The Truth about D&D 1978 Pt.1

Ok...
Back in the days of yore... in the black rocks nestled the sleeping Ancient One...

1978, finally a teenager, making new friends in High-School. Do you leave your geeky friends to hang with the cool kids? Or do you risk social destruction of your soul if the cool kids reject you?
These were important decisions at this time of life. Not in grade school anymore, you're in the big leagues now!

We didn't have all these fancy gadgets back then. We played outside till the streetlamps came on. Our parents had no idea where we were since we left the house first thing in the morning.

There was a ton of geeky cool things that happen in 78. Avalon Hill games, Chainmail, SPI games... what were these new things in the hobby shop? I pondered as I was waiting to purchase another 1/72 scale Sherman Tank model. (I loved building war models back then)

The brand new box set for GAMMAWORLD was calling to me.

Two weeks later, with my allowance, I was buying my first games from TSR.
I took it home, unboxed it... pondered the map of decimated Meriga... read some words...

I was a little confused.

This was not "Avalon Hill" 1, 1a, 1b... 2, 2a, 2b, 2c... numeral set rules that I was used to playing with my friends... this was confusing and different.
Who is side A and how do they fight side B??? Where is the teams? are there teams?
You see most games back them were Allies vs Axis war-games... 2 opponents playing Generals moving their pieces... Chess/Checkers.
REFEREE? and Players... ??

There is no Internet to look up a video on it.
There are no Home computers at this time.
There was no cell phones at this time.
Calling long distance required some effort, most of us shared lines.
Who would I call? I knew no-one who knew what this was.

So, me and my buddy who I play board-games with, get together to figure this one out... how to play this "role-playing". It wasn't easy. We failed.
It wasn't until a friend of ours (who had a friend with an older Brother) got us to find all this out with the friends-friends-older-Brother who played "role-playing" games. D&D in particular.

So, now we knew, one guy hid behind a binder and told us what we see, he asked us "what we do"?
Oh, it's story telling make-believe... but apply real physics to the imagination.
The Older-Brother's gang of friends were weird... older misfits that you would see in High-School, people that were bullied or had social idiosyncrasies.
They certainly weren't normal, but they were enjoyable to learn from.

Now, back to GAMMAWORLD.
(To be continued)

The Fantasy Trip Box set and Decks of Destiny

I come from the days of pocket games. From 1978 on-wards, I was met at my hobby store by these unusual packaged games in small boxes and clear baggies.
There was some really weird stuff back then, lots of cardboard chits and pieces that you had to scissor out. The Avalon Hill games were "professional" grade masterpieces, but these baggie games held some hidden jems.

 Steve Jackson finally got the rights to reproduce two of the best pocket games he created. Melee and Wizard. The fantasy trip is what occured with the combination of the two pocket games and a whole underground movement was formed while D&D Basic ruled the tables.

In the box:
You will have both individually boxed editions of Melee and Wizard as they appeared in their pocket-game form, as well as a boxed "dungeon" setting that works more like a funnel-arena. Also included is a campaign setting and a book on the Fantasy Trip itself with more advanced rules to make this experience more D&D'ish.
PLUS punch-out hexagon sets which can be used to embellish with dry-erase pens. Lots of cardboard chits included.
Decks of player cards, with pre-generated characters ready to fight, and pads of blanks to create your own characters. HQ Screen and Dice are included.

It's an easy to follow system to play, Steve Jackson has provided a lot of video reference materials on youtube to help you follow the way to play.

The follow up... Decks of Destiny:

More hard cardboard hexes, play mats and materials. The Decks are usable, but are not top quality.
You also get more blank pads and a lot of  "journal-ing" materials, like books you can fill out for characters, books for campaign journals, more dice... and most importantly...
Fold up printed boxes sized for the components. These boxes store all your cards, dice, materials, pads... everything. (from both box sets)

I also got a few extras I was missing via kickstarter, including a book of compiled adventures from magazines of the era (in modernized form) and a few bonus items as rewards.

Play:
This will be a tactical game with RPG aspects sprinkled in as the Game-Master wills.
You will have a lot of monsters to reference, which should make it easy to create your own.
As D&D has tactical options with a lot of "Theater of the mind" playability, Fantasy Trip is going to be a lot of tactical board-play. The RP will be player interactions after the fights, or just before.
Don't worry, it's easy tactical... you will get the swing of things down fast. But it's vital in your fight to have the area marked out and ready to roll.

TRAVELLER How to prep

When dealing with games of immense scope, there is hardly an RPG system that goes full blown galactic, like TRAVELLER.

This can be rather daunting to a new Referee/DM/Game-Master who is the director of the campaign. Where and how do you start? How do I prepare for the players ability to go ANYWHERE??

First lets break down the elements of your future game in TRAVELLER.


The Players:
First thing to consider is the players themselves. What kind of players are they? Do they like to lean a certain way? Are they law-abiding? Are they Mercs? Are they "Bad-guys"?
Quite often, this will be dictated buy "whom" they play as. So a lot of this will become more apparent when they roll up their characters and provide the interesting protagonists/antagonists to the setting.

The Ride:
Players will go from point A to B via some form of transportation. The Referee controls if this exists currently. This is your first point of control, at least to establish how this group will work.
Some cases, the ride is part of a character's benefits. This might scare you, but you still have a lot of control here as well.

The System:
The first scene takes place in the game, you have your choice of systems in the Imperium or in your own homebrew of systems.
Every system will have numerous worlds, the most habitable one is the one listed as the prominent world of the system. Depending on Tech levels, this system could have multiple locations on several planets in the system. You must make each system feel like it's more than one world. You want to make it feel like there is a LOT to explore in each system.

The most prominent point of control in these three elements is the Ride.

Remember with Benefit Starships introduced by a character due to their good fortune within their career path, this ride will be an old bucket of bolts. They do not give out brand-new off the line ships as Benefit give-a-ways. This ride might have failing components, a borked Jump drive is always the best faulty aspect of an acquired starship. AND if the players want to be free of the system, they need to earn the creds to buy the parts... or steal them or scavenge them.

Controlling this element is key to have several things happen for the group of players.
1: Gives them a goal
2: Gets them to work together to earn the part they need.
3: Let's you as the Ref, see how the players work together, will they do this with honest jobs? will they steal the part? will they be good-guys? bad-guys? will they work for the highest bidder?

After working on the system, detailing the planets (if they have a ship, at least let them have a functioning maneuver drive to explore the system) and creating points of interest on any colonies on other planets. Create some companies for the players to work for. Makes some really evil ones, make a few neutral ones, make ones that work for an out-of-system syndicate. Make some gangsters... corrupt officials...
Now you are starting to get it... this system will be LIT with adventures.

Now lets make a job board. This is where you have all these companies and organizations promoting jobs for the players to take. Some will be jobs that undermine other companies... this creates dynamic tension in the system, and an urgency to leave or gun-up and take em out!

This is as far as I go prepping the game. After the first session, I should know what to prep for. The players have established their connection, a job is taken, the course is plotted to the next location...

Establishing the way the PC group interacts with the system is key to you understanding where they will likely go next. Follow my tips above for your next TRAVELLER session and let me know how it went in the comments below.

Yoon-Suin (The purple land)

An interesting book.
This is a Campaign creation book. Based on OSR, but can be easily adapted to any new or old rules system.
You can run adventures from this setting and have completely different games out of them, even with the same players attending.
The main constants in the setting are 6 areas.
Each of these areas could be rolled up on the fly, however as a GM, I'd pre-roll each area out into basic form and depending on where the players want to go... detail further.
There is a taste of Eastern-Asia and India mixed with its own weird Jordoba influence.

If you have a few hours before the gang shows up for a game session, and the usual DM has a flat tire and cant make the session. You can easily create a campaign quickly with this book and be ready to play when everyone shows up.
It will likely be interesting enough for the players to continue gaming in as well.
I enjoyed reading through the book, it has some really interesting beasts and locations... you could really create a fantasy version of "Apocalypse Now" river ride with Martin Sheen, quite easily.

Keep in mind, I would like to elaborate more on this book... but I'd be spoiling the fun to be had for YOU as the DM and the players reading this blog. There are a TON of random options and charts. Each of the 6 regions are distinct and can have epic campaigns derived from each location.
Trust me to say this book is worth having on your bookshelf, waiting for that absent DM situation to happen. And when it does, you, and your players will have an epic session, or more.

Castles & Crusades

Alternate Cover Version... much more appealing than the dark original version.
2017 7th Edition.

Well, out of all my fantasy themed roleplaying games, C&C has been the system that has stuck with me the most (second to 2nd Edition AD&D). In fact this had taken over 2nd Edition AD&D for me.
Keep in mind I started playing D&D in 1978 (at age 13), and the first books I had included the Greyhawk pocketbook and then the Holmes boxed Edition. Oh, how much they would be worth today if I had hung onto them.

Castles & Crusades had modernized the original D&D rules, killing Thac0 and replacing it with a less confusing ascending AC difficulty that 3rd Ed D&D provided.
NO extra fluff to classes, straight forwards with some options to play around with.
Siege Engine is easy to grasp for determining skill checks.

Today I still GM a group with C&C, (currently going through an altered L-series of Bone Hill). One of the players never played D&D before, but he's found that it's easy to learn compared to 5E which was also introduced to him weeks before joining my table.

As with all systems, your experience with them vastly differs depending on the Game Master. If your GM is terrible, well, you know, your experience may suffer.
C&C is not overly complex with basic player classes and basic player races. Easy to reference special abilities and class features that do not overwhelm you. Easy enough to take 3rd Ed D&D monsters and use them almost directly from the tomes, C&C also has their own Monsters and Treasures collection as well.
The GM's Guidebook is a good companion to the Players Handbook. (mine is a PDF printed copy, I invested in a B&W laser printer and use that a lot) Adding more options as suggestions, not to over-complicate things in the Players book. Extending the levels to 20 and giving additional special powers as your characters increase in levels.

My experiences with C&C is all positive, players have gravitated towards it as an easy system to learn.

The Expanse RPG

So.. Green Ronin is usually hit or miss for me.
I've purchased from them in the past with "Blue Rose" for my daughter.
The rules in Blue Rose was rather convoluted and she found it rather hard to understand.
Even I had a rather hard time understanding AGE through that book.
However, the Expanse is rather easy to understand.
I suppose it's all in the way they lay things out. It was easy to wrap my head around this book, and it prompted me to sign up for a free month of Amazon Prime, just so I could binge watch the former Netflix series.
The good thing is, since the mechanics are so well laid out, it made it easier to understand Blue Rose.

A "must have" for this book is the  Game Masters Kit

This collection of information includes sturdy reference sheets for the players and a GM's screen which is well laid out with all the information needed for running the game.
It also includes a dry-erase initiative tracker sheet and pre-generated character sheets, and a complete adventure. Giving a new GM a complete scope of whats needed.

Absu's Bounty is another book that further adds to the GM's arsenal.
One thing though, it seems to parallel the TV Series... mimicking a lot of what you find from the series and just slightly changing a few things. If your players watched the series, you will find this adventure to be a little predictable for them.
Tool-wise, this book can help in fabricating your own adventures by seeing how they adopted ideas from the series and put them into context.

I'll be GM'ing this one soon with a group, we will see how it plays out, and it will be a great help for my daughter struggling with Blue Rose. I'll let you know how it goes.

The Strange Box set

There is a lot to be said about Monte Cook Games.
High production value, great artists and great ideas.

The Cypher System is a different approach to roleplaying games that I really like, specifically the rolling conventions with dice. The players roll all the dice. (the GM might occasionally)

The card though, are the best feature of the game. I highly recommend them, for ALL your RPG's, not just Numenera or TheStrange. You can use them really with anything you play.

I was lucky to find a Kickstarter version of TheStrange Deluxe boxed set from Noble Knight Games which has always provided excellent service through ebay as well. In fact, this box set was much cheaper than the Kickstarter price.
In all I'm very happy with this box set, the video above provides some insight on what you get in the box.
It's already got me creating a series of game ideas revolving around Moorcock's Eternal Champion (alternate world version of course) for my own tabletop campaign.

The Cypher System is very easy for a GM to run, even better with the cards. I have bought several box sets of cards and obtained missing/expanded sets from DTRPG... though I have to say shipping prices through DTRPG to Canada is BRUTAL, and I don't purchase them often.

Cypher, once you get your head rapped around your GM-freedom, can be easy to adapt into any genre you want. As I prefer to play Sci-fi, TheStrange and Numenera have little need of adapting for you to have all your Sci-fi adventuring needs met with both provided systems.

I hope those reading, really consider this hidden gem of a game system. If you have any questions about it, please ask in the comments section here on the blog.