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Modular: Resurrecting RuneQuest: An Investigation by the Tales of the Reaching Moon Editorial Staff

Modular: Resurrecting RuneQuest: An Investigation by the Tales of the Reaching Moon Editorial Staff

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Runequest Deluxe Third Edition boxed set-small Runequest Deluxe Third Edition boxed set 2-back-small

[This article was originally published in Tales of the Reaching Moon #5 in Spring, 1991, after the RuneQuest trademark had been sold to Avalon Hill and the game re-released in Deluxe and Standard boxed sets. Its publication was a catalyst for Avalon Hill bringing Ken Rolston on board and kicking off what became known as the (short-lived) “RuneQuest Renaissance.”

This article was actually based on a report commissioned by Avalon Hill itself in 1990 (prior to the decision to publish Eldarad). The original report was written by an award-winning game designer.]

Introduction

RuneQuest is a great game. We all know that. Unfortunately, things haven’t been going so good for the game for some time. We all know that too. We, the Tales of the Reaching Moon staff present here our thoughts about the history of the game, the hole RuneQuest is currently in, and what action we think Avalon Hill should take to dig its way out again.

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Simulations Publications Inc: The TSR Incursion

Simulations Publications Inc: The TSR Incursion

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Around the end of 1981, brothers Kevin and Brian Blume wrested control of TSR away from founder Gary Gygax. The company would change dramatically under their leadership, until Gygax returned from his west coast exile in 1984 and (briefly) reclaimed his company. One ‘Blume Incident’ from 1982 is a pretty good example of the way they did things.

In 1958, Avalon Hill was formed, creating the modern wargaming industry, out of which role playing games grew. In 1969, James Dunnigan created Simulations Publications, Inc. — to be known as SPI — with Redmond Simenson as co-founder. He started the company to save an existing wargaming fanzine, Chris Wagner’s Strategy & Tactics, which was in a precarious financial state. Simenson was the graphic designer for the magazine and a huge part of its success. For the princely sum of $1 (yes, you read that right), SPI took on Strategy and Tactics and made it the industry’s leading newsletter, starting with the September, 1969 issue.

Strategy & Tactics would include a new wargame in every single issue from then through the current one, which is remarkable. With the popularity of the magazine, SPI also became Avalon Hill’s major competitor in the wargaming market and enjoyed great success in the seventies. Things were good. Then, as for JFK, came Dallas. Okay, not quite.

Dunnigan’s Dallas: The Television Roleplaying Game, was a licensed product, intended to cash in on the massively successful show. My first thought is to wonder how many Dallas fans wanted to play an RPG — apparently not many. It was a disaster. Simonsen commented that they produced “80,000 copies and that was 79,999 too many.”

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Modular: The Capharnaum RPG: A Kickstarter Combining the Campbellian Hero Path, Arabian Nights Multiculturalism, and Compelling Worldbuilding

Modular: The Capharnaum RPG: A Kickstarter Combining the Campbellian Hero Path, Arabian Nights Multiculturalism, and Compelling Worldbuilding

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Capharnaum RPG

Two years after running our very successful Kickstarter for the transhumanist SF RPG Mindjammer, Mindjammer Press is back with a new project — the English-language version of a fascinating French-language RPG “Capharnaum – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked.” As a soundbite it’s billed as “a fantastic Arabian Nights RPG of deserts, dragons, and crusaders” — but it’s so much more than that. I first came across Capharnaum and its gorgeous artwork in the Paris Games Fair in 2009, and even then I couldn’t believe it hadn’t been brought to the English-speaking gamer. Now, with Capharnaum‘s second edition, the case is even more compelling.

The brains behind Capharnaum — The Tales of the Dragon-Marked are two experienced French game designers, Raphaël Bardas and François Cedelle. They’re joined by a large and extremely active gaming community based in Montpellier, the ancient town on the Mediterranean coast, but active throughout France, bringing together enthusiasts of ancient world Mediterranean and Arabian Nights-style gaming. In the aftermath of 9/11, Raphaël and François wanted to create a setting which refracted the cultural conflicts of our time in a historical-fantasy context, but which equally provided a gameplay which transcended those conflicts and offered a route to coexistence and appreciation of our diversity.

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MASHED: A Korean War MASH RPG

MASHED: A Korean War MASH RPG

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Mashed Mark Plemmons-small

“Keep in mind that you can’t take that many well-educated, highly intelligent people and restrict them to live in an area the size of a football field and not expect some very odd and unusual things to happen.”

So said former Korean War helicopter pilot Ed Ziegler, in a quote that starts off MASHED’s early Gameplay section and gives a hint of what the following pages hold in store.

‘MASH’ is a historical acronym that stands for ‘Mobile Army Surgical Hospital,’ though it was popularized by the M*A*S*H film and television series, which may very well be where you first learned of it. The game acknowledges M*A*S*H as a good source of inspiration for your table, but is not based directly on it, thus avoiding any messy trademark or copyright issues. Instead, MASHED content comes from dozens of historical works and military manuals. Fortunately, since they are the same sources as those used by the M*A*S*H producers, the ‘feel’ of the game can be very much like that of the show itself, mixing light comedy, gallows humor, and mature situations.

The core rules are based on Vincent and Meguey Baker’s Apocalypse World (Meguey is also credited as a developmental editor on this book), and inspired by other Powered by the Apocalypse games such as Jason Morningstar’s Night Witches. If you’re familiar at all with the PbtA engine, you’ll have a good idea of how the rules work.

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Modular: Fox Trot Plays Dungeons & Dragons

Modular: Fox Trot Plays Dungeons & Dragons

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FoxTrot_OrlandoBill Amend’s Fox Trot is a comic strip that ran daily from 1988 into 2006, then switched to a Sunday-only format. Still around today, it tells the story of the Fox family. Dad Roger is a loveable goober who wishes he was better at golf and chess. Mom Andy is the common sense core of the family unit. Sixteen year old Peter is a wannabe athlete, with fourteen year old Paige a typical teenage girl. And ten year old Jason lives to torment Paige and is a school geek. He’s got a pet iguana named Quincy who acts like, well, an iguana, but can really be the center of a strip.

The dynamics and shifting alliances of the three kids are instantly relatable to anyone who grew up with at least one sibling. as Calvin and Hobbes’ creator Bill Watterson wrote in the introduction to the first collection:

Fox Trot particularly captures the Machiavellian nature of adolescents. The balance of power between Peter, 16, Page, 14 and Jason 10, is a constantly bartered commodity, and alliances are fragile and short-lived. No collusion will survive an opportunity to get a sibling in trouble, and hesitant parents are goaded with the cry of, ‘Punish him! Punish him! Ground him! Ground him!’

Meanwhile, the challenges of parenting and marriage are amply represented by Roger and Andy. It’s one of my all-time favorite strips and with my nine year old son going through all my collections, I’m enjoying the Fox family all over again.

Jason is a Black Gate kid. His interests are all over pop culture: Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, horror (he loves Halloween, to his family’s pain), Christmas lists, Indiana Jones (even Young Indiana Jones) and cultural tropes such as westerns and Sherlock Holmes. Naturally, being a brainy geek, he’s into Dungeons and Dragons, usually playing with his best friend, Marcus. One rainy spring break, Paige found herself lured into playing D&D with Jason.

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Modular: Tabletop Terror in the Tomb of Annihilation

Modular: Tabletop Terror in the Tomb of Annihilation

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Tomb of Annihilation-smallAs the season of ghosts and ghouls is upon us, it’s a good time to have a terror-filled gaming experience. The most recent Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition adventure book, Tomb of Annihilation (Amazon), provides a good framework for a unleashing undead horrors upon a group of innocent fantasy adventurers.

Tomb of Annihilation is set in the land of Chult, an Africa-inspired continent setting in the Forgotten Realms. The players begin in a thriving metropolis, Port Nyanzaru, in which adventurers can race dinosaurs for fun and profit. As they move deeper into the jungles of Chult, investigating a powerful death curse that affects resurrected people throughout the world, they eventually come upon an ancient temple that is under the sway of a powerful archlich. Along the way, the players will interact with tribal shamans, zombie dinosaurs, and flying monkeys.

This isn’t the first 5th edition adventure that fits well thematically with a horror-based mood. Curse of Strahd (Amazon) re-invents the gothic horror of the Ravenloft setting, while Out of the Abyss (Amazon) explores demonic enemies spreading throughout the Underdark. The collection of deadly dungeons Tales of the Yawning Portal (Amazon) contains the chapters Dead in Thay and Tomb of Horrors.

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The Expedition Into the Black Reservoir: A Dungeon Adventure at Greyhawk Castle by Gary Gygax

The Expedition Into the Black Reservoir: A Dungeon Adventure at Greyhawk Castle by Gary Gygax

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The Expedition Into the Black Resevoir Gary Gygax

The early days of D&D have been chronicled many times, in Shannon Appelcline’s excellent Designers and Dragons books, Michael Witwer’s Empire of Imagination, David Kushner and Koren Shadmi’s Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D, and a rapidly growing corpus of gaming history texts. When an era you lived through in your teens now has its own shelf in the history section, you’re getting old.

Still, there are plenty of unchronicled tidbits of gaming history out there, and I stumbled on one this weekend. In 1974 Gary Gygax, strapped for marketing cash for his just-released adventure game Dungeons and Dragons, agreed to contribute two articles to issue 12 of El Conquistador, a Chicago small press magazine devoted to play-by-mail Diplomacy leagues and general wargaming, in exchange for a full-page D&D ad. The first article was “Postal Brotherhood,” a short piece on play-by-mail gaming, a pastime that was already dying (and was fully dead less than two decades later).

The second was vastly more interesting: a four-page story that’s believed to be the first Greyhawk tale ever published.

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Modular: A First Look at Elite Dangerous Role Playing Game

Modular: A First Look at Elite Dangerous Role Playing Game

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256 New COREBOOK Mockup
Clearly a labor of love

Yes, you read that right!

Elite Dangerous, the current incarnation of the granddaddy of all immersive video games, now has its own tabletop roleplaying game, and I’m sitting here with a review copy.

The problem with the video game is that, even with the new ability to land on airless worlds and trundle around in AFVs, it’s essentially space exploration on the radio. You don’t get to land on the worlds with interesting cultures and brawl with gangsters or tread the mean streets, or avoid being the main course at a barbaric religious ceremony. A tabletop roleplaying game has the potential to supply those missing experiences. But does the franchise really need its own game? (As you’ll see, “Yes, actually.”)

EDRPG 256 Book Spread 1
Well written, beautifully illustrated

Frankly, I half-expected Elite Dangerous Role Playing Game (EDRPG) to be a cynically put together I can’t believe it’s not Traveller-lite (please don’t send round lawyers with pulse lasers) with a detailed trade mini-game. Instead I found myself reading what’s clearly a labor of love that emulates a different corner of the Star Punk genre, and does so with an emphasis  — in the core rules — on what you do when you’re not trading. It’s also loaded with material pitched for beginner GM’s, but — again in the core rules — assumes some familiarity with the computer game; not disastrous, but  confusing if you haven’t played Elite seriously in four decades (I’m told there will be free material on the website to help with this).

Given Elite Dangerous has 2-3 million players, and a cult of enthusiasts who enjoy the “shared” part of “shared escapism,” Elite Dangerous Roleplaying Game promises to be an instant modern classic. It’s a good thing, then, that the game mechanics are elegant, but more refined than innovative, which is what you want in something obviously intended as a workhorse to support happy years of sandbox gaming.

Let me unpack some of that.

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Support an Exciting New Magazine of Sword & Sorcery: Tales From the Magician’s Skull

Support an Exciting New Magazine of Sword & Sorcery: Tales From the Magician’s Skull

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Tales from the Magician's Skull-small

Here’s the best news I’ve heard all month: Goodman Games, publisher of the excellent Dungeon Crawl Classics line of old-school RPG adventures, has launched a brand new magazine of Sword & Sorcery, Tales From the Magician’s Skull. The editor chosen to helm this groundbreaking project? None other than our very own Howard Andrew Jones. Here’s Howard with the scoop.

A gong shivers…
The mists part to reveal a grisly object lying upon a mound of rubble, a browned and ancient head with one glowing, malefic eye…
It speaks, in a voice of cold command: “Silence, mortal dogs! It is time now for
TALES FROM THE MAGICIAN’S SKULL!
Goodman Games [has launched] the Kickstarter for the exciting new sword-and-sorcery magazine inspired by Appendix N. I am mightily pleased to be the magazine’s editor, and I’ve had a blast assembling it with Joseph Goodman. We’ve been working together for almost a year, and I’ve got to tell you that the result is GLORIOUS. Just check out that Jim Pavalec cover.

The first issue, with stories by James Enge, John C. Hocking, Chris Willrich, Howard Andrew Jones, C.L. Werner and others, truly is a knockout. The Kickstarter funded in less than 24 hours, and continues to gather momentum. Make a pledge, and make sure you get your copy of the the first issue of what’s sure to be one of the most important magazine launches of the decade. And check back here this week for a 3-way interview with publisher Joseph Goodman, Howard Andrew Jones, and the grinning skull itself!

The Past Remembered

The Past Remembered

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oie_945629XusRtgBBLast week I attended the funeral for my friend Densel’s wife, Sheryl. As these things tend to, it spawned a reunion of friends who don’t see each other anymore. Densel was a major hub of roleplaying on Staten Island, and our love for our friend, and each other, grew from our meeting together to play Dungeons and Dragons. Only in recent years have I learned that while he was gaming with me and my group, he was moonlighting with other groups all across the Island. He is single-handedly responsible for more people playing D&D on Staten Island than any other person I know.

The first time I met Densel was when his friend, Desmond, brought him to Boy Scouts to play violin for us and join our troop. He was a six-foot-four, sixteen-year-old black kid and I was a five-foot-four, eleven-year-old white kid. Though five years older than I, we hit it off. What really connected us were the three wildly illustrated pamphlets he brought on a camping trip: Dungeons & Dragons, Greyhawk, and Blackmoor. One of his older brothers had gone to school in Wisconsin and brought the game back to Staten Island with him. When we saw Densel reading them, a couple of us younger guys asked him what they were. When he asked if we had read Moorcock or Tolkien and we said yes, he then asked if we would like to play a game where we could be knights and rangers. Without hesitation, we said yes.

We didn’t play the game properly. Mostly, it was just us talking about the characters we wanted to play and then Densel talking us through adventures. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t really learning the game; I was hooked by the idea of roleplaying. The illustrations from those original books are a major part of what I believe fantasy should look like. The thought of getting caught up in playing someone like Elric or Aragorn blew my eleven-year-old mind.

Densel aged out of scouts and I didn’t see him again for a couple of years. I was still finishing grade school and he was getting ready to enter college. It was then that I started playing D&D for real with my immediate circle of friends. Both my neighbor and I got the boxed Basic Set for Christmas. For two years we played relentlessly; and I mean relentlessly. For anyone who played the game in that first flush of its popularity in the late 1970s, you know what I mean. Every free weekend was spent playing, and the days between designing dungeons and drawing maps. Soon I was building up a shelf of hardcover Advanced D&D manuals. Almost any money I earned or got as a gift was plowed into the game.

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