Dragonbane Readthrough, Part Eight

Despite its title, the eighth and last chapter of the Dragonbane rulebook, Adventures, does not provide any adventures (those are in a separate book of the core set). What it does provide, though, is a miscellanea of GM advice and campaign game rules for ongoing campaigns.

Nothing really particular here, but a meaty selection of useful gaming advice:

Travelling

You get travelling times, including the effects of a forced march on the player characters; getting lost; a mishaps table for wilderness adventures (which is much more fun than wandering monsters), etc.

Foraging

To my taste there is waaaay too much detail on foraging in the wilderness and on the effects of not having enough food 🥱, but I understand this may sound ‘fun’ to other players (after all, why should combat be the only area where frp games rules are über detailed?)

GM Advice

This section is both classic and useful. We old timers may safely ignore it, but inexperienced GMs will find helpful advice. I particularly like the paragraph about managing mooks. In a stat-heavy game such as Dragonbane it can be tedious to keep track of fully-statted ‘low-level’ NPCs, and you get plenty of advice here as how to reduce bookkeeping in this area.

Creating Adventures

On top of useful advice about the kind of challenges the PCs may encounter, and when and where, there are a few random tables reminiscent of my own adventure generator 🙂

Monsters are such a central and peculiar part of Dragonbane, what with their automatic and diverse attacks, each with their own tables. Therefore I am slightly disappointed that there aren’t any guidelines for creating your own Dragonbane monsters.

Dragonbane Readthrough, Part Seven

The seventh chapter, Bestiary, is one of the areas where Dragonbane shines, because of one peculiar feature of Dragonbane: monster attacks succeed automatically. My mind went boom 🤯 when I realised the implications. The days and nights spent at trying to create interesting challenges for my players, which they destroyed in a few lucky rounds… The yawn elicited at the mentions of the creatures I’d throw onto their player characters… If monster attacks succeed automatically, fear will change sides.

How does this work? The GM will draw an initiative card per each monster attack (monstrous creatures often have multiple attacks per round). When it is the monster’s turn to act in the combat round, the GM determines who the unlucky target of the monster attack is, rolls a D6 on the monster attack table, and applies the results to the hapless victim.

Each monster has its own unique ‘monster attacks’ table; it’s not simply a ‘roll D-something for damage’ (well, it can be, but it’s usually just one of the entries in the table).

Demons possess or curse their opponents; dragons flap their wings and create hurricane-strong winds; ghosts inflict all kinds of conditions… Even more mundane monsters such as giant spiders have deadly poison attacks or may mesmerise you with their many eyes.

The monster becomes the ultimate foe in an adventure, not a mere passing threat.

The only drawback is that, since each monster takes up several pages, the selection in the bestiary is quite limited.

Dragonbane Readthrough, Part Six

The sixth chapter, Gear, is all about the various pieces of Equipment that can be purchased by Dragonbane player characters, with a big emphasis on combat-related gear. Expect the usual [boring] lists of weapons, armour, etc. from frp games.

The Good

1. Heavy/noisy armour gives banes on various rolls, rather than minus something penalties.

2. Weapons are divided into bludgeoning, slashing, etc. categories, with optional rules to take this feature into account if you want more of a simulationist approach to combat.

The Bad

This chapter is literally a compilation of lists. Do not expect anything like the RuneQuest Weapons & Equipment book.

Actually, what is most fun about the Dragonbane gear is the vast array of improvised weapons, which however are not described in this chapter but on a set of bespoke cards that are part of the Dragonbane core set.

Dragonbane Readthrough, Part Five

The fifth chapter, Magic, explains how a player character may become a spell-caster, describes Dragonbane’s three different magical systems/schools, and gives all the in-game details of magic use. There will be many differences here, possibly much more than in the areas of combat and damage, between Dragonbane and the BRP family of games.

Firstly, Dragonbane is strikingly different from RuneQuest, where famously ‘everyone is a spell caster’, and is somewhat more like the Basic Role-Playing System, where access to magic depends on the PC’s profession.

Getting back to the professions post, remember how each profession had its own unique heroic ability? Well, the mage’s heroic ability is “Magic Talent”, meaning he or she can use magic – actually a single school of magic: each school of magic, of which there are three, has to be learnt separately, i.e., is a discrete Skill, with its skill level. Each given spell belongs to a school of magic and also has to be learnt separately (using up an experience check). The three schools of magic are:

1. Animism

2. Elementalism

3. Mentalism

Note that there is a short collection of ‘general’ spells that can be learnt by practitioners of any school of magic.

There are also ‘magic tricks’, similar to D&D’s cantrips, which are always ready to be cast and do not count against the limit of spells that the PC has memorised (see below).

Animism

Animism is slightly reminiscent of RuneQuest Battle/Spirit Magic, and/or of some of D&D’s druidic spells (like Entangle). 

Elementalism

Elementalism harnesses the powers of the elements and provides whizz bang spells, more reminiscent of RuneQuest Rune Magic or of D&D spells.

Mentalism

Mentalism makes use of the mage’s psychic abilities to affect others. It is a mix of D&D psionics and of RuneQuest shamanic abilities or Darkness-/Moon-related Rune Magic.

Learning & Memorising Spells

Spells are not skills but must be learnt separately. Each spell has a rank, a value that has no in-game effect except indicating the minimum skill level (in the relevant school of magic) necessary to learn it. Some spells also have a prerequisite, e.g., you cannot learn Purge if you haven’t learnt Banish before.

A starting mage receives three rank I spells from their school of magic.

The maximum number of spells a PC may hold in their memory, ready to be cast, is approximately equal to INT/2. The PC, however, may learn any number of spells… the player must just state, after each shift rest, which spells the PC has now memorised.

Casting Spells

This will be exceedingly familiar to players of BRP-powered frp games: casting a spell requires the expenditure of the relevant number of WPs and a successful roll against the skill level in the corresponding school of magic. If the roll fails, the WPs are still expended.

Once you have run out of WPs, you may cast spells by ‘sacrificing’ your HPs. This is a great rule, but it may have been more fun to restrict this ability to a certain category of mages (e.g., “blood mages”) rather than make it generally available. This adds to my general impression of the game: the rules are great but they do not manage to impress a particular “flavour” of fantasy in my mind… 

Casting a spell is the PC’s action in combat. Period. No complex strike rank calculation, or initiative by spells, ranged weapons, and mêlée combat. As a lazy GM, I love this.

If the skill roll was a critical, the mage may choose one of three effects:

1. Spell damage or range doubled,

2. The spell doesn’t cost any WPs,

3. The mage may immediately cast another spell but with a bane on the roll.

If the skill roll was a fumble, you roll 1D20 and check the magical mishaps table. This is pretty fun, with my favourite ill effect being ‘you vomit a frog the moment you tell a lie’.

Edit− Resisting Offensive Spells

There is no BRP-like Resistance Table in Dragonlance, nor anything like the Mythras opposed rolls.

Spells which affect unwilling living targets all have different ways of being resisted/avoided:

- Spells that create a tangible threat like e.g. Fireball or Lightning Bolt can be dodged or parried as a ranged attack. Others like Pillar (which suddenly creates an earth o stone pillar) can be avoided via a successful Acrobatics roll.

- Some other elemental spells, e.g. Frost or Whirlwind, simply cannot be avoided in any way.

- Some area spells (e.g., Ensnaring Roots) cannot be avoided when first cast, but the target can then break free from the area of effect.

- Most mind-affecting spells, like e.g. Dominate or Sleep, can be resisted via a WIL roll. Some others, however, like Mental Strike, cannot be resisted.

Spells – Some Personal Considerations

The spells are quite diverse, with a good mix of D&D favourites (Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Sleep, Stoneskin) and RuneQuest ones (Countermagic, Detect XXX, Enchantment, Farsee, Fear, Summon/Control XXX Elemental)

My main beef with the spells is that the implied setting is ‘vanilla fantasy’/Old School D&D, yet most of the spells feel ‘magic-user’-ey; there aren’t many ‘clerical’ spells beyond the obvious Cure-like spells, and the Banish/Purge spells (which work like the Turn Undead power of D&D clerics).

Globally, there is a total lack of clerics/priests in the implied setting. I am OK with that – Tunnels & Trolls is one of my favourite frp games, and it doesn’t feature clerics/priests either. But then Trollworld is atheistic, whereas Dragonbane’s implied setting constantly mentions demonic threats (both in the rulebook and in the core set adventures) so I would expect either clerical PCs whose role is to protect the world from demons, or evil NPC priests à la Robert E Howard trying to bring forth demonic dominance into the world.

Also as a diehard RQ fan no gods/deities means no cults.

Dragonbane Readthrough, Part Four

The fourth chapter, Combat & Damage, tackles exactly what it says. As with any frp game, combat in Dragonbane is paramount, and I will try and delve into some detail here, again emphasising the differences between Dragonbane and the BRP family of games.

Initiative

The chapter starts with a long explanation as to how Dragonbane manages Initiative, which makes sense since it is quite idiosyncratic. Each player, and the GM who manages all the NPCs/monsters involved in the combat, draws a card from a deck containing 10 cards numbered 1−10. The card will indicate the drawer’s turn in the combat round (lowest goes first). At the beginning of the next round, everyone draws a card again. Obviously, the GM may decide to draw several cards instead of a single one, especially if there is a ‘boss’ and their ‘mooks’, or different kinds of opponents (humanoids and monsters, for instance).

A few spot rules allow the GM to factor in further elements like surprise, delaying one’s attack, etc.

Actions & Reactions

During their turn in a given combat round, each combatant may move and act (one move and one action, in any order). Parrying or dodging uses up one’s movement and action for the combat round, meaning you must carefully plan whether you attack or keep your action for later on if you’re fighting a particular dangerous opponent or if you do not have many HPs left. I’m not particularly fond of this rule, but obviously since I’ve never played Dragonbane I’d have to run a few sample encounters to form an opinion. I also suspect that player co-ordination is much more important in Dragonbane than in BRP/RuneQuest.

Casting a spell, using a noncombat skill/heroic ability, or helping another character all also count as one action. Disengaging from an opponent doesn’t count as an action but will give your opponent a free attack, which cannot be parried or dodged, if the relevant skill roll is failed.

Mêlée Combat

The various details of mêlée combat are quite similar to what you’d expect in a BRP-powered game. The main improvement, I think, is that a lot of peculiarities that would entail percentage modifications in BRP/RuneQuest are simply (and elegantly) managed by the bane/boon system in Dragonbane.

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, rolling a 1 is a critical, and rolling a 20 is a fumble, period.

If you roll a critical, instead of starting a string of complex calculations based on the kind of damage the weapon inflicts (crushing/impaling/slashing), as in RuneQuest, you simply choose an outcome out of three possible ones:

1. Double weapon’s damage (before applying damage bonus)

2. Immediately perform a free second attack against another opponent

3. Ignore opponent’s armour

If you roll a fumble, you roll 1D6 and check the fumble table. The results are quite similar to the ones in the BRP/RuneQuest fumble tables, with less variety.

The effects of a critical parry are different than in BRP/RuneQuest.

Ranged Combat

Most of what I’ve written above also applies to ranged combat. In case of a critical, only effects No.1 and No.3 may be chosen.

Parrying a ranged attack is possible, but only with a shield.

If a target is partially covered, the attacker gets a bane.

Damage, Death & Healing

Alas, Dragonbane doesn’t use hit locations (of which I’m very fond). As a result, armour provides the same protection on the whole body; wearing a helmet simply adds further protection.

Dragonbane manages weapon durability in a much simpler way than BRP/RuneQuest: a weapon is either intact or damaged; you do not tally the weapon’s hit points.

Again, since Dragonbane doesn’t use hit locations, only the total hit points of your character will determine their state. Once the PC’s HPs reach 0, you start rolling against your CON each round and must tally successes and failures. After three successes, you recover 1D6 HPs; after three failures, the character is dead.

Surviving death, however, yields after-effects (you roll on a table) that take between 1 and 18 days to heal. Some after-effects (teeth knocked out, a severed finger) are permanent.

On top of magical healing, Dragonbane PCs may recover lost hit points via a stretch rest (1D6 to 2D6) or a shift rest (all HPs). I hate this… it smacks so much of D&D: “Oh, I got hit by a sword and I have this huge gash in my abdomen. No worries, a good night’s sleep and it will be forgotten!”

Spot Rules

This chapter also provides spot rules for Darkness combat, Disease, Drowning, Falling, Fear, Improvised weapons, Mounted Combat, Poison. These are all well thought out.

Dragonbane Readthrough, Part Three

As mentioned in my previous posts about Dragonbane, Skills are at the very heart of Dragonbane’s engine.

It is hence no surprise that the third chapter, Skills, doesn’t start with a skill list but with detailed explanations as to how skill rolls are resolved.

In a nutshell, the Dragonbane engine is the Basic Role-Playing (BRP) System, but with a D20 instead of a D100, i.e., everything is divided by 5, so that the Characteristics are consistent with the skill values– kind of the opposite of what CoC 7th edition did.

This entails some simplifications: rolling a 1 is a critical, and rolling a 20 is a fumble; no complex computations of what is or isn’t a critical/a fumble any longer.

Instead of penalties/bonuses expressed in terms of negative/positive modifiers to the skill value, Dragonbane has a system of banes and boons. A bane is when you roll two D20s and keep the highest roll. A boon is when you roll two D20s and keep the lowest roll.

At first I thought this was a blatant rip-off from D&D 5th edition’s advantages and disadvantages. Well, maybe it is, but it has been skilfully blended into Dragonbane’s underlying BRP engine and I suspect it works marvellously (more about this later).

You can also push a roll, but this works quite differently from CoC 7th edition: you simply re-roll and, irrespective of whether the re-roll was successful or unsuccessful, you get a condition on one of your Characteristics: all further rolls on skills whose base chance is based on said Characteristic get a bane until your next stretch rest.

Then we get to the list of the core skills, all 30 of them (of which 10 are weapon skills). This is somewhat like Mythras’s standard skills, and about half the number of the core skills in BRP/RuneQuest (and yet I do not really feel like anything important is missing).

The list of the core skills is followed by the list of the heroic abilities. There are 44 heroic abilities, and they are extremely diverse: some of them read like hugely specialised skills (e.g., Backstabbing), some others are quasi-magical (à la Sense Assassin in RuneQuest), some others are a one-off benefit (e.g., Robust, which gives you +2 starting HPs), and some others give bonuses to a single core skill (e.g., Hard to Catch, which gives a boon to Evade rolls).

I also quite like these heroic abilities. Not that they are anything revolutionary (if I remember them correctly, the legendary abilities from Mongoose RuneQuest worked in a similar way), but they are a nice way to add, er, heroic skills to your game without having a looooong skill list on the character sheet– a common criticism levelled against BRP/RuneQuest [which I have never understood in the first place; if you think there are too many skills, just remove the ones you feel are unnecessary!].

I can also imagine adapting Dragonbane to the world of Glorantha, and instead of giving PCs heroic abilities based on their profession, giving them based on the cult they belong to, e.g., the already-mentioned Sense Assassin.

Dragonbane Readthrough, Part Two

Unimaginatively, the chargen chapter is titled Your Player Character.

It’s all very standard fare, but the layout is clear, uncluttered, and the optional rules stand clearly separated in sidebars with different colours. So kudos for the layout.

Kin

The first choice to be made is the PC’s kin (i.e., race). The choices are completely consistent with the overall vanilla fantasy look and feel of the game, except that the Chaosium roots of Dragonbane appear through the possibility of playing a Mallard (i.e., a humanoid duck). Each kin/race gives you an innate ability, which again slightly smacks of D&D rather than BRP.

Humans are nondescript. They are the last born of the young races and they can be found all over the world. Halflings live in hilly farmlands; dwarves feel a connection with rocks and fight with axes; elves are aloof and mysterious. Please kill me with the Tome of Western Fantasy Clichés.

Mallards (ah!) are a common sight in the world— so more defining a feature than in RuneQuest (where they’re only supposed to be found in the Dragon Pass area). Also, all backgrounds are open to them.

Wolfkin are the other nonstandard race. They are muscular wolf-headed humanoids and do apparently peacefully live alongside the other humanoid races.

Except for the innate ability, race doesn’t seem to affect your PC’s stats.

Profession

The second choice to be made is the PC’s profession. There are ten professions to choose from:

1. Artisan

2. Bard

3. Fighter

4. Hunter

5. Knight

6. Mage

7. Mariner

8. Merchant

9. Scholar

10. Thief

Again, these smack more of D&D classes than of BRP professions (which are really only pre-defined ways of allocating your skill points), because each profession yields a unique heroic ability. The Mage, for instance, gets to use magic, and none of the other professions may use magic (at least at character creation).

The Bard, the Fighter, the Mage and the Thief are really the equivalent of their D&D namesakes. The Artisan is a little bit of a jack-of-all-trades. The Hunter is a D&D ranger, the Knight a D&D paladin, and the Mariner a D&D thief-acrobat.

Note that I am OK with these D&D-like professions, as they give Dragonbane an OSR patina.

The only professions that really reminded me of BRP/RuneQuest are the Merchant, the equivalent to an Issaries cultist, and the Scholar, the equivalent to a Lhankoring.

Distinctive Features

The following choices to be made are the PC’s Name & Age.

Characteristics

The PC’s six characteristics (STR, CON, AGL, INT, WIL, CHA) are rolled as follows: 4D6, remove worst die, then assign in whichever order. I think this is pretty generous compared to both OSR and RQ.

I just find it odd that this isn’t the very first step, but then it is consistent with the fact that you choose your PC’s profession first.

Derived Characteristics

This step is very similar to what you would do in a BRP-derived game, with a few differences:

 - Damage Bonus is STR-based only (since SIZ has been dropped), and AGL-based for ranged weapons.

 - Hit Points are equal to your CON (again, because SIZ has been dropped).

Skills

This is where Dragonbane shows its BRP roots and is furthest removed from D&D-ish frp games. There are lots of skills, and by reading the examples of play it is obvious that they are at the heart of Dragonbane’s engine.

The skill base chances of the core skills are directly derived from the PC’s characteristics. In this aspect, Dragonbane is actually much more similar to Mythras than to BRP/RuneQuest.

Then there are secondary (i.e., specialised) skills in which PCs do not get a starting base chance.

Heroic Abilities

As written above, each given profession yields a heroic ability. These are quasi-magic abilities that do not function like skills but more like (Battle /Spirit) Magic spells from BRP/RuneQuest. For instance if you are a Thief you get the Backstabbing heroic ability: by spending 3 WPs, your attack cannot be dodged or parried, and you get damage bonuses.

I quite like this, because (a) all PCs will need Willpower Points, meaning WIL won’t be a ‘dump stat’, and (b) there’s a limit on how often you can use your heroic ability, without this limit being completely arbitrary (as in D&D’s “You can only cast one spell per day – Why? – Because REASONS”).

Gear and Encumbrance

Starting gear is given by a die roll. Good, I hate it when my players spend hours looking at equipment and price lists in order to choose their starting gear.

The Encumbrance rules are quite simple: you can carry STR/2 “items”, with heavy items being worth 2, 3 or even more “items”, and tiny items not being counted against the total.

This is similar to RuneQuest, where you can carry the average of your STR and CON in “things”. RQ is more lenient though.

Experience

I won’t go into details, but globally the Experience system is similar to the BRP/RuneQuest one, with skill box ticks. Skills, however, cannot go beyond 20 (i.e., 100%); instead of increasing your skill, you gain a new heroic ability.

Personal Conclusion

I really enjoy the whole Dragonbane chargen system: at character creation, the PCs will neatly fit into the usual OSR roles, but given the experience rules and the fact that you can purchase heroic abilities irrespective of your class, er, profession, you may customise your PC as you like without the added vapourware of feats and whatnot from the more recent editions of D&D.

Dragonbane Readthrough, Part One

One year ago, I downloaded Dragonbane’s Quickstart and posted my very first impressions about this BRP-inspired Swedish fantasy role-playing (frp) game here.

One month ago, there was a sale on DriveThruRPG and I purchased the fully-fledged Dragonbane core set. I plan to publish a series of posts much more detailed than the ‘first impressions’ entry from last year in the following days. These posts will follow the structure of the core rules as I peruse the PDF.

Dragonbane is beautifully illustrated and (unless I’m mistaken) all the pictures are from a single illustrator, which helps set a particular ‘grimdark’ tone. However, except for this peculiarity, the book’s chapters are pretty standard fare for an frp game, and the implied setting itself doesn’t seem to deviate much from your standard vanilla fantasy world (but more about this in a later post).

The contents of the rulebook are as follows:

1.Introduction

2. Chargen

3. Skills

4. Combat & Damage

5. Magic

6. Equipment

7. Bestiary

8. GM Advice

As written above, nothing revolutionary here. This could be the table of contents of pretty much any frp game.

The other PDFs from the core set purchase add further stuff (mostly gadgets that must look terrific in physical form like battle mats, cards, standees, etc., but which are unfortunately pretty useless as a set of PDF files). However, there’s a 200-page Adventures book with eleven adventures that form a campaign if played in a succession. I think this is pretty cool for a core set.

Now let’s get back to the rulebook and read the introductory chapter, In the Oldest Times.

It starts with a mood piece about dragons and demons having been arch-enemies in the past, having almost destroyed each other, and having thus paved the way for the rise of younger races– like humans.

The usual blah blah about the GM, the PCs, the NPCs, the dice... follows. And then we have an overview of the system itself. As explained in my June 2023 post, Dragonbane is descended from the original Magic World, so I will again emphasise the differences with the Basic Role-Playing (BRP) System: some attributes get a name change (Agility instead of Dexterity, and Willpower instead of Power), and Size has been removed altogether. Magic Points/Power Points are now called Willpower Points.

Then we get the definition of three important units of time used throughout the rules: the Round (10 seconds), the Stretch (15 minutes), and the Shift (6 hours). These are really important and I suspect they are more of a D&D influence than a BRP one because a lot of things the PCs may recover (HPs, WPs, spells…) depend on a round rest, a stretch rest, or a shift rest.

Note: a round in Basic Role-Playing is about 12 seconds long, and a full turn is 5 minutes.

RPG A Day 28−31

Day 28 — Great Gamer Gadget

I don’t like gadgets— at least not for tabletop role-playing games; I’ll happily purchase gadgets for my wargames, like mounted mapboards, deluxe cards, bespoke dice, acrylic counters, you name it. But the action of a role-playing game unfolds in your mind... it doesn’t need any physical media!

Day 29 — Awesome App

Sorry it’s in French but the best answer to this stupid question is definitely imaginos’.

Day 30 — Person You’d Like to Game With

I’ve mentioned at the Day 19 entry that I’d only managed to have the missus play once. It was a D&D game and she was playing a fairy. She was awesome (not very surprising since she’s into improvisational theatre) but alas she never wanted to play again... she prefers family boardgames. So that’s it: the person I’d like to game with is my wife!

Day 31 — Game or Gamer You Miss

Well, as a Gloranthaphile, I obviously miss Greg Stafford. Technically speaking, he wasn’t a great GM (all of us who have had the privilege to play with him have anecdotes on this subject) but he was such a marvellous and mesmerising storyteller.

I miss you Greg!

RPG A Day 25−27

Day 25 — Desirable Dice

Desirable Dice?? Dear Lord, what kind of “question of the day” is this?

Like all roleplayers, I do have a fetish for dice, but I do not remember having ever desired a particular die, even though there are a few it took me some time to get hold of, like the ‘D4 that rolls’ (actually a D8 numbered 1−4 twice), my polyhedral dice with Chinese numerals, or my fancy weather dice.

Day 26 — Superb Screen

I am not very keen on ‘official’ TTRPG screens. Sure, I regularly purchase the ones that are made for the games I referee, but I usually leave them at home and use my all-purpose, house-made screen instead in which I can put the tables I need and not the ones someone has decided I should need. Or I even usually simply place my binder upright on the table: et voilà... a superb screen!

Day 27 — Marvellous Miniature

Being of the theatre of the mind persuasion (see Day 8) I am not big on accessories/gadgets; this is hence again a difficult “question of the day” for me. I don’t own any minis. Not even a single one. So when I run a game in which visualising one’s surroundings is really important, I print mirror-sided pictures of the PCs/NPCs, glue the two sides on heavy paper or cardboard, and put the resulting paper minis in standees. Works for me!

RPG A Day 21−24

Day 21 — Classic Campaign

Shadows on the Borderland is my favourite product from the ‘RuneQuest Renaissance’ of the early 1990s, one of the few original Avalon Hill RuneQuest supplements that was not a re-issued or a re-packaged product from the RQ2 range.

Shadows on the Borderland was not officially presented as a campaign, but as a series of adventures set in the same area (Prax) and with a common theme: the ever-present threat of Chaos in this uncivilised part of central Genertela— which of course enabled resourceful GMs to build a campaign out of these adventures (which is exactly what our GM did).

Day 22 — Notable Non-Player Character

What is a ‘notable’ NPC? One that is central to the ‘lore’ of a role-playing game? In this case, Arkat, Argrath, Harrek, Ralzakark and many others are notable NPCs, especially Argrath, who is supposed to play a major role in the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha line.

Or is it an NPC that the player characters are bound to meet over and over again over the course of their adventures, and who acts as a useful deus ex machina tool for the [lazy] GM? In this case, le Club Pythagore from the French role-playing game Maléfices ticks all the boxes.

Or is it an NPC that you and your fellow gamers will remember from a great role-playing session or from a memorable campaign? In this case, everyone will have a different reference as to who is a notable NPC, irrespective of how well the NPC was presented in a given gaming supplement. From my recent sessions as a player, I have fond memories of Zaleena Silver-Tongue, a Lunar schemer from The Eleven Lights campaign written for HeroQuest/QuestWorlds.

And, last but not least, me and my friends have notable NPCs from our house campaigns. These NPCs won’t mean a thing to you, but we of course love reminiscing about them. One such NPC is Sturm Martex, a dream magician from Orathorn who kept thwarting my players’ plans during our Chern Durel campaign. I think his appearance is what made him so memorable... he had no body, just a head that was carried around on a silken cushion resting on a precious palanquin supported by his slaves. He had tinkered too much with dream magic, and his body got stuck in the Dream World. 

Day 23 — Peerless Player

Anyone who has ever attended a role-playing convention and enthusiastically played in a one-shot with total strangers is a peerless player 🙂

Day 24 — Acclaimed Advice

As someone of the show, don’t tell persuasion, I enjoy learning from experienced GMs at cons during the course of a game or at a panel.

For inexperienced GMs I will recommend the book Mener des parties de jeu de rôle (in French), which is a collection of articles written by French TTRPG professionals with loads of useful tips.

RPG A Day 20

Day 20 — Amazing Adventure

Oh my days, there are so many.

For me the best adventures are the ones with well-defined NPCs that you will still fondly remember years after the adventure has been played, but I am not going to mention my favourite TTRPG campaigns again (that was Day 12), so I’ll have to think of something else.

One that truly stands out from my recent years of GMing is a free Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes adventure titled the Curse of the Midnight Sun by Michael Paul. It is supposed to be set in upstate New York in 1953, but: (1) I have moved the action to Normandy in 1902, and (2) I have adapted it to Maléfices.

Well, what was supposed to be a one-shot adventure ended up as a fabulous mini-campaign with very endearing NPCs, scary villains, and two mysterious siblings.

RPG A Day 19

Day 19 — Sensational Session

We are a family of hardcore gamers. Well, me, my son, my daughter, and my son’s girlfriend are. My wife and my son-in-law less so. The missus loves family boardgames à la Ticket to Ride, and my son-in-law likes short, fun games with simple rules. I’ve only managed to play D&D once with my wife, and my son-in-law started playing in my Maléfices campaign but dropped out after two or three sessions.

So that was the situation until I convinced everybody to play Arkham Horror (3rd ed.). And that was truly a sensational session— we played the Feast of Umôrdhoth scenario, and even though Arkham Horror is not exactly a role-playing game (your player character does not progress beyond amassing gear, and the choices you make are limited by the scenario) my wife and my son-in-law were completely immersed in our desperate fight against the chthonian horror. Next step, a real role-playing session? [I hear there is an Arkham Horror rpg in the works...]

RPG A Day 18

Day 18 — Memorable Moment of Play

Well, as someone who’s been playing since 1981, there have been many, but one of the best memories from the recent years is certainly the finale of my RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha campaign set in the Kingdom of Ignorance, when the player characters heroquested on behalf of Can Shu’s daughter who was looking for a means to act against her father. The heroquest succeeded, and its consequences kickstarted the Hero Wars in Chern Durel, much to our satisfaction as this episode marked the end of two intense years of gaming in real life.

RPG A Day 16–17

Day 16 — Quick To Learn

In my opinion, a role-playing game that is quick to learn is one in which there aren’t many different subsets of rules. Or maybe there are, but there is a single, overlying engine that lets you start playing, and then you needn’t refer to the rest of the rules until you have reached the particular situation that requires looking up said rules. In this way of looking at things, all BRP-based TTRPGs are ‘quick to learn’.

If we want to move further towards simplicity on the simple vs complex axis, however, there are many TTRPGs that are even quicker to learn.

Tunnels & Trolls has been my favourite go-to system for one-shots or to introduce newbies to TTRPGs for a long time. My only complaint is that it has two different unrelated engines, one for combat, one for non-combat actions, which I find inelegant.

Maléfices is even simpler: you have to roll 1D20 under a given characteristic (of which there are only five) to succeed in an action. Except perhaps for diceless systems, I don’t think there is anything quicker to learn.

Day 17 — an Engaging RPG Community

With the demise of Google+ and the decline of the OSR community, I would say that currently the online British RPG community is the most engaging. There are many cordial Discord servers (GROGPOD, The Mitchester Arms...), several excellent podcasts (Blasphemous Tomes, Frankenstein’s RPG, The Grognard Files, Orlanth Rex’s Gaming Vexes, What Would the Smart Party Do?), each with its own little idiosyncratic community, and now that Twitter has become a haven for fаѕсіѕtѕ and spreaders of fake news, we have all migrated to Bluesky where everybody is super friendly.

There also many online conventions, the most notable of which is the virtual GROGMEET.

RPG A Day 12−15

Day 12 — RPG With Well-Supported Campaigns

I expect a lot of people will wax lyrical about the Masks of Nyarlathotep or The Enemy Within. Well, let me stand out of the TTRPG crowd and highlight how good many of the campaign games I have played for HeroQuest/QuestWorlds are.

Blood Over Gold, the (unpublished) Harreksaga, and The Eleven Lights, all of these HQ campaigns rank high on my list of best-campaigns-ever-played. Except for the Harreksaga which is more like a series of one-shots in different locales, these HQ campaigns feature extremely detailed NPCs in a complex web of relationships, which is what makes them stand out and “feel real”— which is what any good TTRPG campaign should strive for.

Day 13 — Evocative Environments

Given my obsession with all things Gloranthan, I reckon no one would believe that my favourite TTRPG genre is the historical role-playing game. And since my favourite city is Paris, I feel the most evocative environments are:

 - the 17th century Paris rife with the swashbuckling exploits of the musketeers from les Lames du Cardinal,

 - the early 20th century Paris full of occult mystery from Maléfices

(of course, both of these are French TTRPGs).

Day 14 — Compelling Characters

This question is not super clear. Are we talking about the player characters? the non-player characters? If it is the latter, I am going to repeat myself and refer to the incredibly detailed NPCs from the HeroQuest/QuestWorlds campaigns I’ve mentioned at the ‘Day 12’ entry.

If it is about PCs... any TTRPG that allows you to flesh out believable player characters rather than two-dimensional ones will do the job. Which I think favours narrative role-playing games. And the only one I’m really familiar with is, again, HeroQuest/QuestWorlds.

Day 15 — Great Character Gear

Groan. Honestly, this is probably the last thing I’m interested in when I play. For me ‘horse’ or ‘rifle’ are good enough on my character sheet and, despite being a lifelong fan of Tunnels & Trolls, I’ve always found its list of weapons ridiculously long and detailed for a game that is supposed to emphasise simplicity.

So I am going to mention a supplement that is supposed to be a ‘character gear’ manual but which is, in reality, an immersive guide into the day-to-day life of the people of central Genertela:

the Weapons & Equipment book for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

RPG A Day 8−11

Day 8 — An Accessory You Appreciate

As a GM, being a proponent of the ‘theatre of the mind’ style of play, I am not fond of the use of accessories; I’ve never ever used minis, I seldom use a dry-erase board, and my GM screen is only there to make sure no one is peering at my notes.

An accessory I do appreciate as a player is the All Rolled Up because I know I’ll have all the stuff I need for the gaming session or at the con.

Square Dice Trays are also very useful because my dice somehow always end up rolling under a piece of furniture.

Day 9 — An Accessory You’d Like to See

Now if someone could invent a virtual tabletop system for dummies— that would be the ultimate ‘accessory I’d like to see’! Something like what Rally The Troops does for wargames or Boardgame Arena does for boardgames, but for tabletop role-playing games.

Day 10 — RPG You’d Like to See on TV

A lot of RPGs nowadays are based on licences so in a way we already have a lot of RPG universes on telly. One thing comes to my mind though: I’d like to see an East Asian fantasy TV show with low-level magic, not the kind of over-the-top magic you see in The Storm Riders or in The Legend of Zu; no, I want to see low-level, discreet magic like in The Celestial Empire.

Day 11 — RPG with Well-Supported One-Shots

Except for a very long campaign that was a mash-up of Masks of Nyarlathotep and Horror on the Orient Express, my experience with the Call of Cthulhu RPG has been one of one-shots with our characters dying or becoming mad at the end of the one-shot session, so I reckon this is it.

RPG A Day 6–7

Day 6 — RPG That is Easy to Use

I’m not sure what this entails. All RPGs are easy to use. All you need is a table, a few friends, and your imagination. 

This may leave out a few RPGs that mandate the use of minis or of weird dice but that still leaves 99% of games in.

Day 7 — RPG with ‘Good Form’

Without the shadow of a doubt, the RuneQuest Starter Set.

RuneQuest has often been maligned as being “only for Grognards” or “only for Gloranthaphiles”. The Starter Set shows how this criticism is rubbish.

The Starter Set is a beautiful, sturdy box containing everything needed to start playing RQ in the world of Glorantha: four booklets, a set of pre-generated characters, several maps, and a few accessories, like the super cool Strike Rank Tracker for mathematically-impaired players.

The first booklet contains the rules, which are perfectly laid out (I feel they’re even clearer than in the core book). The absence of what is probably the most daunting part of RQ:G, character generation, makes them almost standard fare as far as fantasy RPGs go. The slim booklet makes the rules easier to use as reference than a thick book.

The second booklet gives an overview of the world of Glorantha, with an emphasis on a single city, which I think is a good idea because it sets the tone of RQ adventuring, which is often city- or wilderness-based rather than dungeon delving.

The third booklet is a solo adventure. This is a terrific idea— an inexperienced GM can get the gist of RQ adventuring before they set up a table for their friends by playing this advenure, although I think the adventure itself may be a tad too complex.

The fourth booklet contains three adventures. The focus of the adventures is to have the novice players slowly discover the peculiarities of RQ and Glorantha as they start adventuring. The adventures are really good— but while I appreciate the surprise effect of the third one on long-term RQ aficionados I’m not sure it’s a good example of what a 21st century RQ game usually revolves around.

The character sheets are practical and beautifully illustrated. The characters are a good mix of adventuring types and make it perfectly clear that RQ is not your typical vanilla fantasy TTRPG.

RPG A Day 4−5

Day 4 − RPG With Great Art

For me, one of the outstanding features of the latest edition of RuneQuest, i.e., RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, is its art, and in particular the illustrations by Andrey Fetisov, Katrin Dirim, Antonia Doncheva, Jakub Rebelka, Ossi Hiekkala, Michelle Lockamy...

I feel art in RPGs has always been a ‘filler’, with little if any relationship with the text it was supposed to, er, illustrate. Don’t get me wrong— I love the humorous vignettes in the original AD&D DMG, and I am a lifelong fan of the early Chaosium or Flying Buffalo artists like Luise Perenne and Liz Danforth, but I feel none of these Old School products featured art that enhanced the immersion in the game world like the latest RQ:G art does.

Day 5 − RPG With Great Writing

This might seem paradoxical, but although I really do not like 13th Age in Glorantha as a TTRPG engine, I immensely enjoy the book for its clear writing, many examples, and insightful side bars explaining why this or that choice has been made, including instances of where the two authors may have disagreed upon a given option. I wish all rule books were written like this one.

RPG A Day 1−3

Hey. Haven’t done this for a long time, mostly because the daily suggestions of the last few editions were kinda daft.

Also I think I will be unable to post daily, so expect this as irregular bursts every two or three days.

Day One − First RPG Bought This Year

Well, it doesn’t specify whether it’s ‘dead tree’ or any format, so I’ll assume it’s the latter and it’s going to be a double order for two Jonstown Compendium products:

Nochet: Queen of Cities

Secrets of HeroQuesting

both for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. This was on 1st March, which also shows that I don’t buy as many RPGs as I used to.

Day Two − Most Recently Played

Again, it doesn’t specify whether it’s face-to-face or any kind of gaming, so again I’m assuming the latter. In which case it’s my Monday night VTT session of

Old School Essentials

GM’ed by Old Scouse Roleplayer.

Day Three − Most often played RPG

Since the 2023 RPG-a-Day challenge? since the beginning of the year? since forever? It would be nice to know. I’ll assume since forever, in which case it is

RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha

(with HeroQuest/QuestWorlds a close second).

RuneQuest Humble Bundle

For a mere €16, you can get the PDFs of most of the books of the latest edition of RuneQuest via this incredible offer.

Whether you have sat on a fence, or only purchased the dead tree versions, or even if you want to offer this bundle to a friend, you can’t possibly ignore this unbelievable offer.

In detail, this is what you’ll get:

1. the RQ core rules
2. the RQ Screen Pack
3. the RQ Quickstart
4. the RQ Bestiary
5. the RQ Book of Magic
6. the RQ Starter Set (best TTRPG starter set evah)
7. RuneQuest Weapons & Equipment
8. King of Sartar
9. Cults of RuneQuest — Mythology (invaluable even if you don’t play RQ)
10. Cults of RuneQuest — the Prosopaedia
11. Cults of RuneQuest — the Lightbringers (the good friends of Orlanth Rex)
12. Cults of RuneQuest — the Earth Goddesses
13. the Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories (scenario pack)
14. the Smoking Ruins & Other Stories (scenario pack)
15. the Guide to Glorantha (all about Glorantha, the TV series)
16. the Argan Argar Atlas (map companion to the Guide)
17. the Glorantha Sourcebook (all about Glorantha, the film)
18. the RQ colouring book (I have no idea what this is)

Again, this is amazing value for €16!

We Are All Us

Titled Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way, the cults book for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha detailing the Lunar cults is out at last. I am specifically writing “at last” because, whereas we could always use and slightly adapt the cults that were detailed for the earlier editions of the game for the Storm or the Darkness pantheons (and a few others), there was next-to-nothing if you wanted to stat Lunar NPCs, or play a Lunar player character.

This tome gives us at last the cult descriptions for the following deities: the Seven Mothers, the Crimson Bat, Danfive Xaron, Deezola, Etyries, Hon-eel, Hwarin Dalthippa, Irrippi Ontor, Jakaleel the Witch, Nysalor/Gbaji, the Red Emperor, the Red Goddess, Teelo Norri, Yanafal Tarnils, Yara Aranis. Many cult write-ups contain significant nuggets of Lunar lore, e.g., the write-up of the cult of the Red Emperor, or even wider information, e.g., about Illumination within the Nysalor/Gbaji write-up (and yes, there is much more stuff than in Lords of Terror).

The book may be ordered here (if you buy it from Chaosium, you also get the PDF).

RQG - Errata & Q&A

OMG this is huge. I hadn’t realised there had been so many errata and Q&A published on the Chaosium’s web-site. I reckon this is going to be a very useful reference page.

Animal Shape-Shifters in Glorantha

cover of DW #9

With the exception of the Telmori, the lupine shape-shifters that play a central role in the lore of Dragon Pass and Sartar, and which have been extensively described in several RQ and HQ supplements, animal shape-changers have never been precisely described in Gloranthan products. Worse than that, what little information we may find in the sources is often contradictory.

In RuneQuest 2nd edition (their first appearance), for instance, animal shape-shifters are described as follows under the heading Lycanthropes:

“Shape changers are a lonely breed, tainted with Chaos, and disdainful of civilisation. Few know whether they are animals who can take on human shape, or humans capable of assuming the shape of an animal. In either case, they can assume the strength and senses of the animal form at the expense of some intelligence (varying as to species).

...

Lycanthropes are a very rare breed, no matter what sort of animal they become. The genes for lycanthropy are recessive, so that only matings between lycanthropes will breed true. Most children of two lycanthropes are either animal or human without shapechanging ability.

...

Their Chaotic nature gives them their abilities of shape change and invulnerability to impure metals. They do not receive any of the Chaotic Features shown in Chapter X.

...

The lycanthropes include Bearwalkers, Tiger Sons, Tusk Brothers, and Wolfbrothers.”

In HeroQuest Glorantha, animal shape-shifters are described as follows under the heading Skin-walkers — accompanied by the Beast and Spirit Runes:

“Skin-walkers are shape-changers, and disdainful of civilisation. Few know whether they are animals who can take on human shape, or humans capable of assuming the shape of an animal. In either case, they can assume the strength and senses of the animal form at the expense of some intelligence (varying as to species), with its natural weapons.

...

The skin-walkers known in Dragon Pass and the Holy Country include Bearwalkers, Tiger Sons, Tusk Brothers, and Wolf Brothers. Only the Wolf Brothers are described in further detail here. The God Learners classified them as a type of primitive men they called Hsunchen or Hykimi. There are dozens of different types of Hsunchen throughout the rest of Glorantha.”

In a nutshell, RQ2 tells us that animal shape-changers are lycanthropes tainted by Chaos, whereas HQG describes them as a sort of peculiar Hsunchen. Well, that’s completely different: lycanthropes are basically monsters, whereas Hsunchen are primitive humans. Also, the connection to the Chaos Rune has been replaced by a connection to the Beast and Spirit Runes.

Worse yet, the most recent material (the RQG line) is completely devoid of any references to animal shape-shifters other than the Telmori. The Guide to Glorantha merely mentions (on page 484) that one of the towns in the East Isles has a Tiger Son Guard “comprised of Hsa were-tigers”, which simply adds a layer of confusion since ‘Hsa’ is the name of the tiger Hsunchen tribe according to the Guide (p439 and p561).

It is simply impossible to try and figure out which interpretation is correct (‘monsters’ vs ‘primitive humans’) given the current canon.

A further research on each type of animal shape-changer in the Gloranthan corpus doesn’t provide any particular help either:

A search on ‘Bearwalker’ returns a mention of “the Rathori Bearwalkers from the forests of northern Genertela” in HeroQuest Glorantha, and a very similar one in the Glorantha Sourcebook.
In the HQ supplement Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, ‘Bearwalkers’ is the name given to the initiates of Odayla (p110). In its sister publication Sartar Companion, there is a description of such an NPC (p133), who “attacks and kills Telmori or Chaos on sight and without hesitation”. We are very far from the Chaotic nature of RQ2 Bearwalkers...
In RQG, ‘Bearwalkers’ is the name given to Odayla Rune Lords (RQG core rules p300, and the Lightbringers p124). 

A search on ‘Tiger Son’ returns a long, unofficial article in Different Worlds issue No.9, and a mention of a Tiger Son initiate of Zorak Zoran in Big Rubble. 

A search on ‘Tusk Brother’ doesn’t return anything.

⁂

So, to summarise:

★ In early Glorantha (end of the 70s, beginning of the 80s), lycanthropes were animal shape-shifters tainted by Chaos. According to the official rules, you had to be born a lycanthrope, whereas Big Rubble and Different Worlds issue No.9 seemed to imply you might become one via a cult.

★ In the early 2010s (at the time of the Guide and of HeroQuest Glorantha), the concept of ‘animal shape-changers’ seems to have become interchangeable with ‘Hsunchen’. The association with the Chaos Rune is gone, except for the Telmori.

★ Today, with the RQG line, there is no all-encompassing concept any longer. You have the Chaotic Telmori; you have the Bearwalkers who are the Rune Lords of Odayla; Tiger Sons and Tusk Brothers have disappeared. As for the Germanic prefix were-, it is used in the Glorantha Bestiary for the Ducks who are “sometimes called durulz or were-ducks” (p31), even though... they are not shape-changers, they are Beast Men! The inconsistency is total.

R.I.P. Jennell Jaquays

Jennell Jaquays (14 Oct 1956−10 Jan 2024) has passed away. She was one of the last giants of the gaming industry from the Golden Age, on par with Greg Stafford and Steve Perrin.

 

The Dragon, issue 21, cover by Jennell Jaquays

Jennell Jaquays’ peculiarity was that she was an accomplished artist: writer, illustrator, miniature sculptor, and even magazine editor. She also worked in the video game industry. Another peculiarity is that she will be remembered both for D&D classics (Dark Tower, Caverns of Thracia) and non-D&D classics (Griffin Mountain, probably the very first RPG sandbox, and the Flying Buffalo City Books).

She even left her name as a verb: “jaquaying” a dungeon means rendering it less linear, providing several entrances and ways out, and most importantly designing it so that important encounters needn’t appear in a pre-definite order of succession.

More about Jennell Jaquays’ legacy at Designers & Dragons.