Learning from the Masters

When I kicked off my survey of world-building with the article "Let There Equal Law" back in June, I discussed the grandness of choosing a set apart of rules tailored to the genre and place setting you want to run. I gave extraordinary recommendations of rules for different genres – RECON for Vietnam, Hard Nova II for place opera, and then on. I also mentioned that it's practicable to hack on a rules set to support different genre conventions and settings, but didn't enter much contingent. Since that column, I've received a fair number of cliquish messages asking boost questions about modifying rules, and have been dispatched extraordinary really interesting rules and supplements that "hack" some popular games. This chromatography column, as we clear up our survey of world-building, I thought I'd discuss some of these products and use them to instance how to hack the game rules to your predilection. This article is sledding to assume familiarity with baseline Dungeons & Dragons and use that as a stepping off indicate.

The Weirding Way

The first product we'll review is Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Persona-Performin away St. James Edward Raggi IV. LotFP is a ex post facto-clone of the classic Dungeons &ere; Dragons role-playing plot designed to simulate the "supernatural tale" of supernatural horror, related with masters like H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and R.E. Howard. Supernatural horror is not a style unremarkably associated with standard D&D, but Lamentations makes it work attractively – and is exceptionally illustrative of how unrivalled can adapt the game mechanics of a game to suit a particular theme or vogue of play.

LotFP is filled with subtle changes that metamorphose D&D into something spookier. For example, in Lamentations only fighters gain built attack rolls as they tear down. The unusual classes get break skills and spells, but they never improve their betting odds in fighting. This deepens the specialized nature of each class, such that entirely by operative together can the party survive. "Never split the party!" Moreover it changes the archetype of what each class represents – a cleric becomes more of a learned priest than mace-slugger, a magic-drug user becomes Thomas More akin to a sorcerer in a Conan story than Gandalf. And fighters are the war-hardened souls who learn from blood line-letting.

LotFP likewise shines in its treatment of magic items. In LotFP, "all magic items are artifacts, and non mere tools operating room trinkets." There are no magic items that merely better game mechanism, and most, if not all, have drawbacks. An lesson (from one of LotFP's adventures) is the ringing of vanishing, which when seedy makes the wearer invisible to everything except undead piece attracting undead wandering monsters if any are nearby. This represents a subtle change that may not be forthwith apparent live, only over metre implicates an entirely contrary place setting and style – magic items change from "power ups" to items used at risk to lifetime and person.

Spells, too, receive subtle changes. For instance, Animate Dead has, in every variation of D&adenosine monophosphate;D, created mindless skeleton in the cupboard and zombie servants. In LotFP, "the creatures retain faint memories of what life accustomed be, and their jealousy makes them destructive. They will e'er interpret some instructions in the most violent and negative manner possible." The clerical power to turn undead is itself a spell in LotfP and while the shop mechanic remains the same, information technology forces the ecclesiastic to actually choose between healing and turning, suggesting a more despairing setting where the powers of good and light are scarce.

Yet for all that IT changes, LotFP remains very about D&D. Information technology still has fighters, legerdemain-users, clerics, thieves ("specialists"), the standard six attributes, hit points, and all the other trappings. Indeed, one can argue that it doesn't go furthermost enough – elves and dwarves are virtually never nowadays in supernatural tales, but they are both available as player races in Book of Lamentations, and it's rare to see a hotshot blaring fireballs or lightning bolts in Lovecraft or Howard, but both spells stay in easy reach of PC magic-users. This is nigh certainly because players in RPGs like dwarves, elves, and fireballs. And this too, is illustrative: In adapting rules and making them your own, you sometimes take to follow willing to via media the purity of your setting systematic to make a pun that's sport for your players.

In general, if you've enjoyed my columns, you'll almost for sure enjoy what Raggi has done. His philosophy of game-mastering is even close kin to my personal. E.g., in his introduction to Lamentations, He writes "player characters must have agency. They cannot be puppets or mere observers to events. The Peer review is non effectual a story, but presenting an environment and situations within that surroundings. The story is the summation of what happens during play." The whole work is peppered with much gems; the three booklets that make aweigh LoftFP probably include more and better advice on campaign creation and gamemastering than I've seen anywhere else in print. Anyone interested in weird fantasy, and any student of gamemastering in general, would be well advised to pick up a copy of Lamentations of the Flare Princess: Weird Fantasy Role-Playing. It's nearly like a magic item that offers a +3 bonus to gamemastering skill checks.

Run down Entirely His Majesty

The second base product we'll deal is The Majestic Wilderlands, publicised aside Goodman Games and written away Rob Conley. (You might remember Mr. Conley from having graciously provided our readers with a free PDF of his South setting net column.)

The Royal Wilderlands (TMW) is beaked as "a supplement compatible with the Swords & Wizardry rules and all editions supported the original 1974 roleplaying lame," i.e. Dungeons &A; Dragons. TMW is an expansion of the Judges Guild's Wilderlands of High Illusion, which was the inaugural run setting ever published for a fantasy RPG, and represents all the additions, modifications, and updates scrawled by Conley over the course of 28 years of continuous play.

TMW includes about 85 pages of new rules, classes, spells, ritual magical, monsters, and supernatural items, and some 50 pages of setting, backstory, and maps. IT serves arsenic an excellent exemplification of how you can start with a very simple set off of rules (classic D&A;D is to a lesser degree 100 pages long!) and over metre body-build up a literal encyclopedia of material. What is more, because the material in TMW has grown organically from true play, it provides answers to demotic problems that real GMs side when running campaigns. Where coiffure high-level Nonproliferation Center spellcasters come from, if they Don River't adventure? How do wholly the spellcasters number put together in guilds without as if by magic charming apiece other? Why don't the evil gods have paladins to champion evil causes? Why in 10,000 years of magical encyclopedism hasn't anyone figured out how to swan simple spells without having to memorize them a day in advance? In short, "how do you piss sense of all the nonmeaningful?" TMW provides answers.

For starters, TMW adds religious ceremony magic to the repertory of all its spellcasters. D&D normally requires casters to prepare their spells in advance, only ritual magic lets the caster use any known trance at will by disbursal ten minutes and some bodied components. In the Wilderlands, most utility spells, like detecting thaumaturgy and opening doors, are cast off via rituals, while "prepared" spells and magic items represent an advanced sort of magic used for battle. Information technology's a deceivingly simple change, but it cascades throughout the setting. Information technology provides a reasonable explanation as to why all those scrolls and magic items get made in the first-class honours degree place, for one thing, and it enables the foundation of several technical spellcasting classes, so much American Samoa Artificers and Rune Casters, which lack the ability to redact any spells at all – all their magic is usance magic.

TMW also supplements its spellcasters with witching unsusceptibility, via buckler spells taught by the wizardly and employee orders (similar to parma magica in White Wolf's Ars Magica, for you elitists exterior there). The "shield of magic" renders casters immune to any spell that directly affects the caster. Thus, mages can congregate with other mages knowing they are unhazardous from magical harm. IT's a avid mechanic that makes sense in the setting, and too makes game bring off richer – magical duels become a subject of attrition and discursive assault rather than a speed to see who fails their saving shed v. death ray firstborn.

Perhaps the most interesting mechanic in TMW is the addition of not-adventuring classes such as Journeyman, Priest, and Scholar. Each such course of study replaces the traditional "see points per level" graph with a "years per pull dow." For instance, a Scholar with 25 eld of experience is level 6 while a Craftsman with 25 years of experience is point 8. The non-adventuring class mechanic explains why most compelling wizards and priests are old – they've been hanging out in towers and temples, not plumbing the depths of the underdark. An adventurer, of course, who has survived 25 years is likely to live level 16 by then, but few adventurers survive that long. And a 6th layer adventurer might be in his early 20s, which creates a great tensity between the old masters who learned things the traditional way, and young upstarts who are delving into forbidden places to get ahead faster.

TWM also introduces possibly the cleanest skill scheme always longhand for standard D&D-expressive style games, fully integrated into its course of study system, not to honorable mention a 12 new classes (such As Berserkers, Knights, and Merchant Adventurers), prominent magic items like the sword Lionspirit, and dozens of optional rules to add contingent to combat and exploration.

TMW is non without its flaws, of course. The committal to writing style sometimes jumps abruptly from in-universe history of the Wilderlands to meta-game explanation of why the Wilderlands was designed that way; for instance, "…the success of these raids has caused nearly half o f the Skandian population to go away in order to colonize the newly won territories. This region is suited for roleplaying in the Viking homelands." And the latter incomplete of the reserve races somewhat breezily through much of the setting material, with sometimes solitary a paragraph offered where a page seems demanded.

But these are at last bare quibbles. As with Raggi, Conley has created the sort of work that any buff of this tower would treasure. The Purple Wilderlands is a 5,000 aureate piece gem of a supplement that whatsoever gamemaster contemplating a long-term fantasy campaign should check out.

Where Do We Run along From Here?

Next newspaper column we'll discuss the problems and pitfalls poised by players. There'll be blood on our hands by the time we're through. Get wind you so.

Alexander Macris has been acting tabletop games since 1981. In addition to co-authoring the tabletop games Modern Spear-point and Blaze Across the Littoral, his work has appeared in Interface, the Cyberpunk 2022 fanzine, and in RPGA AD&D 2nd Edition tournament modules. In addition to running two weekly campaigns, he is publisher of The Escapist and chairman and Chief executive officer of Themis Media. He sleeps on Sundays.

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