GURPS 4E Revised On the Horizon

 Wow, by pure accident I stumbled on this discussion at the SJ Games website here. GURPS is getting a revised single-volume omnibus rulebook apparently to be release in March(ish) for $79.95. The changes are described in the article, which mostly sound like a clean up, and the part that got some people worried related to sensitivity changes....though the changes they indicate make sense, so I am not sure it's fair to call it "sensitivity" changes so much as "pragmatic modernization reflecting the sensibilities of 2026." I am curious as to how this works out for subjects such as slavery, which has a section in the Campaigns book, chiefly because GURPS as a system was written primarily for historical and realistic gaming, and it was assumed that such rules would be needed. On the other hand, I have never in my many years I ran GURPS actually needed any of those specific rules, so there ya' go. 

Either way I am and ever shall be a grand proponent of GURPS, so I will take anything I can get in terms of the game continuing and being available in print. Once it's out and I have my copy I'll write about if the changes were worth it. 

The Second GM Inspiration: GURPS Places of Mystery

 

The Second GM Inspiration: GURPS Places of Mystery

In its many years GURPS, especially 2nd edition and 3rd edition, generated a copious wealth of useful sourcebooks that were almost universally appreciated by those looking for a bit of history or realism in their games, whether they were actually used for GURPS or not. One of the best of these books, one which has remained in my collection for decades now and gets brought out for periodic use and inspiration, is GURPS Places of Mystery.

Places of Mystery contains twelve sections focusing on historical, archaeological and sometimes mythical locales in our world, providing enough detail on their mythological and historical relevance, along with maps, to funnel your modern day or historical adventurers and investigators through hundreds of hours of interesting gaming. Just a sample of topics and locales in this book include:

The Bermuda Triangle

Stonehange

Ley Lines

Temples of Thebes

Lamaseries

Mohenjo Daro

Nubia

King Solomon's Mines

Knossos

Camelot

The Kremlin

Ayer's Rock

Anasazi Towns

And etc etc.....this is just a sampling of one or two locations from each chapter!

For modern games like Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds or Cypher System this is an invaluable book. 95% of it is system-neutral as well, and what few rules are here for GURPS are remarkably easy to interpret into other game systems with little to no difficulty.

For fantasy games you can easily take these locations and reinterpret them within the light of your preferred fantasy setting. Adopting many of these locations may let you fill out and even explore some ideas in your fantasy campaign that you might not otherwise have considered before, now with a veneer of quasi-historical authenticity.

Anyway, check it out! PDF here and Amazon Print Edition here. 

The Twelfth (and Final) Weird Thing: The Amarna Campaign

 The Twelfth Weird Thing: The Ancient Amarna Campaign

 Presented as it stands, a campaign idea I had for a GURPS Egypt campaign I have never quite managed to foster to reality....

Set ancient Egypt around 1350-1340 BC. It’s going to involve a particularly weird and unpleasant period in Egyptian history during the reign of Akhenaten and the dynamic relationship between Egypt, Amurru, Syria, Hattusa, Punt and Nubia during that period. There’s some really interesting and weird stuff that happened around this time, with lots of holes in the record but enough to know what happened if not always why. This will be a “mostly historical” account but with a horror-themed take on the Egyptian pantheon and a dose of necromancy mixed in. The PCs will be delegates of one of the key “allies” of the time, probably Amurru, though one of them will be a Hittite spy as well. This gives them local prominence for the Mediterranean without being overly familiar with Egyptian customs…they will have to navigate the rivalries and particulars of Egyptian noble life during a turbulent period while representing the self-interest if their own noble ruler, King Aziru, whom they have come to find and possibly liberate from his semi-imprisonment by Akhenaten.

Key Figures:

Akhenaten: the ruler of Egypt, high priest of a new being or philosophical concept he calls the Aten. He is married to Nefertiti and has six daughters. His mystical power is impressive and he is believe to be able to transform into a sphinx, as well as have potent heka (magic, specifically necromancy). His is at once revered and feared by his people in this time. He dwells in the recently constructed city of Akhetaten.

Aziru: ruler of Amurru, a Canaanite city. His conquering of the city of Zemar led to his exile and semi-imprisonment in Egypt after the betrayal of the King of Gubla (Byblos), Rid-Hadda, into the hands of Siduna.

Zimredda of Siduna, the king of Siduna who claimed victory in the capture and possible murder of deposed king Rid-Hadda.

The Habiru, an army of rebels and raiders joined in common cause on the borders of Syria and beyond to stand against the noble lesser kings who serve the Pharaoh.

Shardana: the mercenaries from the sea, prominent sea people who ravage the coast during this time with their ongoing attacks.

Ili-Rapih: ruler of Gubla once his brother Rid-Hadda is killed in Siduna.

Zemar (Sumur): trade city conquered by Aziru.

Gods:

Amurru: gods of Amurru include Hadad (Canaanite storm god) and Asherah (Ba’alat Gublu, fertility goddess)

Egypt: At this time Aten is the only recognized deity/concept, but there are still cults hidden away in worship to the many Egyptian deities which noble and commoner alike is loathe to neglect just becaue the Pharaoh has decreed it.

Languages:

Khemit (Egypt), Akkadian (most of northern Canaan and Syria), Hatti (Hittite), Cushite (Nubia), Puntish (Punt). Others: Alashiya

Locations:

Alashiya: ruled by King Kushmeshusha and his daughter princess Hatbi, an island kingdom which pays copious amounts of copper to Egypt as tribute, but is fiercely xenophobic in many other regards. The city is built along a mountain slope. Recently a plague descended upon the land, driven by the “Hand of Nergal.”

Plot Ideas:

Hand of Nergal:

Akkadian god of death, war and destruction, Nergal is the supposed cause of the plague which begins in the north and spreads from Alashiya to Egypt and throughout Canaan to Hatti. Those who are killed by the plague are known to rise again as the undead. In Egypt the cults of Anubis, Set and Isis suspect that the plague is beset upon humankind for their abandonment of the old gods and grow suspicious that it is the fault of Akhenaten himself.

Nergals’ touch to the north seems to lead to demonic possession of the corpses, and it is believed the Seven Gods or Demons called the Ilu Sebettu are the drivers behind this undead plague. Nergal and the Seven rule with their councilor Isum from Emeslam, a dark kingdom in the realm of the gods, each one personifying a weapon of death. Beside him resides Ereshkigal, his wife of the underworld.

All of Nergal’s plague comes from the ancient ruined city of Kutha, from which his dark servants ride forth to spread the plague.

A talisman of his first wife, Las, is believed to provide blindness to the undead, who cannot sense one so armed with such a talisman.

The Usurpation of Akhenaten:

Akhenaten’s rule is sound until his final year, following the great convocation of his servants throughout the kingdom and the principalities of Egypt. When this happens, the plague comes to Akhetaten and the Pharaoh’s daughters begin to die. As they revive into undead the quiescent Egyptians who remember the old gods can stand it no more and repent, seeking to bring down the Pharaoh in civil war. Ultimately Nefertiti will repent worship of Aten when her husband falls and take the mantle of rulership briefly before her son Tutankhamen rises to power. Only when Akhenaten is dead and Tutankhamen is sworn into the rule of Pharaoh does the plague leave Egypt.

Special Twists: it becomes clear that Akhenaten is sick and transformed by undeath or possession. His heka makes him more susceptible. The PCs are tasked with seeking out the ancient Temple of Set near the Necropolis of Naqada. There the PCs must find a way to put him down, beseeching the dark god with such a task.

Communing with Set (after a brutal trial to prove worthiness of some sort) reveals that the right eye of Akhenaten is his weakness, and once plucked from it’s socket must be returned to the temple as an offering in exchange for such knowledge. The eye is symbolic of Ra’s eye of the sun, and Set wants it. Once it is retrieved, they must travel eastward into the barren wastes and deliver it to an ancient Sphinx.

As the Werewolf Changes

 During last night's game I was surprised to notice that Jackalweres no longer have a problem with silver in the 2025 Monster Manual. So in checking out the other lycanthropes I discovered that hey, it turns out in D&D 5.5 you can harm werewolves with anything, normally, now. They get a few extra HP and a slight AC boost but lose all the mythological flavor of the thing they used to be.

This got me to thinking about how they looked in other systems, so I thought I'd plunge down that rabbit hole a bit to see:

AD&D 1E/2E: Can only be harmed by silver or +1 weapons. So at this stage in the game, low level PCs who have trouble finding magic weapons really need to carry a silvered weapon with them just in case.... In rereading their entries I assume they transform as an action but maybe it was as part of their movement. I seem to recall running AD&D where they could move, transform and attack all in the same combat round, which makes sense in the longer 1E turn cycles.

D&D 3.5: Gain damage reduction 10/silver but only in hybrid and wolf form, interestingly! Shapeshift is an action. Looking at the old format for D&D 3.5 stat blocks on monsters reminded me of how convoluted and information dense they were; how interesting to see that the 2025 MM swung so far to the opposite direction that the current stat blocks feel anemic and drained of all color and flavor.

Pathfinder 1E: Have resistance 10 to all attacks except silvered weapons! Change shape is a move equivalent action, and they induce lycanthropy on a failed saving roll following a bite.

Pathfinder 2E: They have shapeshift as an action, and are vulnerable 5 to silvered weapons. Lycanthropy is induced on a failed save.

D&D 4E: they have regeneration 5, but silver stops their regeneration. They shapshift as a minor action, and they do extra damage against bloodied opponents. Instead of imparting lycnathropy as a disease they induce moon frenzy, which behaves a bit like the confusion spell (but does not end with the inflicted turning into a lycanthrope, interestingly). Diseases and curses in 4E were notoriously weak and ineffectual.

D&D 5E (2014): resistant to nonmagical or silvered weapons, but shapeshift as a standard action. Still have some flavor text that leans into making werewolves interesting in a traditional way. If bitten, on a failed save you just have lycanthropy now.

D&D 2024 (5.5): They gain 13 hit points and get a better AC, but lose any special resistance to ordinary damage, and silver is not even mentioned. They can shapeshift as a bonus action. Lycanthropy if bitten, but you have to reach zero hit points for it to take effect.

Tales of the Valiant: Werewolves are resistant to non-magical damage (silver is not mentioned here either). They induce lycanthropy as a curse after biting someone who fails a save.  

How about some of the other games out there? Let's see:

Swords & Wizardry Complete: mirrors AD&D 1E; so they can probably shapeshift as part of their turn, and are immune to nonmagical, non silvered attacks. Lycanthropy is automatic in an opponent reduced to 50% of their hit points by the werewolf.

Dragonbane: Werewolves hate silver as it deals full damage (along with fire) and messes with their senses. They take half damage from non-magical weapons. taking even 1 point of damage from the werewolf induces both paralysis (potency 9) and lycanthropy, and can only be cured with powerful magic or wolvesbane. And on its monster attacks a 6 induces a berserker frenzy in which your party probably dies!

Basic Roleplaying/Call of Cthulhu: They have regeneration, are immune to most damage (silvered weapons will do full damage and kill them on a serious wound, though), and taking any damage from a bite induces lycanthropy, which can maybe be avoided on a luck role if the bite also severs the limb that was bitten. Nice! The BRP statblock addresses magic and fire doing full damage as well.

Cypher System: they are level 4 creatures, which normally would mean 12 health but they have 24 health. They can cause lycanthropy if you are sufficiently injured to be reduced on the damage track. They take a long time (1D6 rounds) to shapeshift if caught in the act.

Dungeon Fantasy RPG (GURPS): These things are terrifying with damage resistance 15 against all attacks except silver (which does double damage and ignores the DR), and they regenerate 1 HP per second (GURPS combat rounds are 1 second long, so for D&D purposes that's 6 HPs of regeneration for a D&D round). Interestingly Dungeon Fantasy punts on the lycanthropy as a bite-induced curse with some flavor text about how the local temples try to keep that under control, and the rest of the statblock ignores it. GURPS Werewolves from the 3rd edition sourcebook of course does a lot more that I won't belabor here.

Fantasy AGE: They show up in the Bestiary sourcebook, and can induce the lycanthropy curse on a stunt, with the difficulty being based on how many stunt points are applied. The inflicted makes checks each night until the full moon; if they don't kick it before the full moon they go full lycanthrope. There's a section on lycanthrope vulnerabilities, but silver is mentioned as only one possibility, with the GM encouraged to customize for the campaign.

Mythras: Mythras punts on this one terribly and you need to go dig in the wolf section to get a sense of it. Ostensibly they are emulating older, more archaic notions of shapeshifters rather than more modern takes on lycanthropy, I guess? 

Mork Borg: It's actually a character class, the Cursed Skinwalker (in Feretory). You die, and your body is possessed by an animalistic presence, returning you to life as a cursed skinwalker. a bloody, skinless wolf is only one of your options. Tangentially werewolfish, but it wouldn't be Mork Borg if it was conventional now, would it? 

Okay, it was at this point that I ran out of energy (I was looking at The Fantasy Trip's take, which is to lump werewolves and vampires together as cursed/diseased species when mental fatigue just overwhelmed me). I have to say, if you want a werewolf to be scary, then there are two games that do this exceedingly well: Call of Cthulhu/BRP and Dragonbane (with honorable mention to GURPS/Dungeon Fantasy). The least scary edition of the the werewolf can be found in the current D&D Monster Manual for 2025, which is a real shame; it really lacks any of the color and vibrancy of the mythology it derives from. Curiously, they have done a better job with some other monsters in the book (medusa got a slight improvement imo, for example) so it is a shame to see them drop the ball here just because, apparently, someone might not want to be bothered with finding a silvered weapon? Weird. Very weird. Aside from D&D 2024, the next worst take on werewolves is (imo) Mythras, which puts the least amount of effort into the concept, delegating lycanthropy to a paragraph in the wolf statblock section.

This is making me want to consider Dragonbane for gaming in the very near future now, though. 

Mythras By Session Three - Glory to the Ranged Combat

 Much of session 3 in Mythras involved some exploration of a mysterious hidden elven passage (thought to be Elven, then they realized it might once have been until kobolds (see the kobolds in Book of Schemes, lovely little bastards) occupied the passages. The group ended up having an interesting long range battle with a gang of orcs pursuing an escaped prisoner later on, which helped teach everyone how ranged combat works, as well as reminding us that a bow takes 2 action points to reload, and also get some proper range on experimenting with charges. Also, when you spend an AP to evade you go prone, another thing we were forgetting before.

Mythras has a lot of entertainingly fiddly bits, is what I am saying. But its good, because you realize just how much depth the system offers for a surprisingly well modeled realistic combat experience. It shines a hard light on just how gamified and artificial combat feels in modern D&D style games these days.

An odd thing has happened to me, though. As I am diving deeper into rekindling my old brain cells remembering how to play Mythras and Runequest, I am suddenly developing a really intense craving to start playing GURPS again, too. GURPS is the only other system where you can portray highly accurate combat with the appropriate level of lethal gravitas. I like systems where the best way to survive combat is to avoid it, but if you do plan to go into combat.....do it smartly, and take advantage of all the resources you have to stay alive. GURPS was a darling of mine for so many years, and I unfortunately really got out of sync with running it, I think the last time I actually ran a game was.....hmmm....2013 or 2014 maybe?

Anyway, this is all good. 2025 is shaping up to be the year I get back to the game systems that make me think, and give me a discreetly different and interesting experience from the popular conventional games out there. 

The Ever Changing Gaming Prospects for 2025

So! The conundrum set off for me by my dislike of the design direction of the current edition of D&D has led to a close evaluation of options. It has led me down the following path:

Mythras - So I am actually running Mythras on Wednesdays now, which is not much of a stretch as I have run Mythras on and off over the last several years. My goal this time is to maybe, just maybe, stick with it for longer than a short campaign. We shall see; the problem is that my intrigue at the style/approach Mythras offers is often occluded by the more conventional approach D&D and Pathfinder take; or put another way, sometimes deep simulationism and verisimilitude are not as fun, long-term, as slightly gamified fun can offer.

D&D 5.5 - One of my friends sort of talked me into giving it a try, to look at the good options and maybe hold judgement on the bad bits until I see how it plays at the table (and over time). I decided this is a possibility, if I run a campaign that is new, built ground-up on the implied expectations of the new edition. I did devise a decent campaign outline so far, but I am still not feeling overly motivated to run D&D 5.5; my theory is that secretly, maybe even almost unconsciously, I am just really burned out on it all and this is as good an excuse as any to take a break. 

Dragonbane - I want to run this but I feel like it needs an expansion rulebook to hold long term interest, and I am regularly thwarted by my players' threats to roll all mallards. 

Pathfinder 2E Revised - this actually looks like the best overall prospect to me for continuing a D&D-like style of play without all the finnicky expectations of a new edition that foundationally change the core feel of the game. That said, Pathfinder 2E Remaster has its own special issues, not least of which is trying to figure out what monsters have been arbitrarily renamed or remastered into analogous replacements (e.g. gnolls now being kholos and such). But, aside from that, and my general irritation at may little design decisions in the system, it is still shaping up to maybe be the best choice for me. Except, of course. for.....

Tales of the Valiant - So it's basically D&D 5E, but with some nice revamps, and its main problem is not offering enough player choices (yet). But that aside, it is sort of the default no-brainer for me to continue gaming with. My group does seem deeply interested in D&D 5.5, but I think if I push hard enough I can get them to at least give this a shot. 

In digging through my collection I also found a few choice relics that I would like to play but which often get neglected when time to plan something comes up. Specifically:

Swords & Wizardry Revised - this lovely remaster of the S&W Complete rules, now with two additional rules/monster tomes filled with new content and classes are really my favorite iteration of the OSR (aside from OSE). Alas, my only problem with running it is that I am just not sure I could get most of my group to tolerate going to back to an old school state of mind. Last time I ran it (and OSE) I find about half the group would rather sit out a few sessions than bother to play an OSR game. Yeesh!

Forbidden Lands - I was really enjoying reading up and learning the intricacies of this Year Zero Engine based game and in looking at it again I realize it would be a fascinating experience to play. All I need to do is figure out how to "make it my own" in the sense that its default world assumptions are not always in alignment with what I want to do with it.....note that this is the exact same problem I now face with the new D&D books, they have shifted away from D&D as it has existed in prior editions (though maybe not as extreme as FL in terms of the implied world assumptions), but who knows, maybe I could find time to absorb the default setting and figure it all out as it is intended.

Cypher System's Godforsaken and More - Cypher System is a great game, and easy to run. I love a lot of it mechanical elements and focus on story. It has a good series of sourcebooks for supporting fantasy play. Maybe I should consider looking to it for my D&D-likes. It certainly is flexible enough to support the campaign settings I want to adapt to whatever system I pick.

GURPS Fantasy and Dungeon Fantasy - I have never been overly keen to run Dungeon Fantasy because it is essentially taking the core strength of GURPS (its generic, universal flexbility for realistic gaming) and wedded it with D&Disms. If I want D&D dungeon delving, there's always D&D. Same problem with Classic Fantasy for Mythras. But there is regular GURPS and the Fantasy sourcebook (and Magic). It's main problem is one of scope and work; I'd need to put a lot of effort into building stuff out for a game, and at my age I no longer have the time and interest to deal with GURPS's level of fiddliness (Mythras is on the edge of my tolerance level). But! I used to run GURPS all the time with a fairly low level of prep, though usually for modern day or SF games. Maybe I can find a happy middle ground here. Worth thinking about at some point.

Savage Worlds - With the Fantasy Companion and the Pathfinder for Savage Worlds books this would seem to be a no-brainer, but for various reasons I can't quite pinpoint easily, I was finding myself less than satisfied with the system in a recent Supers campaign I ran. I think the sense of gravitas and engagement with the mechanics were not there. Almost....dare I say it....too simplistic and swingy for my tastes, although maybe also my fault for picking a genre (comic books) my group was not terribly into or familiar with. The net result was disppointing, at least to me. So maybe doing fantasy with SW is actually a better bet as the group is most definitely more familiar with this genre and the system in that sense.

Okay! So enough pondering on this for now. 

Death Bat's 2025 Gaming Plans: Dragonbane, Mothership, Savage Worlds and the Usual Suspects

Here it is! The short and sweet outline of what I plan to do for 2025....at least in theory:

Part I: The things I am certain to be running this year:

Dragonbane

Starting next week we are going to finally start a campaign in Dragonbane. I am really looking forward to this, as until now if you wanted to play BRP Fantasy, the only real options were: find a copy of the out of print (albeit POD) Magic World, customize Runequest, or finnagle Mythras. Actually those are all good options, but Dragonbane has a astyle, character and odd mix of OSR and modernity that resonates well with me. I am looking forward to this.

Savage Worlds

We started Savage Worlds this weekend, using Supers/Horror mashup for a sort of Planetary/Hellboy/Horror Comics inspired campaign. I think this is going to be a fun, long prospect for a campaign as I get to lean in to my secret obsession I never usually write or talk about: the comic genre and all its quirks! I also plan to offer up more SW genres down the road, and am really looking forward to the new Science Fiction Companion when it ships in February.

Mothership

I plan to run more Mothership intermittently throughout 2025, and may warm up to a short or long campaign again at some point. I realize with Mothership it is as much about the player investment in the experience as anything, so how much Mothership I get to run will depend on the group I assemble.

Part II: The things I expect to run or try to run this year, but there are caveats:

D&D 5.75

The new D&D is on hold until the Monster Manual comes out. I have to see how the final tome in the revised books looks so I can assess my feelings on the new revision, and how it all comes together. Right now, using existing monsters with new characters makes the characters feel a but overpowered and I can't tell if that's by design, or because we're missing the appropriately revamped monsters to accompany them.

Tales of the Valiant

I really want to run this, but I need to detox a bit from having run way too much 5E in 2024. If the final book in the D&D 5.75 set doesn't really live up to expectations, I may just insist that any future 5E in 2025 be via Tales of the Valiant.

GURPS

I would love to get a chance to play GURPS again, but it's thunder may be stolen by Savage Worlds in 2025, which is honestly a better fit for my regulars. I may get to run GURPS with my son and some new players, though, if I can find them.

Mork Borg and Vast Grimm (and Maybe Death In Space)

This is all part of the Mork Borg universe. I anticipate running more one shots and short 2-3 session games here at some point, especially if this year is not monopoloized by protracted D&D campaigns. That said, which flavor and variant (and I also just got Ronin, another Mork Borg spin off that is amazing) depend on mood, I guess.

Part III: The Fever Dreams

I can sum the unlikely candidates up like this: Runequest (because I can't quite invest in Glorantha); Mythras (because as soon as I start diving in to relearn it I remember why I stop); Vaesen (I really want to, but the cute approach to the art is at odds with my ability to convey a horror atmosphere); then there's Pathfinder 2E, which I actually fully expect I may be playing in as a player, but do not think I will get around to GMing this year, but who knows! I often say that then prove myself wrong for at least one session. Also Traveller, which I wouldn't mind running, but I need a shift in my group dynamics before I will consider it (e.g. honest die rollers only please). That last one applies to a lot of these games, actually. 

I didn't mention Cypher System because I can't quite pin down what I want to do with it, but that could change in 2025. I also can't quite bring myself to offer it up right now (despite loving the system) because the die rolls are all player facing, and when you may have one or more suspects in your group who like to cheat on their die rolls, it can be very demoralizing. Yes, I likely need to have a chat with the specific person(s) about this. If you wonder why I don't just kick them, keep in mind I am gaming with a group of players who have in some cases been together as gamers and friends for 18 or more years, so these are not just randos, or people I don't know (or want to know), or pickup gamers. So at some point an honest talk is a better approach. Also, we're all really old now, and so one would think age would make us better people, both on how to approach this and (yes) why on earth would anyone at this stage cheat? It is frustrating....but it is not like 20+ years ago when when the cheating was generally unheard of among those I gamed with, as we all took the experience more earnestly. So yeah, I do need to decide what to do about this and how to approach it, and maybe I am doing so in too nuanced a fashion, but age has a way of doing that to you I guess.

Anyway, See you all on the flip side in 2025! Some predictions to come next. 

Deathbat's Goals and Predictions for 2024

 Well the new year is here and along with it comes a slew of blogs and vlogs talking about new year predictions, goals and rampant, wild speculation. For my part of this, I am going to lump my post into a list of predictions and goals for myself:

Goal: run Mothership - easily achieved! I am starting the new campaign next Saturday (sesh zero was last Saturday, obstructed by work).

Prediction: D&D One will release but D&D Beyond will be in poor shape for an "early access" portal of online graphics-focused gaming - I actually think that we won't be anywhere close to seeing a properly ready product on D&D Beyond in the way most gamers imagine it will need to be. We're going to see a product that only hints at that demo WotC showed us, instead.

Goal: run Dragonbane - also easily achieved! I will plan to run this, probably on Saturday, after the Mothership campaign.

Prediction: Tales of the Valiant will arrive and be a big hit, may eat in to Pathfinder's market share but won't steal casuals from D&D. Much as I'd like to imagine it could, I don't see it happening. But I do believe that Kobold Press is well known for putting out good products, and that will garner attention within the more "core" RPGer crowd that may be seeking a D&D alternate. It's target of 5E compatibility will make it an easier sell.

Goal: run Traveller! Now that the newer release books are all in my hands I have a keen interest in building out a new Traveller campaign, and I might consider using The Great Rift set to do it. Probably a goal for later this year due to my interrupting the flow with Mothership in January.

Prediction: We will get D&D-like (what we used to call heartbreaker) fatigue in 2024 as numerous other D&D-inspired games finally release in response to the revamped D&D plus the post OGL kerfuffle. Examples include Tales of the Valiant, of course, and the second set of Pathfinder 2E revised book, but Shadowdark is a thing, as is a 2nd edition of 13th Age allegedly supposed to release some day, and there are a fair number of other D&D-based post-OGL products named last year which I recall as being scheduled for release this year.

Goal: Try to get at least 2 posts out every week this year on the blog. I'll try! It is a good writing exercise, this as always has been less about writing for an audience (yeah, may explain some posts lol) and more about writing for myself to keep my own interest engaged.

Prediction: We will not see a lot of new IP or gaming properties this year as the market is too knotted around D&D at the moment. Once the new D&D books and whatever happens with D&D Beyond finally drop, we will see a sag in the market for a bit, and possibly some waning interest over time, followed by maybe some more creative endeavours in 2025. This will be my "bold" prediction. Will see if it comes to pass next year.

Goal: pace myself. I am honestly getting older, so I keep reminding myself, and it can be hard to run two games a week these days while managing a business and family. I need to keep that in mind and not be shy about letting my gamer cohorts know that sometimes Wednesday or Saturday nights are just not good for gaming. Also, whenever possible, I need to foster more local IRL gaming because the VTT experience is just never really going to cut it for me. 

Okay, that's it for my gaming predictions and goals of 2024! I wish I had more of a non-D&D sort for predictions, but it's hard to come up with anything noteworthy. To that end:

--I could say "Chaosium will give up on Rivers of London" for example, but that's hardly a prediction and more just an observation that they backed a really esoteric IP (for the states, at least) and didn't do enough promotion. 

--Or I could speculate that we'll reach January 1 2025 and still be waiting for the third Esper Genesis book to arrive (I am going to call that one now), but that's mostly just a recognition that something on the business/publishing end of the publisher for that book series has gone very south and that I suspect the real reason that they haven't produced the book is lack of funds. 

--Likewise I could predict that Steve Jackson Games may announce a new edition of GURPS this year but I doubt it; I think the core developers/writers at SJ Games are too old and tired to take up the mantle of a new edition, and GURPS has languished in its own special corner of the cottage industry for so long that no new blood exists to come take up the task. 

--I could also predict 13th Age 2nd Edition won't see release this year, because they probably want to wait until well after D&D's next edition has saturated its way through the audience and generated a new group of expats for a different variant edition, but who really knows, Pelgrane Press publishes to the toot of its own horn. 

--I could also predict that Pathfinder, despite now having better, more organized and comprehensive books out, will flounder in the market due to the perceived buy-in being too high for most gamers, but it will still appeal to the subset of D&Ders who crave a bit more dynamic mechanical flair in their games. We'll see!

Anyway, Happy New Year!  

Five Game Systems I Plan to Visit in Lieu of The Big Two (D&D and Pathfinder 2E)

 Okay, there's nothing wrong with either Pathfinder 2E or Dungeons & Dragons as rule systems....well, there may be issues,* obviously, but this is the year that I really want to do something different, other than play these two systems. Last year I enjoyed Call of Cthulhu (always a good staple), and Mothership reared its head. OSE was fun for a couple mini campaigns, and there are no doubt other games I ran in 2022 that I can't remember at the moment.

For 2023, I may wish to enjoy some fantasy gaming that's not the two top dogs. Here's the list I've compiled (akin to my SF list I posted a week or so back):

Forbidden Lands - first up, the Free League Year Zero Engine powered fantasy boxed set was once really hard to track down. I now have the core and all the supplements, as well as a couple sets of the lovely dice (you don't need special dice to run this, but I like having them anyway). I feel very comfortable with the system mechanically; it's got a nice reductionist approach to skills and talents with an elegant and distinct method of dice resolution. It's focus makes characters both pragmatic and effective but also fragile and always at risk. You are practically expected to engage with the world; building fortresses and settlements and finding mentors makes improvement through experience much easier, so there's an active mechanic for players to want to forge their own path in the world. The default setting is interesting enough for me to consider using it as-is, something that is honestly very hard for me to do with all of my own game worlds I like advancing in storyline.....but the good news is its written in a manner that lets me use it as I wish, with my own setting if I so desire. And it has a lot of fan support on Free League's page on Drivethrurpg.com. 

 Savage Worlds Using the Pathfinder Expansions or Fantasy Companion - The as yet soon-to-be-printed Fantasy Companion is a revision that takes a queue from the Pathfinder for Savage Worlds books. Its also compatible with those books, which means that you can run a lot of fantasy now with Savage Worlds, and itr finally can be said to have a lot of easy to use support for fantasy gaming. Savage Worlds' SWADE edition is a great mechanical update and restatement of an already fine game system, and I know my group is interesting in trying this all out....so I should probably prioritize this one.

Dragonbane (Drakar och Demoner) - This lovely kickstarter is a reimagining/revision to a classic era Swedish RPG that spawned out of a translated edition of the 1982 Magic World from Chaosium. Free League is in charge, and you can tell fom the design, but given I love their stuff so much its a small wonder I am keen on this. The print edition is not coming out until late in the year, but the working draft/playtest copy is quite functional and I definitely want to run this for a short test game soon. Plus, playable mallards that aren't from Glorantha!!!! I secretly hope this spawns more content and turns in to the spiritual Magic World successor we all deserve.

Those are the big three. I have contemplated to varying degrees the possibility of Mythras, but for various reasons I am stymied by the possibility, chiefly with the weird character sheet on Roll20. I then look to BRP's Magic World, but while I know we could have some fun with MW, it is am imperfect tome with a lot of errata (which did get in to the PDF, I think, but still). 

There is  a strong fourth contender, although I know the initial learning curve (mostly in PC generation) is steep: Dungeon Fantasy RPG (powered by GURPS)! I might indeed propose this last option, I have a deep and abiding love for GURPS and have gone far too long without running it. It is possible I might instead propose some GURPS historical gaming finally....I was working a lot on some GURPS Egypt campaign ideas last year, and those are still lurking in my files, waiting to be unleashd. 

*Okay yeah I am playing in a Pathfinder 2E game right now that reminded me in a hard way of why I don't want to run it anymore again.

Gaming in July - A Weird and Unexpected Resurgence of D&D 5E and Lots of Time as a Player

 I haven't posted in quite a while, failing my (very mild) commitment to blog more often! I suspect the days of blogs are certainly dimmed, if not over, as vlogs become all the rage, but I just can't bring myself to even entertain the idea, I feel hideously unphotogenic, let alone "video material." 

For July, it looks like my post-vacation fugue turned from "what game will grab my interest?" into "Dungeons & Dragon 5E kind of does all I want for this particular genre of gaming." Part of this is no doubt due to the fact that I am only running one actual live game right now....and when  only have to focus as a GM on a single campaign, I find myself more creatively energized, less spent, and genuinely interested. As a result the campaign has been chugging along with lots of weirdness as I try to see what my players decide to do with their wayward characters.

I haven't abandoned other game prospects, though. I have a campaign for Call of Cthulhu in the works that takes the PCs back to a weird northwest set in 1812, to follow up on a strange campaign twist that happened in another modern day CoC campaign I ran back in 2018. We've been waiting for follow up on this one for years now, so good to get to it again.

I have also been slowly (very slowly) prepping campaign ideas for Mutant Year Zero and Savage Worlds Pathfinder. The latter languishes a bit due to my persistent desire to keep doing D&D 5E but maybe we'll jump in to it soon, I dunno. My Saturday game was postponed while my cohort in GMing for that night stepped up to plate and has been running the Extinction Curse (I think that's it) Adventure path for Pathfinder 2nd Edition. It's been fun to play, but I have been amused by the fact that I now think Pathfinder 2E is actually easier to GM than it is to play....and also more rewarding. As a player I am having fun, but the game's needless layers of complexity in character design are palpable when compared to D&D 5E, Savage Worlds, or even GURPS if I am being honest.

As a player I am also in a live game of Dungeon Crawl Classics a buddy of mine is running (the randomness of it all is a lot of fun, very core and basic but makes for fast-paced and entertaining gaming), Friday night Gaslight Cthulhu which will soon be rotated with a family-focused Dungeon Crawl Classics game my wife is trying to put together (I am interested to see how this goes, her interpretation of therewith!) and sooner or later we will get another Mothership game going, I imagine. Maybe.....I have some SF ideas I am experimenting with....which leads in to:

I'm still working on campaign ideas and stuff for GURPS, too. I don't know when or where I will spring these ideas, or on what hapless group, but I have a strong vision for the historical Egyptian campaign now, along with a fair amount of detail on a prospective exploration-based GURPS Space campaign. 

Getting to Observe Gaming from the Other Side of the Table

 Playing a lot more recently has afforded me a chance to think about what it is that I have been enjoying (and not enjoying) out of RPGs recently, with the added advantage of feeling less pressure to prep material for games ongoing. As of right now, I am many sessions in to a Gaslight era Call of Cthulhu 7E campaign, three sessions in to a Pathfinder 2E campaign, and I have just wrapped a D&D 5E campaign (which will eventually return), with tentative plans to start a Pathfinder for Savage Worlds campaign to try it out when I return from summer vacation. Meanwhile Mothership is there, and we play it when all parties can find themselves in the right moment to set the time aside....but that's really tough, it turns out, to do more than once a month.

So here's what I've noticed so far:

First and most important, as a player I can be picky, or at least I used to be, but these days I am just enjoying not having to drive the game forward so am happy to play the role, regardless of the game subject. So while I might have some notions of what I'd like to play (and I will be straight up on this, my player interests are still trapped in the early nineties in terms of what sort of game experience would make me happy) I am at this point just happy to be playing so the scenarios in action are good enough. Likewise, I applaud my cohorts who are currently GMing, as I feel their pain, acutely.

Now, I love Call of Cthulhu as both player and Keeper, so I have no issues there. We did experiment with Pulp Cthulhu for a time (not my fave), but its since been largely redacted as I think the Keeper realized it didn't really mesh so well as one might like. Pulp Cthulhu exists, and there are no doubt strong advocates for it, but I felt like playing with the Pulp rules was putting the game on "cheat" mode a bit and am happy to see it dialed back to more normal Cthulhu rules these days.

Lesson learned: I do like it when the game is tougher and expects you to know that being careful is important.

Now, in three sessions of Pathfinder 2E I have simultaneously come to appreciate that PF2E was most definitely written by game designers who wanted to both make the GM's life easier and put uppity players in their place. They also were obsessed with balance, to some weird degrees. And the action point system...it feels like its a malevolent social experiment designed to tempt players to poke fate and learn the hard way that second and third iterative attacks, at least in PF2E, are borderline traps, quick pathways to failure. 

It's all kind of interesting to see this not from the angle of the GM, for whom I will argue the mechanical aspects of PF2E are actually simpler than the player facing mechanics, but to really feel it hammered home that the game weighs odds against the players every step of the way. We're even using a published Pathfinder adventure path, and the GM is very by the book, so I know he's running the scenarios exactly as presented. It's brutal, and part of my likes it, but another part of me realizes that Pathfinder 2E, from both sides of the screen, has some profound flaws in design. 

I have already decided that while I will continue to play PF2E, no problem, I am done with it as a GM (well, in theory)....I just think there are so many other, better game systems out there that fit my own style and tastes better. I thought PF2E would cut it, but over time my love of it has soured badly, I guess.

With no immediate games that I need to plan for in the future (except for Savage Pathfinder which is in the can and waiting for when I am ready to run it), I have had ample time to think about what I really want to do with the many game books I have purely for my own amusement. So far, there has been one clear, out-of-the-park winner: GURPS. I've been designing stuff for a hypothetical GURPS Space campaign, filling out NPCs and pregens for my planned GURPS Egypt campaign, finally taking a serious look at what I could do with Dungeon Fantasy RPG, and reading through the many, many PDFs of GURPS I have acquired over the years. 

I'm also still intrigued to do more with D&D 3.5 down the road, but when and where I have no idea. Both D&D 3.5 and GURPS appear to be calling back to a sweet spot in gaming for me, a period from roughly 1992-2006* during which I ran mostly one of these two systems, only occasionally breaking out into other territories. My middle agedness is showing, I guess. 

Ultimately, to run GURPS again I need to get buy-in from my players. Some of them I can count on, others I think might see the perceived complexity of GURPS as a nightmare from which they can never escape. GURPS comes from an older era of design that assumed a level of focus and attention which I think is hard for a lot of gamers (anyone, really) to sustain today. If I run it, I am going to need to do all the heavy lifting at first, including providing lots of pregens, or restrict them to GURPS Lite for a while. We'll see.

Still, we may be able to play some games on our lengthy vacation that is about to start, and I am debating dragging GURPS along for personal fun, and Savage Worlds along because it will be easy to teach to the family members (mostly kids along with my son). Savage Worlds has a wonderful simplicity to it, and its inherent physicality with the card decks, bennie chips, dice as stats and so forth make it a fun game to teach kids. But who knows....usually there's never any actual time on these summer vacations to game (its just me deluding myself) so I should really just pack a handful of things I think I might actually find time to read. We shall see.

*For a lot of that time it was still AD&D 2E, but it was the AD&D 2E with tons of bloated splatbooks and the "2.5" rulebooks, all of which desperately made us crave a cleaned up, newer ruleset, which of course WotC eventually graced us with. And for 2000-2003ish it was the 3.0 version of those rules, which I loved dearly even if I can't go back to them after the 3.5 fixed so much.

SECOND NOTE: If you look at my post prior to this, outlining five campaign ideas, notice how while those are all fine ideas for any old campaign, they would be really cool in a GURPS campaign. Just saying.....I'm not kidding when I say I have that GURPS thing on the brain.

Egyptian Campaign Plans Part II

 First off, I need to check out Akhamet because it sounds interesting and is for 5E; I had no idea it existed. I will be honest, I only tend to focus on books with POD options at Drivethruprg.com and filter PDF-only products entirely. I suspect that Onebookshelf's clientele fall into two categories, one being the group I am in (likes a print copy) and the other being very adjusted to using PDFs. I use PDFs, but I find them better for utility and look-up, but terrible for reading enjoyment.

Anyway, I have narrowed down the plan a bit: first, I investigated the Cypher System Historical Genre section, all four pages of it, and realized that it might not be bad for a one-off or something that could be fun for a short period, but as my instincts suggested, a long term campaign would be better suited with a system that had more granularity to make ordinary heroes interesting. 

After ruling out Open Quest 3 only because of a lack of Roll20 support, I did notice that BRP itself has options in Roll20. But....knowing my group, the best option here would be to turn on the historical options for Call of Cthulhu 7th edition and go with that. This may still be the best option, but my initial idea of doing GURPS but with an intro campaign using pregens has likely won out. 

The motivation for GURPS Egypt with pregens is pretty basic: it lets me as GM work out a range of likely and interesting characters for the players to choose from, and I could still let them customize within that framework/template if desired. It may help the players if they are unsure of what to make, or how to make it. 

I used to play GURPS near constantly in the 90's. It was, by 3rd edition, the go-to system for all of my non D&D and non Cyberpunk gaming. I ran Call of Cthulhu mostly through 3rd edition, but only ran a few short games of CoC 4th edition....but I ran a ton of Cthulhu Mythos campaigns using GURPS. My time with GURPS was unshaken, even when GURPS 4th Edition came out, which had a more procedural and organized feel to it despite being perhaps less organic and measured in its opening doses. For example, in 3rd edition core it was still feasible to use a random roller option to get a quick character going, but not so with GURPS 4E. Luckily, when the baseline is "realistic historical" I can still hand a new player GURPS Lite and advise them to stick to that until they are ready to graduate to the Characters book. Whether or not GURPS Characters will entice or intimidate depends entirely upon how efficiently the player assimilates the book's organizational structure and how afraid they are of some point buy math. Most players, once they realize how insanely flexible GURPS is by design, and how much it supports design options which have weight that are not all about combat (and also how much it can support combat stuff if you so desire) really dig in to it....it's just that first shocking moment of realizing you need to really think about char gen for a bit first that is tough, followed by the risk of decision paralysis. GURPS Lite is a really efficient tool for overcoming those initial issues.

Once we have had an initial exploratory campaign with pregens (tentatively I have some ideas for a generational campaign that picks up a plot that stretches over multiple dynasties and eras), then we can proceed with more freedom in character design and see how it goes. Or, worst case, the opening test scenario and pregens are as far as we get and then we move on. Who knows!

My plan right now is to start with the 1st Dynasty of an upper and lower Nile united under Narmer, an ancient Khemit in which Khanaan is a client state, and there are the groundwork of tales that will in later centuries be mythologized as the adventures of a man named Menes, who might historically be either Narmer or his son, but who in the fictionalized Egypt could very well be a cipher for the deeds of the PCs themselves. More details to come! 

How to Run Historical Games

Last week I talked about criteria for the best type of RPG for historical gaming. For the "best of the best" I identified GURPS, followed to lesser degrees by Mythras, BRP and Call of Cthulhu. The latter of these four works best when you are going to "historical, but with mythos" of course, but the key takeaway was that for good historical gaming you want a system which sticks to a "realistic" baseline, emphasizes interesting ordinary traits in characters, does not require redacting significant content that impacts the game experience (e.g. removing a magic system core to the game's themes) and has support material. GURPS is hands-down the winner here, but Mythras comes in a close second along with BRP and CoC.

Remember it's a Group Venture

This time around I thought I'd talk about some of my experiences running actual historical games. A key problem with historical gaming is that it can mean different things to different people, so the first and foremost bit of advice I can offer up is: talk to your players about your ideas, and make sure that they are both on board with the concept and excited about it. There is nothing that kills a game faster than a GM who's grand vision for an esoteric deep-dive into historical tales around Roman General Riothamus are thwarted by a group of players who were expecting T.H. White's King Arthur. Likewise, a group of players who feel like they are being forced to experience a historical re-enactment of either actual events or the GM's personal fan fiction on a historical moment will lead to inevitable disappointment and campaign collapse. 

Put another way: the motto of any GM, regardless of intent, should always be to remember that it's a group venture and the group should as a whole be having fun. This doesn't mean that if your regular group is not in to what you plan to do that you should ditch it, but it does mean if you are married to an idea for a campaign you should seek out the time, place and players who will find it worth their time to explore the idea in question.

Establishing Familiarity and the Economy of Information

Taking to the players about their expectations for an historical campaign is a good idea. Looking in to your own heart about what speaks to you about the particular historical setting is also a good idea. I once played in a campaign set in an era of feudal Japan, but the GM, despite having a great internal vision of the campaign, wasn't that good at conveying details or explaining the "why" of things to the players. As a result, we had a really shallow experience with the game, unclear as to why some things were happening or what we were expected to do. We persevered because we enjoyed gaming together, but it was a short lived game as the vision was neither conveyed nor understood.

If you decide to go for a historical period in which you are very familiar, figure out how familiar your players are with that time and work out some plans around their familiarity or lack thereof. Take one of these strategies based on your players, which is already assuming that regardless of their understanding of the historical period they have already expressed interest in your pitch:

Players Not Familiar: this means you will need to think about your setting's relevant details and focus on the things which will be interesting or important (preferably both). If you know your players are keen on learning about the historical period as part of the experience great, but otherwise try to avoid narrating it like you're a National Geographic Special or in an academic reading; the same rules with actual fictional worlds apply: details that don't matter really do not matter, and details which the characters would never know the players also would not need to know. If you have some great bit you want to talk about on the historical backdrop that isn't relevant, save it for the after-game talk, but keep it out of the actual play experience.

Players Familiar: everything above counts, twice as much, but with two caveats: the reason you don't wax philosophical on the historical details that don't matter to the plot is because they could derail the game if you get into a discussion of irrelevant minutiae with another scholar of the period. The second caveat is: that player at the table who is familiar is now a valuable resource, so use him or her. If they have some information that might help clarify the moment, take advantage of that so long as it doesn't violate the need for an economy of information (use only that which is relevant). 

On rare occasion you might run something set in a time period for which a player is far more familiar with and vocal than you might want them to be. In these cases try to establish proactively that extraneous details are best kept for the after-game chat. That said, still take advantage of their familiarity with details that lend to the moment, but (to take a totally random example that happened to me in college) ask them to refrain from elaborate lessons on how Vikings saddled their horses (unless your group is like really in to that).

Narrating Detail as a Story Aspect for Entertainment First, Enlightenment Optional

Part of good historical gaming is setting the theme and mood for something exotic and also established in the real world, or it's recollection of such. Much of what I previously mentioned is aimed at the idea of extraneous, irrelevant or unnecessary information; it is not helpful to the story of the moment, or it is packaged in a manner which brings the narrative or gameplay to a standstill. That said, lots of such content when relevant or important to the moment should be presented. Just make sure you do it in a manner consistent with the goals of "presenting useful information" and "establishing the flavor of the scene."

For example: if I set a game that takes place in an early dynastic Egyptian court,  I will want to include information and descriptions which establish for the players useful images and data on the situation. If they are playing Egyptian characters then they will need some basic groundwork on what the court etiquette is, if it's relevant. Establishing customs and practices in this context might be useful, but it works best if you incorporate it into the description of events as part of the story rather than a break out lecture. You might be tempted to send this information to the players beforehand, but I don't advise it unless they request such; too much info sent from a GM without request is not fun, it's homework. I strongly believe in the axiom of "show, don't tell" though since RPGs require a narration you are in fact narrating the "show" part. 

You can use skills to gatekeep info, of course. Players who have no etiquette training or courtly graces experience can be told information from the perspective of those who find what they see as unfamiliar and intimidating; nobility engaging in practices which they find awe inspiring or terrifying to simple commoners. But if the group consists of nobility then the information should be imparted in a manner which helps them set the scene and also understand that what is happening is familiar to their characters, if not them.

In my experience, asking players to tell you what they do in situations like this is often counter-productive. The players who did their homework or have the interest will likely volunteer such data. Others may welcome a GM who doesn't force them to explain in precise detail how to saddle a horse. I experienced that as a player once...it was an ironic moment, as I grew up on a ranch in real life and could saddle and ride a horse, but could not satisfactorily explain it to the GM, so my character (who should have such knowledge regardless of the player) failed at the task. Giant Lose on that scenario.

Using Actual Historical Events as Underpinnings vs. Springboards

There are two thoughts on how to handle documented history: it's written in stone, or it's not. Your players can either find a way to kill Hitler, or Hitler and Eva are destined to be found dead in a bunker. How you choose to do this is important to your initial story pitch. I, for example, lose a metric ton of interest in a historical game that is about to dump the actual historical underpinnings; if I wanted to play an alternative history game then I'd look to something like GURPS Infinite Worlds; if I want historical, I want it with all the gorgeous depth and details of actual history. For this purpose, we will assume that for actual historical gaming we stick to actual historical events.

This poses a problem though: what if your players try to kill Hitler? Well, there are a few ways to handle this: first and simplest is, if they can figure out how to do it, let them. The game stops being historical after that point, but it's still a fun experience. The one thing I feel you don't want to do is impede them. If you've created a scenario where they have the will and the way to accomplish something, it is ultimately better to recognize that you made a scenario which allowed it and proceed accordingly; literally anything else you do that stops the action will feel like GM intervention or rail-roading.

The better solution is to think carefully about scenarios that would prove interesting that don't deal directly with historical lynchpins and allow the players as much agency as possible within that context. For example, rather than design a scenario where the players feel they have the will, means and need to find and murder Hitler in 1938 instead look at other scenarios that deviate from such trains of thought. There are no shortage of lesser historical characters and plenty of "closely similar" personalities you can populate a setting with that will allow for an interesting story while letting the established historical backdrop play out in the background.

Another approach is to look for hotspots in history it is not as clear exactly who did what and how it all specifically went down. I actually think World War II is a terrible genre for actual gaming because you have to slice it very thin to find moments in which PCs can do things not already well established. You can still find moments, though: a campaign centered around D-Day and Operation Overlord can lead to some great fun, all while using the historical record as a backdrop. 

Other historical periods can explode with wide open opportunities for an historical experience that explores the gaps in our understanding. The case of the real King Arthur is a fine example: you could set an entire campaign around the sparse but insightful details of Riomanthus and run a campaign which strive for historical authenticity while also diving into a "what if" of that time period with little effort; the GM who finds creative ways to reference later legends of Arthur by weaving the campaign around the origins of such references gets bonus points. If Riomanthus was the inspiration for Arthur, then who was the inspiration for Merlin, Nimue, Lancelot, Morgan le Fay and the rest? Historical analogs for all of these characters could exist in such a telling, and would manage to walk a fine line between historical setting and creative extrapolation without going over any particular line. 

The key thing to remember is that the further back you go the more your historical context will rely on interpretations of the material available, extrapolations from the pieces of the picture, and the less it will be structured around well established facts. The campaign I am working on now, for example, will be focused on a narrow time period during the reign of King Akhenaten, chiefly because it is both a really interesting period in Egyptian history, but also because thanks to the discovery of the Amarna Letters, which were missives to and from neighboring polities over a few decades, we have a remarkable (but rough) picture of the political goings-ons during a hotbed of activity during the rise and fall of an extremely contentious Pharaoh who attempted to replace an entire belief system with a new, highly abstract form of monotheism. 

This gets to the last key point:

History as Backdrop

Alluded to above, this distinction is important: when you design an historical adventure or campaign, think carefully about whether the subject of the campaign will interweave with historical elements, or whether the historical context will be a backdrop for adventures driven entirely by the players and "local, possibly unrelated" events. 

A friend of mine ran a fantastic historical campaign set roughly around 1,000 AD during the Crusades. It's driver was a macguffin: a piece of wood allegedly believed to be a piece of Christ's cross, a holy relic of incredible worth if it is truly what it is claimed to be. The characters we played were mostly survivors in one form or another, the sorts of characters that would find cause to take interest in the relic, either out of belief or profit. It was a great game, and it provided an elaborate setting backdrop grounded in historical verisimilitude without either overwhelming us with detail or derailing with any actual historical details from the time. It felt like a thing that could have happened but no one wrote it down so it was lost to time, in essence.

When you design games like this, you do so with an eye often toward the more common people of a given period. Not all ideas for historical scenarios will work like this, but if you want your players to have the greatest agency this is the best way to do it.

Guidance to Players: Pregens and Player Guides

One thing you can do, particularly if this is a short campaign or single session event, is provide pregenerated characters. This has a few benefits: it saves time for the players, gives them a range of choices that the GM has pre-vetted as relevant to the intended campaign, and ideally you as GM should have twice as many pregens rolled up as there are players so they still have some agency in picking and choosing from the various backgrounds and personality types to suit to taste. 

If your campaign is geared to be longer (more than 5 sessions) and your players are of sufficient creative mindsets then you will probably want to provide a campaign precis instead. This is not quite the same as sending them a bunch of character homework; more like a quick summary of advised guidelines on character generation, including some basic guidance on character types you allow/recommend and where to look up more information if they want it. GURPS is great in this regard, because you can usually point them to the relevant sourcebook and tell them to follow the guidelines there. Failing that, something which provides some design focus is helpful, and be ready to elaborate on request. For example, in my planned "Fall of Aten" campaign sett around 1338-1333 BC, I might offer up that they can collectively choose to be with one of these factions, but that the players as a whole must belong to the same faction once decided on: 

Syrians (belonging to the powerful northern cluster of Syrian states which stand in opposition to Egypt)

Habiru (rebels and raiders in the southern client states, sponsored by the Syrians to undermine Egyptian rule)

Men of Amurru (servants of king Aziru, who find themselves embroiled in betrayal as AZiru journeys to meet with Pharaoh Akhenaten in the new capitol of Akhetaten, only to be held as a political prisoner; later released and betrayed by his own kin)

Egyptians (either aligned with or against the divisive Pharaoh Akhenaten, either working with him to secure long unattained power in a new administration and form of governance, or quietly aligned against him and seeking ways to bring back the old forms of power)

...and if I'm feeling like something different, they could be optionally part of the Shardana, one of the sea people groups who were early coastal raiders in the region, plaguing Syrian and Egyptian ports alike. That's not a good fit for the direction I want to go so I'd exclude it, but any of the first four options above make an excellent basis for campaigns.

They key here is to find out what the players find most interesting....and go with that. But if you as GM only find certain ways to be interesting or work for your vision, make sure you restrict it to what you know and can do; if I for example felt I did not have enough context to run a campaign that might not make it out of Syria then I shouldn't put that option on the table; or alternatively, if my vision really involved exploring the delicate balance of Egyptian court in a social and religious upheaval, then my player guide should narrow down to more specific details, focusing on social station and factions within that kingdom alone.

Secondarily, some guidance on what systems are in place for the game you are using is also relevant. If I use GURPS but allow a low level of magic and will let players choose from Ritual and Path magic only, they need to know that. The more divergent your ruleset is from the baseline discussed in the prior article, the more work you have cut out for you. For example, if you were to use D&D for historical gaming you'd need to provide a long list of exclusions and maybe design some new thematic archetypes and backgrounds appropriate to the setting. Doable, sure....but in this day and age, there's a game for every flavor and that's easier for me to work with.

Ultimately, running an historical campaign or scenario is going to take more work than using fictional settings, as you can't just start inventing stuff without context. A good historical setting requires some effort and research, but it's payoff when executed well is amazingly fun. The last thing can advise is: do not get too caught up in the details if it is not relevant to the fun of the moment! The ultimate objective is still to have a good time, and you can do so without necessarily getting every little fact straight. If something does end up being anachronistic or historically out of context, but your players don't notice it, that's a perfect "after the game" topic for conversation. Keeping track of every tiny historical detail can be hell at times, and it's inevitable you might screw up....but roll with it, and figure out a way to retcon later if needed.

If you're going to do some historical gaming, I also recommend that you secure a copy of GURPS Low-Tech, and use it (regardless of what system you use), it's a great game-focused resource.

Okay, that's all for now! Maybe a Part II if I think of more things to write about.

(edit: fixed a date issue, apparently had a 2 where I needed a 1 and did not notice!) 

Historical Gaming - Best Traits in a Game System

In this 46th year of role-playing games as a formal hobby we've got all sorts of fine tuned, precision level gaming engines out there for all sorts of things. Recently though I've been really getting back in to a deep dive on historical readings and the thought of running historical games has become all consuming. I've got campaign ideas ranging from revisiting my Mesopotamian campaign set around 2330 BC to a deep dive into England around 650 AD on up to my particularly strong obsession: the rise and fall of the rule of Akhenaten in Egypt from 1351 to 1334 BC. This is an especially interesting time period since a vast trove of diplomatic missives called the Amarna Letters exist, and these include a great deal of interesting insight into what was going on in this particular period of time. Never mind the revolutionary...some might say heretical....upheaval in religious tradition that Akhenaten implemented; there are all kinds of interesting stuff going on in this period in history.

Anyway, when I want to play something that involves exploring dark holes in the ground while fighting monsters both D&D 5E and Pathfinder 2nd Edition work really well for that. When I want even more cinematic excitement in that same vein 13th Age is a good choice. When I want science fiction Traveller is a basic default. So what is the best default for historical gaming?

A key element of a good ruleset for a specific genre must be that it supports what you want out of it. If the rulesystem provides only nominal coverage toward the genre then you may find yourself missing elements you crave. For my purposes, I define the historical genre like this:

Verisimilitude is Critical

Historical settings and themes work best out of necessity when the game system's underlying mechanics support the ideas of the real world. There are many systems which support cinematic or literary storytelling, but a suitable historical experience must at least feel like it is grounded in reality. Some systems let you take historical themes but are not really providing an historical experience in this manner (Cypher System and Savage Worlds are both examples of this). The obvious game systems for this sort of experience are: Mythras, BRP, Call of Cthulhu and GURPS. Each provide a mechanical framework for an experience steeped in "realistic" interpretations of things such as injuries, pragmatic human limits and physics.

Emphasis on the Mundane over the Fantastical

The "realism" must be supported well and in larger proportion to fantastical elements. If the system or setting of necessity feels like you're missing out if you exclude magic from the setting then it may not be an ideal system for historical gaming. The ability to define characters in terms of the mundane and make them feel relevant is critical; it does mean, for example, that the ability of a character to be interesting because the system provides rules for more in-depth skills is preferable to one where skills are less relevant. Combat abilities may focus in greater depth on what actually happens in real combat, and eschews fantastical or cinematic maneuvers; being good at blocking and parrying (and those being part of the process) will help with the historical realism; whirlwind attacks and fantasy parkour not so much.

Magic is of necessity either optional or irrelevant in these systems. The ability to provide for a form of magic that feels more like the way magic was perceived to work in the real world is helpful; the ability of the system to feel robust with no magic at all is even better. Whether you include magic or not, though, it's got to be with a system that does not overshadow the historical underpinnings such that it negates the intended value of the experience as you want it. 

Of systems previously mentioned it  is safe to say the Mythras, BRP/CoC and GURPS all cater to this. However, of these GURPS provides the most robust means by which you can provide for elaborate characters and avoid magic entirely if desired. Alternatively when armed with GURPS Thaumaturgy you can pick and choose from a range of magical traditions designed to feel like the sorts of magic which our ancestors believed in (as well as others of more literary tradition). Mythras provides four types of magic, which often dovetail well with our modern interpretation of how magic might have been perceived to work, but also tends toward a more mythic and literary reimagining of such. Likewise, BRP is simply the original system from which Mythras evolved, and Call of Cthulhu is very much steeped in providing a historical experience tinged with the mythos, a literary construct. 

Resources!

Researching a game on your own dime and time can and is fun for those who want to do it, and historical gamers tend to fit that bill just fine. That said, the more ready-made content a system can offer you to help the process the better. It is almost redundant to point out that GURPS is the be-all and end-all for this sort of thing, thanks to a spate of almost two hundred historically themed books in the 80's and 90's. They moved away from such resources in print with GURPS 4th Edition, but still occasionally offer some useful content (Crusades, Silk Road) while keeping all the classic 3rd edition books in print....and the conversion work required is essentially non-existent, thankfully. Heck, many people use GURPS resources for other game systems as well.

Mythras also provides some historical resources, and you can find other systems out there that make varying efforts to do so, including some that engage in elaborate, fantastical depictions of historical periods such as Aquellare, a tome which must be truly experienced to be appreciated (or reviled, you pick).

Historical Gaming =/= Wargaming

Lastly, it is worth mentioning that a good RPG for this is not the same as a wargame by any stretch, nor should it be construed as such. For many, the most interesting elements of historical gaming are in the details of ordinary everyday living, experiencing a slice of time in an interesting historical period, and figuring out the many strange mysteries left for us in our own historical and archaeological records. Combat and military actions are just one piece of the pie, and a system which handles all desired elements may well suit those with such tastes the most.

For me, GURPS stands out as the system I can count on to provide the kind of historical gaming experience I want, especially if I want to keep it as far away from too much of the fantastical or literary/cinematic as possible. BRP is a close second along with Mythras, and Call of Cthulhu of course is excellent so long as you want to look at history through a sickly green Cthulhu lens (nothing at all wrong with that of course). Meanwhile certain very specific games out there provide some compelling historical experiences on their own...Aquellare is my most recent discovery, but there are others. What games might I have missed that fit this bill?

The Universal World Profile Sourcebook for Cepheus and Traveller

For many of us, particularly the grognards and the gamers who approached SF gaming from the venue of fiction rather than film, there's a consistent expectation that any good SF game will provide you with some useful world building tools, as well as a means by which you can map out your corner of the galaxy for exploration and discovery. Traveller set the bar for this expectation high very early on with a decent system for generating an infinite number of star systems and subsectors to create as large and detailed a galaxy to explore as you could want.

When Mongoose published Traveller in its "1st edition" of their new version of the game they thankfully made it OGL, and then later made the mistake of not keeping MGT2 OGL, thus splitting their market of third party support. Most third party support for Traveller continues, but under the older OGL which has been retooled into a new edition of the game called the Cepheus Engine. This iteration of Traveller is the MGT1 version from the OGL, with some additional content to flesh the game out. It's also spawned lots of new product, aimed primarily as support for Cepheus or for other SF games that could benefits from specific rules such as ship design or world building.

Enter the Universal World Profile. This book is an expansion on the basic world design rules in Cepheus and MGT1, providing more depth of discussion on what each statistic and fact means when creating a world's UWP. For those of you unfamiliar with Traveller's mechanics in world design, each planet gets a "stat block" in Traveller hexadecimal format that lets you quickly determine a planet's composition, size, atmosphere, population, government, star ports and other useful details right no down to trade codes. It was an ingenious way of codifying and making an entire galaxy a prospective explorable option....you could get in a ship, journeying across the parsecs to theoretically endless explorable planets. A creative Traveller referee could take those stat blocks and make them really interesting, or you could play it straight and run Traveller like some sort of trade or merc-driven procedural; the core conceit was brilliant and simple, but it is the reason Traveller remains a persistent and popular RPG to this day and (almost) no one remembers games like Space Opera or Universe (except maybe for how baroque and painful they were).

Anyway, The Universal World Profile sourcebook for Cepheus (and Traveller) is a fully stand-alone resource which will give you more information on the UWP process for its core games, but also serves as a stand-alone resource for GMs who want design worlds for their own preferred SF rpg but maybe don't happen to have a very good resource for that particular game to do so. For example, while the Advent Horizon RPG actually has a nice little world designer in the rules, it's nowhere near as robust as what the UWP can offer. Starfinder has a very Pathfinder-styled section on building locations and encounters for games, but offers zero support for designing a universe to explore in a more organic fashion; it's trending (unfortunately) toward Paizo's desire to sell Adventure Paths rather than material that lets GMs do their own thing, so with a bit of additional effort (such as encounter tables for the Alien Archives) you could use the UWP to actually create some structure to your setting for players to explore.

There are other SF RPGs out there (besides the two I have been messing with a lot recently) that could benefit from a UWP system as well, although it is worth noting some games take the inspiration of the UWP and manage to do their own thing extremely well. GURPS Space has a robust (some might say "too robust") world creator. Stars Without Number, for another example, has a great world generation system that includes building plot hooks and themes in to the design. Unlike SWN however you can design your own brand of SF with the UWP and tailor it to your preferred genre requirements (SWN is great but leans heavily on its implied specific universe). The UWP only really makes the assumption that starships travel discreet distances (parsecs) and that the universe can be captured on a 2-D hex map (hand waive the third dimension). It doesn't presume aliens, but that doesn't stop you from populating every world with them. It doesn't presume technomancy or "the scream" or the idea of an Imperium but all of that can be included or assumed if you so desire.

Anyway, if you need a stand-alone resource for science fiction world building that is accessible and broad in application, check it out. Print version at Lulu, too.

Hall of Judgement Kickstarter for Dungeon Fantasy

SJGames may not have been too happy with the end result and lack of profitability on GURPS Dungeon Fantasy boxed set, but they are kind enough to license out publication of a module for it to Douglas Cole:



The concept of "viking flavored dungeon fantasy" sounds appealing to me. Douglas appears to have done other successful Kickstarters which actually got completed, including one I have (Dungeon Grappling) that is a uniquely exhaustive look on the one subject which we can all agree was a pain in the ass in D&D 3.0.

Surrealism in Gaming

I'm only really aware of one specific RPG* which tackled the idea of surrealism as a core concept: Over the Edge. For it's time, Over the Edge was a masterpiece on how to represent the sort of trippy, not-quite-real experiences that were cultivated from the likes of William S. Burroughs, David Lynch and the Cohen Brothers (with a hefty dose of Burroughs influencing the setting). It was an effort to capture a unique sort of subgenre of film and fiction that was ramping up for a short time in the nineties, and in all honesty it didn't do too badly.

I was really in to the concept of surrealism in the 90's, particularly after a trifecta of exposure to the concept in the form of David Lynch's movies (Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart, Eraserhead), The Cohen Brothers' Barton Fink, and the film adaptation of William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (I had previously read Burroughs, but the idea of adapting his work to film....let alone gaming!...was not so obvious to me until I saw Cronenberg attempt it). I had a fair number of games, usually powered by GURPS (but at the time I was also heavily in to Cyberpunk 2020 and Dark Conspiracies) which were tainted by, or even completely immersed in the core conceits of the surreal, at least as best I could convey it in the medium of gaming.

Recently I wrapped a lengthy year-long campaign in Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition that was best described as "Weird Oregon," or "Something's Wrong in Coos Bay." It originally started out as a short game with a goal of starting a zombie apocalypse, Mythos style. Then it rapidly revamped in to a more conventional CoC investigation with shades of Twin Peaks: The Return influence, as I decided that it would be really interesting if this one region on the Oregon Coast had like, a dozen different intertwined CoC scenarios all going on and weaving in and out together, with a grad climax over a two month (in game) run being the 2017 solar eclipse. The game started about the time of the solar eclipse, and ended last week, so not a bad run for a CoC game! Only one character who was original to this game made it all the way to the end (with both life and sanity intact) so despite the fact that there is still more to do in the region, it will have to wait for a new, future group to explore.

This last weekend, in the wake of the CoC game reaching it's conclusion, I realized that I was A: not done with running modern scenarios focusing on the weird and horrific; and B: was still itching to do a more proper, direct homage to Twin Peaks: The Return. But...a bit more preamble.

If you're even remotely a fan of David Lynch and/or the classic Twin Peaks, and you somehow haven't seen Twin Peaks: The Return on Showtime (also out on DVD/Blu Ray) then you owe it to yourself to take the 18 episode dive into the "limited event" that serves as a third season with a precise 25 year gap between the 2nd season of the original show and this one. I won't belabor the plot points of this, but let's just say that the original show ended on a remarkably disturbing "evil wins big time" sort of cliffhanger and the entirety of The Return is spent wrapping that dangling plot in an 18 hour movie that is conveniently broken up into watchable chunks.

There are also two Twin Peaks novels, written like FBI case files, designed to fill you in on all the extraneous plot points a series this complicated can never properly address. If you're a fan, these are a must read. If you just like procedurals and High Weirdness then these are for you.

So, the thing about Twin Peaks (particularly The Return) that I want to pay homage to in the new campaign are along these lines:

Magic Exists in Modern Times: but it is elusive, hard to grasp, rarely exposed for what it is in a measurable way, and is otherwise impossible to quantify or measure in a scientific or rational manner.

The Spirit World Exists, but it is Weird: in the worlds of Twin Peaks the spirits, if you want to use that term, are very real but they appear to have a strange and interesting relationship with humanity, one which often brings people to interact with them in profoundly changing ways. There seem to be spirits who want to "ride along" and live through their hosts. There are spirits which need to replace you, like changelings or doppelgangers. There are spirits who want to help.....and there are also spirits who embody dire and stark elements of humanity, such as pure good and evil. And like magic, it is essentially impossible to understand, and as soon as you ascribe motives and direction to it as I did, something will cast doubt on that assessment.

Surrealism is the Medium By Which The Tale Unfolds: the core concept of surrealism is the notion of the "irrational juxtaposition of images," but to a greater extent, to honor the Lynchian elements of surrealism is to not merely juxtapose imagery but concepts, people, places and emotions. Surrealism can have moments of stark horror contrasted against almost simplistically irrational normalcy. Twin Peaks, for example, was an idyllic northwestern town of nice, simple people, and yet it was a center of the drug trade, and a spiritual centerpoint in what could best be described as a gateway to the Other (the Black Lodge) by which spirits benign and malevolent seek to interact with the local people, or even to escape. And it is clear from The Return that there are other "points of interaction" with the Other throughout the world.

The idea, though, is that this juxtaposition of sharp contrasts is important to convey the story. In Twin Peaks this is the simple but dramatic lives of the town residents, played against the background while key figures (Dale Cooper) find themselves faced with existential threats from The Other. To do this in the new game (I am returning once more to GURPS as my engine) the player characters will need to be the key figures, but they will be investigating something that is extremely Abnormal, the Other, which rests quietly among an otherwise mundane and idyllic town.

Surrealism AND High Weirdness are the Formula: it's not fair to throw all the weight on surrealism itself, which is a framing tool. Rather, it is also necessary to engage in the weird, the strange and the unusual. In GURPS terms, everyone is a Weirdness Magnet.

Each Player Will Have a Different Interpretation of Events: if the goal is to work, I feel that one of the best ways to pull it off will be to have each player enjoy the experience of the campaign, but ultimately arrive at a different conclusion about what they experienced meant, and what the events played out to be. This will be tough.....by nature gamer groups tend to work to consensus and try to resolve these plots. I had a certain degree of this mystery in the CoC campaign, but in the end they did find mechanisms and lore that allowed for a degree of consensus on what happened. If I pull the plot off for the High Weirdness game, then they will each experience the same story, but arrive at interestingly different conclusions.

As this experiment progresses I'll relay more. It will be interesting....my group has persevered and made it's way through a lengthy CoC campaign, and they did well, so I feel like this new GURPS Surreal High Weirdness campaign may well work as intended. Back when I used to run these in the nineties I had a diehard core of players who had all read and watched the same books and shows that I had, so we were "all on board." Now, thanks to the CoC game, I may have a group that is at least ready to accept what I throw at them.....

*I think Unknown Armies is a close 2nd, but it still provides a coherent narrative structure. You can accomplish surrealism in UA (as you can with CoC), but it's not the core conceit of the game.