Micro Games

My actual copy.

The inimitable John O’Neill over at Black Gate Magazine is doing a series of articles about the old MicroGames that Steve Jackson created in the 70’s. He’s talked a lot about OGRE, which was a fan-favorite by all accounts, though it’s one that I never got to play. However, I do own a copy of Melee from The Fantasy Trip (it’s sitting right here on my desk as I type this), and I’m once more fascinated by the idea.

For those who may not know (and where the hell have you been???), these products were basically simple, pocket-sized board games, meant to be pulled out, set up quickly, and played for a short period, usually for a specific goal. Coming out in the mid-70’s, they are usually viewed as related to the RPG phenomenon that was just getting underway with the 1974 release of Dungeons & Dragons. There’s some validity to that comparison, but these games also stood on their own merits.

Anyways, I will leave the reviewing and in-depth discussion about these games to John, as he probably has more and better things to say. For my part, I will ask one question:

Is there maybe a niche market today for these kinds of games?

I love fiddling with game mechanics. I have invented many systems. Some from scratch, others as modifications of existing games, and still others being a bit of both. I like the idea of boiling down complex ideas into simple mechanics. I don’t go too much for realism, but I do like to balance the mechanics in a realistic way, if you know what I mean.

So, I’m thinking about putting together a few of my own “micro games.” Probably publish them as PWYW PDF’s (or maybe charge $1). I could even try to figure out a way to make printed versions available.

Anyone else think this is a neat idea? Or, better yet, does anyone else know if someone else is already doing this? Because I’m always fearful of just retreading well-travelled roads.

The State of Things

Since Gamehole Con, things have been kind of stagnant for me personally, at least from a gaming standpoint. Our 3.5e campaign trucks on, and is nearing its climax. The last session was a bit of a downer, especially when compared to the previous one. Ahnuld almost got taken down my a demon. That in itself is no big surprise. But considering that in the previous session he had stood toe-to-toe with a Balor, the outcome of a mere Merelith's attacks was disappointing. But, in all honesty, I just had a night of crappy rolls. So, there's that.

Anyways, now that we're all starting to see the horizon in this campaign, we're starting to finally look, as a group, beyond it. For months I have been trying to spark interest in some new ideas that I can work into campaigns myself. Usually these involve a deviation from the standard fantasy, and into such genres as Espionage, Superheroes, and Science Fantasy. All of these ideas were met with reactions that average out to a shrug and a "Meh."

I was starting to come to the conclusion that my group just has no interest in anything beyond fantasy. And this was confirmed when my wife offered to run the Dragon Age RPG, and everyone was immediately on board for it. She had run a game at Gamehole, and one of our regular players sat in on it. And after she got excited, her excitement spread throughout the group. So, it is more or less official that Dragon Age will be our next game. Which, honestly, I'm totally cool with. My wife is a great storyteller (from the World of Darkness tradition). So, I know it will be fun and exciting.

Additionally, she assures me that her campaign will not be as extensive as our current one (which has been going on for 4 or so years in real time now). And that she would like to break it up with other games, of other genres, just to keep things interesting. So, even though no one has embraced my ideas, there's still a chance they may come into the light someday. We'll have to see.

In the meantime, I've been working on getting through with school, which has left me with very little time and energy for writing RPG stuff. I'm hoping to be able to remedy that. I still want to get Zine-O-Morph #2 out by the end of the year. I need to get some artwork done, and write a sample adventure that follows my theme of Military Sci-Fi. I'm also looking at future issue ideas, including one on Pulp-inspired Adventure, and one on Historical Adventure.

I'm also rolling some ideas around for an expansion for Mutants & Marvels that will include some ideas others have suggested, as well as some ideas that were initially scrapped, but I think might find some interest. To date, M&M is one of my most consistent sellers, so there is obviously some interest. I just wish people who bought it would review it...

But right now, during my down time at work, I need to pound out a short research paper on the Literature of the Scottish Reformation. Fun!

And the Gamehole goeth…

Actually the actual Gamehole is apparently a room above a bar & grill where the Gamehole guys meet regularly. I have been invited there a few times, but have never been able to extricate myself from familial obligations to go. Either way, that Gamehole remains, but the Gamehole Con has closed its doors for another year.

Once more, much fun was had during the course of three days. Below I will break down my experiences with each game I took part in. But let me start by giving my thoughts on the Con itself.

Warning: this post is kinda long…

It was awesome. Bigger and better than last year, GHC2 had a larger dealer room, with many interesting vendors and a lot of stuff that I had to make a Will save versus maxing out my credit card for. I walked away with some old school stuff for me (both of Metzner’s red books, a couple of Dragon Magazines, and B4 The Lost City), as well as a set of custom Dragon Age dice and a nifty dice bag, both for my wife. Of course, at the front entrance was the guy selling real swords. And Conan’s Father’s sword sat there for three days, taunting me with its $$$! price tag.

For gaming, there was a quite a wide variety. Of course, the big guns were 5E and Pathfinder, each with whole rooms devoted to just them. But there was also quite a variety of other games, both old and new. I even saw some guys playing Champions, and felt a twinge of jealousy, since I had kind of wanted to find a Supers game. Lots of board games, including an entire library and room of them, where you could just check one out and play it right there if you liked. And of course, a large miniature wargame room (more of a hall). Oddly, I didn’t see much for CCG’s, aside from a hefty MtG presence, as always. Are those out of vogue now?

The facilities were great. The Sheraton was very accommodating, and the other patrons who were clearly not there for the Con seemed to take it all in stride. A few odd looks, and not much more. All-in-all, the whole package was quite organized and well-done. The organizers seemed to have everything well in hand, and there was very little stress rolling off any of them. Now, on to my games…

Shadow of Moonsea (5E) – First off I took in a 5E game run by a friend of mine who works for the same state government agency as I do. It was a cool adventure, with some interesting mysteries, encounters, and a premise that could lead into a whole campaign. I played to type for me, and chose the Half-Orc Barbarian. Hey, it’s what I know and I figured I would ease into the weekend. The only downside was that the DM got so involved with the mounting story, that time ran short and we never got to finish the second half of the final battle. But, despite that, we all had a good time. And, as expected, the 5E rules were nice and swift, and didn’t get in the way of the story.

Why are we here? These things are already dead! (1E) – This was probably my least favorite of the games I played in. The game itself was fine, the DM (apparently someone who had written for TSR back in the day, but whose name escapes me now) knew what he was doing and was entertaining. But, the adventure was kind of silly, and based on D&D-izing a current political hot topic. Needless to say, the DM used it as a way of putting his views out there, and if you happened to disagree with those views…well, I did disagree, so I had to just grin and bear it. Once I got past that, and just concentrated on the game itself, it was fun. Nothing spectacular, but a decent time. After it was over, he let us know that the adventure would be coming out in print next month, and we rolled off to see who would get his playtest copy. I won. Good times, I suppose. The actual highlight of this session was turning around and realizing that Ed Greenwood was at one table running a game, and The Dungeon Bastard was at the other.

Frank Mentzer’s game (OD&D) – This was originally supposed to be a 1E minis-war type of adventure, but Frank, having just come back from Italy a few days prior, had forgotten the materials and minis. So, he gave us the choice of a 1E adventure, or a “Back to 1974” OD&D adventure. We went with 1974. It was a great time. The adventure itself was pretty cool, a standard “meet in the tavern, head to the dungeon” type of thing. But the real fun was just listening to Frank talk about the old days, and how they used to play this version of the game. It was like an RPG history lesson, wrapped around a fun little romp. Frank is a great guy, and I can only hope that I am half the DM he is. Especially when it comes to running things off-the-cuff, and engaging everyone at the table. As a bonus, he autographed my old Expert Rulebook (which now matches my signed David Cook edition), as well as the character sheet I used.

Interlude: Frank’s Table – After we ate dinner, my wife and I had about an hour before our next game. So, we took seats in the lobby in an alcove with a table that had a Con sign reading “Frank’s Table.” We knew it was Frank Mentzer’s table for something, but he wasn’t around when we sat down. Then, about fifteen minutes later, he showed up with a few board games, and proceeded to talk my wife and me into giving one a try. We played fun little game called Cathedral, and it was very cool. My wife wants to find a copy now (it’s out of print), because she thinks our son would enjoy it. Once more, Frank was a great person to talk to, and probably one of the nicest people in the world.

Rogue Moon of Spinstorme (Traveller T20) – We picked this game because we just wanted to break up the fantasy gaming with something else. Using the d20 version of Traveller, this was a nice, hard sci-fi, military game. The guy running it was a fellow Desert Storm vet, so there was a bit of the obligatory story-swapping at the beginning, then it was into the fray. The game was fun, and pretty interesting. With a few combats, some mishaps, and a couple of mysteries, it was the second of three parts, and I found myself wishing I could have taken part in the other two. Since it used the d20 mechanics, the play went smoothly, with little to no hiccups. The cool thing was that, even though it was a military-themed game, it didn’t feel forced, and my wife, who has no military inclination whatsoever, had a great time. Chalk it up to yet another fun game with strangers.

The Ruin of Ravenfall (Pathfinder) – My last game of the weekend was a Sunday morning Pathfinder game. I chose it because it wasn’t a Pathfinder Society game, so there was no pressure to do anything in a certain way. Incidentally, my wife was supposed to have joined us, but she had had a stressful day on Saturday, when there was a family emergency, followed immediately by her car having issues. Suffice it so say, everything is better now, including the car, but she felt she needed to back out of the game. So, I went alone. The adventure turned out to be the one that was written for, and published in the Gamehole Con program this year. The DM set out the pregens, and they were all Pathfinder-specific advanced classes. That was pretty cool, as it allowed me to see other options besides the standard classes. I ended up playing an elven swashbuckler with a rapier and a pepperbox (a primitive multi-barrel pistol, forerunner to the revolver). The adventure was way cool, with a lot of undead, a dark conspiracy, and an excellent boss-fight. I was ecstatic to have figured out the mystery long before the reveal. That rarely happens for me. I had a really good time with that one, and now that I have a copy of the adventure itself, I might see about running it myself sometime. Maybe for my kid or something.

With the Pathfinder game done, the Con was basically over for me. I lingered in the lobby for a bit. I had wanted to hit the dealer room one more time, but they were already packing up, so I wasn’t able to. In the end, I casually meandered out to my car and forlornly went home.

I had so much fun. And honestly, if it were possible, I could do one of these just about every weekend. I can see why some gamers get addicted and travel hundreds of miles for conventions. If I didn’t have so many other responsibilities, I would totally do that. But, I will settle for Gary Con in the Spring, and then Gamehole again next year. And I think next year I definitely want to try my hand at running something.

The Gamehole cometh…

Ok, I know that sounds awful. But I’m really excited about this coming weekend. It’s Gamehole Con II, and I am now officially a 2nd Level Gamer. I’m not sure if I got anything special for that this year, but they assure us that, in the future there will be perks based on how many Gamehole Cons you have attended.

Anyways, my schedule for this coming weekend includes 28 hours of gaming over the course of three days. This includes one 5e game, two 1e games (one with Frank Metzner), a Traveller T20 game, and a Pathfinder game. Basically I will be rolling d20’s all weekend. And I’m totally cool with that.

Friday and Saturday mornings are set aside to browse the seller room, and maybe pick up some off-the-cuff game or a panel. My wife will be there too. She’s playing a game run by Jim Ward on Friday, and then running her own game of Dragon Age that evening. The rest of the time we are together, and I love that. No gamer widow in my house!

I think maybe next year I will see about running a game or two. Right now I’m looking at Covert Ops, and maybe Mutants & Marvels. Of course, if DwD gets FrontierSpace out, I might could go for that. Then again, I might just chicken out and remain a player. We’ll see.

For right now, I’m just excited for this year.

Oh, I forgot to mention that Ahnuld (Half-Orc Barbarian 6/Favored Soul 6/Fighter 5) killed a Balrog…er…Balor in melee combat last night. He had a big boost of help from the Archbishop, and from one of our archer characters, not to mention all of the buffing spells and effects. But, when all was said and done, the thing died, and subsequently exploded (because that’s what they do). And even standing ground zero for the blast, Ahnuld was left with 71 hit points, and ready to fight some more. The army behind the beast was a bit intimidated, and many of them broke and ran. The only downside was that two of our NPC followers, including Ahnuld’s best friend, Atruus (Dark Elf Wizard 13) died in the blast. Fortunately, the Archbishop can raise them both. All-in-all a good session. And the battle for Salisbury is only half over!

An old friend

I drew this sometime in the mid-90's.

Today, I am going to talk about someone who is near and dear to me. And in so doing, I am going to do that thing that all D&D geeks do, but that we all hate when others do it. I'm going to talk about my favorite character. (If you're not interested, get out now. I will completely understand.)

In the beginning...
Sometime around 1985-86, my friend, his sister, and I decided to start a D&D campaign using the Expert Set. In looking back, I had thought that the Expert rules had introduced the half-elf as a player race. This is not true, as it turns out, so we must have been incorporating elements of AD&D into our B/X game. Either way, I made a half-elf fighter named Tomos.

Though visually Tomos was initially based on the Marvel Comics character Longshot, he was actually an idealized version of myself. His stats were phenomenal (and honestly rolled), and I have never truly matched him in that area since (though I occasionally come close). By the end of that short campaign, he was 5th level, and filthy rich. I'm pretty sure we fudged the XP rules, but whatever. He was the highest-level character I had ever had up to that time.

First Upgrade
Jump forward to my Senior year (1987-88). The old friend has graduated and his family has moved away. That year I reconnected with some other friends whom I had met in 8th grade, but who had left and come back three years later (it should probably be noted we were all Air Force brats living on Kadena AFB, Okinawa). They played AD&D, and had middle-level characters. When we decided to start a campaign together, they wanted to use those characters. So, I dusted Tomos off, since he was the only one even close to their level, converted him from B/X to AD&D, and he went gallivanting around Oerth with Panthrus, the human ranger, and Styol Ganthral, the elven fighter/magic-user.

About this time I was deep in the throes of my budding love of Conan and Robert E. Howard. So, when I converted Tomos to AD&D, and his 18 Strength became 18/90 (the strongest a half-elf could be in AD&D), I naturally started thinking of him as Conan with blond hair and pointed ears. But, he also had a 17 Charisma, and since we were using Unearthed Arcana, his Comeliness came out to be 19. So, he was a VERY attractive and pretty Conan. That's when his personality took off in my mind. He soon became an amalgam of Conan and D'Artagnon.

That campaign got him up to 9th level, and I had much fun with his Vorpal bastard sword (treasure from his very first campaign), with which he was Double Specialized (UA...you do the math). I had decided that Tomos had spent much of his amassed fortune on a ship, and was now a seasoned sailor and ship's captain. That worked well, since the campaign took place on an island, and it provided a neat way for the three characters to meet (they hired my ship).

Back from obscurity
Skip forward a few more years. I'm graduated and completely out of touch with all of my old friends from high school. But, I still have Tomos' character sheet. Somewhere around 1990-91, I'm in the Army at Ft. Bliss, TX, and I get the 2nd Edition books. Not having anyone to play with at the time, I proceeded to convert Tomos to 2E just for shits and giggles. Not much effort there, but I made some cool additions (remember fighter followers at 9th level?). I eventually found people to play with. But, sadly, I never played Tomos in that edition.

A brief solo career
A few years later I am out of the Army, living in San Diego, and working my way through school. Having no regular D&D game, a friend offers to run me through tome casual solo adventures. So, once more I dust off Tomos, and we have a few adventures involving a Drow assassin, the Forgotten Realms goddess of Luck, Tymora, and a few other fun events. The game abruptly ended, and Tomos is kinda left hanging. I do remember that he now had a keep of his own from that brief stint. But, not much more than that.

Cameo appearance

Jump forward again to the late 90's. I'm living in Salinas, CA. 3rd Edition comes out, and I jump in with both feet. Found a group through the FLGS, and started playing. After a while I get an idea. I convert Tomos to 3E, and run him in a short campaign that lasted all of one module. I'm not even sure he leveled beyond 9th. As it turned out, that was the last time I ever saw him as a D&D character.

Fiction

Tomos has stayed with me throughout the years, usually as a character I planned to write fiction about. I did write one complete, very Conan-esque story about him on my first computer, but lost it somewhere over the course of several moves. I would also imagine him meeting famous characters from Forgotten Realms, where he had ported to for 3E, like Drizzt Do'Urden. Of all of my characters over the years, Tomos Elvenblood (he picked up that none-too-imaginative surname somewhere around 2E) has always been very special to me.

And now I am thinking it is time to bring him out of “retirement” once more. I have long wanted to write an epic fantasy trilogy. And I have had numerous ideas, plots, settings, and such related to that. But the more I think about it, the more I feel like Tomos is the character I want to be center-stage for that epic story. So, with nothing but time and imagination, I may just sit down and start plotting that out. I’m sure elements of his D&D origins will make it onto the page, and that would suit me just fine.

A bit of a quandary

So, while working on the content for Zine-O-Morph #2, I have a bit of a dilemma.

As I have mentioned before, the focus of #2 is supposed to be Military Science Fiction. The main focus, as I have developed the content, has been on how to run a military sci-fi game that feels like a REAL military game. So, a lot of the info in there is about how the real military works, and how to work some of those details into your game to give it the right feel.

However, I am finding that the majority of the information relates to real-world military, with the science fiction part being pretty secondary (except for the races I created). So, now I am wondering if maybe I should re-direct my efforts a bit. Perhaps make the focus this issue about military in RPG’s in general, and save the sci-fi stuff for a later issue.

Right now, I could tailor a lot of my content to the new Covert Ops game (see my last post). In essence issue #2 would switch from Military Sci-Fi, to Modern Action/Adventure. It would give me a place to detail out the stuff I have for an old SpyCraft game that I ran years ago, as well as flesh out some cool ideas I have for a fictitious organization similar to SPECTRE from the old James Bond novels and movies (but, sadly, not from Victory Games’ JB RPG).

And the Sci-Fi elements I have written (including three new races) could be saved for a future issue. Possibly in time to coincide with DwD’s release of FrontierSpace, depending on when that comes out.

So, what do you folks think? Does the idea of issue #2 being about Super Spies and paramilitary action heroes sound like a good idea?

Covert Ops

My latest RPG acquisition is Covert Ops from DwD Studios. I paid out the $32.99 for the hardback print of the Core Rules, plus PDF’s of everything. All in all, a good investment so far (the print copy is still in transit).

Overall quality is quite good. It’s well-written, well-organized, and very easy to follow. The layout and design are nice and clean, without a lot of the “crap” filler you see in products from larger companies. The artwork is pretty serviceable, and gives the whole game a very comfortable feel.

The mechanics are nice a smooth, and really harken back to the old days of gaming, while still remaining relevant. The guys at DwD are unabashed fans of Star Frontiers, and you can see its influence here. The percentile systems, the use of d10’s exclusively, and the simplified skill system all provide a very concise method of resolving rolls without burdening the game play. And if you’ve read anything I have personally written, you know how much I like that.

As I normally do, after giving the main rules a good skim-through, I printed a character sheet (which is also very nice-looking, and available in two formats, one being more print-friendly), opened my dice-roller app on my iPhone, and rolled up a quick character. The process was extremely easy, and I found that by having you roll your background first, it made placing the rolled attributes in a more logical manner. After only a few minutes I had all of the basics that I needed to play, and all I would need to do then is come up with a good story.

The PDF’s are chock full of goodies that I wish every game had. Worksheets for creating your own missions, agencies, and villain organizations. There’s initiative cards, a hit location sheet, and a few other things that all fit nicely with the simple mechanics. I’m thinking of taking a cue from DwD in this regard, and developing some of these things for Mutants & Marvels.

For a little history, DwD is the company behind BareBones Fantasy, which, I understand, is quite popular, and uses a similar system. They are also developing a science-fiction game based on these core mechanics, which promises to be the spiritual successor to our beloved Star Frontiers. I’m quite eager for that.

In the meantime, I am going to continue to delve into Covert Ops, and try my best to get a group together for some good, old-fashioned super-spy/paramilitary action adventure.