
17. Magical Miscellany -- Support for Green Ronin's AGE.
18. An AGE of Great Inventions -- More support for Green Ronin's AGE, which is a wondrous thing.
19. Scaling Combat Feats for PATHFINDER -- A good article by someone who wants to address the "feat taxes" of 3.x and PATHFINDER. Insert my snarky remark about how PATHFINDER is already amped up, so why does it need to be turned up to 11. Answer with "because it's a game and there is no wrong way to play" response.
20. Marvin the Mage -- Obligatory Cartoon.
21. What's New -- Obligatory Cartoon.
22. Order of the Stick -- Obligatory Cartoon.

As you can see, Tim is being more conservative in the new venture. There are no mentions of Napoleonic games here and the focus is on fantasy. The magazine still covers a wide swath of the hobby though. It has yet to be seen if there is a market for this publication. I'm certainly the target audience, and I've already got a one year subscription to print and digital, but who else will be is the vital question.

Will GYGAX be the next ADVENTURE GAMING or will it be the first of a new breed of hobby based magazines? Only time will tell. It wasn't for lack of quality that ADVENTURE GAMING failed.

1.  

[Vintage RPGs] CHAMPIONS 1st Edition -- A Blast from the Past

The CHAMPIONS super hero role playing game is one of the best super hero role playing games ever designed, and the game to which all super hero rpgs are compared.  CHAMPIONS wasn't the first role playing game in the super hero genre, that honor goes to the game SUPERHERO 2044 which I discussed in an earlier blog post.  CHAMPIONS even builds upon some of the ideas in SUPERHERO 2044.  CHAMPIONS used the vague point based character generation system of SUPERHERO 2044 -- combined with house rules by Wayne Shaw -- as a jumping off point for a new detailed and easy to understand point based system.  CHAMPIONS was also likely influenced by the melee combat system in SUPERHERO 2044 in the use of the 3d6 bell curve to determine "to-hit" rolls in combat.

While CHAMPIONS wasn't the first super hero rpg, it was the first that presented a coherent system by which a player could design the superheroes they read about in comic books.  The first edition of VILLAINS & VIGILANTES, which predates CHAMPIONS, did a good job of emulating many aspects of comic book action but the ability to model a character in character design wasn't one of them.  CHAMPIONS was released at the Origins convention in the summer of 1981, and it immediately captured the interest of Aaron Allston of Steve Jackson Games.  Allston gave CHAMPIONS a positive review in issue #43 of the Space Gamer magazine, wrote many CHAMPIONS articles for that publication, and became one of the major contributors to the early days of CHAMPIONS lore.

Reading through the first edition of the game, as I have been doing the past week, can have that kind of effect upon a person.  The writing is clear -- if uneven in places -- and the rules mechanics inspire a desire to play around in the sandbox provided by the rules.  George MacDonald and Steve Peterson did more than create a great role playing game when they created CHAMPIONS, they created a great character generation game as well.  Hours can be taken up just playing around with character concepts and seeing how they look in the CHAMPIONS system. 

There are sites galore about CHAMPIONS and many reviews about how great the game is, and it truly is, so the remainder of the post won't be either of these.  Rather, I would like to point out some interesting tidbits about the first edition of the game.  Most of these will be critical in nature, but not all.  Before going further I will say that though CHAMPIONS is now in its 6th edition and is a very different game today in some ways, the 1st edition of the game is highly playable and well worth exploring.

• One of the first things that struck me reading the book was how obviously playtested the character design system was.  This is best illustrated in the section under basic characteristics.  In CHAMPIONS there are primary and secondary characteristics.  The primary characteristics include things like Strength and Dexterity.  The secondary statistics are all based on fractions of the primary statistics and represent things like the ability to resist damage.  Where the playtesting shows here is in how players may buy down all of their primary statistics, but only one of their secondary statistics.  A quick analysis of the secondary statistics demonstrates that if this were not the case a buy strength then buy down all the secondary stats related to strength infinite loop would occur.  
• It's striking how few skills there are in 1st edition CHAMPIONS.  There are 14 in total, and some of them are thinks like Luck and Lack of Weakness.  There are no "profession" skills in 1st edition.  To be honest, I kind of like the lack of profession skills.  Professions in superhero adventures seem more flavor than something one should have to pay points for, but this is something that will change in future editions.  
• There are a lot of powers in CHAMPIONS, but the examples are filled with phrases like "a character" or "a villain" instead of an evocative hero/villain name.  It would have been more engaging for the folks at Hero Games to create some Iconic characters that are used throughout the book as examples of each power.  The game does include 3 examples of character generation (Crusader, Ogre, and Starburst), but these characters aren't mentioned in the Powers section.  An example using Starburst in the Energy Blast power would have been nice.
• The art inside the book is less than ideal.  Mark "the hack" Williams has been the target of some criticism for his illustrations, but his work is the best of what is offered in the 1st edition book.  It is clear why they decided to use his work in the 2nd edition of the game.  Williams art is evocative and fun -- if not perfect -- while the work Vic Dal Chele and Diana Navarro is more amateurish.
• The game provides three examples of character generation, but the designs given are less than point efficient and one outclasses the others.  The three sample characters are built on 200 points.  Crusader can barely hurt Ogre if he decides to punch him (his punch is only 6 dice), and his Dex is bought at one point below where he would receive a rounding benefit.  Ogre has a Physical Defense of 23.  This is the amount of damage he subtracts from each physical attack that hits and it is very high.  Assuming an average of 3.5 points of damage per die, Ogre can resist an average of 6.5 dice of damage per attack.  Yes, that's an average but the most damage 6 dice could do to him would be 13.  That would be fine, except Crusader has that 6d6 punch, and Starburst...oh, Starburst.  All of Starburst's major powers are in a multipower which means that as he uses one power he can use less of the other powers in the multipower.  The most damage he can do is 8d6, but only if he isn't flying and doesn't have his forcefield up.  Not efficient at all.  One might hope that character examples demonstrate the appropriate ranges of damage and defense, these don't quite achieve that goal.
• The combat example is good, if implausible.  Crusader and Starburst defeating Ogre?  Sure.
• The supervillain stats at the end of the book -- there are stats for 8 villains and 2 agents -- lack any accompanying art.  The only exception is Shrinker.  
• Speaking of artwork and iconics.  Take that cover.

• Who are these people?!  I want to know.  The only one who is mentioned in the book is Gargoyle.  It's pretty clear which character he is, but I only know his name because of a copyright notice.  Who are the other characters?  Is that "Flare"?  Someone once told me the villain's name was Holocaust, but that could just be a Bay Area rumor.  If you know, please let me know.  I'd love to see the stats for that guy punching "Holocaust" with his energy fist.

CHAMPIONS is a great game, and the first edition is a joy.  If you can, try to hunt down a copy and play some old school super hero rpg.

[Gaming Library] Aaron Allston's STRIKE FORCE: A Must Own GM Resource

At the Origins convention in 1981 Hero Games released what would become one of the best selling super hero role playing games of all time, a game that is still around and which has served as the IP behind a  computer MMORPG.  That game is CHAMPIONSand it is one of the great games that the hobby has produced. 

CHAMPIONS has a large and active fan base, though it does seem to have dwindled a little between the 5th and 6th edition of the rules.  That dwindling may soon find itself reversed with the recent release of CHAMPIONS: LIVE ACTION and upcoming release of CHAMPIONS COMPLETE.  I've been of the opinion the past couple of editions of CHAMPIONS and the HERO rules have become a little bloated, and it seems that the designers behind CHAMPIONS COMPLETE agree as their upcoming rulebook is only 240 pages in total.  While much can be, and has been, written about the CHAMPIONS game, there is one supplement for the game that transcends the game itself and is one of the best "how to run a campaign" supplements ever produced...for any game system.

When CHAMPIONS was released in 1981, Aaron Allston worked for The Space Gamer magazine which was then a publication of Steve Jackson Games.  Steve Jackson returned from the Origins convention with news of the game and asked Aaron to review the game for the magazine.  Aaron did so and his positive review appears in issue 43 of The Space Gamer.  This article was quickly followed by a "proto-Strike Force" article entitled "Look Up in the sky..." in issue 48. 

In the article in issue 48, Allston describes how he came to be a CHAMPIONS player and game master -- he would later become one of its premiere contributors.

The superhero campaign of CHAMPIONS which I run, which is successful enough that it's been thrown out of TSG playtest sessions (it was crowding out all the other games), began as an irritation. Steve Jackson came back from Origins with the news that some new company in California had nabbed the name CHAMPIONS; I'd hoped to use CHAMPIONS on a personal game project.  I could review the Hero Games offering if I wished.  Wonderful.

 Looking over the rulebook, though, I was impressed.  The game appeared clear and coherent after a single read-through and seemed to faithfully simulated the four-color stuff of comic books.  Extensive solo playtesting ensured almost immediately, with the heroic Lightbearers waging a running war with the criminal mastermind Overlord.

In the end, Overlord's munitions-running scheme was wrecked; the Lightbearers disbanded, with one member dead and two others unwillingly allied with the villain; and I had chosen to run CHAMPIONS on a regular basis.

 There is a good deal more to the article in which Allston shares with potential players and game masters some guidelines and some pratfalls that might happen as one plays a super hero campaign.  How does one exactly acquire a super hero secret headquarters anyway?  One can see the foundations for the book STRIKE FORCE in the article, and Allston provides a nice glimpse into what can contribute to the running of a successful game.  As good as the article is, it pales in comparison to the CHAMPIONS sourcebook that Allston wrote based upon that early -- initially merely a playtest -- campaign.

Aaron Allston's STRIKE FORCE is one of the better campaign sourcebooks ever written.  It has a very simple arrangement.  It begins with a section on campaign use.  This section is not a how to plot an adventure section, as by 3rd edition CHAMPIONS had a pretty good chapter on that, rather it was advice for dealing with very specific problems.  This chapter covers the following:

• The "Character Story" -- discusses how to help players develop the character stories that they dreamed up when they initially created the character.
• Simulating the Comics -- discussed how to keep the players behaving in a four-color fashion.
• The New Player
• Aging the Hunteds -- How to make "Hunted" behave like real world constant interactions rather than as a mere random roll done each week.
• Listening to Your Players
• Ground Rules
• Translation Follies
• Types of CHAMPIONS Players -- The Builder, The Buddy, The Combat Monster, The Genre Fiend, The Copier, The Mad Slasher, The Mad Thinker, The Plumber, The Pro from Dover, The Romantic, The Rules Rapist, The Showoff, and The Tragedian.
• Character Conception Checklist
• How to Ruin Your Campaign

If Allston had written no other sections than the "types of players" and "how to ruin your campaign" sections of the sourcebook, this would be an invaluable resource.  Allston's breakdown of player types builds upon some of the discussions which had been going on in Different Worlds magazine and other places in the game-verse, but his clear description of the varied motivations of players is spot on and extremely useful.  Between STRIKE FORCE and Robin Law's book on Game Mastering Rules, you have almost everything you need to run any game successfully...if you follow the advice that is.

In addition to the overview on Campaign advice -- generic campaign advice -- Allston then continues providing an invaluable tool by giving us a look into his own campaign in the subsequent chapters of the book.  We are given an "Abbreviated History" of the STRIKE FORCE campaign, which can be used as an example or as an outline for one's own campaign.  He provides the full roll call of the STRIKE FORCE and SHADOW WARRIORS teams as well as Independent heroes and a number of Villains from the campaign.  This is followed by a detailed history of the campaign -- both his real world work and the in game history.  In the history, Allston shares some of the storytelling challenges he faced and how he overcame them in play.

If you can find a copy of the book, I highly recommend it.

[Gaming] Dungeon Crawl Classics Play Session Report

I was one of the earlier gamers to preorder the Dungeon Crawl Classics roleplaying game.  The entire premise of a role playing game that captured the feel of Appendix N source material without being a retro clone of older rules sets appealed to me.  When my copies -- one regular and one limited -- arrived, I immediately set about the task of reading the rules.  They were clear and captured the feel of the game play I enjoyed as a younger gamer. 

While it is true that DCC captures the feel of games of past generations, it is also true that they are quite innovative.  The game's use of a dice chain to represent the affects of bonuses and penalties is fun in theory and in practice.  It's spell system for Wizards and Clerics, as well as its "Mighty Deeds" system for Fighters, are exciting.  For the first time in a d20 based RPG there is a solid spell duel system that manages to incorporate the normal magic rules while feeling like the magic of fiction.  The ability to invoke patrons, and the mercurial nature of spells add a nice spice to the overall system.  I think that this is a very strong game, and want to play it more and more...

I was very excited to play and began the campaign to convince my players to give the game a try.   This last weekend, I finally got that opportunity.  The only thing missing was a "thematic" ally in keeping the game's tone on target...ah Nick...how we needed you.

What follows in this blog post isn't a glowing example of joy, instead it's a demonstration of how a well written game can lead to a less than fun time.  This is even when the players knew pretty well what to expect. 

I told my regular players to be prepared for a possible TPK, and that they shouldn't get attached to their characters.  I also told them that they would have to make 4 characters each due to the high lethality of the adventure. Four of the players rolled their characters up in person, and one used the online character generator.  It was an interesting band of characters  made up of farmers, jewelers, glovemakers, and coopers.  Most of them were human, but there were a couple of Dwarves and a Halfling.  On the "attribute" side, and interesting thing happened.  Every player had one character who was significantly above average.  Not with multiple "18s," but with a couple of 16s an no bad attributes.  I could tell right away that the players had begun to build an attachment to their more competent characters.  One player went so far as to call his extraordinary cooper Lord "Spivak" and created a back story that the other 3 characters were accompanying this self-important barrel and chest maker on an adventure.

As an aside, Spivak wasn't his name.  I have forgotten the specific name at the time of this writing, but it should be noted that the player had already become attached to the character and that attachment was only set to grow.

At the beginning of the adventure, I warned the players that this would be a lethal adventure and that their characters would likely die.  They each looked at their characters and began to sort them out as fodder and potential hero in their mind.  Fodder would open doors and heroes would be cautious in the hopes of becoming 1st level characters -- who have a significantly higher chance to stay alive than these beginning characters.

The party heard of a mystic gate that opened between the stones of a neolithic structure when the stars were right...and the stars were right tonight.  They journeyed to the top of a hill that contained the structure in question, only to see the mysterious constellation above them and a mystic gate between worlds before them.

The players were quite impressive in their caution and use of reason and restraint.  They solved the riddle of the constellation, and lost no party members trying to enter the complex.  The next room went as they planned.  They had fodder risk the danger, and the heroes followed behind.  They also came up with and interesting solution to the third room's dangerous trap.  Through an ingenious application of levers, they were able to not only neutralize the trap but to almost turn it into a weapon against their foes.

This is where the fun begins, and where some of the characters began to shine.   You see, the party behaved in a highly efficient tactical manner and Lord Spivak's crowbar seemed to be the weapon that kept dealing the final blow.  He was a wonder to behold, as he split the skull of a giant demonic serpent.  Also a wonder to behold was the Halfling Glovemaker who used all of his small but "unhuman" strength to hold a door closed long enough to create a plan to deal with the dangers behind the door.

After three major combats, a couple of defeated traps, the now smaller party encountered what would be their last fight.  Their foes weren't particularly impressive.  In fact, even with the low hit points starting characters begin with it was likely that a blow from one of these foes would be non-lethal.  When one struck Lord Spivak, I wasn't too worried.  He had a good chance of survival.  Sadly, he was struck down.  I could see the disappointment in the player.  This was his noble character, far better than his surviving character Friar Sloth (actual name) a character with stats suited to becoming a Cleric.  It was almost as upsetting for me as it was for the player.  The heroism of the character, and his great story were darkened by one quick roll of the die.  It was a truly chaotic situation, and a disappointing one for the player.

This was something that I hadn't prepared the group for.  I had prepared them to have a group of characters who were all extremely incompetent.  I hadn't prepared them for the whimsical and almost meaningless loss of a valiant one.  I don't know that my group will want to return to the world of DCC, though I certainly do.  The death of Lord Spivak is one of the best gaming moments I can remember for some time -- as was the amazing bravery of the "unhumanly" strong Halfling Glovemaker.  We even started having quick in jokes, like how all Jewelers start with a 20gp gem we like to call Leather Armor.

While this was a problem with my group, it isn't something that the designers of the game didn't predict.  They have even provided advice for groups to help players get in the mindset.  I'd prepared the group for some character loss, but I couldn't prepare them for the loss of characters who had been so awesome in the past 3 encounters.  In addition to the potential for lethality, I should have warned them to Embrace the Chaos.

Embrace the Chaos
The DCC RPG is unpredictable. Really unpredictable. One moment, the PCs are losing a battle against a Rat God and thousands of his furry minions, and the next, the dwarf has won a strength check against the god, ripped free his bejeweled scepter of death and is hammering that Rat God back through time and space to whatever pit that spawned him.

And the opposite happens as well: When that glorious natural 1 rolls up, the entire table howls with agony, and you get the chance to add another notch in your judge-screen.

It isn’t pretty. It isn’t predictable. But it is a fundamental feature of the game. No battle is truly lost until the last PC gives up, and death is never more than a heartbeat away. With judicious use of Luck, spellburn and piety, the PCs can turn the odds in their favors. But stare too long into the abyss, and at some point the abyss will look back.

Image by Jody Lindke

[Gaming History] Ace of Aces Seeks a Triumphant Return

I have always had warm feelings for Rick Loomis' game company Flying Buffalo.  When I was a young gamer whose pool of friends included few other rpg/wargame players, I spent many an enjoyable hour playing the solo adventures for Tunnels and Trolls that Flying Buffalo published.  I watched as their product lines improved in quality with the addition of the Blade subdivision and its line of well designed and attractive supplements.  I have always believed that a part of this improvement should be credited to Dave Arneson who may have provided some underwriting for this project, as he did many others after his settlement with TSR.  At a minimum Arneson wrote one of the better supplements for their Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes games.

To me Flying Buffalo is the Oakland A's of the Adventure Gaming hobby.  Loomis has been innovative in many of his ideas, and has used his vision to purchase the rights to some excellent games, but he has never had the budget to bring his vision to full light.  After all, Flying Buffalo were at the forefront of the Play By Mail hobby (essentially creating the genre post-Diplomacy), the rpg hobby itself (with the release of Tunnels and Trolls), the creation of the solo game book hobby, and their purchase of the rights to publish the innovative flip book games like Ace of Aces designed by Alfred Leonardi and published by Nova Games.

Nova Games itself has heavily influenced hobby gaming.  In addition to the excellent Ace of Aces game, and the Lost Worlds combat book spin offs, Nova was responsible for the first edition of the now classic Axis & Allies game.  The Nova edition of Axis and Allies received a less than sterling review in Fire and Movement issue 27, which stated that the game would be better as a beer & pretzels game by a publisher like Milton Bradley.  That review couldn't have been more prescient, as by 1984 Axis & Allies became one of the "big" three Milton Bradley "Gamemaster" series board games.  The "Gamemaster" series of games essentially created what we now refer to as the "Ameritrash" game.  These are highly thematic games that have a complexity that falls somewhere in the middle of Risk and the easier "chit and token" games of a publisher like Avalon Hill or SPI.  When the Mildotn Bradly version came out, the reviews were quite different than the early F&M review.  To quote Warren Spector in The Space Gamer 72, "WOW! Make that double WOW! ...If any adventure/wargame company had released Axis & Allies it would probably sell for three times what it costs from Milton Bradley.  As it is, it can be yours for a measly 15 bucks if you shop around. So what are you waiting for?"

Like Axis & Allies, the Ace of Aces game seeks to provide game play that satisfies what was a new kind of gamer, and a demographic that makes up a large number of gamers today, the gamer who wants an easy to play game that is deep and has high replay value.  Where Axis provides game play at the most abstract of levels and covers all of WWII on one map, Ace of Aces provides game play at the most granular level.  It is a battle of one German biplane against one British biplane.  It is Rickenbacker versus Richtofen, Snoopy versus the Red Baron -- and it plays in about 15 minutes. When Nick Schuessler, Steve Jackson Games' resident war game guru in the 80s, reviewed the game he wrote, "All of the praise for this unique gaming system has been well deserved.  Simply put, AofA is the most innovative thing to happen to the hobby since Tactics II."  Given that Tactics II effectively created the war board game hobby, that is high praise indeed.


It is a magnificent game, that is sadly out of print and that would make a great iPad/iPhone app.

Do you hear that Rick?  This game is perfect for the iPad/iPhone without any alteration.  None.  Make it now.

As I mentioned, the game is out of print, but it doesn't have to be that way.  Rick Loomis is attempting to print a new edition of the game through a Kickstarter that is pretty close to meeting its funding goal.  The KS doesn't have a video attached to it, but the game's creator Alfred Leonardi has released a tutorial video.  As you can see by watching the video, it is more of a play through video than a tutorial.  But it does provide an excellent primer for how quickly the game plays.  In the video, two total neophytes play a full game in under 10 minutes.

Unlike other recent videos by more tech savvy companies, this tutorial is a bit crude.  But it does have it's charm.  The Ace of Aces game was also given a stellar review and recommendation in the most recent issue of Battles Magazine (number 8).  Would that the Flying Buffalo Kickstarter had the graphic design of that magazine, the game would certainly already be funded.  

Go! Now! Back this project!  Let's play an Ace of Aces tournament at Gen Con 2013. 

Role Playing Games and Candyland

I've had many conversations with friends where I have posited that the best introductory role playing games for younger players -- ages 5 to 9 -- are The Pokemon Jr. Adventure Game by Bill Slavicsek and Stan!, A Faery's Tale by Patrick Sweeney, Sandy Antunes, Christina Stiles, Colin Chapman, and Robin D. Laws, and RPG Kids by Enrique Bertran aka NewbieDM.  Each of these games comes at introducing RPGs to younger players and their parents from a different perspective, and each is a wonderful addition to any gamer's collection.  These games aren't merely good introductory games, they are also fun games for gamers of any age.

Over the past year, I have added another game to this list and the game might surprise some hobby gamers.  The game is the much maligned Candy Land by Hasbro.  Most hobby gamers look at Candy Land as a boring exercise in which the players have no influence over the flow of play, and as a game completely devoid of any kind of play strategy.  Anyone who has played the game knows that the only actions a player takes are to draw a card and to move his/her pawn to the space signified by the drawn card.  This simple randomized movement "track" game is so disliked that it has a rating of 3.21 on BoardGame Geek.  A quick look at what a 3.2 rating means on BGG, let's us know that the BGG community thinks the game is Bad and not worth replaying.  Even adjusting for BGG's anti-children's game bias by adding a point or so doesn't put this game into recommendable territory for most gamers.

Last December I defended Candy Land as a board game, and a quick look through the internet demonstates that the game is a rich source for statistical analysis.  Dave Rusin of Northern Illinois University and Lou Scheffer a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (which I first heard about in Tim Hartford's book Adapt) have both written good analyses of the game from a statistical perspective, but it is the rigorous analysis at DataGenetics by Nick Berry which truly demonstrates just how deeply one can dig into the statistics of the game. When I defended the game back in December, I highlighted the pedagogical aspects of play in Candy Land.  It is a wonderful game for teaching young people how to play games, and also aids in educating young players that not all victories come from "being better" than your opponent which helps to teach good sportsmanship.

What I only briefly mentioned in that post, was that Candy Land is a great role playing game as well.  Back in December I stated that one of the joys of playing the game with my daughter's History and Mystery was that it engaged their imagination's in storytelling.  I'm quite surprised that I didn't associate this with role playing and role playing games in that article, even though I described the way my daughters play the game as follows:

Rather than the goal of the game being to "go home" as is written in the rules, Mystery and History are on a journey to have tea at Hello Kitty's house.  To add to the immersion, they have placed Lego Duplo "cat legos" on the board at both the home and peanut brittle house squares.  The home square represents Hello Kitty's house and the peanut brittle house is the domicile of Hello Kitty's apocryphal twin sister "Boxie." 

Re-reading the post made me realize how much like a role playing game session that sounds, but my daughters go even further than might be alluded to in the above description.  History and Mystery also engage in dialogue with the Duplo cats and have conversations with Hello Kitty and Boxie when they reach their destinations.  In fact, it is more important to Mystery that her "Ginger Man" reach the Peanut Brittle square than winning the game.  What's more is that they use the first person singular "I" when they refer to their gingerbread man pawn.  The girls are completely immersed in the fictional world of Candy Land.  Not only that, but they have expanded the fantasy world to include their own imaginary components.

As a parent it is a real joy to watch my daughters engage in this kind of imaginative play.  They also role play when they dress up in their Iron Man and Captain America costumes, when they play with their Legos and cars as well as with various stuffed animals and dolls.  They even do some role playing when they borrow my D&D and Star Wars miniatures.  It's quite magnificent to watch, and it's truly amazing to see how well Candy Land creates a Salen/Zimmerman/Huizinga "magic circle" as well.  It demonstrates it so well that like Zimmerman in his defense of the magic circle, I find criticisms like that by Darryl Woodford a little pendantic, overly literal, and odd.  What is most interesting in this demonstration is that I get to see how the "magic circle" of play that my daughters have created during a game of Candy Land extend beyond the spaces on the board itself, but that the imaginary land in which they are playing includes implied spaces in the illustrations and their own imagined Candy Land environment.  This imagining only extends until they stop playing the game.  Once the game stops, they are no longer in Candy Land and they have already had their tea parties.  They are ready to begin engaging with the real world and their foray's into "Elfland" (to borrow a phrase from Lord Dunsany) are finished and without the trauma or life changes that accompany most fictional representations of fantastic journeys.  The magic circle allows them to explore Wonderland without the risk of the Red Queen chopping off their heads.  It's a wonder to see.

I wish that I was the first person to describe Candy Land as a role playing game, but James Ernest in Family Games: The 100 Best -- and I'm sure countless others -- have beat me to it. As he described his play with his daughter Nora:

When I got "stuck on a gooey gumdrop," Nora would move her pawn back to that space and help me get unstuck.  This completely surprised me, because as a grown-up I assumed that a race game is unfriendly.  She would move back to her own space after helping me, but she always helped.  And she expected this kind of socially responsible behavior out of her parents as well....

Anyone who thinks he has seen all of Candy Land ought to play it again with a child.

Candy Land may not be the pinnacle of role playing game systems, but it seems clear to me that my own "maturity as a gamer" is what got in the way of my enjoyment of this game for many years.  Playing it with my daughters is a joy, and I will rue the day when Candy Land no longer creates a magic circle where my daughters are imagining a realistic milieu.  I hope that when that day comes, games like Pokemon Jr., A Faery's Tale, RPG Kids, and even D&D will be able to create one to replace the one that was lost.  There is a part of me that thinks it is a tragedy when adults believe that spending some time wandering the fields of Elfland is a waste of time or silly.