The Other OSR: Welcome to Strangeville

Strangeville is a town like any other, which means that it is beset by monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens, and because the adults never believe in monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens until it is too late, the only standing between the monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens and Strangeville’s doom are the kids! Young teenagers on bikes or skateboards or even roller-skates with the curiosity to notice that something strange is going in where else, but Strangeville! Welcome to Strangeville then, an Old School Renaissance compatible roleplaying game based on Knave. Published by Doomed Wizard Games, it is obviously based also on the television series Stranger Things as well as Paper Girls, The Goonies, and just any adventure film or television series set in the eighties in which the kids are the heroes. Being based on Knave it offers fast-playing stripped down mechanics, whilst also suggesting collaborative worldbuilding between the players and the Game Master. What it does not do is provide anything in terms of spells or monsters beyond advice on how to adapt them to Welcome to Strangeville. Thus, the Game Master will need access to a bestiary and a source of spells of some kind. That said, the Old School Renaissance is not exactly short of those.

In Welcome to Strangeville, a Player Character has six abilities—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma—each of which has a Check Bonus and a Save bonus. The Check Bonus ranges between one and six and is added to the die roll when a Player Character undertakes an action. The Save Bonus is equal to the Check Bonus plus ten, and it is what the Player Character rolls against when tyring withstand various dangers or effects. He has an Alignment, either Nark, Slacker, or Bogus. Nark indicates that the Player Character believes in the greater good rather than the individual, a Slacker cares more about himself, but can be roused to action, and if a character is Bogus, he is definitely selfish, if not downright evil. He has a number of Traits such as Age—between twelve and fourteen, Physique, Hair, Virtue, Vice, Speech, Parents, and Parent Occupation, and so on. He will also have some gear which will include either a bicycle, a skateboard, or a pair of roller-skates so that he can get around.

To create a character, a player rolls three six-sided dice for each ability and assigns the lowest rolled as the Check Bonus. He adds ten to the Check Bonus to get the Save Bonus for the ability. Having done this for each ability, selects an Alignment and rolls for Traits, Gear, and means of transport.

At thirteen Terrell Thompson is beginning to get big and broad, which has made him a pick for the high school football team. He tries to keep himself out of trouble, but as the new kid in the school—his mom having moved to Strangeville to work in the town pharmacy, together with his size, he feels he gets picked on when things go wrong. So, he is not always trusting, but when he does make friends, he stands by them.

Terrell Thompson
Level: One

Strength Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Dexterity Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Constitution Check +4/Save Bonus 14
Intelligence Check +2/Save Bonus 12
Wisdom Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Charisma Check +1/Save Bonus 11

Hit Points 8

TRAITS
Age: 13 Gender: Male
Physique: Towering Face: Wide Skin: Perfect Hair: Dreadlocks Clothing: Torn
Virtue: Loyal Vice: Prejudiced
Speech: Breathy
Misfortunes: Suspected
Parents: Widowed Mother Parent’s Occupation: Pharmacist
Alignment: Slacker

GEAR
Swiss Army Knife, lantern & oil, caltrops, perfume, skateboard

Mechanically, Welcome to Strangeville is straightforward. To have his teenager undertake an action, a player rolls a twenty-sided die, adds the appropriate ability check and if the result is fifteen or more, he succeeds. The target may vary—primarily in combat because the target is likely to have a different value for its Dexterity Save, but otherwise, Welcome to Strangeville uses the standard Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic. Strength is used for physical actions, melee combat, and extra damage, Dexterity for speed and reflexes, Constitution to resist diseases and poisons, Intelligence for anything involving concentration and precision, including tinkering with machinery or picking pockets, Wisdom for perception and ranged attacks, and Charisma whenever a character interacts with someone else. Thus, there are some minor changes in how the abilities in comparison to more traditional Old School Renaissance retroclones.

Combat uses the same mechanics, with the defender’s Save acting as the target. This can be to inflict damage, and Welcome to Strangeville suggests that firearms be extremely be hard to hold of as the Player Characters are teenagers, or it can be stunts such as disarming an opponent or knocking them over. Most weapons inflict a four- or six-sided die in terms of damage, whilst rifles and shotguns do more. When a Player Character’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, he is unconscious and if they are reduced to his Constitution Check as a negative value, he is dead, that is if he has a Constitution Check of +2 and his Hit Pits are reduced to -2, he is dead. Critical hits occur if the player rolls a twenty and a fumble occurs if he rolls a one.

Other rules are quick and easy. Stunts on bicycles, skateboards, and so on, require a Dexterity check, it is possible to subdue an opponent, and a Player Character has a number of item slots equal to his Constitution Save. There are narrative elements too. For example, Group Advantage can be gained for everyone’s next action two or more Player Characters declare a collective action and their players narrate how a previous incident helps them with this one, but the primary narrative element to Welcome to Strangeville comes in the set-up when the players and the Game Master work together to create and describe the town of Strangeville. During Session Zero, each player also creates a handful of rumours and urban legends about places in the town, monsters that lurk, houses said to be haunted, serial killers believed to stalk, and so on. The Game Master takes these and deicides which are true and which are false, using as many or as few as she likes to both establish a sense of mystery and weirdness about Strangeville, whilst also using some as the basis for adventures. Beyond this, the advice for the Game Master is fairly brief, primarily focusing on how to adapt and use monsters and spells from other sources, noting that a spell takes a slot in a Player Character’s inventory.

Physically, Welcome to Strangeville is a bit scruffy in places and the artwork does vary in quality. It is clearly written and anyone with any experience of the Old School Renaissance will grasp how it works with ease. The cover though, is good.

Although it uses the stripped back mechanics of Knave, what Welcome to Strangeville is not, is an introductory roleplaying game. It is not written as such, and is more aimed at the experienced Game Master who can develop the ideas suggested by her players during their Session Zero. Given that it does have to rely on other Old School Renaissance sourcebooks for its content, Welcome to Strangeville is underwritten in comparison to other roleplaying games in its genres and a group looking for a more rounded treatment of the ‘kids in peril’ genre may want to look elsewhere. However, for a group that prefers Old School Renaissance and is prepared to put the development work in to create their own setting and the Game Master their ‘kids in peril’ adventures, Welcome to Strangeville is a succinct little choice.

2003: Lashings of Ginger Beer

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”, (L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953). Never is there a more apt quote for Lashings of Ginger Beer: A spiffing role-playing game. In the twenty-first century, we are spoilt for choice when it comes to roleplaying games in which we play children or teenagers going off on adventures, free of the aegis of either parents or adults, of which Tales from the Loop and Kids on Bikes are most well-known. First published in 1995 by Beyond Belief Games, it is the 2003 edition that is the best-known version. As any Briton of a certain age, what Lashings of Ginger Beer is about—or is inspired by—is the adventures of the Famous Five, the characters from the series of books by children’s author, Enid Blyton. The five, Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the Dog, cycle into the countryside or sail across to an island where they explore the area, notice things out of the ordinary, discover secret tunnels, uncover criminal activities, and help bring the perpetrators to justice. Not just the Famous Five, but also the characters of Blyton’s Secret Seven and those of Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons. In the bucolic idyll found over the Easter and summer holidays such characters will engage in carefree camping trips, have adventures, not worry about school or home life, and enjoy massive farmhouse teas or hampers of food.

A kid in Lashings of Ginger Beer has four attributes—Tough, Deft, Clever, and Charm. These range in value between one and three. Younger kids have better ratings in Deft and Charm, whilst older kids have higher Tough and Clever attributes. Each Kid has a Kid Type—Good (‘Normal’), Swot (‘Bookworm’), or Truant (‘Tomboy’). These model the members of the Famous Five to an extent. So that the rebellious George is most obviously a Truant (‘Tomboy’), whilst Dick and Julian are Good kids, and Anne either a Good kid or a Swot. All Kids have two things they are good at, Hide and Snoop, whilst each Kid Type provides a further list of things a Kid is good at. The Good Kid Type is good at ‘Act Innocently’, ‘Camping’, Hobbies’, Sports’, ‘Ride Bicycle’, and ‘Spot Nasty People’. The Swot is good at ‘Sciences’, ‘History’, Geography’, ‘Languages’, ‘Music’, and ‘Useless Facts’. The Truant is good at ‘Fighting’, ‘Wriggle (from Grasp)’, ‘Climb Trees & Walls’, ‘Catapult’, ‘Throwing Things’, and ‘Lie Convincingly’.

To create a Kid, a player decides upon his Kid’s age, which sets the four attributes, and then add a single point to one. He then chooses a Kid Type and divides eight points between the things that the Kid Type is good at. It is possible to select things that the Kid is good at from another Kid Type, but this is more expensive. He also begins with three useful things, two of which he has to purchase. It is assumed that he has a few shillings and pence saved from pocket money and in addition, may have brothers and sisters. Lastly, all of the players should decide what their gang is called, for example, ‘The Fearless Four’ or ‘The Mysterious Crew’. A gang can also have a scruffy dog, which can be taught a handful of commands.

Henry
Kid Type: Swot Age: 13
Tough 2 Deft 2 Clever 3 Charm 2
Things He Is Good At:

Sciences 2 History 1 Geography 1 Languages 1 Music 1 Useless Facts 2

Mechanically, Lashings of Ginger Beer uses pools of six-sided dice equal to an attribute plus the thing that the Kid is good at. A roll of one six is a success, with additional success meaning that the Kid has achieved the task with greater alacrity. Contests are won by whomever rolls the most successes, though ties are possible. This includes combat, where a tie might result in a standoff. If a Kid suffers damage, he loses points of his Tough attribute. If a Kid has his Tough attribute reduced to zero, he is not killed, of course, but rather bruised, with a black eye or the scraped knee. Lastly, the result of any roll also determines who gains the narration rights to the outcome, the player if his Kid is successful, the Game Master if the Kid is unsuccessful.

Beyond this, there are some notes on Idyllic England, suggestions as what the Kids’ gang name—and book series—name might be, and a short list of appropriate language for the period, so that something that is good, would be “Wizard!” or a disappointed Kid might exclaim, “Darn it!” There are notes too on the play of the game, no more than a paragraph, to the effect that Lashings of Ginger Beer is meant to be fun, that the rules are not in any way realistic, and that they are this way to fit the style of Idyllic England. Half of Lashings of Ginger Beer is dedicated to ‘Adventures & Mysteries’. There are six of these, which take in a circus, a mysterious manor, a haunted castle, and so on. These are really all quite fun and are obviously inspired by the fiction.

Mechanically, Lashings of Ginger Beer is simple, even simplistic, and lacking in nuance. Part of the issue is with the Kid options available, which are limited and offer too many skills across the three Kid Types. It is difficult to design Kids outside of its Type, confining them to strict archetypes. Plus, it is difficult to design Kids like Anne of the Famous Five, which would closer model the source material.

Physically, and in keeping with the style and tone of the game, Lashings of Ginger Beer is a simple affair. The layout is clean and tidy, the line art a mix of period pieces and modern additions. The latter is not as good as the former, but the latter is not accompanied by anachronistic titles.

If you are of a certain age, Lashings of Ginger Beer: A spiffing role-playing game has a problem. Much like Pendragon has the issue of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Lashings of Ginger Beer: A spiffing role-playing game has The Comic Strip Presents... Five Go Mad in Dorset. Broadcast in 1982, this parodied the children adventurer format of the Famous Five and the social attitudes prevalent in Blyton’s stories. It is difficult to roleplay Lashings of Ginger Beer without lapsing into that parody and quoting from it. Yet even as that it is a problem, it is one that Lashings of Ginger Beer acknowledges, though without actually mentioning it. For example, the very title, Lashings of Ginger Beer’, is taken from The Comic Strip Presents... Five Go Mad in Dorset rather than Enid Blyton’s books where it never appears. Then the artwork parodies the source material too, for example, with Julian and Dick in bathing suits, running into the water and shouting how good the acid that they have just taken is and suggesting that they should give some to Timmy the Dog. Some of the captions to the artwork, all of its period appropriate, are even more suggestive. So even as Lashings of Ginger Beer is presenting itself as a straightforward roleplaying game based on a very English genre, it is both parodying both itself and its source material, whilst also acknowledging the parody. Which establishes an odd dissonance between the tone of the writing and the tone of the artwork, between the tone of the game and source material and the anachronism of the parody.

Besides having a problem, Lashings of Ginger Beer: A spiffing role-playing game is a deeply problematic game, primarily because of its source material and influences that are reflective of the time when they were written and the social attitudes of the time when they were written. The Famous Five books present an England that is a White, Middle-Class idyll in which foreigners cannot be trusted, women have their place, and you can be snobs about both the poor and the rich. It is fair to say that Lashings of Ginger Beer does not reflect any of this itself, but for a modern audience aware of the issues with the source material, it is always going to be lurking in the background as they play.

Another issue with Lashings of Ginger Beer is that it shows its age in terms of design, especially in comparison to the number of roleplaying games that explore the children adventurer genre currently available. For example, Kids on Bikes from Hunters Entertainment and Renegade Studios and Tales from the Loop from Free League Publishing are both more sophisticated in terms of their mechanics, yet without much more in the way of complexity. They also offer more choice and more nuance in that choice in terms of what the players can choose as their characters and character archetypes. Similarly, roleplaying games like Tales from the Loop also offer more emotional sophistication in terms of the Player Characters and especially in terms of their family lives, which reflect the often difficult and fractured nature of the family during the eighties when it is set.

Consequently, were a designer to create a children adventurer-type roleplaying game today, it would be unlikely to be based upon or draw from the same source material and though it would aim for mechanical simplicity in its rules, it would offer a wider of options to play and it would address the emotional nuances in the genre. Design demands have changed radically since 2003.

Of course, to be fair, Lashings of Ginger Beer is not set in the eighties and it is set in an idyll when the idea of family difficulties was something to be kept behind closed doors as best could be, but the upshot is that none of the Player Characters in the roleplaying game possess anything akin to emotional depth or a life away from their adventures. Lashings of Ginger Beer is about roleplaying in that interlude, carefree and joyous, between the responsibilities of home, family, and school, as much as it is on exploration, snooping, and unmasking smugglers and international criminal masterminds on the Dorset coast.

Here then, ultimately lies the charm of Lashings of Ginger Beer: A spiffing role-playing game—and it is charming—the emulation and clear love of its source material, despite its underwhelming rules. It is never going to escape the issues with its source material and there have been better treatments of the children adventurer genre since, but Lashings of Ginger Beer: A spiffing role-playing game, one of the earliest entries in its genre, is simple and charming.