2003: Pax Gladivs

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 idea of using the Internet to deliver a roleplaying game was still new in 2003. Deep7 was one of the pioneers, publishing a series of mini-roleplaying games via what would become DriveThruRPG.com. This series was the 1PG line, a line of simple roleplaying games each focused upon a particular genre and specifically, the cinematic version of that genre and a cinematic style of play. Each entry in the series was—and still is—low preparation, easy to learn, and easy to grasp because each leaned into a cinematic genre. These factors were enhanced by the format which limited a particular aspect of each roleplaying game and its genre to a single page each. Hence the ‘1PG’ name. Thus, the rules of play fit on a single page, the rules for character generation fit on a single page, the advice for the Referee fits on a single page, each scenario fits on a single page, and so on. The 1PG series did espionage with Agent S.E.V.E.N., pulp action with Dime Heroes, and Irwin Allen-style disaster movies with Disaster!, and more.

Published in 2003, Pax Gladivs: Epic Sword & Sandals Adventure was Deep7’s entry into the Swords & Sandal genre of epic stories set in Ancient Rome, inspired by such films as Gladiator and Ben Hur—and that is really all that the players need to know. For the Referee, play is intended to be epic and exciting, but never slow, with quick and dirty intrigues in the villas of the rich, blood spilled on the sands of the arena to cheers of thousands, chases back and forth across the empire by the emboldened barbarians, and so on. Every story should have a good villain and the action should first, the rules second. This amounts to the advice given in Pax Gladivs, which boils down to stick on the soundtrack to Gladiator, describe the scene, and let the action and the drama begin.

A Player Character in Pax Gladivs is simply defined. He has four stats—Vigour, Splendour, Scheming, and Acumen. Both these and the roleplaying game’s various skills are rated between one and three. In addition, a Player Character has Spirit, his charisma and your mental and physical bearing; Guts, which is his courage and bravery; Blood is his Hit Points; and Esteem, which is a measure of his fame and respect. To create a Player Character, a player rolls a three-sided die for each stat, assigns between four and six points between skills, rolls to determine how much Spirit, Guts, and Blood he has, and then rolls against each stat to gain a point of Esteem if successful. Lastly, he rolls for money and for Background and Provenance. Background is his status and occupation, such as Senator or Gladiator, whilst Provenance determines where he is from. Both Background and Provenance provide a mixture of bonuses to stats, skills, and secondary factors.

Name: Albus

Background: Slave Provenance: Rome

Vigour 3 (Drinking 1, Running 1)

Splendour 2 (Etiquette 1)

Scheming 3 (Con 2, Dodge 2, Sneaking 1)

Acumen 3

SPIRIT 2 GUTS 4 BLOOD 19 ESTEEM 3

Mechanically, as with other 1PG titles, Pax Gladivs is simple. To have a character undertake an action his player chooses the appropriate combination of a stat and a skill and attempts to roll equal to or under the target number the combination creates on a single six-sided die. Rolls of one always succeed, whilst rolls of six always fail. Fear is handled via a Guts check, and if failed, the Player Character loses a point of Spirit. Losing all Spirit means losing heart and the will to adventure. The only way to recover Spirit is to survive until the end of a scenario and assign Character Points earned then. Contests of will are rolled against Spirit, but a player can add his character’s Esteem. Combat is only slightly more complex. In combat, the Fighting skill is used for melee, Archery for ranged attacks, and Dodge for evading them. Rolls are made by those involved in the fight simultaneously, with the combatant who makes the roll by the widest margin succeeding. Ties go to the defender, but if both opponents are attacking, ties mean that both attacks succeed. Damage for each weapon type is a set value, for example, five for a short sword and fifteen for a ballista bolt! The attacker’s Vigour value is added to the damaged for melee attacks and all damage is deducted from the Player Character’s Blood value, and armour reduces the damage suffered—one point for thick robes, two for leather, and three for mail or scale.

Beyond this, Pax Gladivs adds rules for genre in the form of the Circus Maximus. It suggests making use of vehicle combat rules in The 1P Companion for chariot races and combat, but the Referee can get by with what is given here. In the arena, Esteem can be used to add a Player Character’s Spirit to the Fighting skill or Armour Value, gain more Blood, invoke the crowd to temporarily increase Guts, turn the crowd against the atonement, or increase the Dodge skill. This only lasts a round and the point of Esteem is lost for the day. If a Player Character uses a point of Esteem to inflict a killing blow, it is not lost. It is permanently lost if a Player Character is defeated, but not dead, and he pleads with the Emperor to spare his life, which requires a Performance check. Wins in the arena will earn a Player Character further Esteem, and if he can earn enough Esteem in this way, he can gain his freedom and become a Freedman, but not a citizen. That requires service as a soldier. A Player Character who begins play as a Gladiator does so with Esteem, but anyone sold into service as a Gladiator loses all of his previous Esteem and has to begin again.

The rules for Pax Gladivs amount to just four pages and the character sheet actually contains two sheets. The rest of the roleplaying game consists of six scenarios, each a page long. Together, they form a mini-campaign, which begins with dramatic fashion in ‘The Iron Lion’, when a lion with iron-shod claws is unleashed on the streets of Rome to attack a particular senator! Who would engineer such an attack? The senator rewards those that helped save him—that is, the Player Characters—by taking them into his employ and quickly they discover that his life is still in danger. The plot continues over the Alps and into Southern Germania where the senator is due to enter into treaty talks with the barbarian tribes across the border. The overall plot is fairly simple, but complicated with double-crossing action back and forth and lots of attempts to stop the senator. The players and their characters need not think too much about the plot, but go with it for the action and the drama.

Physically, Pax Gladivs is cleanly and simply laid out. Bar the cover, it is not really illustrated and the roleplaying game as a whole, very much needs a good edit. Some of the phrasing and terminology is inconsistent, but it is easy to work out how every thing should play.

These smaller games often get forgotten given how old they are, but many of the 1PG titles are worth revisiting or visiting for the first time because they deliver what they promise—cinematically styled, genre focused mini-games that are easy to prepare and run, all with scenarios, some of which form mini-campaigns. Pax Gladivs: Epic Sword & Sandals Adventure was there in 2003 for a quick, dirty, and simple pick-up game set in Rome and it pretty much still is in 2023.

It's a Love Game

Our hobby is organised around convention dates rather than the traditional holidays, which has the side effect of making any attempt to review a game appropriate to a particular holiday all that more awkward. Halloween is of course the exception, as you can find a horror themed RPG or board game at any time of the year, but what about Easter, Christmas, or Valentines? Games with themes particular to these holidays are far and few between, and rare is it that I am asked to write such a review. Except for Valentine’s Day, which with its strong themes of love and romance, would seem to be the perfect subject for RPGs – certainly as a change from uncovering unspeakable horrors or putting other races to the sword and taking their loot – and this is supported by reviews that I have written for publication dates in the past some when near February 14th. These titles have included Green Ronin Publishing’s Blue Rose: The Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy, the original RPG that gave us the True20 System; the Indie RPGs Breaking the Ice and Shooting the Moon: All is fair in love and war from Black & Green Games and Best Friends: A role-playing game about girlfriends and all their petty hatreds from BoxNinja.

This year though, I am going back to 2006 to look at a 1PG title called Idyll: Romantic Fantasy. Published by Deep7, a 1PG RPG is a PDF only game which breaks its constituent parts down into single pages. So a 1PG RPG has one page devoted to its rules, one page devoted to the player and his character, one page devoted to the referee, one page devoted to the game’s specific genre elements, and lastly a series of single pages devoted to scenarios, of which there are usually five or six. The 1PG line dates back to the turn of the century at a time when games electronically published as PDFs stayed in that format, never to reach the shelves at your friendly local gaming store, so long before the game as a PDF became just another way to sell a game before it was actually published. Deep7 published almost twenty 1PG titles plus supplements, covering genres as diverse as spies, pirates, H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, disaster movies of the 1970s, and in a personal favourite, playing cartoon-like insects in the real world. Although it has been a few years since Deep7 has published anything new, the fact that their titles all PDFs means that they are all effectively “in print” and available, and all at their original bargain prices.

What Idyll: Romantic Fantasy explores is a genre defined by the novels of Mercedes Lackey and Tanith Lee, in which heroes are dashing, heroines are strong willed, and wizards are invariably mysterious and rarely trusted. The game’s choice of Pre-Raphaelite cover art – Romeo and Juliet by Sir Frank Dicksee – captures much of that flavour. Unlike other 1PG titles, Idyll: Romantic Fantasy focuses on character interaction and character driven adventures, on sex (whether courtly wooing or hot and sticky bodice ripping, though the game only discusses rather than dwells on this subject), on romance, on lengthy stories that might span multiple generations and multiple novels, and drama. Lots of drama... This is no Indie RPG, so there are no rules that pertain to these elements. The point of any 1PG title is simplicity and the GM’s notes contained in Idyll highlight its genre’s key elements rather go into them in any depth.

Character generation in Idyll – and in other 1PG titles – is very easy. 1d3 is rolled for four stats – Sturdiness, Looks, Craftiness, and Brains – and another 1d6 points are added to these scores. A further four to six points are distributed between the skills, each of which are associated with one of the four stats. 1d6 is also rolled for the character’s Presence, the equivalent to his charisma or physical and mental bearing, while another is rolled for the character’s Guts. This is his Sanity score, and the character fails a roll against his Guts, he loses a point of Presence. In addition to determining his Notoriety, Blood (his hit points) and his money, a character also has a Background and a Status, which can be rolled for or chosen by his player. Backgrounds like Brigand or Mage, and a Status such as Wanted or Blessed each provide various bonuses to skills, money, and other attributes.

So here is a sample character. Robert of Salisbury was captured while fighting abroad and taken as a galley slave. When the slave ship was attacked, he managed to escape, but was horribly scarred. He has returned home, but his looks prevent him from claiming his inheritance. He possesses some natural spellcasting ability, but is not aware of it.

Sturdiness: 3; Looks: 1; Craftiness: 2; Brains: 2
Etiquette 1, Fighting 1, General Knowledge 1, Languages 1, Rumours 1, Spellcasting 1, Swimming 1
Blood: 15; Guts: 3; Presence: 5; Notoriety: 2

The mechanics in Idyll (and in any 1PG) are very simple. Roll a six-sided die with low being better than high, a result of a one always succeeding, a six always failing. Skill checks are rolled under the value of the skill and its stat. The game system is very quick and easy, its simplicity giving the GM plenty of room to rules as needed. It should be noted that while characters can be improved, it is not possible to learn any kind of Spellcasting – arcane or divine – after character generation.

Magic in Idyll receives two pages devoted to it, one detailing the game rules and the other a grimoire of some twenty or so spells for both types of magic. In keeping with the 1PG ideal, magic is kept simple. Each spell has an Intensity number which modifies the target number when making a Spellcasting roll. To cast a known spell, the wizard or priest simply rolls under Brains plus his Spellcasting skill, unless the Intensity of the spell being cast is greater than his combined Brains/Spellcasting score, in which case the difference acts as a negative modifier. This difference can also act as a bonus for a defender if he is attacked using a spell.

In addition, prior to casting a spell, a priest must make an Oratory skill check. A priest cannot know more damage inflicting spells than he knows non-damage inflicting spells, while a mage cannot know any type of healing spell. Both types of spellcaster can expend his improvement points to reduce the Intensity factors of the spells that he does know, so making them easier to cast. Lastly, the rules for magic cover playing druids and shamans as well as the summoning of beings from beyond. Again in relatively simple detail, but these are pointers enough for the GM to work with.

Up until this point Idyll has provided the rules for the game and a plethora of pointers towards the genre – though it has not quote out and out discussed the genre. What it does instead is put the pointers into practice with six single page scenarios. Each opens up with the scenario’s premise, its setup, and an explanation of what is really going on, and is supported with detailed locations and NPCs, plus their stats. Any one of them should provide an evening’s worth of play and all come with complications that add extra drama or lengthen the scenario.

The first of the six is “That Witch is Not,” in which the inhabitants of Briarton have fallen prey to a sickness caused by a witch who was run out of the village after she let the village elder’s oldest son die. The villagers want help in bringing the witch to justice as no one who has ventured into the woods to capture her has returned. This is followed by “Sylveena,” also set in a village, this of Colton. Here a young boy has fallen in love with a half-unicorn girl whom the villagers suspect of being in league with or is fleeing from a goblin band that has been attacking the villagers following her appearances. Again the player characters will have to venture into the woods to find both the young boy and the half-unicorn girl after they run away.

The third scenario is “Ghostly Orphanage” which takes place in the city of Kingsport. What begins with a child’s tale of having been held against his will leads into a decent little mystery that leads into a tragic tale. “Dearest Sister,” the fourth scenario is the first touch upon relationships and sex, though not in any prurient fashion. The heroes come upon a wounded prince, desperate to get home to his aging father following the defeat of their country in battle. The ensuing welcome home feast is not only held for the prince, but also for the return of his sister, long thought dead. What begins as a celebration ends in tragedy when one of the courtiers is poisoned! As with any “murder mystery,” this is the most complex of the scenarios to date and the GM needs to take some care if he is to run it effectively.

The fifth scenario is probably the most difficult to run of all the six, because in “The Breenstil Curse,” all of the player characters have to be female! All of the men in the kingdom have fallen prey to a weakening illness, so the queen commands her greatest heroines to consult with Redmaw, an ancient dragon who will help determine the cause. Though what price he demands is another matter... In the sixth and last scenario, “The Dowry,” the heroes are asked by a merchant to see if a local nobleman has used a love potion on his daughter in the hope that he can marry her and so gain her dowry.

Barring the cover, Idyll is very lightly illustrated. In places, particularly in the scenarios, the text is quite dense. The game also needs another edit, but for a rules set and a set of scenarios at its price, this can be overlooked.

What Idyll does lack is a real discussion of its genre, a problem common to all 1PG titles. There is almost the expectation that in coming to the game, you already know about the genre, but for those of us who do not, it would have been a helpful addition. Or at least some pointers as to where to look for further information. Fortunately, some of the genre’s key elements – such as relationships and strong characterisation – are present in some of the scenarios, and if those are not enough, Wikipedia is a good place to start your research.

Playing Idyll might not necessarily be the most romantic of ways to game. After all, it is a roleplaying game and they usually need more than the one player and a GM to be played effectively. There is nothing to say that Idyll could not be run in that fashion, and some advice could have been included to that end, but a game like the aforementioned Breaking the Ice is a much better game in that regard. Nevertheless, Idyll is pleasingly light and easy and in the hands of a sympathetic GM, its contents will appeal to anyone looking to add some romantic elements to their fantasy gaming or just wanting their fantasy gaming to be a little less masculine. Played as is, or used as a source of extra scenarios and ideas for an existing campaign, Idyll: Romantic Fantasy represents excellent value for money, but then again, that has always been the hallmark of the 1PG titles.