Modifying the Vargold "Brand"

Recently I've been feeling somewhat restrained by Vargold's exclusive focus on fantasy fiction and role-gaming—not because fantasy has lost its place as my favorite genre, but because I've been thinking of things I'd like to write about other genres and forms and media. I could do so on a separate blog (indeed, that was my original plan back in 2010 when I created Vargold to cover fantasy gaming and fiction and Krakalactaka! to cover comics), but I have found that maintaining multiple blogs is more or less a recipe for abandoning at least one of them.

I'm therefore "rebranding" Vargold by broadening its scope to take in comics and other species of speculative fiction. Fantasy will remain the primary focus of the blog, but it will no longer be the only lens through which I view nerd culture. To signal this shift, I've modified the blog description above to read "Barbaric Yawps on Comics, Role-Gaming, and Spec-Fic."

Beyond the Wall: Test-Driving the Character Playbooks

As promised in my last entry, here's my test-drive of one of the Beyond the Wall Character Playbooks. The game comes with six playbooks, two for each of the game's three classes: the Warrior is represented by the Village Hero and the Would-Be Knight; the Rogue, by the Untested Thief and the Young Woodsman; and the Mage, by the Self-Taught Mage and the Witch's Prentice. (There are other playbooks devoted to noble characters and demi-humans in layout right now.) To keep things simple, I'm going to start with one of the Warrior playbooks, the Village Hero. It's not exactly an Assistant Pig-Keeper, but it's as close as BTW currently gets to that archetype.

The Village Hero begins the character creation process with scores of 10 in STR and CON and scores of 8 in the remaining four abilities. These scores will change in response to my rolls on seven background tables, three detailing the character's childhood and four explaining how the character became a member of his or her class.

To discover what my character's parents did for a living, I roll 1d12 and consult the first table. A roll of 10 reveals that my father was a watchman, "stern but fair with child and stranger alike." In game terms, I increase the character's STR to 12, his CON to 11, and his CHA to 9. I also add the Athletics skill; in BTW, skills add +2 to relevant ability checks.

Attached to this table is an icon depicting a scroll. This icon tells me that I may now add a location to the village map and thus determine a fact about the characters' home town. (BTW's village map begins with a tavern icon in the center and then encourages the group to create the rest of the village as they move through the character creation process.) I don't have to link this location to my roll on the table, but I'll do so nonetheless, placing a town jail next to the tavern.

The second table asks me to roll 1d8 to learn what distinguished my hero as a child. My roll of 8 reveals that the character was fairly well-rounded as a lad, learning a bit of something from everyone. His DEX, INT, and WIS all increase to 9.

The third and final childhood table uses a 1d8 roll to determine which of the villagers befriended my character in his youth. (BTW assumes that the player characters were all best friends growing up, so this table is used to establish who else was particularly friendly.) I get another result of 8: "The grizzled mercenary who settled in town taught you a thing or two." I raise my hero's DEX and WIS to 10 and boost his CON to 12.

I also find another icon linked to the table, this time an image of a hand. The rules inform me that I may add an NPC to the list of villagers on the right side of the village map. Again I'll play things straight and make this NPC my character's mercenary mentor.

Three rolls into the process, I now have a warrior character with STR 12, DEX 10, CON 12, INT 9, WIS 10, and CHA 9. He also has the Athletics skill. Finally, I've made two explicit contributions to the party's home base: the town jail and a retired soldier. Perhaps the latter is my hero's father's deputy—or perhaps the mercenary was an amiable drunk who spend lots of time detoxing in the jail and thus got to know my character. There are lots of possibilities here.

I now move to the tables explaining how my character became a Level 1 Warrior. As a beginning Warrior, I acquire two class abilities: Weapon Specialization and Knacks. (The playbook instructs me that my rolls will determine the exact nature of these abilities.) I also pick up the Folklore skill.

Table Four asks me to roll 1d6 to determine how my hero made his name as a fighter. I get a 4 and discover that I saved one of the village children from a pack of ravenous wolves. A bonus of +3 increases my DEX to 13; I also acquire the Survival skill.

Next I roll 1d6 to establish where my character acquired his facility with arms. My result of 1 indicates that I stood in the shield wall during an enemy attack on the village, giving me +2 to CON (for a total of 14) and a Weapon Specialization with the Spear. There's a scroll icon linked to this table, giving me an opportunity to create another village location. Again I opt for the obvious choice and place a crumbling stone wall around the outside of the map.

The sixth table is one of the more interesting ones. It determines my hero's secret, but it also establishes that the hero of the player to my right shares this secret. I roll 1d6 and get a result of 2: apparently my hero once ran from danger—and so did my character's compatriot. My hero raises his DEX to 15 and gains the Fleet Knack; the other player's hero raises his character's DEX by 1.

The seventh and last table is used to determine one of my hero's key possessions. This table varies from playbook to playbook and class to class; in the Village Hero's case, it determines the character's reward for bravery from his fellow villagers. My roll of 3 indicates that the blacksmith made my character a "well-crafted" weapon; I raise my hero's STR to 14 and add a "very fine" spear to his inventory. Cued by the hand icon attached to the table, I also add the blacksmith to the list of villagers.

My hero is now ready for play. Here's his sheet:

STR 14 (+1 to hit and to damage in HTH combat)
DEX 15 (+1 to hit in ranged combat and +1 to AC)
CON 14 (+1 HP per level)
INT 9
WIS 10
CHA 9

Skills: Athletics, Folklore, Survival

Class Abilities: Weapon Specialization with Spear (+1 to hit and +2 to damage with this weapon), Fleet Knack (+1 to initiative)

Equipment: knife (d4 base damage), peasant's clothing, finely made spear (d6 base damage), thickest shield in town (+2 AC), leathers (+2 AC), free food and lodging forever, and 9 silver pieces

Alignment: Lawful

Base Attack Bonus: +1 (when wielding his spear, my hero has a total hit bonus of +3 and a damage roll of 1d6+3)

Initiative: +3

AC: 15

Fortune Points: 3

HP: 11

Saving Throws: Poison 14, Breath Weapon 17, Polymorph 15, Spell 17, Magic Item 16

Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures: Initial Reactions

Back in February, when I blogged about the experiences that brought me to role-gaming, I mentioned my encounter with J. R. R. Tolkien's Hobbit as possibly the crucial factor in making me primarily a fan of fantasy (and thus only secondarily a fan of science-fiction). Tolkien was certainly the first author to introduce me to fantasy, but Lloyd Alexander followed right upon the Professor's heels. In fact, I'm almost certain that I picked up my copy of Alexander's The Black Cauldron (the 1980 Laurel-Leaf edition with the blue-edged pages and the Jean-Leon Huens cover illustration depicted above) at the same Book Fair where I acquired my first copies of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. I thus came to Prydain only a few weeks after I first visited Middle-earth.

I also had the honor of speaking with Lloyd Alexander twice: first as a sixth-grader participating in a phone interview and then as a graduate student in Philadelphia attending a meet-and-greet at Chris's Corner bookstore. After the phone interview, my reading teacher Marty Podskoch gave me a publicity photo of Alexander playing the violin; said photo now hangs on my living room wall. The bookstore meet-and-greet resulted in an autographed hardcover of Black Cauldron that is probably my most carefully guarded book. So I guess you could say that Lloyd Alexander meant—and still means—a lot to me.

Which is why I'm always surprised that Alexander never had a greater effect on role-gaming. He was certainly a factor in my own early gaming: one of my first Tunnels & Trolls character was a rip-off of Gurgi, and I remember adding Gurgi's ever-full sack of food to a list of Dungeons & Dragons magic items I was writing up. But beyond my own initial games I don't recall Alexander having much of a significant influence.

Until now: Flatland Games has just published Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures, a D&D neoclone explicitly "Inspired by the works of Ursula K. Le Guin and Lloyd Alexander" (as the BTW website puts it). What distinguishes BTW from other neoclones is its focus on the party as a band of "young heroes finding their way in dangerous situations" (p. 2 of the Core Rules booklet). D&D as YA fantasy instead of sword-and-sorcery, if you will.

Although it appears that you can more or less run the game as a rules-light version of D&D, BTW's "killer app" is its use of Character Playbooks (randomized life-paths generating different versions of YA fantasy archetypes) and Out-of-the-Box Play (as the players generate their characters using the Playbooks, their dice rolls help to generate the party's home village and influence the GM's scenario—the adventure provided with the initial rules has blank spaces for GMs to insert character-specific information and hooks that shape the way the scenario plays out).

BTW's approach to fantasy thus aims right at the oracular-pig-shaped hole in my gaming heart. I'm going to take some time tonight to roll up a character using one of the Playbooks (either a Taran-esque "Village Hero" or an Eilonwy-esque "Witch's Prentice"). Since BTW assumes that the players will create their heroes as a group (the sixth table in every Playbook not only generates a stat bonus for the character in question, but for the character of the player to the right), this sample hero won't be a completely accurate test case for the game. But I think it will nicely get at just what BTW has to offer the role-gaming scene.

S & W Appreciation Day + Frog God Games Discount = Profit!

I've heard from the good folks at Frog God Games and d20PFSRD.com that they will be offering a 25% discount on all Swords & Wizardry products come Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day (April 17th, next Wednesday). The coupon code for this one-day sale will be sent out prior to the event, and I'll post it here on the blog.

Since I've been putting off snagging a hardcopy of Swords & Wizardry Complete, this announcement comes as good news.

There's a Thing in My Crypt

As Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day (4/17/13) draws closer, I've been brainstorming about what to write as my contribution. Luckily my copy of Crypts & Things finally arrived in the mail to assist me in this process. It's a handsome book, much better looking in hardcopy than in PDF—even if some of the monster art didn't survive the printing process (there are some panels that have essentially gone black in my copy).

Hulks & Horrors: Faraday King, ABD

For once, I'm getting some actual play out of a game book I've purchased: I've rolled up a character for a PBP Hulks & Horrors game run by John Berry himself. The game will be taking place in theRPGsite's PBP forum under the rubric of "The Korathraz Conflict"; there are still a few spots open for characters from interested players.

The character is a Scientist named Faraday King, ABD. (For those not familiar with academic shorthand, "ABD" stands for "All But Dissertation.") He only has 4 hp, so I haven't done a lot of work fleshing him out. For now, he's just a wet-behind-the-ears graduate student who's been unleashed from the lab to carry out field research on the Precursor cultures of Korathraz Sector.

Name: Faraday King

Class: Scientist

Level: Intern (1st)

Languages: Tradespeak, Scilang, Precursor-A

CLASS TRAITS

Hit Die: d6

Saving Throw: +1 WIS

Weapons: Pistol, Dagger

Armor: Light

Preferred Environment: Oxygen, Medium Gravity

Starting Credits: 1,200

COMBAT STATISTICS

Hit Points: 4

Armor Class: 7

Melee To-Hit: +0

Ranged To-Hit: +0

Carrying Load: 55 lbs. (29 lbs. carried)

STATS

STR: 11

INT: 15 (Charge +2)

WIS: 10

DEX: 10

CON: 11

CHA: 14 (3 languages)

SAVING THROWS

DEX: 10

CON: 11

WIS: 11

SCIENCE! ABILITIES

Charge Points: 4

Lvl 1 Programs: Detect Energy, Lock Opener

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Science!: See above for multi-tool’s capacity.

What Is It, Doc?: Provided multi-tool still has Charge, adds +1 to INT checks to identity foreign objects.

Overload: By overloading and destroying multi-tool, can execute one final program regardless of Charge cost. Can only replace multi-tool at home base / home ship.

EQUIPMENT

Laser Pistol: 2d6H damage, 2 lbs., 180 cr.

2 magazines: 15 shots each, 2 lbs., 36 cr.

Fiberweave: AC 7, 2 lbs., 100 cr.

Filter Mask: 50cr.

Rebreather: 1 lb., 100 cr.

EarPod: 100 cr.

Collapsible Solar Panels: 10 lbs., 200 cr.

Wrist Computer: 1 lb., 200 cr.

Filter Bottle: Holds 16 oz. of water; 1 lb., 30 cr.

Pocket Knife: 1 damage, 1 lb., 20 cr.

Backpack: Carries 50 lbs., 2 lbs., 40 cr.

Electronic Torch: lights 60’ area, 24 hr. charge, 1 lb., 20 cr.

Field Ration (x5): 1 day meal each, 5 lbs., 50 cr.

Clothing: 1 lb., 20 cr.

MONEY

54 cr.

Hulks & Horrors Has Docked at Vargold Station

My copy of John Berry's Hulks & Horrors arrived in the mail today. Published by Bedroom Wall Press, the game is a brilliant translation of D&D tropes into science fiction terms. It's also lovingly typeset in what appears to be the same Optima font as Traveller. Looking forward to giving the book a closer read and reporting back here.

Wild Men, I Think I Love You

The April 2013 issue of National Geographic contains a fascinating photo-essay by Rachel Shea entitled "Europe's Wild Men." The article briefly discusses a number of folkloristic traditions in which men dress up as monstrous, half-human beings for ritual purposes. That's all fine and dandy, but what really rocks about the piece are the photos (taken by Charles Fréger) that accompany it. Each image depicts a "wild man" from a different region. The picture at this beginning of this post is my favorite: although it looks like Chewbacca with a bad case of megacephaly, it's actually a Bulgarian kuker, a kind of folk exorcist who protects villagers from evil spirits. There are some other great images: the South Tyrolian Schanppviecher, the German Strohmann (mislabeled on the website as an Italian boes), the Scots burryman, and more—all great nightmare fuel, and all wonderful inspirations for new monsters. Check it out!

Happy Fall of Sauron Day!

Hope you're all enjoying a pleasant Fall of Sauron Day! You've got Frodo Nine-Fingers to thank for the day off!

Playing at the World: Wow.

I just finished reading the Kindle edition of Jon Peterson's Playing at the World the other night, and it would be an understatement to say that I'm impressed. Peterson's book is clearly the definitive starting point for any history of RPGs, capacious in its scope and historical sweep. I'm particularly amazed at the dogged character of his archival research: he relies almost exclusively on contemporary documents, describing the birth of roleplaying games as those who were inventing them saw things. Gary Gygax comes across as a much more impressive figure than the control freak I remember from those early Dragon editorials about what counts as official D&D--he has an air of the polymath about him. I also found it fascinating to read about the gender shock that D&D represented to the almost exclusively male worlds of wargaming and miniature gaming; Lee Gold figures prominently in this history. Because of my recent T&T kick, I felt that Peterson's take on the game was slightly unfair—but then he's clearly talking about the earliest editions of T&T, not the Fifth Edition so expertly edited by Liz Danforth.

All in all, I stand in awe of Peterson's achievement and wholeheartedly recommend the book to those gamers who have yet to encounter it.

Tunnels & Trolls: Down, Down to Delver Town

Sometime in late 1980 or early 1981, I encountered the WaldenBooks in Oneonta's Southside Mall discovered that Dungeons & Dragons was not the only fantasy roleplaying game for sale. There on the shelf in front of me was a large black box with golden lettering that read Tunnels & Trolls and a gilded image of three adventurers about to enter a dungeon portal. (Above is the inked original of Liz Danforth's cover illustration.) I failed my saving roll against T&T's stark yet arty presentation and made my first independent gaming purchase. (My copy of the Holmes Basic D&D set had been a birthday present from my grandparents.)

With interior art by Danforth, Rob Carver (above), and Victoria Poyser, T&T looked a hell of a lot better than D&D did at the time (Dave Trampier's work excluded). Ken St. Andre's text was a better read as well—who wouldn't rather be a delver than an adventurer? I remember being amazed by all the different character kindreds available, and I definitely tried my hand at surviving the solo adventure Buffalo Castle. The one T&T character I remember creating was Prince Gwyn of Dain; I may have done a character sheet for Lloyd Alexander's Gurgi as well.

But I never really got a game of T&T going. My friends were more into D&D at the time, and T&T's combat system (summing up Hit Point Totals for both sides and delivering the difference's worth of damage to the losers) seemed weird compared to the blow-by-blow pacing of D&D. But I never lost my interest in the game and kept up with it over the years, buying the Fifth Edition rules twice more (once in the very nice Blade version and once in the British Corgi version).

Nostalgia played some part in my decision to back the recent Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls Kickstarter. (It was certainly the key factor in my willingness to pay for the extravagant luxury of the personalized wooden replica of the old black-and-gold box.) But I had also been reading a number of forum threads and blog entries in recent years that summarized just how prescient much of T&T actually was.

So I'm going to actually get it together and play some T&T this year. I will be making my own character and putting him through some of the easier solo adventures. In addition, I'm going to run Mike Hill's Dungeon of the Rat for my daughter and a number of her friends. My daughter is very excited about playing a fairy (although we may need to do something about those .25 STR and CON modifiers).