The Runequest Obsession

Runequest was the second game I ever played after D&D. When I started hanging out at the local hobby shop as a kid, I had only around a year’s worth of experience with D&D. But the older crowd there were sort of past D&D, and heavily into other games. Traveller and Runequest was what were getting the most play at that time. Owner Gary had campaigns of RQ going on, and he had one big wall of the play area covered in situational maps for his games. Gary loved that game so much. Gary died a few years ago, but you can still find some writings of his online outlining various Runequest themes. He had obviously continued on with the Runequest love from the late 70’s and onward through the following decades.

When I stopped hanging out in the store after the early 80’s, Runequest pretty much left my life. The gaming side of my life would carry on for many years with only three favorites; AD&D, Call of Cthulhu, and Champions (games like Toon, Bunnies & Burrows, and Empire of The Petal Throne never got on my playlist, unfortunately). But I left my RQ at Aero Hobbies and never really looked back. I think my preference for AD&D, besides true “Sorcery” magic, was that I had a game world I loved and the rules of RQ would never have translated into it. By the late 80’s, RQ would have been just another game that my regular players were unfamiliar with, and would have taken up precious Champs and Call of Cthulhu time if I introduced it to them.

But man, those early games at the shop. They were this huge mystery to me. The world of Glorantha was based on historical places that were very much unlike what Tolkien, Terry Brooks, and other “classic fantasy” writers were presenting in their worlds. It seemed alien to me. Of course, I had yet to have any interest in ancient Mesopotamia, so I didn’t grok that influence. Adventures took my guys (my favorite was a Dragonnewt and second favorite was a duck. I called him “Scotty MacQuack” because I found a duck figure playing a bagpipe!) from the rough plains and temples of Prax, all the way to the greener hills and grasslands of Lunar Tarsh and Dragon Pass (I think I have that right). This was a patchwork world that was being put together and expanded, in-game, by the game designers at a time when I was having my earliest adventures with it. Cheapo modules like Apple Lane and Barristor’s Barracks gave me the medium to eventually start running some Runequest adventures for my friends. But those games soon got swept away by other things we wanted to play.

Well, I got my hands on a copy of second edition, 1970’s Runequest, and some other items on PDF like Cults of Prax, Pavis & Big Rubble, and Snakepipe Hollow. I never had these before, and my imagination is being fired up again by reading more about Glorantha than I ever did back in the day. Then I was just confusedly being a character running around in these modules and sourcebooks being run by the older pricks at Aero. Now, with all this reading I’m doing, I finally am starting to feel like and “insider” in regards to Runequest. I’m unlocking it’s mysteries for myself, man!

So I guess you could say I am a bit obsessed by old RQ right now. With a (probably short) Knights of The Old Republic campaign in full swing right now, I won’t be running any Runequest any time real soon, but when I do get to introduce its mysteries to my regular players I’ll be ready. It’s a long road to Rune Lords status. Better to get on that road sooner rather than later!

WW2? Spice that boring crap up!

By Gar, it’s been awhile since I piggybacked on one of Grognardia James’ posts, so I thought I would glom on today.

I so very rarely think about World War 2 settings for RPG’s. Why would I? Although I like to watch the occasional documentarily or WW2 movie, this is not a genre I have had a lot of love for. A lot of gamers my age and older cannot really say the same. In this scene, WW2 fanatics are legion. Whether it was hanging out at Aero Hobbies as a kid, or in my gaming groups of the 80’s and 90’s, there was always a WW2 lover in my groups. More often than not, these were older guys that had started out with war gaming. SPI and that kind of shit. You will actually still see a lot of that at little gameday events and cons. Older dudes standing around terrain tables pushing tanks around little French villages (Achtung! Where are the pretty French fraulines?), while the little kids at the other table being forced to play D&D with their dads glance over at the tank models with longing.

War is hell, but I like my hell with good doses of Demogorgon and Orcus, thank you very much. But this had me wondering – if I was going to run a WW2 setting RPG, what would I do to make it interesting enough for my players, and more importantly ME, to sit down and work on it?

Well, for one thing, the 1982 game mentioned at Grognardia, Behind Enemy Lines, doesn’t seem to account for a lot of things you would want in your character in a more modern game. Apparently in BEL, you don’t get much in the way of skills outside military ones that you need for missions. Things like Animal Husbandry, and Play Music Instrument, would be just the thing to flesh out a G.I. Joe. You’d want to have “Ox” with his great strength and pro boxing skills, or “Sketch” with is cartooning ability. Your platoon should have “Strings” the negro guitar blues man, and don’t forget “Joey Provoloney” the New Jersey born company cook who always finds a way to make a delicious lasagna out in the field.

OK, now you have your fleshed-out Joes, but what about scenarios? Well, they ain’t gonna be your run of the mill mission to grenade that nazi bunker on the hill. Here are some ideas I would inject if I had to run a WW2 setting:

Zombies, zombies, zombies! The dead are suddenly rising all over the world, and no where on earth are they more plentiful than on the battlefields of Europe or islands in the Pacific. Can you imagine the dead starting to rise on the beaches of Normandy? I betcha Tom Hanks wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about finding Private Ryan anymore!

Dino Wars! Nazi scientist have recreated dinos using mosquito’s in amber, and they are afield! Pterodactyls over England! T. Rex’s on the Russian front! And don’t forget the 50 foot Megalodon Sharks to attack those yank subs out near Bora Bora.

Gigantogantua: the Japanese have unleashed a giant lizard/turtle/gorilla from their ancient legends, and aimed it directly at the west coast of California. “We destroy yankee by destroying his true heart and soul – Horrywood! Banzia!

Heroes and Villains: the world’s first true superheroes are sent by the allies to fight the supermen of the axis of evil. What is that ruckus up in the sky? Why, it’s Captain U.S. vs. Commandant Creepo!

Monster Blitz Squad: those dirty krauts have resurrected the famous monsters of Europe to join the SS Stormtrooper squad of monsters! Dracula! Frankenstein! Wolfman! Hell, those sausage dog eating bastards have even recruited Baba Yaga and her chicken hut! We’re doomed, unless we can count on the knowledge of that doddering old Professor Soandso the government stuck with us.

Alien Axis: “they” have arrived in their flying saucers, but whose side will “they” be on?

So there you have it. Maybe WW2 gaming might not be so boring after all. Do you have any ideas?

Do I like Champions more than D&D?

D&D is my first and always will be my best love. I think.

I’ve been running my 1st ed. (started out as OD&D) game world for over 30 years, and it would be hard not to look at it as a favorite son. And jeez, I can run it in my sleep. I practically phone my games in a third of the time, and the players still love it. It’s easy peasy, and satisfying.

But see, I have these other two games I love. Call of Cthulhu has been a fave since before I ever read Lovecraft. At around 14 years old I played in some games at Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica, and although I found those to be lacking in the fun department (I have to be honest, most of my worst gaming experiences happened in the 4-5 years I spend time at Aero), I fell in love with the feel of the game and the system, and was soon running my own games of it. In the 90’s, I did long running campaigns. My D&D players would hem and haw when I suggested it (not one of them then was a Lovecraft fan), but after a game or two they were often preferring to do it over the D&D. It was great, but unlike my D&D it was a world I didn’t create, just one that I presented (I’d like to say I invented the 1920’s, but that would take Al Gore balls).

So the only thing that came close to my D&D game world love was my Champions campaigns. I started early on in the late 70’s with Superhero 2044. Most people to this day find it a perplexing set of rules to use, but my young mind didn’t seem to have much trouble working around the lightness of the rules. I have spoken elsewhere about my experiences helping playtest, then running Supergame in the early 80’s, so I won’t waste more breath on that here. Soon my friends and I were on to Villains and Vigilantes, but by the mid-80’s it was Champions that had captured my comic book loving heart.

I created my own futuristic game world for it. Heavily influenced by Superhero 2044’s “Inguria,” I made my “New Haven” a pacific island metropolis. America and a lot of the rest of the world was blasted by nuclear war, and New Haven was a place that accommodated many refugees – the majority of whom were rich and or/scientific people. Always exactly 20 years in the future, this setting has grown since the 80’s and the world has become a thing of my own. The 90’s were my heyday with New Haven, and much like CoC my D&D players fell in love with it after giving it a try.

The open nature of what you could create with Champions/Hero System (and in the 90’s I focused on the Hero System 4th edition book) appealed to what I was trying to do with New Haven. That is, create a setting where you could have not just superheroes, but anything that you can imagine from science fiction could be worked in. Aliens, interdimensional beings, things out of fantasy, whatever. Of course, seeing as I was setting my game world in a futuristic version of the Marvel Universe, combined with my weaning on Marvel growing up, many Marvel elements entered into it (I even had a futurist version of the X-Men as a campaign long ago). But my inspirations came from many other, more alternative sources, such as The Watchmen, Marshal Law, and Judge Dredd. Things that turned the superhero myth on it’s ear.

I loved the world, and the open nature of being able to have anything you can envision, and during the 90’s some of my greatest memories are of that game. Close to the year 2000, I pretty much ended my last campaign with a several game long assault on earth by an alien empire. After that, my game group and my gaming in general sort of petered out. And I was well into my 30’s and sort of just figured I had outgrown gaming for other things.

When I started my current group the other year after several years off, it was put together for AD&D 1st edition. But in my mind I knew I would be doing Call of Cthulhu or Champions as an alternative. Well, it is Champs that has come up as the alternative (finally). Regular players Dan and Ben have to take June off (Dan the big South African is getting married, Ben is going to his hometown in Vegas for a few weeks), so I sat down Wed night with Terry, Andy, and Paul for some Champs.
Right before the holidays I had gotten together with Paul and Andy to work up a couple of characters, and even did an encounter with them. They came up with some pretty good dudes. What I was going for was a version of my old Justice Incorporated campaigns (more or less a Dark Champions cross between the A-Team and the X-files).

Andy came up with a cool, Jackie Chan type Hong Kong cop who is in hiding from enemies in New Haven. Paul, still pretty new to gaming generally, came up with a French chemist who, besides having a bit of Savate kick boxing skill, carries chemical compounds that have various affects (gas, smoke, knock out).

Terry, whose characters featured prominently in my 90’s campaigns, came up with “Jane Doe,” a female Bourne Identity type who is a government assassin with amnesia.

I can’t tell you how jazzed I was to be doing a Champions game, especially with Terry, again after ten or more years. This is how gaming is supposed to feel! Terry, who is often a bit slow with her turns and such in D&D, took back to Champions like a duck to water, pouring through the Hero System book to work up her characters. She remembered the rules better than I did!

In that first short session with Paul and Andy, I had their characters hanging out near the theater district near downtown. A mysterious nun in black, wearing white chainmail, and bearing a broadsword showed up to each of them, and guided them into the back alleys where a yuppie couple was being mugged by several gang members. Sister Mary Alice, or “Malice,” was one of my old NPC’s in the game, and was the ghost of a nun who had been murdered. Both the characters, Ken and Jacques, beat up the muggers and saved the couple.

So in this week’s session, the couple thanked them (and unknown to the players Sister Mary will later possess the young woman to have a flesh and blood vehicle for her murderous vengeance on rapists and murderers) and they took off. But Sister Mary guided the two to another assault down the alleyway (comic book alleyways are just chock full of evil doing). They came upon a girl in a hospital gown being menaced by almost a dozen more gang members. The girl was “Jane Doe,” and she had woken up in a hospital with a head wound, hypothermia, and no memory. She woke up with doctors and nurses around her, and thinking she was being tortured she struck out, knocked them away (luckily not killing anyone with one of her heavy killing strikes), and took off to end up woozy in the ally. She came to in time to help Ken and Jacques beat the hell out of the mugger gang.

Successful in the combat, the three strangers were approached by Tawny, a girl who it turned out worked for industrialist Elizabeth Patricia Kyono, a billionaire of Irish and Japanese decent (I’ve always had a great mini for Kyono, and luckily found it). Kyono also ran the hero for hire office Justice Incorporated as a hobby from time to time, and she had Tawny out at night looking for possible employees. As comic book fate would have it, she found three at the same time.

Long and short of it, after meeting with Elizabeth Kyono and agreeing to work for her, the three new members of the new Justice Incorporated took a job protecting some merchants in the bad part of town from a martial arts Dojo turned criminal, and managed to top the night off with them beating up some vandalizing members of the gang. Nice high kicking and karate chopping combat session!

It was great fun, and these being basically martial arts characters very easy to run. They really seem to like their characters, and next week we are hopefully finishing up this adventure.

So right now Champs is my game of choice. When Ben and Dan get back in July, they might not be into it but that is fine. We’ll get back to the D&D, and Champions is best with two or three players anyway. When we are missing a couple D&D players, it’ll be Justice Incorporated, my friends.

p.s. –and oh what a joy to only have to use D6!

Night of the Walking Wet

Even though it is maybe months away, I keep thinking about what I would like to do for the early part of my next campaign, so I have been going through my older game stuff for ideas. Over the weekend I took another look at my old and beaten copy of The Dungeoneer Compendium.

The first 6 issues of The Dungeoneer from back in the day each had a featured dungeon. Each of these were great examples of Judges Guild’s wild and wooly take on Dungeons and Dragons. For one thing, the entries for rooms and areas were just like I did mine in my game notebooks, specifically, poor spelling, grammer, and amusing misuse of words. A lot of the time, you could barely grasp what the author (usually the great Paul Jaquays) was getting at in some of the entries, just like one of my players might find my notebook jots to be if they snuck a glimpse. This stuff was so very amateurish, and for sure that was a good thing. It was one of the charms of the stuff; it was written the way I wrote for my games, and how could that not appeal to me? It was homey and warm, and you automatically felt like the author was your buddy, a regular guy in a way Sir Gary never could came off in his flowery prose.

At one time or another, I ran each of the dungeons featured. Borshak’s Lair, The Pharoah’s Tomb, Merlin’s Garden, etc. Actually, I ran most after the Dungeoneer Compendium came out and collected the dungeons of the first six issues. That great book not only contained all those dungeons, but also placed them all on the land map of Jaquays’ great Night of the Walking Wet setting. All those places, and more, were right there in the Castle Krake area, and I used that to my advantage.

I made a decent mid-level campaign out of it. My teenage sweethearts’ Elf character Noradama “Nord” Calingref won Castle Krake in a card game, and took her adventurer pals along with her to clear out the Slime God, and the Type 4 Demon and ghoul army of Krakesbourough. That Walking Wet scenario is hella cool, and is pure Judges Guild.
I have great memories of all those dungeons set near Krake. In The Pharoah’s Tomb, one player had a desert ranger, and he was able to scramble over all those sand-trap rooms while other characters struggled and got trapped. He loved using an ability I gave his character that he thought he would never use. He was so jazzed, his character skittering over the sand floods and ululating “ayiayiayaiyaiyai!”

Within Borshak’s Lair, a magic tomb invaded by orcs, one character found the hilarious “Fred the Magic Amulet.” The sentient, +1 protection amulet had awesome illusion powers, and I would have it transform into a giant, inanimate shark that still spoke in Fred’s high pitched Mickey Mouse voice. Dark Tower was great, but this shit was Paul Jaquays best work as far as I was concerned. Was he as stoned as I sometimes get when he was writing these scenarios?

All these dungeons featured old school D&D staples, i.e. plenty of magic affect statuary, and traps that were usually more weird and scary than deadly. I had so much fun with this stuff as a teen. Sadly, I eventually got more serious with my adventures, heading more into “High Fantasy” despite sticking with 1st edition.

But I think it is time to revisit some of this classic cheese of time past, so I may just be making the dungeon-heavy Castle Krake area and it’s interesting sandbox surroundings the setting for the next campaign.

Thinkin’ about Tegel (Manor, that is)

Having owned it since the late 70’s, I’m surprised that I never used Tegel Manor more. My maps are worn more from floating around wherever I stored my game stuff over the decades than from use. The players map has only a few halls and rooms penciled in (including the wizards tower), showing that I never really had the place explored by PC’s much.

I really only remember two or three sessions of using Tegel Manor. Once I was around 15, fairly new to gaming, but more experienced than my schoolfriends, mostly because of spending a lot of time playing at Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica with the older creeps who hung out there. My game world (still in use to this very day) was new, so there was no need for things to make much sense in my setting. A funhouse dungeon fit just fine.

I really only remember a couple of things from the first time I used it. The thing that really stands out in my memory is that I had the players greeted by Green Martian Warhoons in the front ball room. Yeah, I know. I don’t know why I included them, but the main reason might have been that at the time I had some great Green Martian miniatures and probably wanted to use them. My main memory of that is the player who was pissed that I didn’t give the Warhoons minuses to hit because they laughed heartily as the blasted away with their radium rifles.

A couple of years later I was visiting my teenage sweetheart in Ventura, and as she was up for playing some D&D I pulled out Tegel and she had two or three of her mid level characters visit the place. I remember later that night the PC’s fleeing from the manor in terror from some ghosts, but I also remember before that Denise having great fun checking out the Rump Family portraits (not liking “Rump,” I actually called them the “Tegel Family”) down one long hall.

But after those halcyon teen gaming sessions, Tegel has floated around in my game containers for decades. My game world had really evolved from a Judges Guild/Arduin Grimoire “anything goes” type of world into a more adult, “realistic” fantasy world. Zeus and Thor etc. were replaced by gods of my own creation (or created by cleric player characters that came along), and crazy funhouse dungeons were mostly replaced by locations with ecologies that made some kind of sense.

Although I haven’t been to Disneyland in decades (blasphemy for a Southern Californian), I went two or three times a year as a kid and teen. The Haunted Mansion was my favorite, and I think that is why Tegel really caught my imagination. You could picture a band of adventurer’s hacking and spell-ing their way through HM just as they would TM. Something was going on in every nook and cranny.

So over the long Memorial Day weekend, I found myself digging out Tegel and giving it a look over for the first time in years. I soon came to the conclusion (probably thanks to a bit of help from some Fat Tire Ale) that there is indeed a place for Tegel Manor in my world. In fact, I never had it go away. I have had it referenced to a time or two within game, and so it must of course still sit up on a hill above Tegel Village, a few short miles North of my main world city Tanmoor.

During my campaign last year (the same one pretty much that goes on currently), a mage character found references to Tegel Manor amongst some books in a treasure trove, and at the time it looked like the seed had been planted: at some point this mage was going to visit Tegel. Unfortunately, that player eventually dropped out of the group, so Tegel left my mind at that point.

But taking another look at my Tegel Material, I see that the ecology of the place (in a fantasy world) is very clear. The family (Rump, Tegel, whatever) is one seriously cursed group. Something weird going on with each and every member of that tree. Therefore, the mansion itself is cursed, soaked in the awful souls of the Rump/Tegel family, and attracting all sorts of evil and undead into it’s rooms and behind the walls. It’s a self-perpetuating evil, one that will probably exist there long after the elves of the forest have faded away and man drives around in horseless carriages.

A campaign to explore Tegel sounds fun on paper, but really, it would be a long haul and a deadly one. One wraith too many, one ghost over the line, and you have characters that have been seriously reduced in level, and seriously aged. Player might not appreciate that , especially considering the low treasure yield. But a mini-campaign, 4 or 5 sessions, might be just the thing for a party of 4th-6th level dudes.

So after a handful of games in my next campaign (probably to start late this year or early next year when I finish The Night Below campaign), I think I’ll lead the new PC’s to Tegel. Right now, I’m envisioning characters on a quest for a mage or sage looking for some item in the manor. I’d have them focus on one corner or wing of the castle, perhaps pitching a temporary camp in Tegel Village, the garden patio at the back of the house (close to the haunted outhouse indicated on the map!), or even inside at the main ballroom near the front door. From there, they would set out about that portion of the house, looking for clues to the McGuffen they would be searching for.

Months away, I know, but it’s fun to start thinking about it, and about my players (who all seem to have never heard of Tegel Manor) reacting to all the weird, scary, and cool shit in Tegel!

ROLL FOR INITIATIVE

I want to mention up front that it was a gaming podcast that got me involved in the online blogging community. I don’t know the name of it (maybe it was an early episode of RFI), but James from Grognardia was a guest, and listening to his old school talk, then going on to look at his blog, inspired me to start my own blog about a year or so ago.

I don’t listen to a lot of podcasts, but on occasion I like to listen to some chatter on my Ipod while on the computer at work or working out, and my cast of choice is usually the popular Adam Carolla Podcast. But the blurb I saw at Dragonsfoot regarding "issue" 14 of the RFI podcast mentioned that they would be talking about Gnolls, creating adventures, and giving tips on running thieves, and that sounded interesting to me.

I’ve been gaming since I was a kid in the late 70’s. In those days, we loved talking gaming, because a lot of it was still so mysterious. Everybody had their own point of view on particularities of various game related things. Then in my early teens in the 80’s, I spent a lot of time at Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica where lots of older gamers (some who probably should not have been hanging around young people) would philosophize and argue about games over issues of The Dragon and the Alarums and Excursions fanzine. But by the late 80’s and through the 90’s, I didn’t hang out at the store anymore (I actually found the owner and the crowd to be very negative as I grew older) or go to cons, and I culled most of my players from my groups of friends, mostly people with little to no D&D experience. So for the most part my efforts to actually sit and discuss gaming when we weren’t actually gaming usually fell flat. I had the occasional exception, somebody dorky enough to sit around and drink beer and talk about the merits of magic-users and clerics and all the deep stuff with me (one of these in the early 90’s was maybe a little too fond of a certain white, powdery substance), but that was a rarity for me. I would usually just run the game, and afterwards if we talked about anything, it was usually movies or TV shows.

So getting into the blogging community, specifically that involving the OSR, really got my juices flowing again as far as out of game talk goes. Long threads on every possible D&D subject can be looked up at Dragonsfoot.org, and the game blogs are just brimming with invigorating ideas and commentary on gaming. I guess gaming podcasts were kind of a no brainer, but it took me well over a year to have a listen to another one. So it was today with the Roll For Initiative cast, and I have to admit I am glad I gave a listen.

I am sure I will put the hosts names together as I get into further episodes (or go back to the archives to hear some older ones), but for now they seem like pretty good dudes. They don’t come off as any of those annoying, creepy gamer dudes who either smell like sour milk or cat piss. But they do know their 1st edition AD&D, and during the discussions they often actually reference their Monster Manual, Fiend Folios, etc. on the spot, which I found pretty endearing. Combined with the occasional mildly amateurish moment (bumping and fidgeting sounds, microphone thumps, awkward interruptions, etc.), it felt pretty comforting and homey, just as if me and my players were hanging around the game table looking things up as we talked gaming. The guys are fairly comfortable on the mike, so it comes off just like a pre/after game jive session, complete with the type of dopey jokes (they pronounce gnolls, “ga-nolls,” for example) all involved in gaming take part in. It seems like just the right attitude for 1st ed. Talk.

So the guys speak on adventure creation (helpful for new DM’s, but pretty standard stuff for the experienced), do a “creature feature” on the gnoll race (I found interesting because I used these beasts for the first time in decades recently), and give tips for successfully running thieves as characters. Most fun for me was the “Dragon’s Hoard” section, where they discuss a magic item out of the game. I wasn’t particularly interested in their discussion on the Beaker of Plentiful Potions, until to my surprise they dragged out some dice and made the random rolls for potions the beaker actually contained. This was a nice touch, and just the sound of dice hitting the table out of a regular game context was very cool.

All in all, I found this to be a great little podcast, and I’m going to listen to more of them. I’ll praise it more in the future when I know more about the gents on the microphone, and dig a little deeper into the background.

Confessions of a 1st edition AD&D house ruler

I started D&D in the late 70’s, and got into AD&D 1st ed. pretty much when it came out. I never used all the rules as-is even from the beginning, but starting sometime in the late 80’s I began leaving out huge sections, and changing rules on lots of things big and small. It has been so long and in my head for so long (few of my house rules are on paper), I forget a lot of reasons why I changed things.

I stopped being a student of what was in rulesbooks by the end of the 80’s. I DM’d mostly in a bubble as an adult. I didn’t go to cons or hang out at game stores (as a kid though I pretty much grew up at Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica). Most of my players who came along or I got into my campaigns starting in the 90’s had little to no D&D experience, so I was pretty much unchallenged on any changes I made.

After several years off I started a new group last year, and most players where seasoned D&D vets. Needless to say, I had some ‘splainen to do, Lucy. Some changes caused delight, some caused head scratching and “why’s.”

OK, I say this because after getting involved in the online community a bit, I have a desire to put a lot of stuff I changed or left out back on the active shelf. So here is a partial list of items I changed/added to my taste over the decades, and some are things I may change back to the rules. Having said that, it turns out many of these are very common house rule items.

Note: Keep in mind that I have very little experience with editions after 1st ed. (as DM or player), so any similarities here to stuff in those editions is probably an accident, or some kind of osmosis. Lately I have described my 1st ed. Games as “AD&D 1st ed. Light” and “OD&D with some AD&D tossed into the mix.”

*Hit points: you get max at 1st level. I think I have done that since around 1982.

*Weapon length/speed adjustments: Don’t use them. I just use common sense for things, like a dude using a polearm or two-handed sword in a narrow tunnel gets penalties. And of course, if a guy with a spear and a guy with a dagger are running at each other, the spear will probably get initiative.

*All things have set movement rate I give out for hex battle mat use. Most humans have 12, dwarves 10, hobbits 8, etc. On your turn you can move a full amount (in hexes or squares), or half and do something (attack, cast spell, etc.). Characters act in order of DEX.

*Combat rounds are 6 seconds, and turns are 1 minute or 10 minutes (depending on what we are talking about)

*Don’t use the extra attack rules, have my own. A fighter would get an extra attack when he hits 5th level; a cleric at 6th, a thief at 7th, etc. and yet another at a higher level (fighter at 8th, etc.).

*All spellcasters get a “spell in mind,” a permanent spell they do not need to study or pray for, and don’t usually need components for . Usually rolled randomly off first level spell list, but sometimes let player choose one from three random rolls (this will be in their head for life, after all). When used it comes back after rest.

*Don’t use psionics (for players, anyway)

*Any race can be any class (pretty much), and anybody can multiclass. I remember in the mid-80’s letting a guy with a half-orc be a fighter/cleric/magic-user/thief (although I doubt I would go so far now). I have a habit of letting any player get the character they envision (which maybe indicates that I should have gotten all Arduin before the 80’s were up).

*I usually allow some skills, and they depend on the characters background. Nothing hard and fast, but a farmer will have farming skills, son of a blacksmith some metal working knowledge, etc. This is one thing that has a lot of room for abuse. For example, a recent MU character who went to a wizard school wanted all these mythology and magical lore skills that you would probably assume an MU would know about anyway. It just seems that some players feel their characters are more fleshed out if they have some background skills. Oh, I usually have skill rolls made based on a stat (intelligence or wisdom on a D20).

*Training to go up a level: don’t make them do it. At least not pay to practice. I usually only have PC’s pay for training when they get another weapon proficiency or something like that. Often not even then.

*I am often arbitrary and lazy when it comes to giving experience. Sometimes I keep track of monsters and treasure; sometimes I put together a number based on how much they need to go up. Often I give as much or more as monster xp for role-playing and such. My players have aren’t really seasoned DM’s, so they don’t know the difference. My slacker attitude about xp is perhaps my greatest failing as a proper DM (IMO).

“The Hellpits of Nightfang” – it changed my world.

A recent posting about Paul Jaquays got me thinking about my fondness for his work (especially when I was a kid) for D&D and Runequest. I suddenly remembered Jaquays’ Hellpits adventure, and it reminded of how much it entered into my particular game world in the 80’s.

The Hellpits of NIghtfang was a 32-page scenario booklet that came out in 1979. Like a lot of the times I was a kid hanging out at Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica as a kid, it was a modest product that really captured my imagination. If you are not familiar with it, let me describe it briefly before telling you how I used this Runequest adventure in a big way in my game world, “Ardor.”

Basically, it is a cleverly designed series of muddy sink holes in a grassy field. It seemed like a simple enough setting, but there was plenty of action and Dex rolls to be had just in trying to navigate the slippery sides of the smallest hole. Down below in the small inner complex, Runequest mainstays like Flail Snails, Stake Snakes, and power-draining spirits abounded. But the main inhabitants of the earthy place were the elderly (but muscular) vampire Rune Lord Nightfang, and his rather homely wife. Fight Nightfang, bargain with him, or whatever. There you go.

OK, so at some point around 1980 I used The Village of Hommlet module to run a couple of games for my group. The major change (and I always make major changes to modules) I made there was to take the handsome, but scarred evil cleric Lareth, and make him as supremely handsome and charismatic anti-paladin. He was not slain at the end of that adventure, and ended up as the lover of a (not evil) Elvish magic-user/thief of one of the female players character named “Noradama” (or “Nord” for short). Although not exactly changing his ways, Lareth behaved long enough to have a short relationship with Nord in later games, and to become a fairly regular NPC. I know I know, lot of questions there. But it was 30 years ago and my memory dims like the Feral Kid in Road Warrior. It lives now, only in my dreams…

So around a year or less later, I had the Hellpits adventure, and decided to use it. But I wanted more from Nightfang and his wife than the sparse background Paul J. put into the scenario. Mind you, this was a Runequest adventure that I was converting into a AD&D adventure. As written, NF was a Rune Lord. So I decided in D&D he would have been some great wizard in ancient past. I needed more background for Lareth, who by now was involved with the same female players other character (a female drow, much more suited to Lareth as a lover than a wood elf tart), and was a regular feature in scenarios.

So I decided that NIghtfang was once known as Earlwuth Tan, a great general from the eastern empire who came to the west and founded my main city of Tanmoor, then just a frontier wilderness, several hundred years ago. In self exile at that time, after being cursed with vampirism, he eventually came across and married his current wife in recent decades, who happened to be a werewolf. Look, I was a teenager, OK? I then (and now) came up with some pretty wacky backgrounds for things .

Lareth was along with the group for that adventure, looking for his long lost father and mother who he barely remembered after he was born 20 years ago. And yeah, it gets wackier. Although I hadn’t originally intended for it when I did the previous Hommlet adventure (but the players did not know that), Lareth was a child of a powerful vampire and a werewolf. He was both, and had been hiding it from the characters. After some battling of monsters and Nightfang, Lareth revealed himself as Nightfang/Earlwuth Tan’s son, and after some thrashing about there was a family reunion that ended will, under the circumstances.

Now it gets bigger than shit. It was time then for a new campaign, and this started with Earlwuth’s (I would no longer refer to him as NIghtfang from then on in) declaration that he would take Tanmoor, the city he founded long ago, from it’s rulers from the Eastern Empire, and return it to the glory he meant for it when he founded it. He was evil, and a vampire, but he wanted the city to be returned to a time of kings and chivalry. The Empire from the East was mostly thought of as evil by the players, so it was not hard to get characters into this concept. For many games, the party helped Earlwuth, Lareth, and family overthrow the imperial forces in the city. Earlwuth/Nightfang then took a backseat, in the shadows, while his son Lareth Tan, took his birthright as king of Tanmoor.

Lareth married his drow character lover, and the Tan family remained for years in-game. Tanmoor had always been a wizardly city, but with a Vampire/Werewolf/Anti-Paladin as king, and his personal Addams Family in court, it became more of a place of elegant weirdness. Though the royal family had an evil background, the normal people of the city were actually safer, more prosperous, and happier than they had been under hundreds of years of rule by a distant empire. Some time in the later 80’s, I had a plot line that included the destruction of the royal Tan family. Hey, things change.

This may be the most extreme example of a modest adventure module being tweaked to fit into my personal game world. I still use this game world today, and when any of my player’s characters are from the Kindom of Tanmoor, I always have to explain the interesting Tan Family part of the city history (that happened around 50 years ago now in-game timeline). Sometimes they go “Oh man, I wish I had rolled up an anti-paladin vampire/werewolf with an 18 charisma instead of this fighter.” But the time of the Tans, the family of Nightfang, has long passed. Tanmoor remains kind of weird, though.

"It's about Bunnies!" - redux

(Note: As I am currently heading into the second weekend of a several weekend run of working at a Ren Faire in Central California [4 + hour drive], taking a class during the week, preparing for a bagpiping competition in October, yada yada yad - my posting is getting slower at a time when I was really getting into the flow. So I thought I would, here and there, dredge up a past post from earlier this year when I had maybe three subscribers and before my blogger network membership. I'm not egotistical enough to call it "best of," but perhaps there will be some interest in past stuff that I thought was worth talking/reading about. This one about Bunnies and Burrows has the distinction of being maybe one of two of my posts that James at Grognardia actually commented on - hold the applause!)

I had never read Watership Down, nor seen the movie by the time I first saw a copy of Bunnies and Burrows over 30 years ago. There it was on the stands at Aero Hobbies. All the older pricks were geeking out about it at the game table, like they did with most unique new games that came out. I don’t remember anyone actually running it at the shop, but I was somewhat smitten by it’s strange nature.I had of course heard of Watership Down in the school yards over the year. It would usually be one of the timid, shy girls reading it at lunchtime (this was before Goth kids came into their own and started to be recognized), or one of the seemingly speechless boys from the “special” class. It’s not exactly a “feel good” story. As Sawyer on the TV show Lost once sarcastically said, in a gleeful singsong voice as he was caught reading it “It’s about bunnies!”

I saw no sad little sick rabbits on the run from all kinds of scary things as I read the B&B rules. Only herbalists, fighters, and the incredibly appealing Maverick character class. The rules were fairly light, as were a lot of the new games coming out. It left a lot open to interpretation, which as any Grognard knows is the salt of the earth in a fun-to-GM game.

B&B came out in 1976, only a few short years after D&D, and it is recognized as the first game to have all non-human characters, and also as the first game with a detailed martial arts system. Your skills and abilities varied depending on your character class, and task resolution was on percentiles. There were great little “simple life” rules in the game that gave it a very quaint flavor. Your rabbit could only count up to 5, and I don’t think you were allowed much more than that in the way of objects in your backpack. Yeah, that’s right. These rabbits weren’t exactly humanoid, but it was obvious that they were more intelligent than animals, and could stand upright and manipulate things with fingers. This was not specific in the book – only some of the skills, and some of the drawings (a maverick holding playing cards, the soldier rabbits of the book cover, etc.) lead you to believe that they were more than plain old bunnies. Well, that and the fact that somebody had to have made the backpacks.

Seeing as you are a rabbit and one of the weakest creatures on the planet, role play was key over combat encounters. All forms of animals are listed as enemies, but only human beings with their “alien minds” were true monsters. Snares, poison, and natural hazards filled the daily lives of the little fellas as well.The rules book itself was pretty poor quality. It looked typewritten (as were a lot of my favorite gaming material of the time), and the “artwork” can only be describes as “scribbles.” I drew better looking artwork of cops beating up hippies on my high school Pee Chee folder.

A couple of editions came out in the following years. There was a GURPS version with a cover that could only be described as hilarious. It had two small rabbits furiously attacking a guard dog, like the two raptors attacking the T Rex in Jurassic Park. That seemed to kind of miss the point of the original game right there, but newer gamers probably would not want to play a game were you mostly just forage for truffles all day, Before heading down to the Doe cave to hammer out babies all night.I finally saw the Watership Down movie and read the book in the 80’s, and the game reflected a lot of that inspiration. Figuring I would probably never run it, I sold it on Ebay several years ago for about 50 bucks. Now that I’m going through my own retro gaming fad, I wish I had kept that one. I even created my own little gameworld for it about 10 years ago. Called “Rabbit Valley Days,” I was hoping to evoke those original rules using another system eventually, but I doubt I can sell my current players on it now. The game is about bunnies, after all.

Three Decades of Comic Book Gaming

My history of running/playing Superhero games began pretty much at their inception. In the late 70’s I was a kid hanging around Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica, California on the weekends, and I had access to every cool new game that came out.

Superhero 2044, the first Superhero RPG, just fascinated me. My 14 year-old brain had some difficulty wrapping itself around some of the rules, and that may have been because they are rather sparse. Most of the crunch seemed to have gone into the rather unique (at the time) patrolling rules, which in a weird way seemed to be a replacement for role-play. When running campaigns for friends (who had previously only played D&D), I quickly ditched the patrolling rules (although they still seemed to be pretty good for solo or one-on-one play), and focused on making sense of the rest of the rules. Talk about rules-light, you barely knew what to do as far as coming up with powers. I cut my “winging it” teeth on this game.

In my Superhero 2044 days, I came up with my own game world for it, called “New Haven,” a last vestige American state that was the only U.S. area to survive nuclear Armageddon. It was my own version of 2044’s Shanter Island. I considered it sort of an all-encompassing Sci Fi setting, and often encouraged players to not just think of running a typical comic book hero, but feel free to come with any kind of Sci Fi character that can be hammered into a world where superheroes exist. My players came up with some incredible PC’s for this milieu over the years, and characters that might seem more in place in a D&D, Rifts, or Cyberpunk game were common. I think New Haven was the most open setting I ever ran, and I used it as my superhero game world over three decades and spanning 3 game rulesbooks (all that I mention here minus Supergame).

As the 70’s were coming to a close, I had the opportunity to play a couple of games at Aero that some folk were playtesting for future publication. I have bittersweet memories of these sessions. It was a young couple, Jay and Aimee, who had created the game. While Jay was gregarious and supportive of younger people in the play process, Aimee was kind of a wicked witch, arguing with him the whole way about this or that rule, and denying players this or that action. A couple of years later I had my own disastrous attempt to run this game at Aero for some of the older assholes, a group of condescending, smelly weirdoes who should not have been hanging around a store populated with kids. Although that experience (and Jay’s lack of support of my attempt, despite his presence), helped sour me on Supergame. I think I was so crushed by that experience that I threw the book in the trash that night. I have to admit that I wasn’t much of a fan of the crunch anyway, based unnecessarily on square roots. In all honesty, it was cool at that young age to know people who created a game. It did have the distinction of being the first game to offer a power-buy system.

I was contacted by Jay earlier this year. Obviously, after 30 years of his game being out of print, he was still watching for Supergame references online (how else would he have found my little blog? You can count Supergame references on the internet on one hand). I had written negatively about the game, and he was a bit upset at my calling his game a Superhero 2044 rip-off. That was probably a bit harsh, but he and Aimee’s efforts may have been better placed as a supplement to 2044’s sparse power rules, rather than force people to whip out a calculator for every little action. Aimee’s very amateurish “art” style did not help. I remember one of her friends seeing my scribble of my character and saying “You have nothing to worry about Aimee”. What a thing to say to a 15 year old kid. That gives you a good idea of the caliber of older people who populated that scene. Very discouraging to younger folk. Well, no artist other than me had to worry about Aimee’s laughable superhero work.

Not long after my Supergame experience, I tried my hand at a series of Villains and Vigilantes games for my friends (away from the negative older pricks of Aero), and we had big fun with these. V&V had random character power generation, which when combined with the suggestion that players play themselves with superpower was the source of gigantic hilarity.

But by the mid-80’s I had found Champions, and I never looked back. All the way up to the late 90’s, it was my game of choice, and I ran many awesome campaigns. Despite the big rules crunch (which I usually hate – at least no square rooting was involved), I managed to get many of my D&D regulars into the game, most of whom didn’t even read comic books! I think the sheer customizability of the game appealed to them in the same way it did to my math-challenged brain.

Around 1999 I ended my final campaign with a huge battle against an alien invasion, followed by a presidential election that involved characters in a variety of ways. The election ended with a black, female president getting elected.

I took several years off from gaming until late last year, but now that I am in the swing again, I sort of hanker to put some more effort into Champions and a new campaign in New Haven. As I ran it more or less in real time, it would be interesting to revisit that world after almost 10 years. I just need to convince my non-comic book reading D&D players that comic book settings are a gaming no-brainer.

My Gross Introduction to D&D

At around 14 years old I was introduced to D&D by a school mate who lived on the Venice Canals, a neighborhood I was born and grew up in. This kid, Rod Seagal, was a gangly, long-haired geek with a love of spitting, and using a long piece of bamboo to kill butterflies in the empty lot next to his apartment. Rod didn’t use rules, and he probably didn’t really know them. I’m sure he played once or twice in somebody’s game, and just used memories of that to run games. He had dice and a handful of badly painted figures, and just made up what you needed to hit, and how much damage things did. The gaming sucked. Characters usually died according to his perverted whims. The first sexual thing that I recall in any game was when I had a character look at a portrait of a Type 5 demon (the lady snake with 6 arms), and the demon came out of the painting and raped me before killing me. “She got some pleasure from you before you die” I think was the exact quote. Jeez. At 14 years old, this guy would most likely end up as a serial killer.

Rod was a really obnoxious person to the degree that I think I was his only friend at the time. He did have some sort of fat, mongoloid dude as a lackey, a boy who seemed to have the same fascination with loogies as Rod did. These guys actually had spit fights in the back alley after eating chocolate. I made it clear that if anything got on me both would get the shit kicked out of them, and as a big athletic kid I was prepared to unleash hell. Rod sometimes threatened me with a spit ball, but I think what kept him from doing it outside of the fear of a beating, was that he liked to run the games for me instead of his gross henchman because I had a certain degree of intelligence and imagination.

Rod’s mom was a single lady who was a secretary or something, and she was tall and blond. I remember catching glimpses of her and wondering how such a pretty lady could give birth to a weird goblin like Rod. At some point Rod had a battery powered water pick, and came into his room and shot me with it. It wasn’t a loogie, but I was still pissed, and after knocking him down and trashing his room a bit mom banned me from the house.

That was it for hanging out with Rod, but that was good for my gaming. Not long later I discovered the three booklets at Chess and Games in West L.A. I was so excited when I saw them. They were already mythical to me. I knew of them when I was hanging out with Rod, but had yet to see them. There they were, right there on a back shelf. Thus, my true D&D education had begun. Soon I would be a regular amongst the sarcastic dorks at Aero Hobbies (an epic tale for another post) in Santa Monica, really learning how to play this game.

Some years later, I ran into Rod after school on the Venice High campus. He didn’t go to Venice, he went to a “special” high school somewhere and was just hanging out there with a couple of other losers. I think they were having a spit fight (I guess you never lose your love for that activity). The DM’s guide had come out, and I had one stashed in my pack. I went up to him and said something to the affect of “hey you fucking dork, look! There are actual rules! You made that shit up as you went along.” Rod said something snarky, and I threatened to beat his ass and he took off. I never saw him again.

So my introduction to the game was shaky and a little weird, but it did set me on the road to a life time of gaming fun. Rod, wherever you are, thanks for introducing me to the game. You weird freak.

"My favorite D&D module was a Runequest adventure” - Apple Lane

As a kid hanging out at the local game shop Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica, I played a lot of Runequest. I maybe ran a handful of games for friends outside the shop, but I never really got a campaign going. As an adventure pack, Apple Lane (by Greg Stafford, first printed in 1978) provided some outstanding encounters, NPC’s, and situations. In the sleepy orchard town of Apple Lane, Your first encounter may just be getting mugged by a Trollkin (as humorously portrayed on the cover). Trollkin haunt the area outside of town, but small raids have been made in the last few weeks on homes around the town fringes. Lead by a big Trollkin named White Eye, the little pests have been a nuisance, even going so far as to kill a little old lady. The Tin Inn is the focal center of town, and here is where you are likely to meet Gringle, a Rune Lord who has settled down to run a pawnshop in town. Gringle will hire you to guard his shop while he and his assistant, Duck John, are out of town for the night. A tribe of Baboons (who can speak in Runequest) have threatened to attack the shop, and a harrowing night fighting them off will be the first real adventure scenario in town. Included are schematics for the three levels of the shop, and entrance points for the Baboons to break in are indicated. The major adventure is to go to an area called The Rainbow Mounds and get a bounty on White Eye offered by the sheriff. In addition to the Trollkin, a once great race have devolved into The Newtlings, froglike beings who live in the waterways of the Mounds. These creatures worship an idol in their main cave, and if the party finds the missing piece of the idol (hidden amongst the warrens of the large rock lizards who also inhabit the caverns), the person who places the piece upon the idol will be crowned King of the Newtlings. This kingship comes with little in the way of power or treasure, but it is a cool way to cap off an adventure. The Rainbow Mounds is really a great dungeon setting. In addition to the main water cavern and some underground rushing rapids and waterfalls, special rooms include a classic D&D style mushroom chamber, and an alter to the Dark Gods of the Trollkin. It’s just a series of caves, but they are set-up really well, and provide multiple pathways for the players to choose. I liked the setting so much, that after getting the book I almost immediately modified things to use it for D&D. I changed some names, such as Lemon Tree instead of Apple Lane, and turned the Trollkins and Baboons into orcs, but most other things I kept the same. Gringle, however, became a high level wizard, and his assistant Duck John became Hobbit John. Over the decades I used the setting several times. White Eye having been killed several times, and the Newtling idol found and a king crowned again and again, was a bit of a stretch. But the problem got solved when I decided that the Newtlings had a curse on them that kept the idol pieces and White Eye in a constant loop. No matter what happened, an idol piece would eventually be lost and found, and no matter how many times White Eye was killed he would return to menace anyone who came to the Mounds. A group of characters are in the Rainbow Mounds right now during my current AD&D campaign (continuing tonight!), and the party includes Kayla, a hobbit who has been there before, and personally killed White Eye in that past adventure. In a game in the late 90’s she came to Lemon Tree, adventured in the Rainbow Mounds, killed the orcs, and eventually married Hobbit John. She has recently returned to find White Eye alive, the Newtlings again waiting for a new ruler, and a disturbing fact: having been to the Mounds multiple times, she risks become part of the curse cycle of the Mounds herself! So, I very much recommending getting a copy of Apple Lane and modify it for use in your D&D games. It is really a fairly simple but elegant setting, and it can be adjusted for various character levels. It actually is a great place to start new characters in, and if you poke around online you can find fan-support for it, including great alternate maps (even a 3D one) for the areas included in the module.

SUPERHERO 2044:My first non-D&D campaign

Hell yeah it was over 30 years ago that I first ran Superhero 2044. I had discovered D&D sometime around 1976 or 77 (maybe even a little earlier), and was in the process of building my little fantasy world “Ardor,” my AD&D game world that I use to this very day. I loved comics, and being able to have superhero types running around instead of fantasy arch-types sounded like a no-brainer to my young no-brain.

I think within a year or so of discovering Superhero 2044, Villains & Vigilantes came out, and I’m pretty sure I ran consecutive campaigns at some point: 2044 was set in the future, and V&V was the current real world, with my players playing themselves as heroes (like that book suggested you do). It would be a few years before I had a disastrous session with a blatant 2044 rip-off called Supergame, an RPG I would actually help playtest for the creators not long after my little 2044 campaign. I didn’t start a Champions campaign until the early 80’s, so besides the aforementioned Villains and Vigilantes, 2044 was my comic book RPG.

A rather cheaply put-together product, it was the cover, front and back, that was the main eye-catcher of 2044. The sheer number of gaudy costumes, especially the few that were obviously inspired by classic Marvel characters, just made my young gamer heart soar with the gaming possibilities.

I used the setting as presented in the book. It was an independent democratic island nation, Shanter Island (we mispronounced it “Shatner” on purpose), but with all the trappings (language, customs, race) of the U.S. A world wide nuclear war had previously devastated much of society, creating the need for The Science Police. Sci Pol existed to put the brakes on nuclear power and other technology that could be used for evil – or another World War. The futuristic independent island nation concept, and the Science Police, were two things that I would carry over to my long running Champions campaign setting.

Your main island map of Shanter shows the city, the air and space port, and industrial locations. A large part of that map is made up of the “Outback,” miles and miles of forest and mountain areas. This area is not uninhabited – thanks to the pro-superhero government of Shanter Island, a law has been passed letting hero-types make “land grabs” for caves and hilltops to build secret HQ’s on. Nice! This combined with the 1970’s “futurisms” (moving sidewalks downtown, monorails in the city, aliens walking amongst us, etc.) gave the proceedings a really nice cheesy feel, even back then.

I had three or four players for those first few games, but I only really remember two characters from the game that were played – both of them “Doc” Winslow’s. One was a man in super strong, super invincible power armor, based on a figure from the old Gamma World line. Seeing as the rules didn’t give you much information on what kind of powers you could have, or even what those powers might do, the players were pretty much free to get whatever they wanted outside of points assigned to stats. You could probably read about how the rules worked in more detail in some online review, but suffice it to say that the rules on superpowers were obscure enough that a player could totally take advantage. This power armored guy was just devastating to most of his surroundings, and he would smash his way down the street, crushing bank robbers and costumed villains in droves.

Although a lot of the world’s framework is left up to the GM, some background is provided in the way of descriptions of previous superhero events, and a couple of characters. The Freedom League, a former superhero team, was mostly destroyed in recent years by Dr. Ruby, the premier super villain. The only hero to survive was “Mr. Banta,” but only his brain lives on housed in a cyborg shell. Mr. B runs a major superhero equipment/costume shop. This shop is made up of all the leftover gear from the deceased League members and their personal trophies from defeated enemies, so this is one of the things in the book that makes your imagination go wild. This is pretty much the place the character can buy anything that he wasn’t able to put together with points or choice of super powers. The GM can use this shop as the source of all kinds of plot devices and McGuffins. Although assumed by the general public to be dead, there are a series of somewhat humorous drawings in the margins of the book detailing various ways that Doc Ruby might have survived.

Probably the most interesting (and frustrating) feature of the rules was the strict patrolling procedures that each character had to follow. Sheets were given so the player and GM could plot out the characters movements throughout the city, his hours spent patrolling and what part of the island he did the patrolling in. The GM would then suss-out how many crimes were stopped, and how many criminals apprehended. The GM would also have to “handicap” the characters performance parameters occasionally, so as to be able to figure out how many points to give for the time spent patrolling. That meant at least running an actual encounter and fighting on the game table, rather than working out the statistics of this police department style patrolling system. It even included rules for all the lawsuits that get filed against the hero for damage caused during patrol. These rules only really worked for solo play, and although we used the patrolling rules for awhile, we soon abandoned them in order to get some actual role play and important encounters going on more consistently.

In my earliest days of hanging out at the local game shop, I got the chance to help playtest a new superhero RPG called Supergame around the time I was still running 2044. It was created by friends of the shop owner, and that is the main reason it eventually saw a published form. Because I was there for some of the original playtesting of that system, and because of my own disastrous attempts to run a session of it at the shop, I think I’ll save that tale for another post. Suffice to say that, outside of the system itself, The creators of Supergame had blatantly drawn more than just inspiration from Superhero 2044, and I would go so far as to call many of it’s elements a rip-off. But then again, 2044 had a lot of unique qualities, especially the setting, that inspired me to eventually create a superhero game world of my own, strongly based on that little independent island nation called Shatner. Uh, I mean “Shanter.”