Real gamer's character sheet

There was a great post the other day over at The Sandbox of Doom singing the praises of the 3"x5" character sheet. Even though I wouldn't necessarily label myself an Old School Gamer I can dig this. When it comes to character sheets I've always thought smaller is better. Maybe it's because of playing wargames where models seldom have a sheet bigger than a playing card. But I thinks it's really because of my fondness for good ol' Tunnels & Trolls 5th Ed. where men were men, Amazons were Amazons, and Trolls smelled really bad.

Atlantis

A post today by James Maliszewski reviwing C. J. Cutliffe Hyne's classic novel The Lost Continent got me thinking about how seldom it's been used as a setting for FRPG's. You'd think people would naturally be attracted to this major, fantastic continent of folklore when imagining fantasy geographies. Instead, almost everyone prefers to frolic in the fields surveyed by Tolkien.

The only RPG line based on Atlantis was Bard Games' Atlantean Trilogy stuff that came out back in the mid 1980's. There was the The Arcanum, The Lexicon, and The Bestiary. All of it was recently re-edited and released by Morrigan Press as Atlantis: The Second Age. A nice effort, and by all accounts a very detailed treatment. But even so they couldn't avoid the Tolkien derived pseudo-medieval fantasy species such as trolls, faeries, and elves. I'd rather have seen creatures from classical mythology in this setting. Or the completely original creatures they later went with in Talislanta.

Aside from the odd superhero/occult investigation module touching on Atlantis the only other supplement was GURPS Atlantis. In addition to giving a good account of the Atlantis myth, it covers the fabled continent from three angles. The Orichalcum Age which gives it a high fantasy treatment; The Heirs of Minos that gives details for use in conspiracy games; and Lords of the Deep, that gives presents a fantastic background for steampunk or superhero games.

The only other serious coverage of Atlantis is Hero Game's The Atlantean Age setting book for Fantasy Hero. It approaches the mythic land from a high fantasy direction as you might expect. The book provides detailed coverage of the continent's history, culture, religion and magic. The monsters are suitably colorful, with things like war apes, battledons and Atlantean Dragons. Basically it's a focused and detailed treatment of the sword-and-sorcery aspects of the myth.

All of these supplements have something to offer, though the Hero Games version is my favorite. In large part that's because it matches what I imagine the lost continent to be. I see it as a place of high adventure and fabulous magic like the realms depicted in the pages of Weird Tales. Hopefully we'll someday see more gamers exploring fabled Atlantis and discovering it's wonders.

Random Dungeon Maker

Rob Lang has a great post today linking to Dyson Logos' amazing Random Morph Map dungeon generator. I love these kind of things, and this one's better than most. The maps not only work for traditional fantasy dungeons, but would make great alien ruins, or asteroid tunnels. Here's what they look like. Thanks, Dyson.

RPGs by the numbers

Profiles on blogger that list as an Interest...

Mekton: 1

Fuzion: 2 (Including the guy above.)

BESM (Tri-Stat): 12

Traveller: ~143

D&D: ~2,300

So there you go. BESM/Tri-Stat is marginally more popular than Fuzion. (And it's interesting that more wimmin than men list it as an interest.) Traveller is over ten times more popular than either. And they all get crushed by the D&D juggernaut.

I still like Fuzion, and there's more than enough material online to run a decent science fiction/mecha game. But with Tri-Stat being a more complete free game and having more appeal to wimmin, and therefore a bigger potential audience, I think I've talked myself into focusing on using it for the near future. Unless I do the smart thing and just play Traveller...or drink the D&D Kool-Aid. "Magic Missile!"

Vanishing games

It seams like the webpages devoted to the RPGs I like are vanishing at an alarming rate. This has been happening slowly over the past few years. Now that Geocities, which was home to many a RPG related page, is defunct it's really noticeable.

I'm mainly thinking of Fuzion here. Even though it never really caught on with either the Hero System or Interlock fans, there used to be a huge amount of material for it available to download for free. There were major plug-ins covering magic, psi powers, aliens, and Road Warrior style combat. Supplements like the Total Powers plug-in and the Heroic Abilities plug-in gave you complete superpowers rules. And Naughty Tentacles even provided material for hentai games. All that material is basically gone now. Even Lightspeed, one of the few games left using the Fuzion mechanics, is supposedly switching to a different system.

Action! System, which is an OGL knock off of Fuzion, hasn't fared much better. There was never as much material available for it in the first place, and now even that's disappearing. My favorite use of the game, Jamie Borg's ASsembler rules which ported OGL Mecha to A!S, vanished with Geocities. And it doesn't help that the Gold Rush Games site has been down for years, although you can still by their games at sites like RPG Now.

It's very discouraging. I have copies of most of this stuff archived, but it's hard to get people interested in playing a game they've almost never heard of and that has almost no web presence.

As it stands I think Tri-Stat dX is one of the best free games out there. It's a complete RPG, with a full-fledged power system that covers everything from mecha to superheroes. It's sort of like a free, rules-lite version of Hero System. I have a few nits to pick with the game, but nothing that a page or so of house rules can't cover. And even though Guardians of Order went under years ago, BESM/Tri-Stat have a good reputation and fairly wide recognition. Plus they have a slick, active fan site online.

Maybe I'm just in a funk because I haven't been able to get any games going lately. Aside from the occasional pick-up game with friends I haven't been able to get anything rolling. I'm probably just approaching things at the wrong angle or something, but going with more popular free system that I like may help. We'll see.

Retro-robots

Marauding metal monsters to menace your meritorious heroes.

Hydra Miniatures offers a good selection of retro-bots as part of it's Retro Raygun line.

(Robot Legionnaire)

(Warbot)

(Size comparison w/figure from Rattrap)

Wargames Supply Dump has a couple of robots as part of their Dick Garrison line.

(Khang Robot DG08)

(Khang Robot DG09)

Pulp Figs also has some robot that come straight from a mad scientist's lab.

(Promethian Killer Robots)

Killer B Games include a hovering 'bot in their G.A.F.D.O.Z. line.



('Bot comparison: Left, Rattrap's Robot Type II; Center, Killer B's GAFDOZ4; Right, Hydra's Robot Legionnaire)


And Rattrap have a robot in their .45 Adventure line of pulp models.

(unpainted Robot Type II)

Negromundheim

Rient's ongoing Mutant Future campaign has me thinking about Negromundheim. Now before you get the wrong idea, the name isn't some kind of slur. It's a punning reference the the Games Workshop games Necromunda and Mordheim. However, instead of using the overpriced GW rules, the game uses Shockforce II.

Negromundheim is a war scarred, radiation soaked, mutant infested planet somewhere in the Galactic Empire. Think Gamma World in a space opera context. It was created by a group of French gamers to use as a setting for their tongue-in-cheek battles. It's an entertaining setting with a history that makes for a fun read.

The Shockforce rules themselves use the WarEngine system which can best be described as a simplified version of the D6 System adapted to wargaming. One significant change is the die rolling mechanic. Here's how the rules describe it:

"Many attributes like Attack Value and Defense use values like 2k2 or 4k3. The ‘k’ stands for ‘keep.’ You roll the number of dice before the ‘k’, but keep only the number of dice after the ‘k,’ usually the higher ones."

So if you have an AV of 4k2, you roll four dice but only count the two highest. It's a clever variation that fixes the glitch in the original D6 mechanic, but as you can imagine it leads to an uneven distribution of probabilities. (A much better implementation of the idea is EABA's mechanic where you keep the highest three dice rolled.)

Shockforce also included a simple set of point-build Special Powers that can give a model mutant abilities, which really gives them a Gamma World vibe. Unfortunately the point system used isn't very balanced -- kinda like BESM. All-in-all it's a fun game that makes for colorful skirmish battles. Plus you can get the rules for free on-line now, so what's not to like?

Negromundheim is a great example of how to make a (not-to-serious) post-catastrophe campaign setting. And by putting it in a space opera context you don't limit the players to being natives. They could be interstellar Travellers there after treasure, information, or just looking for repairs after a mishap. Who knows what they'll find...