A Beggarly Affair

One of the delights of Maelstrom, the Tudor set RPG published in the United Kingdom by Puffin Books back in 1984 and then more recently by Arion Games in 2007 is its Livings the equivalent of its Classes in other RPGs. From Architects, Doctors, and Scriveners to Beggars, Blacksmiths, and Traders via Mages, Mercenaries, Priests, and Rogues, each of the game’s numerous Livings is presented in plenty of detail. Every Living is interesting and capable, though often only in some small way. The more recent Maelstrom Companion added yet further Livings, expanding especially with a number of legal professions. Now there is a supplement that focusses entirely upon one type of Living with the eponymously titled Beggars Companion.

This slim one-hundred-and-twenty-two page paperback expands greatly upon the beggar and his place in the Tudor England portrayed in Maelstrom. For the player it covers how beggars rose in numbers during the late Tudor period; how they were treated by the state, the church, and society in general; the numerous types of beggars and their ‘tricks’; and the basics of the secretive language of Beggars’ Cant. For the Referee, it covers the beggars’ campaign; a set of beggars and rogues that can be player characters or NPCs; and a septet of adventure seeds as well as a full adventure.

For the player there are a total of twenty-eight new Livings, all of them beggarly professions. They range from the ‘Abraham Man’, who fakes lunacy, and the ‘Bawdy Basket’, who trades in lewd lechery and loathsome falsehoods, to the ‘Whipjack’, who fakes service as a shipwrecked mariner, and the ‘Wild Rogue’, who has known no other profession except that of beggar. Most of these can be taken by a character of either gender, but several are gender specific, such as the female only ‘Bawdy Basket’ or the ‘Father of Families’, a male only Living for which the beggar entreats his audience with tales of the loss of his wife and children. Each is accorded bonuses and penalties to his attributes as well as a ‘Nefarious Knack’, a special ability that is particular to that type of beggar. Thus, the ‘Counterfeit Crank’ is capable of ‘Loose Fall’, so that when replicating the effects of epilepsy, he is capable of falling to the ground without injuring himself.

Our sample character is Eleanor Mathews, a widow who was forced upon the road with the death of her husband, Nicholas. She uses her knowledge of herbs, and more recently spices, to work as a ‘saffroner’, a sell of fake herbs and spices to the unwary. Despite her being a woman, the Brotherhood has accepted Eleanor as she is a skilled healer.

Eleanor Mathewson
Herbalist/Trickster-Saffroner, Age 38
Attack Skill 30
Defence Skill 30
Endurance 30
Speed 30
Agility 30
Will 30
Persuasion 41
Knowledge 45
Perception 40
Equipment: Sample herbs, filler materials, clothes, pouch with 14 pennies, a day’s food, knife
Abilities: Herb Lore, Diagnosis, Assess

What comes across clearly from reading the Beggars Companion is how much of a challenge roleplaying a beggar character will be in Maelstrom. Tudor society looks upon the beggar poorly, seeing him as lazy and greedy and ill prepared to work for a living as every proper, upright, and industrious Christian ought. The state has legislated against the beggar many times, but beggars can obtain licenses to practise their ‘trade’. Such licenses can also be counterfeited. Even so, the law will often drive beggars out of a parish, or worse, punish them by placing them in the stocks, branding them, or have the gristle from their upper ears cut away as indication of their vagrancy. Further, as outsiders, beggars are rarely trusted and as strangers, can be blamed for the cause of manner of ills – diseases, thefts, and so on. That said, beggars can at times call upon the charity of the church, though the degree of help available will wax and wane… Another source of help is the Brotherhood, a fraternal organisation that provides shelter and support to beggars in good stead, but will call upon its brethren to aid in its criminal activities. What this means is that beggars must live by their wiles as well as by their ‘tricks’ of the trade in order to earn them a crust and they need to succeed without being obvious about it. 

Essentially, what this addresses is the issue at the heart of the Beggars Companion – why would the players should choose to play in campaign involving beggars. Besides the detail provided with each Living, the Knack assigned to each Living serves as a ‘roleplaying’ hook, not only something that the character can do and do well, but something that needs to be roleplayed. Not just roleplayed by the player as part of the game, but actually roleplayed by the character in the game in order to do well. Thus the challenge of playing a beggar this historical setting is only extended. Further challenges of increasing difficulty are presented in the Styles of Play, beginning with the Theatrical style that is much lighter in tone and better suited to one-off scenarios and short campaigns. This is followed by the default Historical setting, replete with filth, decay, depravity, and distrust, and then the Dark style, in which the lives of the beggar characters are under constant threat.

In addition to the Rogues Gallery, the Referee’s Section also includes a further Living. The Upright Man is a manipulator of both the beggar and the respectable, hiding behind his own façade of respectability that creates by being seen to work. Where most characters in Maelstrom have no more than two Livings, the Upright Man is a third Living, one to be taken after a previous profession and then life as a beggar. It can also be used as something for beggar characters to aspire to. ‘The Long Road’ is a full scenario, much in the style of the adventure from the core rulebook for Maelstrom. Here the beggar characters follow not just a road, but also another beggar, Old Ted. Once an Upright Man, it is believed that Old Ted amassed a small fortune so as members of the Brotherhood, the characters have been tasked to keep their eye on him. Suddenly he wanders off. Where could he be going, and why? Understandably, this is a linear affair, although given the subject matter of this supplement, it is a pity that the adventure only really allows the player characters the opportunity to practise their knacks at the beginning. Rounding out the supplement are a set of appendices that cover the physical hardships of being a beggar, more herbs, and a bibliography.

The Beggars Companion is a reasonably well presented book. It is lightly illustrated and although it is an easy read, it could have done with a closer edit in places. Overall, this is an interesting little book that nicely expands upon an aspect of Tudor England and Maelstrom. It would be nice to see it supported with more adventures and even a campaign, but in the meantime, there is plenty of detail and background material for the Referee to bring to his game.

An Elizabethan Whirl's Companion

The classics are not always perfect, and so it is with Maelstrom, the Tudor set RPG published in the United Kingdom by Puffin Books back in 1984. There is much to love about the game, including its period attention to detail, its simplicity, and its two scenarios, one for solo play and the other to be run by the GM. Unfortunately the RPG was lacking in terms of certain rules, for example, those for firearms and for two-weapon fighting, and background and setting detail. None of these issues were addressed when Arion Games released a new edition of the game, but fortunately now they have with the game’s very first supplement, The Maelstrom Companion.

The Maelstrom Companion comes as a slim, oversized paperback that contains an array of additions to the game and setting. In terms of rules, the most obvious and simple additions are the new rules for firearms and two-weapon fighting, which are both so simple and easy that the reader is left wondering why anyone had to wait for so long to get them. The obvious answer is that the original RPG had been out of print for over two decades before The Maelstrom Companion was even considered… That said, none of the firearms are named, being merely listed as having differing Attack Skill modifiers, damage ratings, ranges, and so on according to their size, whether a pistol or a musket. This was an omission when it came to weapons in the Maelstrom RPG, and it is one that is continued here.

One of the best aspects of Maelstrom is its Livings, the equivalent of its Classes in other RPGs. From Architects, Doctors, and Scriveners to Beggars, Blacksmiths, and Traders via Mages, Mercenaries, Priests, and Rogues, each of the game’s numerous Livings was presented in plenty of detail. The Maelstrom Companion adds several new Livings, including the Agent, who serves a political patron and works a network of contacts and informants in his master’s service; Alchemists, capable researching certain recipes, such as that for Aqua Vitae, Blackpowder, and Fireproof Cloth; Barber-Surgeons, capable of treating wounds – unlike Physicians!; law enforcement in the form of Beadles, Constables, and Watchmen; Farmers, who can raise crops and stock, handle and treat animals, and tell the weather; Friars, who are monks that actively spend time amongst the laity, often relying upon them for charity; Hunters, excellent shots and trappers who use their stealth as either game keeper or poacher; Sailors, who not only know how to sail and swim, but climb too; the Tavern Keeper, who in the course maintaining his establishment, gains a nose for food and drink as well as for trouble; and the Witch, who understands herbalism and medicines, but also knows curses.

Many of these are supported with new rules and expanded rules. For example, the Alchemist is supported with rules for Alchemy along with numerous recipes. Likewise, the Witch’s new rules for Witchcraft detail the nature of the Contracts that a practitioner enters with certain intelligences from the Maelstrom, be they “Demons” or “Devils” or not; her healing skills, or rather her “country wisdom;” her ability to make Curses and Charms; and her loyal Familiar. A Witch who pursues a knowledge of Herbalism cannot make Contracts or Curses and vice versa. The expanded rules cover magic, allowing a Mage to specialise as an Astrologer, an Elementalist, or a Skryer (a Mage that specialises in contacting and speaking to spirits and more). They expand and divide healing between the three Livings that become available with the advent of The Maelstrom Companion. Wounds are bandaged, internal bleeding is staunched, limbs splinted, and teeth pulled by a Barber-Surgeon, whereas the superior – in attitude, at least – Physician do not, and instead primarily treats diseases and infections. Overlapping between the skills of both is the Herbalist, who can treat minor wounds and diseases. Similarly, the Weaponsmith Living can now be a Gunsmith rather than a Bladesmith, and thus specialise in the manufacture of the firearms whose rules appear elsewhere in the book. Lastly, the Labourer Living is actually given a full benefit in that he can work for a full day and gain bed and board if not wages. Character generation overall is supported with a list of period Christian names, along with a table of distinguishing features, such as Alcoholic, Disconcerting Gaze, and Tall, that can be used to individualise a character.

Much of the contents of The Maelstrom Companion is for GM and player alike, but the GM is not ignored. He receives a supernatural bestiary, covering an array of unnatural creatures from Black Dogs to Robin Goodfellow; a short, if pertinent history that details the Tudor church and the Dissolution of the Monasteries – useful in particular if the setting provided in The Maelstrom Companion is used; and some actual campaign advice. This explores various campaign styles possible in the Tudor period – political, military, trade, business, criminal, and so on. Some of the descriptions of these styles are longer than others, but they are at least ideas and they are accompanied by sample campaign ideas. The reader though, will be left wanting more, and perhaps they could be expanded upon in future supplements.

Where Maelstrom provided information on the places along the road between St. Albans and London, The Maelstrom Companion gives a whole setting to explore and interact with. This is the Suffolk market town of Bury St. Edmunds in the year 1540 during the reign of Henry VIII. Once the county seat, the life of the town revolved around its powerful abbey, but with the break from Rome, the King’s establishment of the Church of England, and the dissolution of the monasteries, Bury St. Edmunds has lost much of its status. Into this power vacuum have moved various nobles, merchants, and guilds, each vying for influence and prestige, and each perhaps looking for a few good men (and women) who might be able to work behind the scenes to further their employer’s ends. The environs and personalities of the town are described in some detail, that latter organised by Living, and a timeline of events are given for the whole of 1540. Some adventure hooks are also given, though no scenario is included. It would be pleasing to see this further supported with actual scenarios set in the town. The Maelstrom Companion is rounded out with various useful game references, such as the Master Living list and quick guides to running both Basic and Advanced Combat.

Physically, once you get past the front cover, The Maelstrom Companion is disappointing. The layout is unsophisticated, even pedestrian. Where much of the artwork in the Maelstrom core rules conveyed much of the game’s feel, here it is murky and disappointing. For the most part, the book is decently written, but it does need another edit in places. It could also do with a reorganisation, so that the sections for the GM are clearly kept separated from those that the players can read.

The production values are this supplement’s Achilles Heel. They give the book a disparate and unfocused feel, which whilst unfair is not wholly unwarranted. For the most part, the new material is decent, especially that which builds upon the game’s primary highlight – its detailed Livings, whether that be the additional rules or the expanded ones. The supplement though points to the need for further development, whether that is in the form of expanded advice for the GM or scenarios, including those that could be set in Bury St. Edmund. Ultimately, whilst there is a goodly amount of useful and interesting information in The Maelstrom Companion, both the information presented and the book itself is let very much let down by its underwhelming production values.

An Elizabethan Whirl

On occasion I want to delve into the extensive library/ludography upstairs and pull out a classic or an item of interest and review it. If all I did was review games, then it would happen, but the truth is that there is never quite enough time to review games from the here and now, let alone review those from the past. Yet the reflective nature of the twenty-first century and our yearning for late twentieth century nostalgia has led to the games of our yester years actually being made available once again just as if they were appearing on the shelves all that time ago. Such is the case with Maelstrom.

Originally published in 1984, Maelstrom was something of an oddity. It was a full RPG, but not one that was released not by a hobby publisher, but by Puffin Books, the imprint of Penguin Books that was, and remains a major publisher of children’s books. This meant that an actual RPG appeared not just on the shelves of your local games shop, but also on the shelves of your local, and thus any, book shop. Now this sounds strange, but in 1984, the hobby in the United Kingdom was at the height of the Fighting Fantasy craze. Titles in the solo game book series were selling very well, but Maelstrom was a very different beast, a semi-historical RPG set in the late Elizabethan Age, that came not only with a magic system and potentially, a treatment of the supernatural, but also a solo adventure and an adventure written for multiple characters. Further, its characters were not the traditional warriors and wizards, but nobles, professionals, craftsmen and artisans, tradesmen and labourers, as well as mercenaries, priests, mages, and rogues.

Now Arion Games have brought it back. It still comes as a thick, slightly over-sized paperback with the terrific snow scene of a man defending a cart and his companions from members of the soldiery. Inside the book is still split between two parts, one for the players and one for the referee, with a solo adventure in the players’ part, and an adventure to run in the referee’s. The book still has the heavy ink illustrations that do so much to give it a heavy atmosphere and a historical feel. Everything looks about the same as my now somewhat shelf worn copy that I bought back in 1984. The question is, how do the game’s rules and the game itself stand up to scrutiny with the benefit of twenty-five years’ gaming experience?

Maelstrom uses a percentile system, with characters having to make rolls or Saving Throws against one of nine attributes that define each character. So for example, to parry a sword thrust, a character must roll against his Defence Skill, whereas to work out the state of a noble’s household accounts, a clerk would roll against his Knowledge Skill. If this sounds simple, then it is. Even the complications only add just a little more to account for critical results, combat, and magic.

So in a fight, the blows of the combatants go back and forth with rolls on their Attack and Defence Skills with damage from successful hits rolled according to the weapon type, which often requires the use of six-sided as well as ten-sided dice. One interesting aspect of combat is that whilst all damage is recorded against a character’s Endurance – who will fall unconscious if he suffers damage equal to his Endurance – each wound is recorded individually. So for example, Alfred, waylaid by thugs, is beaten several times with their cudgels for a total of sixteen points of damage, which is recorded blow-by-blow as 5/5/2/4 (16). Wounds are recorded this way because each heals individually, at a rate of one point per week if resting or one point per month if pursuing a normal life, so that in our example, after a week’s bed rest, Alfred’s wounds are reduced to 4/4/1/3 (12). This makes for a dangerous combat system, but the issue of a character falling unconscious after receiving damage equal to his Endurance is problematic in that it is not necessarily deadly. Delivering a mortal blow is technically not possible, at least in the basic rules.

The rules for magic continue Maelstrom’s simplicity, requiring a Knowledge Skill roll by a mage to recall the correct incantation and a number of Will rolls equal to the desired effect’s difficulty. The game does not come with dedicated spell lists and the referee is expected to determine the rolls needed for the effect that the player mage wants. Again, critical successes and failures are possible, and their effects also need to be determined by the referee. In casting a spell, a mage taps into the “Maelstrom,” a dangerous and chaotic force that can, at the referee’s option, act independently for or against the mage, or even serve as a strange dimension that the mage and his fellow player characters can be cast into and out of, perhaps to end in some strange place or time.

Creating a character in Maelstrom involves assigning fifty points between nine attributes, each of which starts at a base of thirty. After that each character requires a Living, representing his past prior to going adventuring. Each Living determines a character’s age, appropriate skills, and possessions. The given selection of Livings is diverse, from Noble to Labourer, and includes Professionals (Architects, Clerks, Doctors, and Scriveners – lawyers), Craftsmen and Artisans (Armourers, Blacksmiths, Bladesmiths, Masons, Tailors, Tanners, and Wood-carvers), Traders (in everything from fish and fruit to wine and groceries), Travelling Players (musicians, minstrels, and players), and Herbalists. The latter are usually pacifists that collect and prepare herbs for medicinal purposes, knowing in which seasons herbs are available. The Herbalist Living is supported with excellent appendix detailing the herbs its practitioners work with.

Our sample character is Henyre Powlett, an architect who has been studying and working under a master architect in Bristol for almost half of his life. He wishes to travel to gain further work and experience. He is a gentleman whose family owns land in the county of Somerset.

Henyre Powlett
Architect, Age 26
Attack Skill 30
Defence Skill 30
Endurance 35
Speed 35
Agility 30
Will 35
Persuasion 40
Knowledge 45
Perception 40
Equipment: horse, dagger, good clothes, pouch with 49 shillings, a week’s food, skin of wine, and architect’s tools

Of the Livings available, the closest in terms to classic types in other RPGs are the Mage, the Mercenary, the Priest, and the Rogue. Mages are generally older as they need to take up a second Living in order to provide a cover for their sorcerous activities and likely membership of a cult. Mercenaries are excellent fighters and know how to use their armour to lessen blows taken and to use their weapons to inflict more injurious wounds. A Priest can exalt those around him through Preaching, and has limited powers – Detection, Warding, Casting Out, and Exorcism – over spirits. Rogues though, are further divided into Beggars, Thieves, Assassins, Tricksters, Burglars, and non-specialists, each with their own particular skills in addition to those general to the Living.

The Player’s Section is rounded out with a solo adventure and some advanced rules. The adventure is relatively short, but still atmospherically grim. It is designed to be played with an Assassin character who is given a target to kill. The advanced rules add encumbrance, attribute modifiers for Livings, rules for making a living out of a character’s Living, more detailed weapons and wounds, and the effects of critical rolls in combat. For the most part, the Referee’s Rules gives even more details on each of the Livings as well as a scenario. The latter describes a road trip from St. Albans to London in which various events occur and comes full of colourful detail. The adventure is well done and serves as a good introduction to the setting.

So far, Maelstrom is an immensely likeable RPG. It is full of period detail, never more so than with the character types which get more coverage in Maelstrom than any other subject, though this information is split between the book’s two parts for the player and the referee. It is also easy to play and run, the rules being simple and easy, but although the game can be run as is, it is not without its problems.

The rules themselves are too simple, especially the basic rules. The advanced rules are necessary to avoid the game being too simplistic, especially for combat, which needs the rules for serious and critical wounds for it to be more than straight fight to a knockout. For an RPG set during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, it seems a curious omission that no rules are given for the use of firearms. Another problem with the RPG’s list of weaponry is that whilst multiple damage listings are given for each weapon type – for example, “1-10, 2-12, 3-18, 2-20, 4-24, 3-30, and 5-30” all under sword – the listings do not actually assign an actual sword type to each damage value. Suggestions are given separately, which is anything other than helpful.

Perhaps, the biggest problem with Maelstrom is the lack of adequate background. A little over two pages is devoted to “Background: The Lie of Land,” discussing the period in the broadest of terms. The truth of it is that it not enough. Without more background, the referee is forced to look elsewhere if he wants to write adventures as beyond the wealth of detail accorded the various Livings, Maelstrom is sorely lacking. The Elizabethan Age is a period of religious strife, exploration, treason, and more, all of which is ignored in Maelstrom. The result is that the referee will need to come up with a background and a focus for his game, for Maelstrom lacks a sense of conflict that would provide that focus.

Further, perhaps too much information is paid to the characters and their Livings. You can of course, have too much information, but at the same time, there is the matter of whether a player would chose to play a Fruiterer or an Engraver versus a Mage or a Mercenary?

Physically, this edition of Maelstrom does need an edit and perhaps its layout could be a bit more open and easier to read. Worse, much of the artwork has a slightly faded, washed out look that renders the road map in the adventure very hard to read.

There is much to like about Maelstrom. Its rules are easy, and even with the use of the advanced rules included, the game is still quite light. The magic system is simple, but also flexible, and what is included in the book, is supported with two good adventures. The historical detail is excellent, but it is too focused. It needs more historical background rather the detail about the Livings and perhaps, it even needs a second edition. As it is, Maelstrom is not without charm, but it is without focus.

Retrospective: Suppressed Transmission

Of course, you know about the Suppressed Transmission?

If you do, then go make a cup of tea and put your feet up with a copy of Foucault’s Pendulum, you know the one with annotations from the Pope. In mean time, come a little closer and I will put you in the picture. Back in 1998, Steve Jackson Games’ Pyramid magazine began publishing a series of columns by Ken Hite entitled Suppressed Transmission.

Following Lovecraft’s dictum that “…piecing together of associated knowledge” opens up “terrifying vistas of reality” each Suppressed Transmission is an essay that placed subjects as diverse as the Roswell landings – all six of them, Shakespeare as well as his plays, variations upon Spring Heeled Jack, Antarctic Space Nazis, and the many colours of the elixir vitae that is Cocoa-Cola under a lens that not only revealed Hite’s mind map, but also his reading habits of the then previous twenty years. With each essay he spins a web of horror, conspiracies, secret histories, alternate histories, and high weirdness that makes connections hither and thither. Hite’s aim is never to validate the pseudoscience, conspiracies, fallacies, and slapdash scholarship that he bases these essays on – and which I suspect he finds to be endearingly risible – but rather to give the reader concepts, ideas, and set-ups that he can base a whole game on.

For example, in “The Sky is Falling,” Hite goes from discussing what the 1908 Tunguska incident was and what it might have been – including the coming to Earth of a Colour Out of Space or the attempted summoning of Azathoth (really? Not seen that in a Call of Cthulhu adventure), to moving the incident to Moscow rather than Siberia and seeing what could happen. Which includes no World War I and a race to Mars between the Red Baron and Eddie Rickenbacker amongst other things… Elsewhere, Hite plays the Kevin Bacon game with Sir Francis Bacon rather the actor in “Six Degrees of Sir Francis Bacon,” explores what happened to Roanoke in “Croatoan or Bust: Finding the Lost Colony,” and gives us the A to Z of all things conspiratorial in “A Conspiratorial Alphabet,” all before leaving us with his “Top Ten Books for High Weirdness in Your Campaign.”

To date, of the three hundred written, Steve Jackson Games has only published the first sixty-eight in two volumes, Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast and Suppressed Transmission: The Second Broadcast. Both books are now only available in PDF, but in each case they allow Hite to revisit and reorganise each of the first year’s columns and annotate and cross reference every one. Then apply an index, which means that can you look up something like H.P. Lovecraft (fifteen entries), penguins (four entries), or the Templars (also fifteen entries), just to see how Hite uses them and the places that he takes them to.

In their time, Hite’s columns were a constant draw to Pyramid magazine and ensured that readers would renew their subscriptions time and again. They were considered to be that good and many subscribers felt them to be the best articles to appear in the magazine. Even at their most basic, every Suppressed Transmission is immensely readable. At just three or four pages long, they are easy to read just about anywhere, and they are even just about the right length to read aloud. Their use though is as a veritable well spring of ideas.

Perhaps too many GURPS books are referenced, but most GURPS books are good reference guides too. Sometimes its feels as if Hite is channelling one too many Illuminati games, but then he is saving you an awful lot of research and entertaining you at the same time.

About as fruity a cabinet of cocktails of insanely weird ideas as any gaming reference work deserves to be, Suppressed Transmission never fails to be entertaining and interesting. It is a resource that should be on the shelf of any good referee and just be glad that Hite was channelling this insane weirdness so that you never had too.