[Fanzine Focus XXVI] Grogzilla #1

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support. Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

Once per year, The Grognard Files, a North of England podcast dedicated to the games of the late seventies and early eighties, in particular, RuneQuest, hosts Grogmeet a one-day convention in Manchester, again in the North of England. As The Armchair Adventurers, the podcast also publishes its fanzine, just once a year, and typically timed for release at Grogmeet. The first issue, The Grognard Files – Annual 2017, is available as a ‘Pay What You Want’ PDF available to download with the proceeds of the sale of the fanzine will donated to continue the running of Yog-sothoth.com, the best site dedicated to Lovecraft and Lovecraftian investigative horror. More recent issues, The Grognard Files – Annual 2018 and The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 have sadly not followed suit, but for members of the ‘Grog Squad’ and attendees of Grogmeet, both issues continue to serve up thick, syrupy wodges of nostalgia and gaming inspired by their youths in the nineteen eighties. Of course, worldwide circumstances means that there has been no Grogmeet since 2019 and thus no issue of The Grognard Files, but The Grognard Files – Annual 2019 was not the only fanzine to be released at Grogmeet in 2019. Further, that fanzine has gone on to be expanded following a Kickstarter campaign and unlike The Grognard Files – Annual 2019, is still available.

Grogzilla #1 is published by D101 Games, best known for the OpenQuest roleplaying game and the Glorantha fanzine, Hearts in Glorantha. It is undeniably a showcase for what the publisher does and is full of ideas and bits and pieces, some of which are silly, some useful, and some interesting. The issue starts with the silly—‘A Question of Ducks’, which is a poll of Twitter and the Grog Squad—as fans of The Grognard Files podcast are known—and their feelings about Ducks in gaming. The questions are mostly related to Glorantha, the answers varying from series to silly, depending upon how the respondent feels about Ducks. ‘Four Faces of Grogzilla’ is almost as silly, presenting four versions of the not-kaiju for D101 Games’ different roleplaying games—OpenQuest, Crypts and Things, Monkey the RPG, and River of Heaven: Science-Fiction Roleplaying in the 28th Century. Thus, Grogzilla for OpenQuest is a half-dragon, half demonic reptile thing which slumbers deep under the earth, but which cult priests can summon him to rampage across the land once again, whilst hysterical mobs sacrifice to him in order to avoid such a fate! Then for River of Heaven, Robozilla is a giant robot originally intended to be used to help terraform the world of Terrosa, but since stolen by terrorists! More fun perhaps is Monkeyzilla, for Monkey the RPG, the ten-storey high, fire breathing lizard which the Monkey King transformed into to fight the Pagoda Throwing General, which nobody talks about because of all the destruction wrought in the ensuing battle!

The scenario in Grogzilla #1 is ‘Wigan Pigs’. Written for use with Swords & Wizardry, but therefore adaptable to the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice, the scenario is a sequel to The Road to Hell, which is also set during Elizabethan times. It is a mixture of Tudor fantasy and horror, the Player Characters sent by Doctor John Dee to England’s northwest to locate a consignment of missing pigs which should have been delivered to the Irish butcher and purveyor of fine sausages, Mrs Figgins. Such a mundane task hides a nasty secret and a moral quandary for the Player Characters and for Game Master a moment to reflect wonder if the scenario should not have been called ‘The Road to Wigan Pig’ instead. The scenario is also easy to adapt to other systems, but perhaps the most obvious in the two years since the fanzine’s publication is The Dee Sanction.

There are multiple Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying games, but Grogzilla #1 offers one more with ‘Outsiders’. This is a game design document, suggesting how the author might design his own Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying game were he to do so. First to avoid what Call of Cthulhu does and use those elements of H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction which are in the public domain and then… The result is a scaled down concept, using a simple mechanic with just two six-sided dice, skills which can damage and are therefore harder to use. The Player Characters are actual outsiders, punks and rockers, radical scientists, drifters, hackers, and more, with talents such as Athletics, Science, Gobsite(!), and the like. The opposition consists of Horrors, similarly scaled down, Deep Ones, cultists, and the like, whilst deities—or alien intelligences—are ineffable, unknowable, working their way through their proxies. It would be fascinating to see this developed further by the author, but with access to the fanzine, there is nothing to stop the reader from developing it further.

‘The Six Traveller’s Culture – Magical Questing Gypsies for Mythras’ presents a Culture and its faith for use with The Design Mechanism’s Mythras. A preview of a forthcoming supplement from D101 Games, there is a danger here in presenting gaming content based on other cultures, but this very much appears to have been sensitively done. It provides for their skills—standard, combat styles, and professional, cultural passions, and more. The Six Travellers constantly journey in wagons following routes long established by their heroes and gods, many in the footsteps of the Six, searching for the magical Way Stones, long lost, but capable of fostering trade and safe passage. In their way are the agents of a malevolence known as the Ignorance. Accompanied by notes on the social castes amongst the Six Travellers this culture would make an interesting addition to a fantasy campaign.

Further previews follow. ‘Lost Fools of Atlantis’ is a preview of a roleplaying game about conspiracies and the ridiculousness of conspiracy theories, more a black comedy than a serious game. Again, the game is yet to appear, but the fiction is sufficiently intriguing to wonder what it might be like and actually be about. Lastly ‘The Barbarian at the Gate’ is a preview of Swords Against the Shroud, a rewrite of the Barbarian Class from Crypts and Things for use with The Black Hack, Second Edition. With a high Constitution, a certain fearlessness, initial ferocity in a fight, outdoor survival skills, it is exactly what you would expect in a classic fantasy treatment of the Barbarian. It is well done, with plenty of mechanical flavour and would certainly be fun to play. Between the two, is ‘Pitbull’, a sample NPC, a street ronin, for the Cyberpunk roleplaying game, Reboot. It seems decent enough, but not having seen the roleplaying game, it is difficult to comment further.

Physically, Grogzilla #1 is a ‘rough cut’ affair (note, the version available on Drivethrurpg.com will be different), not quite the ‘deckle edge’ feel, but definitely something with a ‘put together by hand’ feel. Black and white throughout, the cover has pleasing linen finish and the roughness continues throughout the fanzine. Not necessarily to its detriment, but it gives it the amateurish feel of fanzines of old.

Grogzilla #1 is a medley of ideas and previews, not necessarily useful, but nevertheless interesting. The scenario though, ‘Wigan Pigs’, is the exception and easily adaptable.

Manners, Magic, & Machination

Lyonesse is a lost land, a kingdom out of Celtic and Arthurian legend to the west of France and the British Isles said to have slipped under the waves late in the eleventh century in just a single night. Adherents of Christianity say that the drowning was divine wrath as punishment for the islanders’ unvirtuous living, but in truth, the inhabitants of the Elder Islands were always reluctant to accept the new faith’s spread from the lands to the East. None more so than the islands’ halflings—or fae—in their fairy shee (or grottoes) in the Great Forest of Tantravelles, their very power preventing Christianity from gaining a foothold, whilst the ordinary men and women of the Elder Isles embraced a great many other faiths. This was before the islands’ submergence, when its Ten Kingdoms and petty duchies and baronies feuded with each other, knights sought to embody the code of chivalry, wooing fair noble women, and competing in tournaments major and minor; wizards and witches explored the limits of their knowledge in the Elder Isles and otherworldly realms, whilst being bound by the Great Edict of Murgen—the most powerful of the surviving Elder Islands’ arch-mages—which forbade them from involving themselves in the petty politics of the Elder Isles, but not from meddling in the affairs of each other; and flimflammers and mountebanks slinked from village to village, enjoying the best that each has to offer for the least amount of effort—or the best scheme they can run. It is the events which took place in the Elder Isles during the Fifth Century that are perhaps the best known, when the ambitious King Casmir of Lyonesse sought to defeat and conquer the nine rival kingdoms, in particular, the island kingdom of Troicinet and its king, Aillas. These tales—and others—are chronicled in the fantasy novels, Lyonesse, The Green Pearl, and Madouc—better known as the Lyonesse Trilogy by author Jack Vance. They and their setting are also the subject of a roleplaying game from The Design Mechanism.

Lyonesse: Fantasy Roleplaying Based on the Novels by Jack Vance is a hefty tome which enables the Storyteller and her players and their characters to explore the Elder Isles and get involved in the intrigues, plots, rivalries, and conniving between the kingdoms and their lords, between those of rival magic users, court lords and ladies, adventure on quests great and small, get caught up in the taunts and clutches of the faery, or simply go in search of a really good cup of tea and slice of cake—if not pickled brawn and mashed bean sprouts in a robust nigella sauce, followed by fried grayling fish with sautéed pollock drizzled with a white wine nettle sauce. In addition to being able to randomly determine the landlord of the inn or eatery where the Player Characters are dining, as well as what they are eating—feasts are an important feature of life in the Elder Isles, Lyonesse introduces the Elder Isles and gives a synopsis of the three novels, explores the Ten Kingdoms via a lengthy gazetteer, examines their society and religion, presents rules for the magic of the Elder Isles, and more. The book is over five hundred pages long and whilst somewhat unwieldy, is undeniably comprehensive.

The comprehensiveness begins with a history of the Elder Isles followed by a guide to the Ten Kingdoms of the Elder Isles—Blaloc, Caduz, Dahaut, Dascinet, Godelia, Lyonesse, North Ulfland, South Ulfland, Pomperol, and Troicinet, as well as two others, Scola and Skaghane, the latter a separate island whose forces recently invaded North Ulfland and South Ulfland, an event which prefigures the events of the trilogy. It details the location, climate, and geography of each, history and background, government and economy, culture and people, notable places, and lastly, each kingdom’s role in the Lyonesse Saga and situation during each part of the trilogy. Each is accompanied by a map of the kingdom taken from the larger map of the isles. As well as all of this information, this gazetteer offers extra details, such as the Royal Honours of Lyonesse, the strange and isolationist Isle of Tark where women are never seen—this is because all of them are vampires and reside underground where their superior enables them to mine for precious metals, a discussion of political campaigns—Lyonesse being a hotbed of political intrigue—along with a table of villainous plots! Not every kingdom is accorded this extra information, but this, of course, is a reflection of the source material. Throughout though, there is a wealth of details here, from the weird and the wonderful to the mundane and the ordinary, even down to highlighting the inconsistencies in the Lyonesse Trilogy itself. Those aside,  there is plenty of information around which the Storyteller can build a story or scenario idea or a player could create his character.

The chapter on the society and religion of the Elder Isles makes clear that the inhabitants of the Ten Kingdoms are a melange, settled wave after wave of different peoples—Danaans, Galatians, Greeks, Lydians, Celts, and more. They were followed by Romans who only settled but did not conquer, Greek and Phoenician traders came, as did British and Irish settlers, the Celts having a strong influence in the Elder Isles. They are a welcoming people, with a strong sense of hospitality, their Roman blood making them cautious with money, their Greek blood granting them silver tongues and quick wits. As well as explaining everything from their social classes, morality, and law and justice to language, coinage, aesthetics, and education and science, the chapter details the numerous cults and religions to be found on the island, to be seen in the isles’ innumerable hidden temples, graven idols, standing stones carved with mysterious glyphs, and unknown tombs whose constructions methods have long been lost, plus songs, dances, place-names, and folk-tales that suggest a land of forgotten gods and dead priesthoods. The faiths include the Court of Dead Gods, Etruscan Rites, the Druid Faith, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Mithraism, all of which are described in detail and include a Faith bonus should any character—Player Character or NPC—be an adherent to one religion or another.

By default, all characters in Lyonesse are human—guidelines in the Bestiary provide the means to create Halfling Player Characters. The process of character generation begins by rolling dice to determine base attributes—Strength, Constitution, Size, Dexterity, Intelligence, Power, and Charisma. From these are derived several factors. These include the expected Damage and Experience Modifiers, Healing Rate, Height and Weight, Hit Points, Strike Rank, and so on, but to these are added Action Points, spent to act in combat, and Luck Points, used to give a character an edge, whether to reroll a dice roll, swap the tens and units of a percentile roll, to mitigate damage or unfavourable circumstances, or to gain a vital advantage in combat. Each character also receives the same set of standard skills, the base value for each one determined adding two attributes or doubling a single attribute.

Beyond the base character, a player takes his character through four steps. In the first, he rolls for or selects an Origin and a Culture—Celtic, Hybras, Ska, or Itinerant, which will provide one hundred skill points to assign to various standard skills, professional skills, and a Combat Style. The latter represents skill in fighting a number of weapons and  an associated trait, for example, the Dagger, Sling, and Bow weapons and the Skirmishing Trait for the Hunter Combat Style. Next, the player rolls for a Background Event—this providing a story element or motivation for the Player Character, determines his community ties—mostly derived from his social class, and in the third, he selects an actual Profession as well as assigning another one hundred skill points to its related skills. Some professional skills come from a character’s Culture; the others come from his choice of Profession. A character’s choice of culture also sets the careers available to him. For example, Crafter, Fisher, and Hunter are available to all four Cultures; Courtesan and Alchemist to Hybras only; and Wise Man/Woman to Celt, Ska, and Itinerant. Although the base values for both types of skills are determined by a character’s attributes, the granting of the same number of skill points throughout the process serves to balance character generation. Lastly, he assigns a further one-hundred-and-fifty skill points as bonus skill points.

In addition, a character has several Passions—loyalties, beliefs, and feelings towards someone or something, that are again measured as percentiles and which work in a similar fashion to the Personal Traits of the King Arthur Pendragon RPG. They also do something more though in that they can serve as a resisting value or to give a bonus to an action if said action is dramatically appropriate to the Passion. For example, a character who is subject to a seduction attempt could use the love of his wife to resist the attempt, whilst later he might use the same Passion to grant a bonus to a bow shot to strike a villain who has his wife in grasp and is threatening to kill her.

Ublaf the Unbelievable is a street poet and performer who ran away to Twissamy rather than work on the family farm, something that neither of his siblings have forgiven him for. Although he always had a fascination with stories—especially ones involving fairies, his family always saw it as a distraction from work, he learnt much from the travelling troupe of entertainers he joined. Not just performing skills, proving a reasonable poet and orator, but also how to seduce others—of any gender, and so make life easier for himself. He has had a string of lovers and received and pawned various fine gifts, but thoroughly enjoys such encounters that he wants more and more! One day, he might even seduce a fairy king or queen!

Ublaf the Unbelievable
Age 24
Profession: Entertainer

STR 12 CON 11 SIZ 11 DEX 08 INT 11 POW 12 CHA 15

Action Points: 2 Damage Modifier: -1d2 Experience Modifier: +1 Healing Rate: 2

Hit Points
Head 3 Chest 5 Abdomen 4 L. Arm 2 R. Arm 2 L. Leg 3 R. Leg 3

Initiative Bonus: +10
Luck Points: 2
Magic Points: 12
Movement Rate: 6

Standard Skills:
Athletics 30%, Boating 23%, Brawn 33%, Common Tongue 26%, Conceal 30%, Customs 62%, Dance 33%, Deceit 56%, Drive 20%, Eloquence 75%, Endurance 22%, Evade 16%, First Aid 19%, Folklore 32%, Influence 45%, Insight 48%, Perception 23%, Ride 20%, Sing 37%, Stealth 19%, Swim 23%, Unarmed 20%, Willpower 34%

Professional Skills:
Acting 60%, Art (Poetry) 57%, Courtesy 56%, Literacy 45%, Lore (Fairy) 52%, Oratory 57%, Seduction 56%, Streetwise 42%

Combat Skills:
Citizen Militia (Mace, Shield, Trait: Cautious Fighter) 20%

Passions
Loyalty to Town/City (Blaloc) 47%
Love (Himself) 67%
Hate (His brother and sister) 57%

Background
Origin: Blaloc
Culture: Hybras
Social Class: Freeman
Family: Parents dead, outright enmity to both brother and sister, both grandfathers still alive, no aunts or uncles, four cousins.
Reputation: A good family reputation
Connections: One Mover & Shaker contact, one reasonably connected rival
Family is Reasonably Connected; one ally
Weakness: Nymphomania 57%
Background Event: For some time now you’ve suspected that a powerful being has been watching out for you, and have come to believe it is one of the local gods of popular legend. You cannot say why they might be interested in your fate, but you've had several strokes of remarkable fortune that cannot be attributed to luck alone.
Affluence Rating: 52%

Lyonesse: Fantasy Roleplaying Based on the Novels by Jack Vance uses the Mythras system for its mechanics, a tried and tested percentile system in which a player rolls equal to, or less, than a skill or passion to succeed. Any roll of five or less always success, whilst ninety-six or above is a failure. A Critical success is one fifth of a skill, a Fumble, either ninety-nine or one hundred. The rules cover difficulty factors, contested rolls, group rolls, and so on, as you would expect, but also allow for an optional ‘Success, but…’ with consequences rule. It is also possible to augment one skill with another, although if successful, this only adds a tenth of the augmenting skill to the intended skill roll. For example, Ublaf the Unbelievable would add 15% to his Seduction skill when augmenting with his Eloquence. However, this would not increase the chance of his player rolling a Critical result.

Passions work in a similar fashion to skill augments, again adding a fifth of their value to the skill roll. They have other uses though, often being used to either drive or determine the actions of Player Character or NPC, to oppose other Passions, as a measure of a character’s commitment to that Passion, and even resist being manipulated. Depending upon events, Passions can deepen or wane, reflecting the outcome of a Game Master’s plot as much as they can be used to drive a plot and interactions between the Player Characters and with the NPCs within it. All of the NPCs drawn from the Lyonesse Trilogy in the roleplaying game have Passions, useful, of course, for the Game Master when determining their motivations and actions.

Since Lyonesse uses Mythras, combat in the Elder Isles tends towards being short and brutal. It uses an Action Point economy to determine how many things a Player Character or NPC has per round, actions including attacking, bracing against incoming attacks, changing range, casting magic, countering spells, and even dithering(!), and Combat Styles that each cover a number of weapons and Traits. For example, the Noble Combat Style includes Spear, Sword, and Shield, plus the Mounted Combat or Trained Beast Trait. The Trait in particular, covers special training or situations, for example, the Mounted Combat Trait enables the rider to ignore the skill cap placed upon combat rolls by the Ride skill, whilst Trained Beast covers fighting in close formation with an animal, the user able to use his Action Points to defend against attacks against the animal. As well as inflicting damage, the primary aim in combat in Mythras is to inflict Special Effects or disadvantages upon an opponent, such as doing a Bash to knock him off balance, Bypass Armour to inflict more damage, Compel Surrender, Scar Foe, and so on. This requires a differentially better roll than that of an opponent, so a Critical success versus a standard success, a success versus a failure, and similar results. Typically a roll will generate just the one Special Effect, but a Critical success versus a Fumble will generate a maximum of three! This makes for a much more action-packed fight, one with more story, and thus potentially as memorable as it is nasty. The Elder Isles being a land of chivalry means that the combat rules also cover jousting.

Also intrinsic to the Elder Isles and thus Lyonesse: Fantasy Roleplaying Based on the Novels by Jack Vance is magic. Woven into the lives of fairies, halflings, and various wizards, witches, and the like, magic is potentially powerful and deadly. In the Elder Isles it comes in three primary forms—fairy magic, sandestin magic, and enchanted items. Fairies and halflings have their own magic, whilst human magic users are capable of mastering the incantations necessary to command sandestins, the strange creatures who will actually perform the magical effect for the caster, and some of whom have effects of their own beyond merely casting magic. However, many so-called wizards are simply charlatans who were lucky enough to have come upon an enchanted device, either that, or stole or swindled it from its former owner. For fairy magic, it is a matter of learning or finding someone who can teach a Player Character one or more Fairy Cantraps, such as Agriva’s Telescopic Fornication—something that Ublaf the Unbelievable would probably want to learn, Egumasko's Mellow Scarf—sends a scarf to wrap around the head of the intended target and forces him to abay his passions or tempers, or Impspring Tinkle-toe—makes the recipient involuntarily leap high into the air whilst simultaneously twirling their feet!

Sandestin magic requires much more effort, practitioners studying the skills of Sandestin Invocation and Sandestin Coercion. The former actually needs to be studied multiple times, each time for a different Axiom, such as Geomancy or Verdomancy, each Axiom related to a different type of sandestin and thus different spell effects. The exact effects can be altered through the caster’s Sandestin Coercion skill, the higher the skill, the more effects possible. However, this requires more Magic Points and it is possible for a magic user to run out and overextend himself, leading to an unfortunate result, such as the caster suffering from a random poison or souls of every living creature within 10 metres being ripped from their bodies, their becoming haunts, and only able return to life if they first kill the magician! As with fairy magic, a wide list of interesting spells are given for sandestin magic. For example, Expurgation removes written text, illustration, and art from books and scrolls, Gyration lifts a victim into the air spins them at a speed chosen by the caster, which can range from making them ill or actually ripping limbs off, and Obturation, which will close one of the target’s orifices of the caster’s choice. The spell selection is diverse, inventively named, and some of them are useful, but many of them in their own way are quite nasty. However, learning spells is hard work, represented by their high costs in potential experience point rolls which a player will have to save and pay in order to learn a new spell. Lastly, there are rules for creating and using enchanted items which a swindler or mountebank might use to fool others into thinking that he has great magic ability.

Lyonesse: Fantasy Roleplaying Based on the Novels by Jack Vance also includes a bestiary, ranging ordinary creatures and giant versions to supernatural beasts like Bearded Gryphs, various types of Fairies and Halflings—including rules for creating Halfling Player Characters, Sandestins, Screamers, and individual creatures such as Dungle the Giant who is bothered by a jealous Harpy or Arbogast the Ogre, flesh-eating of the Forest of Tantrevalles. They are joined by full write-ups and stats for the heroes and villains of the Lyonesse Trilogy, such as young Prince Aillas, heir to the throne of Troicinet, who is thus the target of the ambitious, driven, amoral King Casmir of Lyonesse. Their inclusion of course, enables the Game Master to involve the Player Characters in the machinations and plots of the various NPCs and so pull them into the setting.

In addition, Lyonesse: Fantasy Roleplaying Based on the Novels by Jack Vance introduces other worlds and suggests what might be found there as well as reasons to visit, tables for generating towns and taverns and what might be found there, and a set of extensive notes for the Game Master on running the roleplaying game. These cover the types of adventures to be had in the Elder Isles, the nature of its magic, its themes—travelogues, food, tricks and tricksters, and getting captured, as well as general advice on various aspects of Lyonesse: Fantasy Roleplaying Based on the Novels by Jack Vance and its setting. If the roleplaying game is lacking, it is that there is no scenario, or indeed no scenario hooks, which might have been useful for a setting that is as rich as this is, but the notes for the Game Master nevertheless useful and will help her create her first adventure, or two.

Physically, Lyonesse: Fantasy Roleplaying Based on the Novels by Jack Vance is very well laid out, well written, and illustrated with some very nice black and white artwork. The rules are thoroughly illustrated throughout with the tale of primarily one character, though they expend a little with magic, which adds a sense of continuity from start to finish. However, it does need an edit in places and whilst the maps are in colour, some full colour illustrations would have perked up the book a little.

Lyonesse: Fantasy Roleplaying Based on the Novels by Jack Vance is fantastic and thorough, almost compendium-like adaptation of a classic fantastical setting, one that is likely to feel almost familiar to many gamers, because even if they have not read the novels, they will have encountered its influence on Dungeons & Dragons. This provides an opportunity for roleplayers old and new, unaware of them or not, to visit the Elder Isles, the setting of that influence, and explore it in all of its glory and grit, its whimsy and wonder, its manners and machinations, its delights and its dangers, in this well designed, well researched roleplaying game.

The Other OSR: Classic Fantasy

It is impossible to ignore the influence of Dungeons & Dragons and the effect that its imprint has had on the gaming hobby. It remains the most popular roleplaying game some forty or more years since it was first published, and it is a design and a set-up which for many was their first experience of roleplaying—and one to which they return again and again. This explains the popularity of the Old School Renaissance and the many retroclones—roleplaying games which seek to emulate the mechanics and play style of previous editions Dungeons & Dragons—which that movement has spawned in the last fifteen years. Just as with the Indie Game movement before it began as an amateur endeavour, so did the Old School Renaissance, and just as with the Indie Game movement before it, many of the aspects of the Old School Renaissance are being adopted by mainstream roleplaying publishers who go on to publish retroclones of their own. Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, published by Goodman Games is a perfect example of this. Other publishers have been around long enough for them to publish new editions of their games which originally appeared in the first few years of the hobby, whilst still others are taking their new, more contemporary games and mapping them onto the retroclone.

Classic Fantasy: Dungeoneering Adventures, d100 Style! is an example of a publisher taking an existing roleplaying game and mapping it back onto the roleplaying game designs of the Old School Renaissance. Published by The Design Mechanism, it is a supplement for use with Mythras, the set of rules previously published as RuneQuest 6, and now presented as a streamlined version of Basic Roleplaying, the skills based, percentile system derived from RuneQuest which would be used in a wide variety of roleplaying games. One important aspect of Mythras is that it includes Passions—loyalties, beliefs, and feelings towards someone or something, that are again measured as percentiles and which work in a similar fashion to the Personal Traits of the King Arthur Pendragon RPG. In essence, Mythras can be described as a ‘Skills & Passions’ percentile, simulation roleplaying game, designed to handle detail and grit in its gameplay, but without being overly complex.

Thus, Classic Fantasy: Dungeoneering Adventures, d100 Style! is designed to take the percentile system of Mythras and map it onto the Class and Level set-up of Dungeons & Dragons and its various iterations and interpretations. Which is most odd indeed, for arguably, what the original RuneQuest and thus Basic Roleplaying was designed to do was everything that Dungeon & Dragons did not. In Dungeons & Dragons, characters are defined by their role—or Class—and are restricted to the powers and abilities of their Class; characters acquire Experience Points from adventuring—killing monsters, finding treasure, and sometimes story awards too—which when the amount exceeds a set threshold, a character gains a Level and all of the benefits of that Level; and various elements of the game are abstract in nature, including Armour Class, Hit Points, and so on. In the first iterations of the venerable roleplaying game, only the Thief Class had specific skills! RuneQuest and thus Basic Roleplaying, used neither Classes or Levels; everyone had skills and could learn any skill given time, and they improved them by learning and doing, one skill at a time; weapon skills were learned weapon by weapon, armour protected a character against damage rather than made you harder to hit, with hit locations having Hit Points and being protected by pieces of armour; and of course, everyone had access to magic too in one form or another. All of which is possible in Mythras, but in order to do classic Class and Level fantasy, not all of this is possible in Classic Fantasy. What it does mean though, if your Ork Berserker has the ‘voice of an angel’, then he can learn to sing and improve his skill and does not have to become a Bard to do it! (Which of course is not allowed in Classic Fantasy…)

To create a character in Mythras, a player rolls dice to determine his character’s base attributes—Strength, Constitution, Size, Dexterity, Intelligence, Power, and Charisma. From these are derived several factors, including Damage and Experience Modifiers, Healing Rate, Height and Weight, Hit Points, and Strike Rank, plus Action Points, spent to act in combat, and Luck Points, used to give a character an edge, whether a dice roll, the mitigation of damage or unfavourable circumstances, or a vital advantage in combat. Each character also receives the same set of standard skills, the base value for each one determined by adding two attributes or doubling a single attribute. Then, the player takes his character through three steps. The first is to select the character’s Culture—Barbarian, Civilised, Nomadic, or Primitive; the second step his Career, the third his Bonus skill points. At each step a character receives a set number of points to assign to skills, either to a character’s standard skills or his professional skills, the latter type of skill, such as Commerce, Gambling, and Mysticism, gained after years of practice and learning. Some professional skills come from a character’s Culture; the others come from his choice of Class. A character’s choice of culture also determines the Classes available to him. Although the base values for both types of skills are determined by a character’s attributes, the granting of the same number of skill points throughout the process serves to balance character generation.

For the most part, character creation in Classic Fantasy follows these steps, but the first change is in selecting a Race. In Mythras, the default Race is Human, but like the roleplaying games of old, Classic Fantasy also offers Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, and Halfling as its other Races. The choice of Race will determine the number of dice to be rolled for Attributes and also the choice of Classes available. In some retroclones Race is treated as a character’s Class, but in Classic Fantasy, it is a character’s Culture. Humans have Barbarian, Civilised, Nomadic, or Primitive as their Culture and like the Cultures of the Demi-Humans, determines the choice of Classes to choose from. Where Humans gain an extra Luck Point and an extra Experience Roll in addition to the standard and professional skills from their Culture, Dwarves gain Magic and Poison Resistance, Infravision, and Tunnel Sense; Elves gain Infravision, Resistance to Sleep and Charm, Unaffected by Raise Dead, Stealthy, and Secret and Concealed Object Detection; Halflings gain Magic and Poison Resistance, Stealthy, and Exposure Tolerance (Feet). The other Races receive similar abilities modelling similar elements found in their design in retroclones.

Classic Fantasy offers twelve Classes—Bard, Berserker, Cavalier, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Magic-User, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Thief, and Thief-Acrobat. As well as standard and professional skills, each Class provides a Combat Style, a package of weapons in which members of the Class are trained—such as only honourable weapons for the Cavalier Class and daggers, darts, knives, slings, and staves for Magic-Users, and a number of Abilities and Talents. Some of the Talents are organised into Tiers and a character needs more Experience Rolls to select them. Where Classes in Dungeons & Dragons et al are organised into Levels, in Classic Fantasy they are organised into Ranks—and just the five per Class. Now Ranks are not Levels, representing progression in an organisation, such as a guild or order, rather than an abstract measure of achievement. To increase in Rank, a character needs to advance their Class’ five prerequisite skills, for example, the Ranger Class has Athletics, Channel, Combat Style (Ranger), Piety (Specific Nature Deity), and Stealth. These all need to be at 50% for a character to qualify for Rank 1, otherwise they remain Rank 0, and then at 70% for Rank 2 and so on… In some Classes, Rank is organised as a pyramid, so to progress, characters of those Classes will need to wait for a spot to open up.

In addition, all characters have Passions. During the process of generation, a character gains them from their Culture or Race, and then from their Class. One of these has to be a Moral Philosophy, either Good, Neutral, or Evil, to which a trait or two is attached. Some Classes require a strict Moral Philosophy, for example, a Druid must have Neutral (Respectful of Nature and Strives for Balance). Some Classes also require a character to take an oath and again, this is treated as a Passion. In this way, Passions model the morality of the Alignment systems to be found in various retroclones, but because they are measured as percentiles and can go up and down—depending upon how a player roleplays his character—they offer a more nuanced alternative.

Our sample character is Ned Smith, a simple blacksmith’s son from the town of Blaineford Forum. His older brother is more skilled than he is and so he has decided to search out fame and fortune elsewhere. He has decided to put to use the martial skills he learned as member of the town’s militia.

Ned Smith
Age: 18 Culture: Civilised
Fighter Rank 1

STR 18 CON 15 SIZ 14 DEX 11 INT 15 POW 12 CHA 14

Action Points: 3 Damage Modifier: +1D4 Experience Modifier: +1 Healing Rate: 3
Build: Medium Height: 182 cm Weight: 95 kg
Hit Points
Head 6 Chest 8 Abdomen 7 L. Arm 4 R. Arm 4 L. Leg 6 R. Leg 6
Luck Points: 3
Magic Points: 12
Healing Rate: 3
Movement Rate: 6
Experience Rolls: 1

Standard Skills:
Athletics 52%, Boating 33%, Brawn 52%, Combat Style (Fighter) 62%, Conceal 28%, Customs 70%, Dance 25%, Deceit 34%, Drive 28%, Endurance 50%, Evade 42%, First Aid 36%, Influence 33%, Insight 42%, Language (Common Tongue) 69%, Locale 35%, Perception 39%, Ride 28%, Sing 26%, Stealth 26%, Swim 33%, Unarmed 52%, Willpower 39%

Professional Skills:
Commerce 44%, Craft (Blacksmith) 41%, Lore (Military History) 40%, Lore (Strategy & Tactics) 50%, Streetwise 41%, Survival 47%

Abilities/Talents
Armour Proficiency, Combat Proficiency, Weapon Specialisation (Axe) (+10%/+1 Action Point)

Passions
Moral Philosophy: Good (Helpful, Honest) 58%
Loyalty to Town/City (Blaineford Forum) 57%
Love (Mother) 56%
Hate (gang) 56%

Equipment
Mail shirt & Coif (5 AP Head, Arms, Chest, Abdomen), Laminated Greaves (4 AP), Battleaxe (1d6+1), Dagger (1d4+1), Shortspear (1d8+1)

In the main, Classic Fantasy uses the mechanics of Mythras, but it adds to them in order to emulate its genre. This includes rules for locked and stuck doors, repairing arms and armour, searching rooms and finding secret or concealed doors, securing doors, traps—with several examples, visibility underground, and where to rest and recover. These all emphasise the dungeoneering aspects of the genre and thus Classic Fantasy. Instead of the Strike Rank system of Mythras, initiative is used in Classic Fantasy, but the primary change to the combat mechanics is to offer rules for miniatures combat. In effect, what these do is shift the mechanics of Mythras further away from the simulation of Basic Roleplaying to the wargaming roots of Dungeons & Dragons and thus the hobby.

Where in the roleplaying games that it is emulating have Experience Points, Mythras and thus Classic Fantasy, have Experience Rolls. As per Mythras, these are awarded by the Game Master at certain points in a campaign or at the end of a scenario and can be used by a player to improve any of his character’s skills. (In a traditional Basic Roleplaying game, they are earned skill by skill and only those skills which have earned an Experience Roll can be improved.) Although attaining a new Rank does not cost any Experience Rolls, some Classes do offer higher tier talents which cost more Experience Rolls to purchase. When a skill is improved, it will be increased by no more than five percentiles, which means that character improvement is relatively slow—although a Game Master can reward her players with more Experience Rolls for a faster game—and even slower in terms of rising in Rank. And that is if the player focuses primarily on his character’s five Class prerequisite skills necessary to raise in Rank.   

Mythras offers four types of magic—Folk Magic, Animism, Sorcery, and Thesim. Classic Fantasy offers just the two disciplines—arcane and divine, the first primarily the domain of the Magic-User, the latter primarily the domain of the Cleric. The Arcane Bard can also cast arcane spells, whilst the Druidic Bard, the Druid, the Paladin, and the Ranger can cast divine spells. Where magic and spells in most retroclones are Vancian in nature, essentially memorise, cast, and forget, Classic Fantasy offers a little more flexibility and a few more options. Arcane spellcasters still have to memorise their spells and divine spellcasters still have to pray to their deity, and spells are forgotten once cast, they require Magic Points to be expended and a skill roll to be made for a spell to be successfully cast. In addition, a spellcaster can increase the Intensity of a spell to increase its effect or its Magnitude to make it harder to disbelieve or dispel. Both cost extra Magic Points beyond the basic cost of casting. Many of the arcane and divine spells listed will be recognised as versions of those found in the Old School Renaissance and includes cantrips for the arcane spellcaster.

Similarly, the bestiary and the treasure section are full entries which will very familiar to anyone who has played Dungeons & Dragons or another retroclone. From the Red Dragon and the Kobold to the Bag of Holding and Girdle of Giant Strength, Classic Fantasy covers just about every standard a Game Monster would want to populate her dungeon (world) with and reward her players and their characters with, in turn providing a reinterpretation of each for the Mythras system. There are some new magic items too, like the Broom of Hostility and the Flagon of Curses, as well as guides for the Game Master to develop her own. Rounding out the supplement is a discussion of the cosmology common to retroclones and the deities of Greymoor, the implied setting for Classic Fantasy. This is useful if the Game Master is running a game not set in a specific world. Lastly, there is a set of encounter tables in an appendix.

Physically, Classic Fantasy is a decently presented black and white hardback book which echoes the look of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons core rulebooks. Numerous artists illustrate the book, some of the artwork being very good, some of it being rather cartoony. Another issue is that the tables—and there are quite a few tables in the book—are not always easy to read as the text is quite small. The only thing that is perhaps missing, is a conversion guide to Classic Fantasy the Old School Rennaisence.

Classic Fantasy: Dungeoneering Adventures, d100 Style! is designed as a reinterpretation of classic Class and Level fantasy roleplaying, reworking it to function using a percentile mechanic with more realistic combat and more nuanced spell casting. Yet given its core mechanics, it is a grittier and deadlier reinterpretation, and with its emphasis on skills and passions, it brings a greater sense of individuality and nuance to each and every character. Overall, Classic Fantasy: Dungeoneering Adventures, d100 Style! is the percentile retroclone with which to take Mythras down a dungeon to fight dragons and steal treasure, as it successfully brings the Basic Roleplaying mechanics to old style gaming.

d100 Traveller

Published by FrostByte Books, M-Space: d100 roleplaying in the far future is part of the continuing wave of RPGs originating in Sweden, includling Symbaroum, Mutant Chronicles, and Mutant: Year Zero. Unlike those three RPGs, M-Space is neither Swedish nor European in its origins or its tone, being very much inspired by classic American Science Fiction and classic American Science Fiction RPGs. Further, its mechanics are similarly American in design, being derived from RuneQuest and Basic RolePlaying. Specifically, M-Space uses Mythras Imperative, the streamlined version of Mythras, the new incarnation of the RPG from The Design Mechanism that previously powered RuneQuest 6.

Part of the ‘Mythras Gateway’ program, M-Space is a percentile system that will be familiar to anyone who has played any RPG using the Basic Roleplaying system, whether that is Call of Cthulhu, Hawkmoon, or Ringworld. Stats are generally rated between one and eighteen, the primary mechanic is skill based and skills are fundamental to the game, everyone has hit locations, and so combat is fairly deadly. Character creation is a matter of rolling stats and assigning points to skills derived from the character’s Culture and Career—M-Space gives Rural, Urban, and Orbital as its possible Cultures, plus free to assign skill points. Skills themselves are divided into Standard skills, which everyone knows, and Professional Skills, specialised skills that a character only knows from his Culture and his Career. Most notable of the skills is Combat Style, essentially each a package that represents training in a number of weapons. So for example, Combat Style (Bodyguard) might cover the use of Handgun, Unarmed Combat, and Evade, whereas Combat Style (Merkrai’an Rider) could include spear, knife, and brawl. The major addition to combat in comparison to other Basic Roleplaying RPGs are Special Effects, conditions such as Blind Opponent, Bypass Armour, and Rapid Reload that come into play when a combatant rolls better than an opponent. A character will also have Passions—for and against people, organisations, places, and ideas—that can be used to help augment skills for particular actions, serve as roleplaying hooks, and indicate elements of a campaign to focus on.

Our sample character is a bureaucrat who trained to be a pilot, but washed out due to low fitness evaluations. Instead he entered the civil service where his space operations training saw him posted to the Customs & Excise Transit Authority. He is ambitious and wants to prove himself as good as any spacer. He has a strong dislike of smugglers and any who would besmirch the good name of pilots or attempt to undermine what he sees as the fair and just efforts of the Customs & Excise Transit Authority.

Chae-Won Daniel
Age 41

Culture: Orbital
Career: Official

STR 13 CON 07 SIZ 12 DEX 16 INT 16 POW 14 CHA 17

Action Points: 2 Damage Modifier: – Experience Modifier: +1 Healing Rate: 2
Initiative Bonus: +16 Luck Points: 3 Power Points: 14 Movement Rate: 6

Hit Points
Head 4 Chest 6 Abdomen 5 L. Arm 3 R. Arm 3 L. Leg 4 R. Leg 4

Standard Skills:
Conceal 30%, Customs 52%, Deceit 30%, Influence 74%, Insight 73%, Locale 32%, Native Tongue 63%, Perception 50%, Sing 51%, Willpower 52%


Professional Skills:
Bureaucracy 62%, Commerce 63%, Courtesy 63%, Pilot 52%, 

Combat Skills:
Combat Style (Orbital Self-Defence) 49%

Passions
Loyalty to Home (Orbital Habitat 242) 70%
Love (Mother) 61%
Hate (Smugglers) 50%

Mechanically, M-Space is a straightforward percentile system. Anyone who has used the Mythras system before will have no issues picking up and playing M-Space just as anyone who has played any RPG using the Basic RolePlaying system will pick the rules up with ease. Beyond most simple circumstances, M-Space covers more complex situations with ‘Extended Conflicts’, such as a poker game, a race through an asteroid belt, a dinner party, and so on. These are handled through opposed rolls, with the winner inflicting damage to the loser’s Conflict Pool, each Conflict Pool being based on one or more of each participant’s stats and being created according to the needs of the situation. So to sneak into a warehouse would mean a character rolling his Stealth versus the guard’s Perception in an extended series of tests with the guard using his Intelligence as his Conflict Pool and the character his Dexterity as his Conflict Pool. 

Unsurprisingly M-Space adds a number of separate systems to handle its Science Fiction—starship design, starship combat, alien creation, world building, and vehicle design. Starship design is done by building modules. For example, one module is required per crewmember or passenger, but four modules are equal to cubicle; one module is roughly equal to one ton of cargo space; a hanger bay equal to four modules would hold an ATV, whilst ten modules would house a fighter or shuttle, and so on. On the whole the system is fairly simple, although it will require some arithmetic. Hyperspace travel is framed as a narrative device, with a Jump rating of between one and five determining how far any Hyperspace Drive will get you. A Jump of one will get your ship to the nearest few stars, a Jump of five across the subsector. Starship combat, unlike standard man-to-man missile and melee combat, involves more maneuvering, typically to gain a better position—offensive or defensive—to avoid incoming fire or to better deliver it. Like the standard combat system, starship combat has its own Special Effects, these being divided into those for Pilot and Gunnery. Like standard combat, a simplified version of the starship combat rules are also provided. Unlike the standard combat system, the starship combat rules do include a fully worked out example.

Alien creation involves addressing a number of points raised as Universal Life Form Parameters, for example, how Strange an alien is, its biosphere, body plans, and so on. Rolling on or choosing from the simple tables gives the answers and essentially allows the GM to build an alien as he goes along. For intelligent aliens the GM can add technology and culture, whilst a similar set of tables will inspire the GM to create worlds where his campaign can be set. Further notable additions include rules for Circles or organisations and how they and the player characters interact and rules for Psionics. They are divided into three spheres—Sense, Mind, and Matter—with Psionic ability, like Telepathy or Farsight, is treated as a separate skill. The rules are a fairly standard approach to Psionics, but what they do not address is how they are acquired. For example, there is no Psionicist Career given.

Rounding out M-Space are some sample space ships and sample alien lifeforms. The latter are better than the former, including as they do the Grept, an intelligent species with an advanced civilisation and society whose hierarchy is based on Psionic ability, and the Deep-Sea Gobbler, a large fish-like species that is on the verge of civilisation. Unfortunately, there is nothing original about the spaceships. From the X Fighter and the Y Fighter to the Corvette and the Destroyer, they are essentially the ships from the Star Wars franchise. Now M-Space is designed to be a toolkit to model various types of Science Fiction, not necessarily specific franchises from Science Fiction. Nowhere else is this modelling done in M-Space. Had the rulebook included sections on using the rules to model various types or franchises of Science Fiction, then these ships would have been a welcome addition to such a section, but because the author does not even bother to change the very similar names, they just stick out like a sore thumb.

Which highlights the biggest problem at the heart of M-Space—how is M-Space to be used? What sort of Science Fiction can it be used to emulate? The author never addresses this nor does he talk about the genre. Part of the problem is that what M-Space really does is emulate another RPG—Traveller, and Classic Traveller at that, published in 1977 by Game Designers’ Workshop. If M-Space is emulating a forty year old RPG, then Traveller—especially in the form of its setting, the Third Imperium—is based more on the Imperial Science Fiction of the 1940s and 1950s, of Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Bertram Chandler, Robert A. Heinlein, H. Beam Piper, E.C. Tubb, and others. The author makes this explicit with the inclusion of the Tech Level Table from Traveller—included as Traveller is under Creative Common license and by the author as a direct homage—but the similarities between Traveller and M-Space run throughout the pages of the the RPG. The inclusion of the Tech Level Table just confirms the similarities.

Further, there is no advice for the GM whatsoever. So in addition to no discussion of Science Fiction and its various subgenres, there is no advice on running M-Space or Science Fiction in general. The lack of advice on running M-Space is compounded by the general lack of examples in the book. Now there is an example of starship combat and there are examples here and there, but there is no example of play or of character generation. None of this will be that much of issue for the experienced GM, but anyone new to roleplaying or science fiction roleplaying will find little to help them here.

Physically, M-Space comes as a black and white square volume. In places the writing could have benefited from a tighter edit and there is no denying that the author’s style is rather dry. Which is no surprise given the toolkit nature of M-Space. In terms of illustrations, each chapter is prefaced by a fully painted piece that works even in grayscale, but elsewhere the artwork is less effective. In particular, many of the thumbnail portraits are superfluous placeholders. Decent enough, but do no more than take up space and do not evoke the RPG’s genre.

As much as M-Space is an emulation of Traveller, it is not particularly strong emulation of Imperial Science Fiction or of any particular subgenre of Science Fiction. It could certainly be used to run a Traveller-like game, or one set in the far future of the Third Imperium, the near futures of Firefly or 2300AD, and with a stretch, even the Pulpier settings of Star Wars and the Star Frontiers RPG. How exactly you would go about recreating any of those settings or creating one of the GM’s own devising, is down to the GM—there is no advice given in M-Space. This is M-Space’s biggest weakness. Essentially, how do you use M-Space? How do I use the tools in M-Space to this or that? Of course, this will not stop an experienced GM who will know how to use the tools provided in M-Space to tinker away and create a setting of his choice, whereas a GM with less experience should probably look at an RPG other than M-Space. This also means that M-Space is not an RPG written with players in mind, as there no hook nor an elevator pitch with which to grab them, because beyond character generation, M-Space is about the tools that GM has to play with.