New Experience in D&D Clones (Breaking the Old-School Cycle)

Alvario Tapia's art evokes the lost lands of the Bitter Reach wrapped in ice and snow!

The older versions of D&D, such as B/X and BECMI have a lot going for them and inspired countless clones and revised versions over the years since the Old School Renaissance began. My current version is Old-School Essentials.

These games were focused on exploration in the pursuit of treasure. There is a sound argument that the system of attaching character advancement to the recovery of treasure (experience points for gold) encourages creative play that is not centered on violence. If the goal is to get the treasure out of the ruins and the players receive improvements to their characters based on achieving that goal, the thought is they will focus on that goal with as little risk to their characters as possible. Because fighting comes with the risk of character death, negotiation, trickery, stealth, and imaginative (or preposterous) plans are all preferable to combat.

On the surface, this system seems great, and it does encourage creative roleplay and planning from the players. The problem comes with the way it interacts with the assumptions of the implied setting. It's often said that D&D has as many or more similarities to western fiction as it does to fantasy fiction. The assumption is the characters are on the frontier. They strike out into the wilderness from one of the villages, towns, or cities that are the points of light representing civilization and order in the dark and untamed chaos that is the frontier. The idea is the characters are exploring these spaces that are unknown to, or forgotten by, the civilized peoples of the fantasy world. The problem with the frontier of D&D is the same problem with frontier of the old west: somebody was already there.

The base of most of the older adventures is to acquire resources from the frontier until a character amasses enough power and renown to build a fortress or tower from which to tame the wilderness, settle an area, and move into domain level play.

It's safe to say my worldview changed dramatically since I started playing RPGs back in 1983. for a variety of reasons, I no longer see the colonial patterns of going somewhere different to take resources and setting it with familiar people as a fun adventure. Newer versions of D&D exchanged experience for gold with experience for winning fights and defeating monsters. The result is no better because the incentives encourage ruthless killing of every creature the characters find. 

I feel it is important to decolonize my games and make my table a better place for more people to be. I also don't want to reinforce the assumptions that led to so much harm to people here in Canada and elsewhere. My professional and personal journey of decolonization is a long, ongoing, and important one for me.

I decided to make changes to my B/X home game and follow the example of some new games when it comes to advancement, but still hold onto the flavour of the old character classes from D&D. Two of my favourite RPGs to play right now are from Free League. They both manage to move away from the colonialism of the wild west assumptions of D&D. I assume this has a lot to do with the worldview of the Swedes and their core values. These games are focused on wild adventure and exploration. They both have experience systems that reinforce their respective strengths, by having the group review their characters' performance against these assumptions with a series of questions that grant an experience point for every yes.

Johan Egerkrans bringing the mayhem!

Dragonbane takes place in a world made of the shattered remains of a draconic empire destroyed by conflict with demons. Factions, monsters, and power-mad fools raid the ruins that dot the wilderness in search of artifacts that will help them carve their own little kingdoms and empires out of what is left. These adventures tend to emulate the plots of pulp fantasy and legends, involving thwarting tyrants and pulling off feats of daring rather than pulling enough gold out of a dungeon to disrupt a nation's economy. The first adventure is a race to recover the pieces of and reassemble an artifact to stop an ancient evil from returning to plague the world. 

The experience system in Dragonbane gives points for big moments when using skills. If the player roles a critical success or failure, called dragons(1) and demons(20), during a session they put a mark beside the skill on the character sheet that allows for a chance at advancement. This means the more the characters do things, more they can improve. It favours action that is the bread and butter of this game of, "Magic and Mayhem." The characters get more marks at the end of session the players can place as they want if they are able to say yes to any of a series of five questions.

Forbidden Lands manages to incorporate a community-building element without being colonial. For the two settings I've played so far they focus on exploration in the wake of a cataclysm that kept people isolated in small communities. The disappearance of the Bloodmist in the Raven Lands and the melting glaciers in the Bitter Reach create opportunities for the people of these places to explore the world that was hidden from them for so long and rebuild new communities on the abandoned bones of the fortresses, towns, and cities of the past. The creatures that are normally disposable in D&D are playable "Kin" in Forbidden Lands, with goblins, wolfkin, and orcs travelling alongside humans, halflings, elves, and dwarves. There is still conflict between these groups, but the buffer created by the new revealed lands and bigger threats on the horizon make negotiation between them more attractive than warfare. 

Nils Gulliksson showing a party on the move.

The mechanics of the game are focused on exploration with all the opportunities and dangers that come with it. The combat is so dangerous that if a creature could speak we would negotiate, coming up with some creative solutions; including writing a song about a drake to feed its vanity in exchange for something it had in its lair we needed.

The experience system for Forbidden Lands also uses a series of ten questions about each character's performance with a focus on exploration and roleplay. It is a fun way to wrap up a session with the whole group talking about how each character was great. 

Ending the sessions with these positive recaps solidifies the big moments of the session and makes for some positive vibes at the end of the game too. I prefer it to milestone experience because the old-school classes advance at different rates and milestones can't account for that dynamic. That's why I decided to incorporate the experience questions at the end of my sessions as well. To keep the integrity of the B/X class progression I knocked two zeroes of the experience requirements for each level. This means the Thief needs 12 XP (or 12 yes answers) to get to level two and 24 to get to level three, but the Magic User needs 25 XP (or 25 yes answers) to get to level two and 50 to get to level three. the Thief and Magic User need at total of 1600 and 3000 XP respectively for level nine, so progression slows as they advance. 

In practice it is working well at the lower levels, but a session only renders around 10 XP so I may need to tighten the progression up as they get up there. I don't think anyone wants to take 150 sessions to advance their Magic User from level eight to level nine. The consensus online seems to be that people should be able to level their characters in five or six sessions so I'll probably fix the progression after it gets to be 50 or so XP between levels. Although, I do like the progressively slower progression in how it makes the name-level characters more rare and impressive. It also keeps the party in the fifth-to-eighth-level sweet spot that I like to play in a lot longer than normal. It's an ongoing project with my players, so I'll keep it how it is for now and see how it goes.

My Experience Questions for my home B/X game

The beauty of B/X is it is difficult to break the game with changes because the system is both simple and robust. Adapting elements of newer games to move the assumptions away from its problematic past works well in my experience and helped me reinforce creative play and heroics at my table.

If you have comments, hit me up on Bluesky where I'll be sure to post: @dave-stuff.bsky.social

Playtesting The Hardy Boys Mysteries RPG at CleriCon 2024!

The key to three days of amazing gaming with a bunch of online RPG content creators!

CleriCon2024 wrapped today! It was a wild three days full of gaming with great people and I hope we get to do it all again next year! I had many wonderful experiences over the weekend that I will talk about in another post, but for this post I want to focus on the answer to a question friend messaged me to ask over the past couple of days.

This year I stepped up my involvement by running a game on the Friday night. I took a risk and ran the playtest version of my own Hardy Boys Mysteries RPG, but it was a risk that paid off bigtime!

Something special for our top sleuth!

I ran the adventure I created for it called, "The Clue in the Missing Milk," and people loved it! I ran it once before at home so I wasn't going in unprepared, but I found playtesting at a Con stressful before we started. The lead-up was the worst, but once we got the session going we all sunk into Bayport and soon there was no room for my nerves. I was glad I ran it during the first session though, because I doubt I would enjoy any of the games I signed up to play before I was done with mine!

I had some worries about how a Powered by the Apocalypse based game would be received at an Old-School D&D focused Con, but the group that signed up for my game loved how the system helped it feel like the Hardy Boys! Everyone was there for the experience, and no one had any pre-existing notions about PbtA systems. It did what we needed it to do to immerse us in the kid-detective genre.

The first playtest confirmed the concept and got me some excellent feedback about how to deliver the information to the players, especially on the archetype playbooks/character sheets. The second playtest gave me a better idea of what tools the Editor (the person in the Master of Ceremonies/Referee type role) needs for smooth play. 

The feedback from the CleriCon game was positive and created a crazy buzz about the game that ran right through the Con! The players enjoyed it and talked about it so much I had people asking me questions about where they could get it and if I will run it next year even as I was leaving today! 

There is not enough developed for me to release yet, and plenty of work to do before that happens. The confirmation that the core of the game is fun to play and emulates those early, public domain, Hardy Boys books is wonderful, but far from the end of testing.

My amazing partner Mel helped create a clue for the CleriCon game with her Cricut!

I ran for a group of four. Two young people in their early 20s who had a familiarity with the Hardy Boys and two older players who grew up with the books and were thrilled to step back into something like the stories they loved so much. All four found solving the mystery a fun, satisfying experience. The one player they voted the Sleuth who contributed the most received a copy of The House on the Cliff, the second Hardy Boys story, in the tan hard-cover with the yellow-spined slip cover. Watching the look on his face while he untied the twine holding the wrapping closed and took out the book was a pleasure. He shared he had a subscription as a boy and received one of the blue-spined picture-cover books every month, and was amazed to have an older version. I apologize to the people in his life if you get dragged through bookstores, antique barns, and thrift shops as he rebuilds that collection.

I had provided pairs of dice and note pads for all the Sleuths but everyone gave those back for the next playtest. I took it as a good sign that they all kept their character playbooks and took their pages of notes out of the pads as mementos of the experience.

There was room for improvement and as I review the game I expect I will find more. I noticed spots that could be tweaked and that more needs to be done to get the pacing of the adventure more in line with the original stories. Maybe it's the nature of Con play, but the players focused on solving the mystery and foiling the criminal plot as fast as possible. They did not do much to engage with the character's regular lives. In the original stories the Hardy Boys and their friends still had school, homework, chores, and regular fun pursuits that came before investigating the mysteries. There's still some work to do to support that balance.

I also noted some difficulties in terms of organization for the Editor that could be solved by handling the clues better. I already have some ideas about how to make that flow better, but it will all need to be tested.

Write, test, rewrite... I'll be on that treadmill for while.

The positive feedback and absolute joy we had playing the game filled my tank with all the motivation I need to push on to the next steps. Once I have the game running the way I want it to run I'll need to try it out with someone else running it. Seeing how they use the material will let me know if I need to give groups more tools or guidelines to help them get to where we got on Friday. I'll let you all know when I get there.

I'm still feeling the high! I know I have something special, but I'm not fooling myself about how much work there is left. I'll keep folks updated here on the blog and see what else I can use to keep people connected to the wild ride this journey might turn out to be. 

I am grateful to the play-testers who took a chance on The Hardy Boys Mysteries RPG so far and everyone else expressing excitement for the project! 

Thank you all so much! 

The Hardy Boys Mysteries RPG at CleriCon!

I mentioned in my last post, my main project right now is The Hardy Boys Mysteries Role Playing Game. What I didn't mention is my first public playtest is happening at CleriCon tonight!

Look! A CLUE!

We'll be playing: "The Clue in the Missing Milk." It's an adventure I ran before to positive feedback so I'm hoping it works well again tonight! I only have a five-hour drive to Glen Williams, Ontario to second-guess myself.

CleriCon is an old-school RPG Convention with a focus on B/X and BECMI D&D. There are newer games running, like Mork Borg, but I'm fairly certain I'll be running the only RPG Powered by the Apocalypse. I tried a few systems, including a few of my own creation, but they didn't fit those original Hardy Boys stories the way a custom PbtA system did.

The Hardy Boys are adventures full of silly, campy fun where the characters stumble into clues and coincidences until they can't help but solve the mystery. Mysteries are usually difficult to run well in RPGs, but The Hardy Boys are more like adventures with a mystery as a plot device. The stories are full of outrageous coincidences and the action delivers clues to the characters with more efficiency than Amazon. That's how I ended up with PbtA. The Move structure is perfect for bludgeoning the players with clues as they move through the story until they have everything they need to solve the mystery and thwart the plans of the bad guys! 

The Clue in the Missing Milk follows the Hardy Boys formula, starting with an inciting incident to bring the Sleuths into the action and connect them to the mystery. After that there is a timeline for a few things that will happen with or without their involvement, and a huge collection of clues they can uncover as they move around Bayport.

Some goodies for my players at CleriCon, including one of the
first six Hardy Boys Books, WITH a yellow-spined slipcover. 
It's all wrapped up and ready for the top Sleuth!

I tested the adventure earlier this week with a mixed group of mostly strangers with all levels of experience with RPGs from none to decades of play. The laughter did not stop and it was the most fun I had running a game in a long time! When I first conceived the idea to start this project I could not have hoped for more.

So now it is fingers crossed for tonight to see how it tests in the craziness of Con play. 

Wish me luck!

I'm back!

After a few years of quietly playing, running, and (as always) tinkering with games, I have something to add to the conversation again. Instead of focusing on tweaks to existing games, I find myself diving deep into design. Like many people involved in the RPG community I'm always messing around with some idea for a game, adventure, or scenario, but this time it feels different.

No limits! Yeah!

I have a few design projects on the go. Some of it grew out of regular play and some addresses problems I see. I still favour the rules-light systems based in the old school tradition, but love how games have grown and changed. There are so many options and tools we have now to mix and match and get exactly what we want out of the experience at our table or online game-space! I also find my professional life crossing over into RPGs as new game-based therapies develop. It's all exciting!

Most of the RPGs I'm working on are somewhere in the middle of the write, test, rewrite cycle. I tend to follow the muse as it jumps around so they all move forward at a glacial pace. I'll talk about each as they come up but the project that caught fire for me right now is my take on the Hardy Boys adventures. Originally the Mid Century Mysteries, the core of the game was in the works long before I decided to take advantage of the original Hardy Boys Books entering the public domain. My connection to this material is strange and deserves its own post, so I'll expand on that later.

Source material for the Hardy Boys Adventure RPG!

With my brain hyper-focused on the Hardy Boys Adventures RPG, everything else is still taking up space in my brain, but more in the background. There will be more about them in the future, but it may be a while.

My home game that grew out of playing the original Black Hack continues to develop. It was something all its own by the time the second edition of the Black Hack came out. I'll get it all in order at some point. It would be nice to put a book together for my own use and to have a better reference for my players. The reactions to the bits of it I posted before also make me think there's room for it as an option in the RPG market. Based on my experience, it could be a good game to use to introduce new folks to the RPG hobby in a way that is more accessible. For it to be accessible, it needs to be more than a pile of Google documents and hand-written notes. I want people to have a great experience then have something they could take away to try out on their own. There's more to it than that, but I can expand on the story of that game later. My big lesson from that one is kids can be the best playtesters! 

I'm working on a sci-fi game that came out of play-testing an original system I had planned to use for sword and sorcery. At that stage of the testing I wasn't certain what I would do with magic, so I ran the test using the system for a sci-fi scenario so I could have fantastic elements without magic. The system performed well, and turned out to be adaptable. After using it for sci-fi though, I realised the system supported one of the best science fiction RPG experiences I ever had. I tossed out the whole sword and sorcery thing and dove into creating a sci-fi game that made use of the core game mechanics. Then there was a lot more work to do! I'll go into the details, hopes, and motivations for that one in a later post too. 

Obligatory dice photo! These dice come from the Threshold Diceworks Holmes Retro Collection

The other project comes from people asking me to run "D&D" for them and while I doubt I'll ever publish it, organizing all the changes into a handbook would make my life easier when I run it. I used to run fifth edition D&D for a few years after it first came out, as scrolling back on the blog will show, and I enjoyed it. I find D&D's grown into a monster of supplemental rules, new options, and there is too much to keep track of when running. I still like to play it, but I don't run it anymore.  The same bloat eventually weighed down second edition D&D so much the game almost disappeared! The bloat brought me back to B/X D&D and Old School Essentials. As much fun as I have with it, I started smoothing things out. I mixed in some new approaches while keeping the core rules, benefits, and play style of B/X. I know there are people who think B/X D&D is some kind of sacred text that is eternal. I have no problems with that view, and enjoy playing at their tables. After speaking with folks that look to the old school for a set of rules that can be modified without breaking, I know there people who would like to take a look at the changes I made as inspiration for their own changes. I'll post pieces of that as it comes together as well. The last time I ran it was a great experience!

I'm not sure writing a post about posts I will write later is a good idea, but I'm back, and I'm doing different things these days. We'll see how it goes.

Forbidden Lands - Session Report

I have the tremendous luck to be playing in a Forbidden Lands campaign in the new Bitter Reach campaign setting. Forbidden Lands is the fantasy RPG put out by Free League using their Year Zero Engine rules. I played a one-shot in the main adventuring area called the Raven Lands before moving on to play in a long term campaign in the newly released Bitter Reach, a frozen wasteland north of the Raven Lands.

At first I wasn't too keen on playing a setting covered by a glacier. I live in Northern Ontario, and I did more than my fair share of winter camping so I don't find the idea of trekking across windswept snows to be romantic. I mostly think of long marches in snow shoes carrying too much gear and getting frostbite. Everyone else was excited so I decided to give it a whirl, even after they all made fun of me for having driven a dogsled team once. It would appear I am a Canadian stereotype. 

It turns out that the game also has no romance for hiking through the cold. The weather is a unpredictable foe, and travel is dangerous! It became another challenge of exploration that I found myself enjoying. 

This post is a session report, rather than a review, so I'll get to that. This report is from this week's game. Looking back, it blows my mind how much happens in a two hour session! The group I am playing with is a tonne of fun! The report itself is written from the point of view of my character. Ellodi is a student of winter elf lore who, until recently, lived on the coast of the Bitter Reach and made a living appraising winter elf artifacts to finance her magical studies. This report comes in media res, several sessions in.

Yeah, it's a lot like that.

First foray onto the glacier, Day 11

We drove our dogs hard across the glacier top, travelling straight southwest from the tower, and leaving Kastor's Edge far behind us. Avalanches, storms and snowblindness slowed our progress and we were forced to make camp before turning south.

The weather broke the next day and we made excellent time to the place we believed was the source of the strange lights in the sky.

The glacier parted before us to form a valley between the glistening cliffs of broken ice, and expose the ruins of an ancient winter elf city.

We proceeded with caution since tracks and campfires indicated we were somewhat late to the party as treasure hunters had beat us to this important find. After scouting out the closer buildings, we decided to explore the unoccupied remains of a sorcerer's tower as a place of interest and potential camp.

The contents of the tower had suffered great damage from the crushing weight of the ice and the recent melt. Only one scroll was recovered after careful work. We were able to find a few artifacts and some excellent examples of the furniture from the period. The tower doors were in excellent condition and with a little work were repaired and secured to protect us from the potential mischief of the treasure hunters who are no doubt raiding this precious archaeological site as I write this report.

Karina volunteered to remain in the tower and prepare our camp (mostly because her player didn't make this session) while we made haste to explore the other buildings we had spotted from the upper level of the tower.

We approached an important looking structure that was largely intact due to its extra thick walls. I was hoping for a library of some sort but once inside we found a structure that looked like a vault and in front of it a person that welcomed us.

This person was impossibly beautiful and charismatic. They quickly charmed the party. Lucy, the minstrel, was particularly smitten. Djhara also made advances of a romantic nature toward the person but I am uncertain if they understood since the mating rituals of the wolfkin are something of an acquired taste.

The creature claimed to be only interested in one of the many artifacts their research indicated was in the vault. They were happy to allow us to recover all the other artifacts as long as they received the medallion.

Opening the lock turned out to be child's play when comparing the stellar components to the sketch Selatula had made of the ancient star patterns in the tower we had previously explored. (The lock was actually pretty difficult and would have been impossible without that star chart. Even then, Ellodi strained to do it, and had to push a lore roll to get the job done)

Once inside the vault we found many scrolls that appeared to be documents indicating ownership. These would certainly be helpful in constructing a translation key for the winter elf language. There was also two medallions similar to the description the creature gave us. Upon closer inspection we noticed that the two medallions had the star patterns of two different areas of the ancient night sky.

We also noticed the creature could not touch the medallion. They deflected all questions about their refusal to touch either medallion. Our suspicions were aroused, but it was being cooperative and I had already marked the star-field on our sketch so it seemed harmless to let it take the artifact as agreed and potentially dangerous to go back on our agreement.

As Lucy deposited the medallion into a pouch for the charming creature I asked a question about the night sky on their medallion. The creature's charm fell before a rage that transformed it into a monstrous entity with tentacles and yellow eyes that rivaled our torches with their preternatural glow.

The demon grabbed Lucy's wrist and I felt the magic flow into her, before seeing it paralyze her mid scream. At the same time the creature roared its defiance and wrath, breaking Djhara's spirit with the horrors it held and we watched in abject terror as the great warrior, Djhara Bloodspit, folded up into a ball on the floor.

Sela reached for the second medallion, hoping to wrap it around the demon's neck. I was quicker and spoke the words to weave a spell drawing on the primal power of the fires burning in our torches to make the creature's fine clothing to burst into purifying flame. Not knowing if it might be immune to such an attack I marshaled my energy carefully, using only a portion of it. That power, increased by my frailer heritage, made the demon the centre of a pillar of terrible flame.

To the surprise of all of us, fire was the weakness of the creature and it succumbed instantly to the attack, turning to a pile of ash in a heap of burned clothing. Sela's outstretched hand dropped back to her side as her mouth fell open at the devastation of the scene. I too was taken by surprise and exclaimed, "That's not supposed to happen!"

We recovered the demon's medallion and gathered the rest of the artifacts before returning back to the tower to care for the afflictions wreaked on us by the foul creature. Lucy recovered, and in turn was able to use the power of her music to bring Djhara out of her waking nightmare.

Would that the evening had passed uneventfully, but Sela's sharp ears picked up a call for help out on the glacier. Djhara, Sela and myself went out to a crevice in the ice to effect a rescue of a wayward traveller who is even now curled up by our fire in my spare furs. She says she only wants to return to civilization after losing the rest of her party, but my companions are suspicious after the episode with the demon. Time will tell, I suppose.

Ellodi

It's such a stroke of luck the campaign area fits neatly in a rectangle like this!

Old RPG Words That Make No Sense

Progress in RPG design and play is held back by the words we use that don't make any sense.

Hit Points.

So many RPGs have some version of "hit points" whether it's called hits, hit points, health, vitality, or whatever, it is expressed as a representation of how much damage a character can take. Video games have copied this idea for years, and you see your little digital bonhomme getting wailed on while a bar or a number  of hit points gets smaller. Why not? It's there in the name, right? Hit points, those are points you use up getting hit, right?

Someone is hoping the undead giant is almost out of hit points

Except it's not right. Not really. Hit points have almost always been an abstraction expressing something else entirely. I've talked about the problem of damage before, but in terms of Dungeons & Dragons and many games using hit points, there is no damage until the hit points are gone. Hit points represent the ability of a character to postpone the inevitable through skill, experience, luck, or script immunity. They represent an ability for a hero to keep fighting when everyone else would be done. They are more a measure of endurance than damage capacity.

This idea is further confused by the old-school rates of healing where characters only got one hit point back per day of resting. Something ridiculous when characters can easily get to a place where they have 20 or 30 hit points. If they are healing, then they must have been hurt, right? Except that is not how it works. A character is just as effective at one hit point as they are at full hit points. Because they are not hurt unless they are at zero! In the old days if your character went below zero they were dead! Not just wounded, but killed. Luck finally caught up with them and took her due. It wasn't long before rules developed for going into negatives where a risk was involved, but not immediate death.

Fast forward to the last few years. Two different innovations double down on the idea of hit points as an abstract that expresses endurance. The first is the death and dismemberment tables that came out of the Old School Renaissance (OSR) Blogs. The idea was if your character went below zero hit points they had been wounded and could be badly hurt or even dead. Rolling on the tables got you a result that your character had to live with. Maybe they lost a limb, or an eye, and it had ongoing mechanical effect on the character. After a while they could look pretty rough. Eventually a character could even be forced into retirement by accumulating too many, "old war wounds." I'm a big fan of the death and dismemberment tables. Partially because they reinforce the concept of how things work, but also because they add a real element of risk to fighting to your last. Players with characters who can be brought around in a moment to fighting condition with no consequence are not going to have any good reason to surrender, if there is no consequence to negative hit points. The idea that the table might give them a reason to play as if getting wounded is something to be afraid of encourages more realistic role playing.

Oops! You interrupted her short rest.
What's the worst that could happen?

The other innovation is the idea of short and long rests. I think the first game I saw this idea in was Barbarians of Lemuria, where a few hit points could be recovered by taking a breather and a quick drink and full recovery required night's rest. This same approach made it into a few different small press games, and the latest edition (the so-called 5th edition) of D&D. By explicitly recovering hit points through short and long rests the D&D, and any other RPG, rules are making hit points endurance. There is nothing wrong with this approach. I like it. It's cinematic and makes for high-speed pulp-fiction action! That's all great! It allows players to accomplish more by giving them more significant choices about how they use the two resources they have, time and hit points.

The problem is the thing is still called, "hit points," and we generate them by rolling, "hit dice," when these two things are expressions of endurance. It doesn't really matter where the name hit point came from. It may be a hold-over from the war games the designers of the early versions of D&D were playing and using to inform their first RPGs. Maybe someone thought it sounded cool. The fact is, it doesn't fit and is actually misleading. All the grognards and legacy players are already composing their comments about how wrong I am and how the word doesn't matter because obviously we all know what it means.

Except we don't. Many players think the fast recovery of hit points through rest is unrealistic because you can't walk of a sword thrust to the abdomen. If we expressed it as endurance and described combat with point loss as close calls, bangs, jams, bruises, and numbness in the limbs it would be easier to get more people all in on the concept. The other problem is new players. RPGs have exploded, in no small part to the efforts of Wizards of the Coast to make D&D accessible and easy to grasp. Words like hit points get in the way of that because they suggest the character is getting hit when they lose hit points. Why set them up to fail? Why not call it what it is? Because of tradition? Meh, there are more new players now than ever before. Because someone can tell them? People are learning to play from the books and watching actual play on you tube. Terms matter in both of these cases because that is how the new players will interpret what is happening in the game. I'm not the first to come to this conclusion. The Neo-Classical Geek Revival (NGR) fantasy RPG has used the term "Luck" for these points for years.

Someone is rolling on the death and dismemberment table!

The waters are muddied further by the idea of weapon damage. When D&D was first created, almost everything on two legs had single digit hit points. Humans were all assumed to be zero level with, at most, three hit points. That means that first hit was probably taking them down. A dagger could do it, but a two-handed sword had a better chance of ending a generic cultist or town guard in one shot. Fighting fantastic monsters the assumption was they were magical or huge beasts that could actually be hit more than once with little effect. Calling it hit points under those circumstances could have made sense to the people running and playing those first games. It might even still make sense to call the ability of a dragon to keep fighting hit points now. I'll concede that point. Still, for the sake of having a consistent expression it is better to have magical creatures with endurance than characters with hit points for the reasons I outlined above.

So if a weapon doesn't do damage to a character, what does it do? The way I run it at my table is attacks remove hit points. no one takes damage until they go down. Monsters snarl in pain at flesh wounds, enemy shields buckle under the assault, or they are beaten back as they lose their hit points. I've run it like that for a couple of years now. For example, "Your shield arm is still vibrating from the blow and you lose (rattle-rattle) four hit points." It seems cleaner to move this to something like, "Sparks fly as the bugbear's axe crashes against your sword and you stumble back a step. You lose (rattle-rattle) 7 endurance."

It's visceral, it keeps everyone in the fiction, and it shows the player what they still have in the tank to finish the fight. Then they choose how far to take it. Can they push through and find a place to hole up for long enough to get their wind back? Has the alarm gone up and they are facing a running fight until they can win or get out? Endurance is no less exciting, or dangerous with the addition of a death and dismemberment table. It's also still all close enough that converting old modules and third party adventures on the fly should be no problem for a referee/game master.

I run a hugely modified version of the original Black Hack rules. I call the threat to endurance, "attack dice," and it seems to work well. The attack die represents the combat ability of a given character or monster when they attack. It's logical, accurate, and it works well in play. I like to run for new people and experienced players alike. Everyone seems to like it so far.

Belkar Bitterleaf, of the Order of the Stick

These old words, hit points, have the baggage of old assumptions based on their wargaming routes and new assumptions based on what the words mean. For ease of adoption of current gamers, the words are used. They are a short hand that no one will question. Because no one questions the short hard, the baggage follows us to new games that arguably, would be better off without them. There are a host of D&D clones and D&D-ish games out there thanks to the Open Gaming License. These new and different games all put some kind of a spin on the tabletop RPG experience. The publishers of D&D might fear losing their current base by changing too much, but small press publishers have more freedom to break new ground. That's why most of the best innovations in game mechanics, campaign settings and game art come from the small press publishers.

If we take advantage of this freedom, and we dump hit points, hit dice, and damage, what is next? What other words make no sense? Levels, maybe? There are character class levels, spell levels, dungeon levels... How many different things do we need to describe with the same word?

Character level seems sacrosanct. The concept of leveling up is ingrained in western culture thanks to video games borrowing their framework from D&D.  If characters get levels, then everything else needs to find a better word.

Dungeons could be described in terms of floors: Floor one, two, etc. That makes sense and translates well enough to real experience. I don't go to an office on the fifth level of the building, I go to the fifth floor. This seems easy enough to change and will not make it more confusing, at least.

When we talk about spells, we are talking about power. Each level a magic wielding character ascends gives them access to more spell casting power. If spells were described in terms of power, it would make more sense for a level five wizard to finally gain access to power three spells like fireball! Power one, power two... or is it first power spells, second power spells, etc? Regardless, power is a suitable replacement.

As designers and runners of games, many of us do our best to trim the fat of game mechanics so our games run fast and smooth. We should be doing the same with the terminology. If we don't we are leaving a barrier in place for no reason other than that's the way it has always been done without asking if it's the best way to do it.

I'll be trying these out in in my home game and any D&D type games I run online this summer. I'll see how it works out. If you try it, let me know how it works for you. Does it change anything?

What?
I have the Warrior Princess Prestige Class so these arrows used up temporary hit points.
I'm still at full HP!

Review: Troika

I received a PDF of the "Troika! RPG" in one of the charity bundles I supported. Sadly, I don't even know which one. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time but the kickstarter has a bunch of people talking about the game in glowing terms again so I decided to see what the fuss was all about. Overall I was impressed and wished I'd looked at it sooner!

Daniel Sell and Jeremy Duncan created Troika and publish it under the Melsonian Arts Council.

It gives you a lot to work with in only 50 pages, but feels incomplete. It may not be an issue going forward because the new edition is projected to be nearly twice the page count and will come with a series of supporting chapbooks. Still, it's worth mentioning because I'm not sure if the brevity is a feature or a bug.

I like that the setting is baked into the rules. All of the character classes, called backgrounds here, are full of implicit setting information. The skills, the spells, and the handful of monsters, give you a strong sense of the setting. The way this is executed is great! These brief references to the world(s?) of Troika are an evocative way to root the different game elements to the setting without clogging up the game with pages of text. The problem is there is no other reference to the setting in the book. It's only implied, never described. For veteran gamers this setup is not a problem. The game master will simply run the version of the setting that blew up in their mind as they read the rules. Every group would be playing in their own unique version of Troika. I like this idea, but the game is billed as a good beginner role playing game. While the rules are easy, I think people new to RPGs would be a bit confused about what they should be doing and what is supposed to be going on in Troika.

The setting, as far as I can tell, is amazing and full of wonder. It takes place in a series crystalline spheres that hang in a "humpbacked sky" and serve as the stars for each other. It's possible to move between them on golden barges powered by mirrored sails. It also appears to be possible to fall out of one and land in another. Goblins seem to be able to connect underground labyrinths from one sphere to another. In these ways people and cultures from the different spheres mix with each other and adventurers have the option to get into all kinds of new brands of trouble. If things get stale in a long campaign the party need only move to another sphere to get a fresh start or new experience!

Troika is science fantasy, with a mix of swords, energy weapons, and magic. Personally I love the science fantasy, sword and planetesque style RPG setting. If you want a more pure fantasy game, the science fiction elements of Troika could be scrubbed out without much trouble. Certainly a lot easier than the old Star Wars RPG.

The rules are based on an RPG that grew out of series of solo adventure books. Both were called "Fighting Fantasy" and were apparently quite popular in the UK in the 1980s. Living in Canada, I never saw either and I don't remember any ads for them.

The system uses regular six-sided dice for everything but manages them to get a wide variety of results. The core of the system is 2d6 + base skill + advanced skill vs opponent or 2d6 to roll target number or under of the total skill (base skill + advanced skill). So if your character is using a hammer to fight an enemy you roll 2d6 add your skill and any skill you have in hammers and hope you get more than the GM does with 2d6 plus the enemy's skill. If your character is climbing a cliff, you need to roll 2d6 and get the total of your base skill and climb skill or less to succeed. Advanced skills are attached to specific things like climbing, etiquette, specific spells, and swords. I found it easy to grasp and good for all kinds of situations. The roll high sometimes, roll low others I find a bit irritating but it's hardly the first game I've played that switches back and forth.

A sample page from the character generation section with two backgrounds.

The book opens on character generation which is fast, random, and wild. I like character generation at the front of an RPG rule book, since it is the portion used the most. The system allows you to produce a character in a few minutes. There are no classes, but there are 36 backgrounds rolled for using d66 (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22, ... 65, 66). Because there is no class and level advancement these backgrounds are starting places for each player's character. The character improves the skills they use and learn new ones they spend time and effort on. With so many different starting places and no clear path forward, playing each character should be a unique experience.

The game only has three stats: skill, stamina and luck. Usually a game with so few stats ends up with little to differentiate the different characters from each other. In this case, Troika avoids that fate by having a long list of specific "advanced skills" that create the detail and flavour of each player character. It might be more accurate to say this game has one stat and two resources. The base skill is the raw talent the character can apply to any action and augment with a relevant skill if they have it. The stamina is the character's total effort that they use to take lumps and keep going or fuel their spells. It's recovered pretty quickly for an old school game. It is fairly close to 5e D&D's hit points in that respect. The character's luck is another resource they can spend to tip the balance in certain situations or as a saving throw. It's by no means certain, it is luck after all, but it can run out.

One thing I noticed with the advanced skills is there are none for social situations outside of etiquette. I'm guessing this comes from the creators relying on player skill and roleplay for situations that would call for a deception or insight roll in another system. Although the rules specifically invite the invention of more advanced skills, so it;s easy to adjust it to your play style.

The cover image from the game's first print run.

The backgrounds are summed up in a few paragraphs including starting equipment, skills, any special rules that apply and a brief description. The variety of backgrounds include some of the usual suspects with a handful of warriors, priests, and wizards each with a flavourful spin of its own. They also have odd things like a lost king from another sphere who no one has heard of. It turns our a king without a kingdom is just a random person in a crown with a high etiquette skill. The dwarves in Troika are not born, they are made by other dwarves. Each dwarf is an artistic achievement, except the poorly made dwarf character. To other creatures they look like an ordinary dwarf, but other dwarves either ignore them or have a discussion about their flaws and draw on them to emphasize the points made. There is definitely something for everyone in the list. A party randomly rolled of such options would be a motley crew and makes me think of the groups of characters found in Terry Prachett's Discworld.

The encumbrance system is streamlined and easy to use, but has a clever innovation for finding equipment in a hurry. Your character has 12 slots of carrying capacity before they become encumbered. Some items take multiple slots and others, like arrows, can be packed into one. Any time your character tries to grab an item you have stowed like a potion, or a crossbow bolt, you need to roll its position or higher on the list with 2d6. Otherwise they must stop and rummage through their belongings to find it. This set up means players need to "pack carefully" to keep the important stuff, like weapons and ammunition, within easy reach. It's a fun quirk and adds a sense of urgency and suspense to changing weapons or getting a rarely needed item.

The other big innovation is the initiative system. Players each put two tokens in a bag for their character while the game master puts in the appropriate number for the enemies' initiative and the end of round token. Tokens are pulled one at a time to determine the order in which each character or creature in the conflict acts. The bag is refilled and a new round starts when the end of round token is pulled, so it is possible some wont act in a given round while others act multiple times. This makes combat a completely chaotic mess where opportunities are taken as they come and sometimes you get caught flat footed! I love the idea of this system even though I'd need to dig out my poker chips or find something else to make it work.

For me, the section that could use the most expanding is the enemies section. The monsters are fantastic! The dragons are wonderful beings of light and thought, the manticores are brilliant bookworms living in splendor. Each monster entry only takes a few paragraphs and includes a d6 table of creature moods when they are met to keep the encounters unpredictable.

My favourite monster is the parchment witch. This is a long dead sorcerer that covers their bones and rotting sinew with leather, parchment, paper or vellum to hide their true nature. Their thin disguises are vulnerable to water and fire which can make things awkward. They can also wear someone's skin for about a week before it starts to rot and becomes useless. This one is so messed up and it doubles as one of the background options! The parchment witch is only part of the picture though. Some of the monsters are rooted in comedy, like the road knight that appears to be a reference to the black knight of Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail.

The magic system has a simple skill roll and stamina cost to keep spell casters in check. It also has an "Oops!" table for when the player rolls box cars. This system means magic is a bit unpredictable and dangerous without making the casters a constant danger to themselves and everyone around them. The spells themselves have enough variety and are flexible enough to be used in a wide variety of circumstances. This section is probably the most complete in the book.

The equipment section is brief, but doesn't appear to need anything more than it has. One thing I like is how the damage for different weapons is on a d6 table. Rolling a 1 on the d6 does dramatically different damage when the character is using a polearm than it does when they are using a knife. The weapons are defined by their damage spread and how they punch through armour. The armour is a simple damage reduction.

The art is consistent and good. It fits the contradictory elements of comedy, grittiness, and the strange captured by the text.

From a GM's point of view, this game is easy to run on the fly with heavy improv but doesn't need to be run that way for it to work. The stat blocks for monsters are skill/stamina/initiative so everything is there at a glance. The damage tables are in the back of the book so they are easily referenced. I will definitely run this game the first chance I get!

I like that it's not another in a long line of similar games with a twist. Like the d20 retro clones, the Fate games and the powered by the apocalypse games that are becoming legion. By using lesser known system as a jumping off point their game is all twist! Troika is different in a way I respond to. It reaches for the wonder found in the best science fantasy art and I think it's a good tool for a group to get there.

Like my review of The Black Hack, this one is a bit late. I think the reason is the same though. Both games have terrible names that don't inspire me. I thought Troika had something to do with eastern European legends, which I'm not overly interested in. The fact that it hits my sweet spot for crazy science fantasy with a magnificent mixture of awe, darkness and silly, is not referenced in the name. I asked Daniel Sell about the name and he said it was combination of it being the name of the tri-city that was the main population centre of the setting (something not in the book), a reference to the three stats, and something that sounded funny. I can't argue with that logic.

If you are looking for a tight, rules-light science fantasy game with a wide open setting, check out the kickstarter for the Numinous edition of Troika they are running now. It's already funded and the stretch goals will add to the supplementary setting and adventure material that this new version will have to expand what is at its core a solid game. So solid that I think we may see some Troika clones next year.

Have a crazy character sheet I found online.