Adventure Gamebooks as RPGs Part 1 -- Fighting Fantasy's Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and Tunnels & Trolls role playing games, as well as the Choose Your Own Adventure series of interactive novels, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone released the first of their trend setting series of Fighting Fantasy Adventure Gamebooks The Warlock of Firetop Mountain in 1982. The first American edition of Warlock was published in 1983. The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks were the first time that a publication featured both a fully usable set of rules for role playing game play along with a fully interactive solo narrative adventure.

Flying Buffalo was the first company to publish "solo adventures" for role playing games -- and there are quite a few excellent adventures in their Tunnels and Trolls line -- but their adventures required a copy of the Tunnels and Trolls role playing game in order to actually "play" them rather than just read them. Given that some of the early T&T solos were fairly straightforward dungeon crawl style adventures, they play significantly better than they read. They are filled with humor, but lacked an extensive story. This was the result of the adventures' format and not the skill of the writers. Later T&T adventures become more narrative as the marketplace developed and the format adapted to enable more in depth stories to be told. It should also be added that Flying Buffalo's adventures were primarily written for "existing" gamers who were familiar with D&D's genre conventions -- as they stood in the mid to late 70s.

The Choose Your Own Adventure series had entertaining interactive narratives aimed at younger readers. They featured exciting adventures where readers could travel through time, explore vast wildernesses, or investigate haunted houses. They could also be extraordinarily frustrating as certain narrative paths ended with annoying authorial fiat. When/if the reader encountered certain villains, they were doomed. The books satisfied the puzzle solving obsessions of young minds, but the lack of any game rules made the books feel less "alive" than they otherwise could have.

The Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks took the best elements of T&T's solos and combined them with the puzzle solving fun of the Choose Your Own Adventure series. The books sparked a mini-craze that lasted until the early 90s.

The internet is full of fan sites dedicated to the memory and recent resurgence of the Fighting Fantasy series and the Gamebook genre in general. Let me just say that I am a big fan, but that the purpose of the "Adventure Gamebooks as RPGs" series of posts -- at least I hope it will be a series -- is to look at the rules in the gamebooks themselves to see how they work as a rules set.

I hope to answer the following question in each post, "How much fun would this particular rules set be as the foundation for a campaign?"

I am starting with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain for a couple of reasons. It was the first book of its kind, and was thus an innovator in the field. It also eventually inspired two separate complete rules sets for group table top gaming -- Fighting Fantasy Introductory Roleplay and Advanced Fighting Fantasy which has a new version coming from Arion Games later this year. These stand alone rules sets will be reviewed as a part of the series at a later date.

How good are the rules in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain for a regular table top role playing game?

THE RULES

The rules set in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is very simple to understand and implement, perfect for the new gamer. The game uses two mechanical systems to resolve the challenges facing characters. An opposed roll system is used to resolve combat, and a statistic test is used to determine the success of non-combat actions and one in combat action.

STATISTICS

Each character is rated in three categories: Skill, Stamina, and Luck. These statistics form the "core three" for the entire Fighting Fantasy line. While future products add additional statistics or use a skill system to enhance the statistics, Warlock uses these exclusively.

SKILL represents a character's fighting skill and his/her physical capabilities. Heroes have a rating of 7 to 12 in this statistic, while creatures/non-heroic characters potentially range from 2 to 12. The rules section of the book describes SKILL as a character's ability in combat, but it becomes clear as one plays through the adventure that SKILL is a measurement of the character's competence at all physical tasks. It is a measurement of the characters combat ability, strength, and agility.

STAMINA represents how much damage a character can absorb before dying. If a character's STAMINA is reduced to zero, the adventure is over and the player has been defeated. Heroes have a rating of 14 to 24 in this area. Given that successful attacks in Warlock typically do 2 points of stamina damage, this means that heroes can typically be injured between 7 and 12 times during an adventure before they perish.

LUCK represents how lucky a character is. In many ways this is a catch all statistic used to determine if the hero can avoid some otherwise awful fate. It can be used outside of combat to determine of a character stepped on a trap, or during combat to do more/take less damage from an attack.

COMBAT MECHANICS

Combat in Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks is highly abstract, but easy to learn. The player rolls two six-sided dice and adds that result to their SKILL value. The player then rolls two six-sided dice and adds that result to the SKILL value of the player's opponent. The character with the higher result successfully attacks the other combatant and damages him/her. If the result is a tie, then no character lands a blow. As an opposed system that relies on rolls that create a bell shaped probability curve, even a difference of only one point in skill makes a significant difference whether one opponent can harm another. Kit has a nice introductory guest post at Giant Battling Robots discussing the impact of relative advantage that I'd love to see expanded.

This is one of the areas where the cracks of the game system show when attempting to translate the game from a Gamebook environment to a table top environment. The Fighting Fantasy method of generating skill (roll 1d6 and add that to 6) results in some characters with widely different abilities. This can lead to player frustration.

For example, let's say that David has a character with a SKILL of 9 and Phil has one with a SKILL of 11. Let's imagine that their characters are attacked by two Orcs who each have a SKILL of 5. David would have an 84.1% chance of hitting his Orc, while Phil would have a 94.6% chance of hitting his. At first glance, this doesn't seem like such a huge disparity due to the fact that David and Phil are both significantly more SKILLED than their opponents. A 10% difference from a SKILL two points higher seems like it shouldn't bother the players too much, but let's change the parameters a bit. Let's give Phil and David an opponent with a SKILL of 11. In this case, David has a 23.92% chance of hitting the foe while Phil has a 44.37% chance of striking the opponent. The 10% advantage has shifted to a 20% advantage. This is because the differential in target number falls within the steep portion of the bell curve meaning that a +1 penalty can have a significant impact. If the two players were to fight one another, David would still have a 23.92% chance of striking Phil where Phil would have a 66.44% chance of hitting David.

If the system used a linear die -- like a d12 -- for combat resolution, the system would be more fair to the character with a lower SKILL. As it is, it takes a good deal of luck for a character with even two SKILL points less than his opponent to be victorious.

TASK RESOLUTION

In Warlock, everything from bashing down doors to checking to see if a character can successfully balance on a beam is resolved by rolling two six-sided dice and comparing that result to the character's SKILL. LUCK checks are resolved using the same system with the addition that a character's LUCK is reduced by one each time it is checked (though the LUCK can return as the character performs certain tasks successfully).

This system suffers from some of the same downfalls as the combat mechanics when used for group play. A character with a 11 SKILL will succeed 91.67% of the time if the character must roll "less" than SKILL to succeed, where the character with a 9 SKILL will succeed 72.22% of the time, and a character with a 7 will succeed 41.67%.

One of the key pitfalls that game masters, and one imagines game designers, have to consider when running/designing a game is how the players will feel in comparison to other players. Aaron Allston's excellent Strike Force sourcebook lists rules for making sure your players don't have any fun and one of these rules is to make sure that your player's are never the best at anything. Inversely, one might imagine that one could increase the likelihood that their player's do have fun by making sure that each player is good at something that no one else is good at. Since SKILL is so central to the success or failure of a character in combat and in task resolution, players can quickly become frustrated with the discrepancies in character performance. Characters with higher stats are significantly better than their comrades. This is exacerbated by the fact that SKILL and LUCK have a linear distribution in generation, but a standard distribution in action. On a roll of one six-sided die, every number has an equal chance of coming up. This isn't true when rolling two.

The Fighting Fantasy system is easy to learn, quick to play, but can lead to certain players dominating the group storytelling. This is not typically a good thing in a role playing session/campaign. Every character wants some time in the spotlight.

RECOMMENDATIONS

My recommendations are to separate SKILL into three categories: COMBAT ABILITY, PHYSICAL STRENGTH, AGILITY. Once this is done, you can move to a "point buy" system for the statistics rather than random attribute determination. I would think that giving the players 9 points to spend, which are added to values of 6 in each category, would be sufficient. That way if a character wants to be excellent at combat, he/she suffers in other areas where other characters can shine. Note that this recommendation is based solely on the rules as presented in Warlock and ignores rules from later books and the role playing games.

I might also recommend using a d12 for resolving tasks and conflicts. This would make penalties easier to determine for the GM. A -1 penalty to a check has a uniform meaning in a linear resolutions system where it has a dynamic nature in one with a standard distribution. If you prefer the standard distribution, that is fine, just understand that a -1 penalty to a character with an 11 isn't as significant as for one with an 8 in a statistical area. You can see why in the chart above.

Warlock lacks a magic system which means that its use is limited to low magic settings, but that isn't a disadvantage mechanically.

Overall, I think that the game has enough systems to handle most role playing necessities, but that the statistics need to be expanded to make the underlying mechanics more useful. All you really need in an rpg is a combat resolution system and a task resolution system, but I think that the task resolution system needs to be slightly more granular to take into account different areas of expertise. The ability to lift a weight is very different from the ability to walk a tightrope after all. The game would need more "stats" if it were to be translated to table top. As it stands, it is excellent for the adventure for which it was written.

New Season of "Gold" Lives Up to Its Namesake

Though I am a fan of role playing games and sf/f fiction, it was difficult for me to get the proper suspended disbelief mindset to truly appreciate the first season of "Gold -- The Webseries that Does Double Damage." I even titled my review "The Series that Does Half Damage" as a reflection of how incredible -- by which I mean non-credible -- I found the narrative of the story. I just couldn't buy into the background world rules.

It wasn't that the concept of "professional role players" was new, Steven Barnes and Larry Niven wrote an excellent series of novels that contained an incarnation of the concept. I think it was the representation of what professional gaming looked like that rubbed me as somehow false. Though the show wasn't able to cloud my most skeptical critical eye, I still found myself deeply engaged by the acting and the character based interactions of the actual story taking place.

By the time I first watched the series, they had already announced that they would be streaming a sequel at the end of 2010. I eagerly awaited the sequel, hoping that it would expand upon the strengths of the original series while leaving the more problematic aspects behind. My hopes have been more than exceeded with the new season "Night of the Zombie King."

The first season of "Gold" was the tale of a "fallen athlete" trying to pull his life back together to compete on the national stage, and as such it felt somewhat hollow at times. "Night of the Zombie King" starts with a much more mundane premise. A group of friends get together to relive their days of gaming glory and fun. "Zombie King's" premise is one has verisimilitude and nostalgic power for those of us who have been gaming for decades, and who have fond memories of playing games with friends. Where attempting to emotionally related to a professional gamer is an act of pure fiction, empathizing with someone awkwardly re-connecting with old friends comes naturally.

"Night of the Zombie King" is in all ways an improvement on the first season. As before, the actors in the series provide solid performances, but David Nett and company have found a way to make the game a more natural part of the story's environment. Additionally, by making the interpersonal conflicts of the story less grandiose, "Night of the Zombie King" has managed to make the relationships more emotionally powerful.

"Night of the Zombie King" has the same kind of mournful celebratory quality of a film like Fandango. People who thought they would never see each other again meet to finish telling an interactive story they once started together. Watching each episode brings to mind memories of the adventures I have had with my friends over the years. I can still see vividly the time one of my favorite characters faced "Beast-Man" from "The Masters of the Universe" toy line in a friends home brew adventure, the time a player character was intentionally swallowed by the Tarrasque because it was easier to hit the creature from inside its stomach, or the time a friend's superhero character (a character who thought it was the archangel Gabriel) in an attempt to intimidate a small time thug managed to manifest his aura of fear so strongly it cowed all of Europe.

These are the reasons we game, and "Night of the Zombie King" is about those moments.



BTW, if you watch the interview for their DVD, you'll see that it was filmed at my local game store.

Klarkash-Ton the Oft Overlooked Master

Today, in 1893, one of the great trinity of Weird Fiction authors was born. Of the big three Weird Fiction authors, Clark Ashton Smith is the one who has least captured the popular imagination. Robert E. Howard's Conan is a figure that looms large in the popular psyche, and Lovecraft's Weird Tales inspired countless authors and a number of films and television episodes. Awareness of Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Mythos" has long been lurking in the depths of the popular subconscious and is slowly surfacing into full awareness. When one reads Smith's prose, one is quickly taken with its poetic qualities.

Then, with ineffable terror, I beheld the thing to which the light clung like a hellish nimbus, moving as it moved, and revealing dimly the black abomination of head and limbs that were not those of any creature wrought by God. The horror stood erect, rising to the height of a tall man, and it moved with the swaying of a great serpent, and its members undulated as if they were boneless. The round black head, having no visible ears or hair, was thrust foreward on a neck of snakish length. Two eyes, small and lidless, glowing hotly as coals from a wizard's brazier, were set low and near together in the ^noseless^ [formless] face above the serrate gleaming of bat-like teeth. -- The Beast of Averoigne


Sadly, it is likely the very poetic nature of Smith's prose is one of the reasons that generations of readers have been unaware of this great weird author. For a good portion of the 20th century expansive "Victorian" style prose was ostracized in favor of the more "clean" and "direct" writings of the so-called Modern literary tradition. Critics and academia didn't value expansive and rich descriptions, the writing they favored followed the guidelines set forth in George Orwell's Politics and the English Language. Ironically, the academic community which has failed to recognize and promote Smith as a writer has been a far worse violator of Orwell's criticisms than Smith ever was. It is true that things can be overwritten to the point where their meaning is unclear, or even that the writing itself is meaningless, but this is not true of Smith's writing.

When will the popular psyche become aware of Klarkash-Ton's literary influence on modern fantasy? Let us hope that day comes sooner rather than later.

I first encountered the writings of Clark Ashton Smith when I read the X2 Castle Amber module for the Dungeons and Dragons Expert Set game written by Tom Moldvay. Castle Amber was one of the first truly narrative adventures written for the Dungeons and Dragons game. It influenced the structure and tone of the classic Ravenloft module, and permanently embedded the name "Etienne D'Amberville" into the hearts of fans of the Known World D&D setting.


I had purchased Castle Amber believing it had some relation to the Amber stories of Roger Zelazny. I was wrong, but I have rarely been so glad to be incorrect. The Castle Amber module is a celebration of the Weird Tale, combining narrative elements from Edgar Allan Poe, H P Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith. The Poe references were obvious to me, even though I was quite young when I first read the module, but the references to a wondrous place called Averoigne were entirely new to me. I had never heard of the "Beast of Averoigne, (nor the Beast of Gévaudan for that matter) "The Colossus of Ylourgne," or "The Holiness of Azédarac." I likely never would have, but for the fact that Moldvay had a brief bibliography listing the stories that influenced Castle Amber.

Up to that time, I had not encountered anything quite like Smith's writing. My fantasy experience had been primarily limited to Tolkien, Brooks, Greek Myths, Arthurian Legend, Moorcock, Zelazny, and Lewis. The truly weird tale had escaped me, but that small bibliography opened new avenues of fantastic fiction to me.

In recent years, publishers have printed some very nice collections of Clark Ashton Smith's works. The University of Nebraska Press has printed Lost Worlds and Out of Space and Time. Night Shade Books has been compiling Smith short stories in wonderful editions. I highly recommend purchasing physical copies of Smith's works, but for the digital reader Eldritch Dark has collected much of Smith's written work -- with proper concern for copyright.

I could write, and talk, about Smith for hours. When I discovered he had lived in Auburn, CA (a city close to my wife's home town), I began a brief obsession with Smith. I even began reading his correspondence...for fun mind you, much of which you can read at the Eldritch Dark website.

I am not the only person on the interwebs celebrating CAS's birthday, the excellent gaming and weird fiction website Grognardia has a wonderful post up today.

Neuroshima Hex -- One of My Favorite Apps of 2010

Michal Oracz's Neuroshima Hex was initially released in 2006 to much deserved critical acclaim. The game combined traditional territorial control wargame interactions with Eurogame game play and card game style interactions. The resulting product is easy to learn, quick to play, and a rewarding repeat experience. I consider my imported copy of the game -- which is now sold in the US by the excellent Z-Man Games -- one of the treasures of my collection.

Shortly after purchasing my iPhone, I discovered that Neuroshima Hex was being offered as an application for the bargain price of $2.99. I quickly purchased the app and it has been one of the four or five apps I turn to when I need a quick bit of entertainment.

Rather than write a full review of the game, I have attached the two videos below. The first is a trailer for the game and the second is a tutorial which goes over gameplay.

I have to say that one of the things I find most endearing about the app revolution, for both smartphones and tablets, is how quickly it has become a platform for distributing excellent versions of quality board games to users who might never encounter the game otherwise. To buy a copy of the Neuroshima Hex board game requires finding a niche hobby game store, but to buy the app one only need visit iTunes. Now if we could just spread the word about this excellent game.

H.P. Lovecraft and Gameshows

When was the last time an American game show featured questions about H.P. Lovecraft?

I think we should invite this woman to GenCon this year for a charity competition against Kenneth Hite. My money is on Hite for the victory.

Some Notable Additions to My Blogroll in 2010

2010 saw the creation of a number of blogs that I have found myself enjoying, as well as my discovery of blogs that had been posting for a while that I hadn't seen before. I ended up adding a good number of blogs to my various blogroll categories last year, and I thought I'd point out some of the better additions.

1) Grognardia -- James Maliszewski's "Grognardia" blog is one of the best old school gaming blogs on the internet. James' musings about games of yore, his thoughts on game design, and his commentary about classic SF/F are well worth your attention. James is one of my favorite "indie" game designers, having worked on "Sword, Spell, and Shadow" and "A Thousand Suns." I don't always agree with his opinions, but I always enjoy reading them.

2) Fabled Lands -- This is the official blog of Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson where they share information about their "Fabled Lands" line of Fantasy Game books, as well as examples of their past work. Want to see what a roleplaying game about Feudal Japan using the Warhammer Fantasy RPG rules would look like? Head on over to "Fabled Lands" and find out.

3) Fantasy Game Book -- This is a blog that examines fantasy gamebooks with a bit of academic rigor. I added the blog to my list just the other day based on the strength of recent entries by Andrew Wright. His thoughts on "One True Path" vs. "Multi-Path" gamebooks make for interesting reading.

4) Jordan Mechner's Blog -- Before Jordan Mechner, the terms "narrative" and "video game" would rarely be used in a sentence. That changed with Mechner's "Karateka." Though the narrative of the game was simple, his use of musical cues and dramatic elements hinted that video games could be more than tests of reflexes and memory. They could be interactive narrative experiences, and that experience didn't require the use of a laser disk that linked animated sequences through a decision tree.

It's That Time Again -- Christian's Favorite RPGs from 2010

2010 was an excellent year for the role playing game player. Every niche of the market -- from indie to mainstream -- had significant offerings that are must have editions to the gamer's library. Some of the offerings premiered at Gen Con, the industry's equivalent of the CES, but others had their own release timelines and marketing schemes. These schemes alternated between viral pre-order campaigns to structured "in store" celebrations, but all of them were fun to watch. I have to say that while the past few years have had some great game offerings, 2010 was the first time in a couple years that so many games screamed out to me to actually play them and not just to read them and add them to my collection.

So...what products made my Top 10 Role Playing Game products for 2010?

10) The Burning Wheel: Adventure Burner

The Burning Wheel role playing game is a fine example of how the indie role playing game market is capable of making not only good products, but ones that shape the field as well. The game was first published in 2002 and some of its innovations found their way into the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. The game is an rpg by game theorists and designers for game theorists and designers. That doesn't mean that the game isn't fun to play, it is, but it does mean that the way the game is presented changes the way you view other games and inspires tinkering. Once one has read The Burning Wheel books, one cannot read the Skill Challenges in 4e without seeing the game's influence on the hobby. The game encourages player to game master interaction in a way that some might find intimidating when used in play, but the rewards for doing so are grand.

The only complaint fans of the game can legitimately voice is that the release schedule for support products is pretty slim, and adventure support had been non-existent. This year Jared Sorensen* Luke Crane, Thor Lavsrud, and crew released The Adventure Burner supplement for the game which contained three adventures to aid game masters in designing their own scenarios. Like all Burning Wheel offerings, this book has applications well beyond use within the Burning Wheel system. It is a must have product for game masters of any system, as much of its advice is universal in application.

9) All for One: Regime Diabolique

Paul "Wiggy" Wade Williams is one of the most prolific authors in the history of role playing games. More than that, he is one of the most consistently entertaining authors writing games today. One of the reasons for Williams' high output is his ability to take ideas from history/fiction/television and to transform them into his own interpretation. His Hellfrost campaign setting combines the dark fiction of George R.R. Martin, the Icelandic Sagas, Roman History, and Arthurian legend and is one of the best RPG settings available today.

After I learned that Williams would be writing a game using the Ubiquity game system, most of his past work had been for the Savage Worlds game rules, I was intrigued. The Ubiquity rules system was created by Exile Games Studio for their excellent Hollow Earth Expedition game. When I saw that this game would be a swashbuckling adventure set in 30 Year's War France and would include Musketeers, Werewolves, Witchcraft, and Demons, I was sold. I purchased the volume at last year's Gen Con and was delighted by the product. If you loved "Brotherhood of the Wolf" or any of the Three Musketeers stories, but thought they would be slightly improved with the inclusion of the supernatural, then this game is for you.

8) Pathfinder: Advanced Player's Guide

For fans of the 3rd Edition of D&D, Paizo's Pathfinder role playing game was a god send. Typically, when a company updates a rules set players are left with the decision to either grudgingly shift over to the new rules or to continue to play using the old rules knowing that they won't be receiving any product support in the future. This is even more the case when the rules update is so dramatic as the shift between the third and fourth editions of D&D. Thanks to the Open Gaming License and the talented game designers at Paizo Publications, this wasn't the case for 3rd Edition players. Paizo thoroughly, and publicly, playtested their adaptation of the 3rd edition rules and published them as the Pathfinder role playing game. The game is beautiful to look at and corrects some of the flaws of 3rd Edition, while only introducing a couple of its own. It certainly isn't a game that I would use to introduce people to role playing games, but it is one of the premiere games in hobby -- and for good reason.

Last year Paizo released their Advanced Player's Guide which added new core classes and numerous options to the already robust game system. This is a must have for Pathfinder fans, and for 3e fans of all stripes. Paizo's work on this product is excellent.

7) Fabled Lands Gamebooks

Dave Morris, Jamie Thompson, and Russ Nicholson are names that harken back to the Golden Age of White Dwarf Magazine, back before it became a house organ promoting only Warhammer miniatures. Toward the end of the gamebook explosion of the 1980s Morris and crew released a series of gamebooks under the Fabled Lands title. Six books were published, but only three were made available in the States. The books featured complex puzzles, a simple but robust game mechanic, and interactions between the volumes. Choices in one book could lead directly into another volume. Sadly, the market for gamebooks had dwindled by the time these books were released and they never caught on.

Recently, there has been a resurgence of the gamebook market both in print and as applications on the iPhone/Pad. The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks are available as apps and excellent new offerings like those of Tin Man Games have emerged to create interest in the genre. The time was ripe for the Fabled Lands books to reemerge and last Christmas they were republished by a company owned by the books' creators. Give these a chance.

6) The Dresden Files Role Playing Game

Based on Jim Butcher's New York Times Bestselling urban fantasy series Evil Hat Productions' Dresden Files rpg is proof positive that small independent companies can make games that look, feel, and play like those made by the big corporations. Dresden Files uses an adapted version of the FATE rules system to create an easy to play game that incorporates player involvement beyond mere character creation. The entire group gets together to create the setting, the stakes, and the opposition that will occur in the campaign. The systems are innovative and the planning sessions are as fun as typical rpg game play sessions.

5) Deathwatch

For years fans of the Warhammer 40K Universe have awaited a role playing game where we could explore our own stories in the Dark Millenium. Dark Heresy satisfied that need for many, but for those of us who find 40k to be synonymous with "Space Marines" Dark Heresy didn't quite scratch that itch. Fantasy Flight Games' release of Deathwatch satisfies that desire quite nicely. Now players who recreate tactical skirmishes on their kitchen table tops where Ultramarines face off against the terrors of the Warp can experience the struggles of the individual Space Marine as he serves the Emperor and protects the remnants of human empire.

What more can you ask for really? A good rules system with a beautiful rulebook filled with detailed narrative information? Oh...this has that too.

Now all I need is an Eldar 40K rpg and my world will be complete.

4) Gamma World

For decades TSRs Gamma World has been a kind of awkward stepchild of D&D. The game has always had interesting ideas, and has had a couple of quality releases, but it never seemed to receive the corporate marketing support that it deserved. When Wizards of the Coast released the latest version of Gamma World, written using the 4th Edition D&D rules, they could have treated it as it had been treated in the past. They could have published a single volume with little fan fare, or released a game that lacked mechanical similarities to the company's flagship rpg. Instead Wizards created a product that they fully promoted that had monsters that were compatible with the 4th Edition rules set.

They also released a game that is one of the most entertaining gaming experiences around. If you've ever wanted to play around in a post-apocalyptic wasteland as a Pyrokinetic Yeti, as a Telekinetic Plant, or as one of a number of other combinations, then this is the game for you.

3) Castle Ravenloft

With Castle Raventloft, Wizards of the Coast managed to create an entertaining cooperative dungeon crawl board game that was also a perfect introduction to the role playing game hobby. As with super hero games, I am a dungeon crawl board game completist. When I purchased Castle Ravenloft, I expected it to be a good game, instead it was a great game. This is easily one of the best dungeon crawl games ever published. It is no surprise that the initial print run of the game sold out rapidly and forced Wizards of the Coast to delay the production of a similar follow up board game just to ensure there were sufficient copies of this game to go around.

2) Smallville Role Playing Game

I bought this game for two reasons. First, I am a super hero game completist. I own every published super hero role playing game to date, and this was a must have for that reason alone. Second, Cam Banks was one of the lead designers on the game. Banks has done some excellent work in the past on Dragonlance game products, as well as on the Supernatural RPG, and I was interested to see how he would treat super hero soap opera action.

The resulting game is one of the most exciting and innovative role playing games ever produced. From character creation to how the games mechanical resolution system emphasizes character's relationships to each other, this game breaks new ground in the role playing game field. The fact that it does all of this while creating a game that is easy to learn and understand due to its relatively simple mechanics is a wonder. If your mind was ever baffled by the concept of how a game could mechanically represent Superman while still providing mechanics that allow Lois Lane to meaningfully participate in play, then Bank's accomplishment with this game becomes even more clear. This is the first super hero rpg where playing a normal person is just as exciting and rewarding as playing the hero. Like Dresden Files this game incorporates player input in campaign and relationship creation.

1) D&D Essentials

I had been on the fence about playing 4th Edition D&D. I owned the books, but I was more than content to play in my 3.5 Eberron Game and my Pathfinder game -- then came Essentials. I was intrigued by the nostalgia appealing new Dungeons and Dragons: Starter Set that was reminiscent of the Metzger edition of the old D&D Basic Set. I read the box and was impressed by the manner in which it presented the D&D rules, but I was disappointed by some of the small errors and typos. This all changed when I read the Heroes of the Fallen Lands and Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms books. These books presented the new 4th edition rules not merely in a clear and easy to learn format, as was intended, but in an entertaining way as well. The narrative text made these fun to read, and it's not an easy task to make role playing game rules fun to read -- especially D&D rules. The entire product line is worth owning and broke the final layer of resistance I had to playing the 4th edition game. I am now a 4e fan and regularly run an Encounters session at my local game store. For the first time in years, I cannot wait to see what product Wizards releases next.

If you've ever wondered why D&D appeals to so many people, you cannot do much better than to start with the Essentials books.

*[edited 1/7/11 9:31 am]Thanks to Anonymous for pointing out the error in attribution. I could blame my error on the fact that I have been enjoying reading/running Parsley games lately, but that would be lame. Luke Crane is the mad genius behind Burning Wheel (or is he?). As penance, I will be buying another set of the three core books.

Ticket To Ride Adds Giant Monsters

Alan R Moon's Ticket to Ride is one of the best board game series of the past decade. The games combine easily understood rules, quick game play, quality game components, and "gateway" game appeal. Ticket to Ride was the game that established Days of Wonder as a prominent games manufacturer -- Memoir '44 proved they were here to stay. As the years have gone by, Days of Wonder has released a number of fun alternate versions and expansions to the original game. Most of them have been strong entries, and I have enjoyed them all, but none have excited me the way that the game's next offering has.

When I saw the announcement for Ticket to Ride: Alvin and Dexter my heart jumped a little. The high concept combination of classic train game with Giant Monsters and Alien Invaders is a sniper shot into my geek heart. The game expansion should be available in February, but you can read the rules for the expansion online today.

UK's Channel 4 Ranks D&D as 3rd Greatest Toy

Last year, on December 19th, Channel 4 aired a special hosted by Jonathan Ross discussing what he, a panel of experts, and popular vote thought were the 100 Greatest Toys. The show featured the 100 most popular toys and games in England, and my beloved D&D ranked 3rd on the list.

Looking at the list of toys and games, it quickly became apparent that D&D was being used as shorthand for Role Playing Games. RPGs were also the only category of game/toy that featured only one entry on the list. This just strikes me as off somehow. There are an abundance of wonderful RPGs that I think deserve notice, and it is debatable that D&D is even the best RPG available. It isn't really debatable that D&D created the role playing marketplace and its place as the first role playing game deserves quite a bit of recognition (pedantic discussions by patricidal game developers regarding pre-D&D role playing games aside), but should it have been the only game on the list?

What about DC Heroes, James Bond 007, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu to name just a few games that I think deserve mainstream recognition.

I can understand leaving a couple of great rpgs, like Pathfinder and Lamentations of the Flame Princess off the list as they are "pastiche versions" of games that precede their existence.

What are some games that you think deserve to be in the Top 100 games and toys of all time? How about just a list of the top 100 RPGs? I'll submit my list of the Top 30 RPGs, all of which will be games I have played, with some discussion of my criteria on Thursday.

Jim Ward, Creator of the First Science Fiction RPG, Needs Your Help

Jim Ward is one of the founding fathers of the role playing game hobby and the creator of the first Science Fiction role playing game, Metamorphosis Alpha. Ward's 1976 SF creation didn't merely extend the boundaries of roleplaying beyond the simulation of Fantasy novels, it offered a different style of play altogether.

Metamorphosis Alpha wasn't a game of far flung galactic empires or post-apocalyptic Earths. The game was set in a universe where interstellar travel was possible, but the game's action takes place on a single space craft. As the game's introduction describes it:

Mankind's urge to explore and expand its frontiers finally caused another push into the vastness of space -- first interplanetary, then interstellar. By the 23rd Century a great migration wave was spreading from Old Terra to the hundreds of inhabitable worlds which had been discovered in the Milky Way galaxy. During the next hundred years colonization ships of all types and descriptions went out to the stars, bearing seedling colonies seeking a better life. Many found their new homes -- for better or for worse -- but for one reason or another scores of these starships never reached their destination. This game is based on just such an event, the fact of a colony ship which became lost...

Ward's creation was more than a mere emulation of the fiction of Heinlein, Van Vogt, and Asimov, it contained it's own narrative ideas. These ideas allowed for a new experience in the role playing game genre. Players were still exploring multi-leveled complexes, dungeons if you will, but their reason for doing so was different. Instead of glory and wealth, the characters might be seeking mere survival or knowledge of a lost time.

Ward has contributed much to the hobby. He was the founding editor of Dragon Magazine, the creative force behind the Gamma World role playing game (a post-apocalyptic offshoot of Metamorphosis Alpha), and the Spellfire card game.

Sadly, Ward has been diagnosed with a serious neurological disorder. The condition is treatable, but the costs are significant and he needs the support of the gaming community. Visit the Friends of Starship Warden and do your part to help one of the original gamers.

Jeff Dee and Jack Herman to Release Villains and Vigilantes 3.0

Earlier this year Jeff Dee and Jack Herman, the creators of the Villains and Vigilantes role playing game, reacquired the rights to their creation and started their own company Monkey House Games in order to distribute new product for the classic superhero game. Villains and Vigilantes was the second superhero role playing game to enter the gaming market and it helped to launch superhero gaming as a legitimate genre in the hobby. The first edition of V&V was eventually pushed aside by Hero Games flagship Champions game, which became the standard against which all superhero games would be measured. Dee and Herman responded to Hero Games' entry with a streamlined and much improved second edition of Villains and Vigilantes.

While V&V was never able to match the sales of Champions during the superhero rpg heyday of the late 80s to early 90s, it had a loyal following and its creators wrote many excellent gaming products that reflected the "indie" sensibilities of the game's creators. These product included two modules written by indie comic stalwart Bill Willingham whose Elementals comics were among the most influential of the era. Where Champions could be cumbersome to play at times, and absolutely required a battlemap, V&V was a looser game that featured quick and dirty combat rules and a deep sense of fun.

Since forming Monkey House Games, Dee and Herman have released a cleaned up version of the second edition of Villains and Vigilantes -- a version 2.1 -- that featured a new cover and provided errata and clarifications to material in the Fantasy Games Unlimited published second edition. The book also features new interior artwork. While I found the new cover disappointing in comparison to Dee's older artwork, the new interior artwork is up to Dee's normal professional standards. Monkey House has also released a number of new products for the 2.1 version of the rules, and their production schedule has been sufficient to maintain the V&V momentum their start-up began with.

In fact, they have been so successful that Fantasy Games Unlimited, the successor company to the original publisher of V&V, has released new product for the game for the first time in over 15 years. This product appears to be published without proper license, but I will leave the legal wrangling to Dee and Herman. I will say this though. Don't buy a copy of the second edition V&V rules from Fantasy Games Unlimited or copies of the Willingham modules, you can purchase a more recent version of the rules from the actual creators of the game and Willingham's adventures will be available shortly.

Fans had been wondering if Dee and Herman planned on merely supporting their cleaned up version of the second edition, or whether they had plans for a new edition for the new millennium. After all, the rules are good and Monkey House was bringing back into print some of the old classic adventures in addition to publishing new ones.

Monkey House Games answered that question on Christmas Day when they officially announced that they were developing Villains and Vigilantes 3.0 and that the game would be available in 2011.

I look forward to seeing what innovations Dee and Herman have to offer.

Author of Fabled Lands Gamebooks Offers Free e-Gamebook

I mentioned in an earlier post that Dave Morris' excellent, and hard to find, Fabled Lands game book series was available in a new edition. I recently purchased the four available books and eagerly await further volumes in the series. One of the intriguing things about the Fabled Lands series is that choices in one book can lead you to paragraphs in other volumes. It makes for a robust experience, and demonstrates the strengths of design in the series.

Morris is making available -- for a very limited time -- an electronic copy of a relatively hard to find Gamebook. The original printing of the gamebook is easier to find if you live in the UK, but for us in the states this is a wonderful opportunity to play an engaging gamebook. It is also a good starter gamebook for those who have never played one before. It uses a simple role playing resolution system and explains the rules clearly.

If you are interested in playing a rare adventure, or interested in finding out what this game book thing is all about, head on over to Dave's Fabled Land blog and download it while you can. It should be noted that the file is in xps format. The format reads well in Explorer, and not so well in Firefox which redownloads the file every time I try to open it, and can be easily converted into a pdf if you have a full version of Acrobat.

You only have until New-Year's Eve to download the book. Do it...NOW!

D&D Morale Through the Ages

The discussion below is only for those who are really into role playing games. It deals in minutiae and might irritate non-gamers to no end. If you are not a gamer, please don't become annoyed as you will only have yourself to blame for reading deeply into the post.

I was reading through the Troy Denning Black Box the other day. The box has a nice "toy value" quality about it and is my personal favorite "introductory box" edition of D&D. I love the Moldvay/Cook Basic and Expert Sets as rules sets to play, but I think that Denning's "Dragon Cards" system is one of the best pedagogical approaches to teaching role playing games I have ever seen.

To make a long story short, I noticed an interesting rule in the Morale section of the rulebook. According to the Denning box, "A monster or NPC who rolls 12 for his morale check has become a fanatic. A fanatic need not check morale again during this particular encounter." This quote got me wondering as to what the specific morale rules were in earlier editions of "traditional" Dungeons and Dragons, since this rule seemed to go against my understanding of how morale worked in the Basic/Expert rules set.

The Denning boxed set was published in 1991, and republished with some changes to presentation in a tan box in 1994 as The Classic Dungeons & Dragons, which makes it the last edition of the Basic/Expert rules for the Dungeons & Dragons game. The Denning box was meant to serve as the introductory product that led people to purchase the Dungeons and Dragons: Rules Cyclopedia which had the "complete" rules for the Dungeons and Dragons role playing game. It should be noted that these rules were produced during a time when TSR had two D&D product lines that cannibalized some sales from one another, Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

For those of you who don't know what morale is, it is a system by which the "spiritedness" of a given monster or opponent is represented. It simulates the courage of units and how they react when they are under fire, fighting a superior force, have sustained significant casualties etc. In essence, it answers the question "do the survivors flee or keep on fighting?" A historical example of a fighting force with extremely high morale would be the 300 who fought at Thermopylae. They fought to the last with no thought of surrender. Moral rules are a legacy of role playing games war game roots. Morale is extremely important in simulation war games, and is important in some role playing games.

The above quote regarding morale checks in the Denning edition is a typical description of the mechanical resolution of checking morale in the Basic/Expert series of products, but it also -- as I will discuss later -- seems to counter mechanical to that system and I believe is based on a misreading of the rules set. It was this sense that the Denning Morale rule ran contrary to the underlying mechanics of Basic/Expert morale that made me wonder what the rules had been historically and how they changed. Maybe Denning's solution was an upgrade and not a mistake. In order to find out, let's explore the morale rules of the various editions.

Chainmail

Before there was Dungeons & Dragons there was Chainmail. The "fantasy supplement" introduced in the 3rd edition of Chainmail is one of the direct descendants of the D&D game. The morale rules are fairly arcane and lack internal consistency. Chainmail morale can be divided into three categories -- Melee Morale, Casualty Morale, and Cavalry Charge Response Morale. Units in Chainmail respond using the morale rules appropriate to the situation. Chainmail defines morale in the following manner:

In addition, the mental and physical condition of the men (their morale) is taken into consideration in this game.

Morale is checked before and after combat, basing the determination on historical precedent, just as the fighting ability in actual cases was drawn upon to calculate melee results. The loss of "heart" is at least as serious as a defeat in combat, and perhaps more so, for most battles are won without the necessity of decimation of the losing side.

In the definition we see not only a description of morale and its effects, but a justification as well. It is a justification that fits well with early editions of D&D where many of the enemies players defeat flee rather than fight to the death. The game would have been much more deadly for the player's characters if the villains always fought to the death.

Melee Morale

Chainmail evaluates morale at the end of each round of combat. This is done through a relatively arcane system, which I have paraphrased below to make the rules clearer.

1. Compare the number of casualties on each side and subtract losses of the side that lost fewer troops from the side with greater casualties. Multiply this score by the roll of a six sided die and credit these points to the side with lower casualties.

For example: Steven's 10 Heavy Cavalry attacks Charlie's 20 Heavy Foot soldiers. Two of Steven's figures are killed in the melee, but 8 of Charlie's troops are defeated. We subtract the two troops Steven lost from eight Charlie lost and get a difference of 6. We roll a six-sided die and get a 3. We multiply this die roll by 6 (the loss differential) and get 18. Steven's base post melee morale is 18.

2. We now look at how many troops each unit contains. We subtract the number of troops in the smaller unit from the number of troops in the larger unit and credit those points to the player who controls the larger unit as a bonus to his or her base morale.

For example: Charlie's unit of 12 surviving Heavy Foot soldiers contains more units than Steven's unit of 8 Heavy Cavalry. We add this difference to Charlie's post melee morale score giving Charlie a base post melee morale of 4.

3. The player now examines their surviving figures and adds up their total "morale ratings." Different troop types have different morale ratings and this number is multiplied by the number of figures of that unit type and added to that player's post melee morale rating.

For example: Steven has 8 Heavy Cavalry surviving at the end of the battle. Heavy cavalry have a morale rating of 9. Since Steven has 8 figures with a rating of 9 (9 x 8 = 72), he gains an additional 72 post morale points for a total of 90. Charlie has 12 remaining Heavy Foot soldiers who have a morale rating of 5 (12 x 5 = 60), he gains an additional 60 morale points for a total of 64.

4. We now subtract the lower post morale rating from the higher value and compare the results to the morale result chart. If there are fewer than 20 figures per side of combat, then we double the result before comparing the results.

For example: We subtract Charlie's 64 post melee morale points from Steven's 90 points and get a result of 26. Since there are now fewer than 20 individual figures per side, we multiply this result by two and get a total morale differential of 52. After looking at the chart (which I am not including as this is wordy enough), we find that Charlie's troops back up 1 full move in good order and are not fully routed.

As you can see, this system is fairly arcane and fairly involved, but it is workable for a miniatures war game. It isn't particularly effective at the "man to man" combats that typically occur in a role playing game and only takes into account group morale after a round of engagement.

Casualty Morale

In addition to using a morale system that represents the effects of changes in the comparative strengths of units, Chainmail has a morale rule that is to be used when a unit becomes unstable due to an excess of casualties. Not only can a unit become routed due to comparative losses in an immediate engagement, it can become routed due to long term (or short term) attrition as well. This kind of morale is reflected in what I call Chainmail's "casualty morale" system. It is this system which provides the framework that will inspire the morale systems of the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game.

Instability Due to Excess Casualties: When casualties from any and all causes exceed a certain percentage of a unit's original total strength, morale for that unit must be checked by rolling two dice. If the loss is brought below the set percentage by missile fire, the unit must check before the melee portion of the turn. If the loss is brought about by melee, the unit must check morale after melees have been completed for that turn. If the unit remains stable, it need not again check morale until such time as it suffers losses to the stated percentage of its original strength, but at that time it must be removed from the table for the remainder of the game.

Under this system, each unit type has a different casualty rate and required morale roll. Less "professional" units have to check morale at smaller levels of loss and need to roll higher to remain stable. A peasant levy might need to check morale after losing 25% of its membership, and would thus be completely eliminated if it ever lost a total of 50% of its starting membership. This peasant levy would have to roll an 8 or better on two six sided dice. In comparison, mounted knights might only check morale if they lose 50% of their membership and would thus require a total loss to eliminate them if they made their initial morale test. The knights might only require a roll of 4 or better to succeed on their morale check. Failure at the roll means that the troops are totally defeated. Unlike the arcane comparative system used during melee, this system is quick and easy to use.

As I mentioned earlier, it is this system that eventually inspired the morale system of the D&D role playing game. The use of percentage of troop strength lost (which could be group members or total hit points) is easier to translate to an rpg, and the use of a simple roll of two dice for resolution ensures a quick resolution.

Cavalry Charge Response Morale

The final representation of morale effects in Chainmail is their "cavalry charge response" system. Mounted troops have historically had a significant advantage over their more earthbound foes due to the fact that a cohort of well armed men on horseback is an extremely intimidating thing to face. There were rare armies, like the Romans or Swiss pikemen, who had the discipline and courage to stand firm when confronted with a mounted charge, but these were the exception rather than the rule. To represent the fear most troops experience when confronted with a charge, Chainmail uses the following system:

Cavalry Charge: In order to withstand a charge by mounted men, the defending unit must check morale. Fear of the charge was usually more dangerous than the impact of the cavalry. Units that fail to score the required total retreat 1 1/2 moves, backs to the enemy, and must rally. If both units are charging, both must check morale, adding 1 to the dice score if Foot, and two to the dice score if Horse.

This awkwardly phrased paragraph is followed by a chart that compares defending unit type to attacking unit type and gives a number that must be rolled in order for the defending unit to stand firm. For example, a force of Heavy Foot soliders must roll a 9 or better (on 2d6) or flee the charging cavalry. This system is very similar mechanically to the casualty morale system with some modification allowing for the differing ability of some troops to withstand charges from different kinds of cavalry. Like the casualty morale system, some legacy of the cavalry charge system can be seen in later editions of D&D.

Dungeons & Dragons (First Edition)

The first edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game uses the morale systems as they are presented in Chainmail and provides no specific guidelines for a morale system. All references to morale in the original 3 D&D books refer to modifiers that are applied to morale checks with one exception in the section discussing the "Loyalty of Non-Player Characters (Including Monsters)." This additional rule is a demonstration of how the morale rules were developing away from war game considerations and into narrative role playing situations. This was done by essentially combining the casualty morale rules with the cavalry charge morale rules. The additional rule reads as follows:

Non-player characters and men-at-arms will have to make morale checks (using the above reaction table or "Chainmail") whenever a highly dangerous or un-nerving situation arises. Poor morale will mean that those in question will not perform as expected.

Periodic re-checks of loyalty should be made. Length of service, rewards, etc. will bring additional pluses. Poor treatment will bring minuses.

The emphasis on "highly dangerous situations" rather than a quantified representation of damage or unit loss signifies a major shift away from mechanics and demonstrates one of the ways that D&D began to emphasize how the player's characters interacted with non-player characters could affect behavior in the long run. This is one of the early rules hinting at how to incorporate the "acting" portion of role playing games into a game by mechanically rewarding the behavior when it is done in a particular manner. Though the rule mentions the possible use of a reaction chart for morale reactions, when one looks at that chart it becomes clear that the Chainmail morale system gives more individualized results that represent the specific kind of non-player character being modeled by the rules. The reaction chart is useful as a quick and dirty solution, but it gives uniform results regardless of troop type. It should be noted that no monster is given a morale rating in this edition of D&D, though Chainmail does provide morale scores for fantastic creatures that can be used in the melee morale resolution system. How much braver a dragon is than a goblin is only reflected in the fact that goblins subtract 1 from all morale checks in sunlight.

Dungeons & Dragons (Basic -- Holmes Edition)

The word morale is only used three times in the Holmes Basic Set. The Bless spell is listed as adding 1 to morale checks, Hobgoblins are listed as adding 1 to morale checks, and the rules mention that the morale of retainers might be affected if players continually force hirelings to test potentially dangerous magic items. It appears that the Holmes set assumes that players who are interested in adding details like morale can find them in the other rules available at the time, which included both the original three D&D rulebooks as well as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. That said, it is possible that monsters will surrender in the Holmes set if the dungeon master decides that is the case, or if the monster has a positive reaction to the player's characters when it first encounters them.

Dungeons & Dragons (Basic -- Moldvay)

It could be argued that the Tom Moldvay edited D&D Basic Set -- published in 1981 -- is the first version of D&D that can be "played out of the box." Previous editions of D&D almost required aspiring players to find a group of existing players who could explain the mechanics of the game so that the new player could play the game at all. Dr. Holmes attempted to create a version of the game that could be played by neophytes with the earlier Basic Set, but there are those who believe that he failed at the task. I think that the failure to have any morale rules, while including references to morale effects, is indicative of Holmes' failure to deliver on his intentions. He certainly laid the foundations for how a Basic Set could be written, and articulated clearly the task of a Basic Set, but it is arguable whether he succeeded or not.

Holmes described the purpose of a Basic Set in Dragon Magazine #53 as follows, "the D&D Basic Rulebook is written for people who have never seen a game. It is intended to teach the game to someone who's coming to it for the first time. All other considerations should be secondary to teaching how to play the game with a minimum of confusion." Holmes believed, and I agree, that "the first Dungeons & Dragons rule sets...were intended to guide people who were already playing the game. As a guide to learning the game, they were incomprehensible." As I have demonstrated above, the morale rules are clearly an area where this was true. Early morale rules were difficult to understand and inconsistent in mechanics, and Holmes' Basic did not dispel any obfuscation in the original rules.

Moldvay's Basic Set, the set that I learned to play D&D from, was different. It was not only clear in its presentation of the game's mechanics, it was also fun to read and contained some writing that sparked the imagination. The prose wasn't high art, but it was fuel for starving fantasy fans. It was also the first edition of D&D to have a quickly resolved, and easy to understand, morale system.

Knowing that morale rules added complexity to the game, the morale rules in the Moldvay Basic Set are optional. That said, they are easy to understand and clearly articulated:

MORALE (Optional)

Any creature in battle may try to run away or surrender. Characters are never forced to do this; a character always reacts in the way the player wishes. NPCs and monsters, however, may decide to run away or surrender. To handle this situation, each monster is given a morale score...

MORALE SCORES: ...This number is from 2-12. The higher the morale score, the better the morale. A score of 6-8 is average. A score of 2 means that the monster will not fight. A score of 12 means that the monster will fight to the death without checking morale. Creatures with a score between 2 and 12 will need to "check morale" at some time during battle, as explained below.

HOW TO CHECK MORALE: ...To check morale, roll 2d6. If the result is greater than the monsters' morale score, the monster will try to retreat...If the result is less than or equal to the morale score, the monster will continue to fight.

There are a couple of interesting points here. I believe that the Moldvay book is the first time that player's characters don't have to check for morale. Older editions of D&D are more rooted in miniatures war gaming, and morale checks would equally apply to PCs as to monsters. At least, this is the first reference I have seen to pure player empowerment with regard to moral. This is an important innovation in role playing as it gives full decision making to players. If they want to play cowards, they can. If they want to play foolhardy combatants, they can.

You can see how the Moldvay rule runs contrary to the Denning morale rule. Denning's presentation of the morale system is almost identical, save for the "if you roll a 12 on the morale check the monster becomes fanatic and won't surrender rule." Under Moldvay's system, the roll won't ever make a monster fanatic, only an initial score will. More on this difference later.

Dungeons & Dragons (Basic -- Mentzer)

In 1983, TSR published a third edition of the Basic Set. This time the rules were edited by Frank Mentzer. Mentzer brought some innovations to the presentation of the rules, including dividing the rules into a player's booklet and a dungeon master's booklet. This edition keeps the morale rules as optional and expands on Moldvay's description of how and why the rules work. Though the language is expanded, the rules are the same as those in the Moldvay edition.

Dungeons & Dragons (Basic -- Denning)

As you may remember from the beginning of this post, at least those of you still reading this will, the Denning Basic Set -- published in 1991 -- contains a change from the earlier morale rules. In Denning, "A monster or NPC who rolls 12 for his morale check has become a fanatic. A fanatic need not check morale again during this particular encounter." This is in contrast to the Moldvay and Mentzer rules where only a score of 12 indicates a fanatical opponent, and where the roll only determines incidental success or failure.

What is interesting about this rule, and why I believe it to be rooted in a misreading of the earlier rules by Denning, is that it effectively removes any difference between an 11 morale and a 12 morale. Under the Denning system, these scores are statistically identical. This is because a roll of 11 or less gives a successful morale check for the monster and a roll of 12 makes the monster fanatical. At first, I wondered if the rule was an intentional change as it gives any monster (including one with a morale of 2) the chance to become a fanatical opponent. This could lead to some interesting, and amusing, encounters, but when I checked the D&D Rules Cyclopedia -- the rules set that the Denning rules are supposed to be an introduction to -- it turned out that the Cyclopedia did not have the "roll a 12 and monster becomes fanatic" rule. This is something that only exists in the Denning version.

Having written all of this, I am pondering whether to use the Denning "mis-reading" of the rule precisely because of its fun possibilities and the randomness it adds to the game. The rule will only come into play 3% of the time for monsters with other than an 11 morale as one only rolls a 12 once in every 36 rolls on average, and it might create situations that surprise my players.

What are your thoughts on whether to use the Denning rule or not?

Post Apocalyptic Home Alone

I have always been a big fan of the Vincent Price The Last Man on Earth, as well as Charlton Heston's The Omega Man, both of which were based on Richard Matheson's story I am Legend. The story is one of the primary sources for the Zombie Apocalypse genre in film and literature -- a genre that has a fairly basic premise, but seems to continually inspire inventive narratives. One might imagine that the genre would be completely played out by now, but with shows (based on comics) like The Walking Dead and films (and books) like Book of Eli and The Road it's pretty clear that the cannibal apocalypse genre still has a lot to offer.

If you want to get into an argument about how cannibal apocalypse films and zombie apocalypse films aren't the same thing, we can talk about distinctions without differences if you really want -- but I'd rather not.

Instead, I'd like to share a small clip that I think would make a wonderful addition to the genre. It's called "I Am Home Alone." I would have gone with "I Am Alone," but that's just me. It's a mash up of Home Alone and the more recent Will Smith I Am Legend. It's pretty enjoyable. In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing a real version of this story.

Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson's Fabled Lands Adventure Gamebooks Return

In the mid-90s during the dwindling days of the vibrant Fantasy Adventure Gamebook phenomenon, Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson released their Fabled Lands series. It was a "mythical" and much talked about series among gamebook fans, but one that wasn't often seen in the United States. Dave Morris was one of the authors responsible for the Dragon Warriors role playing game (one of the most narratively driven role playing games of its time) and the books featured artwork from Fighting Fantasy artist Russ Nicholson, so the difficulty in finding the books was frustrating to many gamebook fans. I personally wondered if I would ever be able to find copies of the books, and thankfully my wait is over. Fabled Lands Publishing has recently published the first four books in the Fabled Lands series and has eight more listed on their publication schedule.

The adventure gamebook was a genre created by Ian Livingstone and Steven Jackson in 1982, with the publication of the classic Warlock of Firetop Mountain adventure. The genre combined the gaming experience of role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons with the narrative choice pathing of the Choose Your Own Adventure series. For over a decade publishers released a wide variety of these gamebooks.

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, being the first, set the standard for the industry. The vast majority of the Fighting Fantasy series were entertaining and inventive, but they didn't contain epic narratives that used the same character that traveled from book to book. The majority of the Fighting Fantasy series were episodic, and they failed to capture the feel of a role playing game campaign. The first series to truly capture the campaign feeling was Joe Dever's Lone Wolf series, where a player could use the same character for over 20 books as that character changed and grew and faced increasingly challenging foes.

Like the Dever books, the Fabled Lands series contains innovations that separate them from the typical gamebook. In Fabled Lands players have a wider array of character choices to play from than are typically offered. In your standard gamebook, players are typically limited to one "character class." There are books that allow you to play fighters, wizards, superheroes, kai disciples, and more, but each volume typically offers only one archetype. Steve Jackson's Sorcery is one exception, as are the Fabled Lands books. In Fabled Lands, players can choose from one of six professions which cover the majority of fantasy archetypes a player might find interesting. Additionally, Morris and Thomson included a "keyword" mechanic where players acquire keywords as they progress through the series. Possessing these keywords will affect future encounters and shape the playing experience. For ease of play, all keywords within a particular volume begin with the same letter. In The War-Torn Kingdom all keywords begin with A and the progression continues in later volumes. Fabled Lands uses a quick and effective combat system that allows for more variety in results than the Fighting Fantasy series without the use of a chart like in Lone Wolf.

My books came in the mail today, and I am eagerly anticipating my first foray into Sokara and the rest of the Fabled Lands

Light Grammatical Amusement for Your Friday Pleasure

David Mitchell, on behalf of the Queen's English, conveys a small grammatical lesson to Americans. Quite funny and quite useful.

Harry Potter Flashmob at The University of San Diego

Students at the University of San Diego planned and performed a wizard's duel at one of the school's libraries during finals season. The performance seems a little clumsy, and the filming isn't the best, but there are a couple of magic moments and the student's hearts are definitely in the right place. I hope that these students get together for another duel with more planning time, and they definitely have to reuse the "waaaagh!" guy again. He makes the video worth every moment.

INCEPTION in Real Time

As a strong supporter of Intellectual Property rights, I am often hesitant to post links to videos that might cross the line away from "fair use" of other's IP. This video featuring a "real time" interpretation of the "heist" sequence from INCEPTION is a rare exception. I think that its imaginative use of footage and the way it presents a concept discussed in the film, combined with the fact that it in no way presents an alternative to the original IP make this video a clear example of fair use. This is one of those rare instances where the creator of a derivative property has not only made an interesting work of art, but has added to my affection for the originating IP and reminded me that I need to buy the DVD of INCEPTION as soon as possible.