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Modular: James Sutter Fields Some Starfinder RPG Questions

Modular: James Sutter Fields Some Starfinder RPG Questions

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starfinderPaizo Publishing is a major force in the fantasy gaming industry, having taken the core mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons edition 3.5 and transforming it into the Pathfinder RPG, an impressive stand-alone game system in its own right. Beyond the core tabletop roleplaying game, Pathfinder has also diversified out into the Pathfinder Tales series of novels, the various versions of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (including a digital edition), audio dramas, comic books, and ever-expanding other platforms and formats.

But ultimately the Pathfinder game is set in a fantasy adventure world, and retains the feel of the Dungeons & Dragons adventures from which it was derived.

Last fall, Paizo announced a new game system that would take them into the distant future with their Starfinder RPG, and would set a far more distinctive course. This is a game that will take the basic Pathfinder mechanics, but translate them into a far future space opera style of setting.

Last fall at GenCon, I spoke with the Creative Director of Starfinder, long-time Black Gate friend James L. Sutter. In addition to being the author of a couple of great Pathfinder Tales novels, Death’s Heretic and The Redemption Engine, James is also the author of the recent Pathfinder Campaign Setting: The First World, Realm of the Fey (Amazon, Paizo), a supplement that explores a portion of the Pathfinder setting that I have long been hoping would get some additional attention.

Between our GenCon discussion and subsequent information, such as a great GameInformer interview, we got new information about the new classes and races, the backward compatibility with Pathfinder, and some hints about what to expect from starship combat. Everything about this game is looking and sounding great.

Toward the end of January, I ran into James again at the Detroit convention ConFusion, and asked him if I could buy him a beer and riddle him with some additional questions.

He said no.

Instead, he asked if I could e-mail him the questions, because he was heavily booked over the weekend. Below is our exchange, which I hope sheds some some new light on what to expect from the Starfinder RPG, due out from Paizo this August (and available for preorder now).

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Modular: Rethinking the OSR through Modiphius’s Conan – Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of

Modular: Rethinking the OSR through Modiphius’s Conan – Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of

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ConanRPGWell, many of you don’t need to be told that Mophidius’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of is out. Well, maybe it’s not quite out: for those of us who require a hard copy, word is it won’t be shipping until sometime in June. But backers and shoppers now have access to PDF copies of the Conan Core Book and a collection of adventures entitled Jeweled Thrones of the Earth.

I became a backer quite late in the game. Indeed, it couldn’t have been much more than a month ago. I’m not sure why I was late. I’m almost certain I looked at the Kickstarter when it was announced but probably initially passed it over because I assumed that so much of the Conan material probably was done “better” (as in open to additional literary inspirations) in the “conventional” rpgs (D&D and its clones) with which most of us already are familiar.

Curiosity is what made me change my mind. Modiphius was offering free “Quick Start” rules in PDF form. I downloaded them and read them all, including the introductory adventure. Contrary to what some others on this site have reported, I was absorbed and excited by the rules set. I didn’t run the adventure because, well, I write my own adventures. And, outside of egotism, the main reason I don’t run other people’s adventures is because I can’t see how most of them can work. At one point in the introductory “To Race the Thunder” adventure, it reads,

With no hope of joining or rescuing the forces inside the fort, the player characters’ only hope is to strike out to the settlements, to warn the settlers, gathering them and helping them across the Thunder River to safety. The banks of the Thunder River are their only hope at this point, else they will all end up as corpses, cooling as their life-blood sinks into the black and hungry earth.

Are you kidding me? If my players are told they can’t possibly get into the fort, you can be certain that that is the one and only thing they obsessively will try. And with me as GM, they very likely will succeed.

And with that observation, I have come to the thesis of this article: rethinking the OSR in light of what I have learned from reading the new Conan RPG. The OSR, as many of us need not be told, stands for Old-School Renaissance (or Revival, or Roleplaying). And I am fascinated and excited by it. For the few of us who don’t know already, broadly speaking the OSR names a movement in the tabletop rpg industry that is regressive, perhaps nostalgic, a return to iterations of D&D that were popular before the third edition (or d20 system) of the rules. This return was facilitated by “retroclones” made legal under the Open Game License. Examples of retroclones are Swords & Wizardry, Castles & Crusades, Dungeon Crawl Classics and a host of others that might be impossible to enumerate. And to add to this OSR, players no longer need “return” to revised versions of the old rules but can purchase the actual old rules outright from Wizards of the Coast, because the latest owner of the D&D property now has released virtually its entire back stock in PDF and print form.

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Modular: Dungeon Delving Tips – Part I

Modular: Dungeon Delving Tips – Part I

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Delving_partyI’m a big fan of Creighton Broadhurst and his Raging Swan Press. Along with Frog God Games, they make my favorite Pathfinder stuff. And Creighton’s blog is full of great ponderings for players, GMs and even game designers.

He often comes up with some neat lists on wide-ranging topics. One that I liked was his ‘25 Dungeon Delving Tips.’ We’re going to look at the first dozen this week, with the remainder coming in a follow-up post.

Each tip, along with some of Creighton’s commentary, is italicized (as is his brief intro below). My own comments follow underneath in plain text. So, have at it!

25 Dungeon Delving Tips (Part One)

Dungeon delving is a jolly dangerous business. Some adventurers are lucky. Others are stupid while many are unprepared. Thus, the bones of countless adventurers lie mouldering far from the warmth of the sun. 

With that in mind, and in no particular order, here are… tips to make your dungeon delving just a little bit safer.

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Modular: How to Defeat an Ancient Red Dragon in D&D with a Low-Level Party

Modular: How to Defeat an Ancient Red Dragon in D&D with a Low-Level Party

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Red_DragonYou’ve got a huge ancient red dragon that has flipped out. It’s on the rampage. You must stop it or the devastation will be severe and widespread. You have a couple dozen volunteers willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to save hundreds or even thousands, but to what avail? What the hell can you do to defeat an ancient red dragon?

Actually, there is a way, even with low-level warriors. But it’ll take some coordination and three necessary components:

  1. You need quite a few volunteers, both the ones who will be in front-line battle and others willing to distract and pre-occupy the dragon (probably by being slaughtered indiscriminately).

  1. You need a new or modified spell. I don’t know if there is already a spell that specifically does something like what I’m about to describe floating around out there in one of the dozens of supplements, but it doesn’t seem like a big leap to make it work in the D&D schools of magic (probably wouldn’t rate more powerful than a fourth or fifth level spell tops). This spell is cast on an item and creates a delayed teleportation effect. Should the owner of that item ever die, the item will immediately pass into the hands of another person (determined at the time of the spell casting).

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Modular: Who Would Win? John McClane and James Bond versus a Tribe of D&D Goblins

Modular: Who Would Win? John McClane and James Bond versus a Tribe of D&D Goblins

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Knights of the Dinner Table 142-smallI came across a fascinating piece by Noah J.D. Chinn in Knights of the Dinner Table issue 142 (August 2008). Chinn’s guest editorial for the “Gamer’s Pulpit” column is an intriguing analysis of how the realism bar for heroes has shifted radically from the days of our youth (us Gen Xers) until now.

The single most interesting fact he presents is a piece of data generated by Mike Hensley charting how many goblins a first level fighter could kill before dying across all iterations of Dungeons & Dragons (at that point there were 6 versions, 5th Edition not yet having debuted). He ran the combats at least 1,000 times for each fighter in a Javascript simulation program, with the fighter facing the goblins one at a time, producing an average for each version. This is what the data reveals:

  • OD&D: 2.7 goblins killed
  • BD&D: 4.1
  • AD&D1: 4.3
  • AD&D2: 7.3
  • D&D 3e: 10.1
  • D&D 4e: 23.4 Holy Crap!

(It would be interesting to further extrapolate from this data: Does it suggest that a 4e first-level fighter could, one-on-one, take out 4 or 5 OD&D fighters before succumbing? Or that a first-level 4e fighter is roughly equivalent to a third-level fighter in Basic?)

Chinn argues that this hero power inflation cuts across popular culture. He uses the Die Hard movies as an apt illustration:

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Modular: The New Mongoose Traveller RPG #0: Transported by Free Trader Beowulf!

Modular: The New Mongoose Traveller RPG #0: Transported by Free Trader Beowulf!

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Traveller First Edition-small
Like a ray of grit into my comfortable early teenage existence

This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone… Mayday, Mayday… we are under attack… main drive is gone… turret number one not responding… Mayday… losing cabin pressure fast… calling anyone… please help… This is Free Trader Beowulf… Mayday….

35 years and those words still send a chill run down my spine.

I can even see the shelf in the now defunct gaming shop on Edinburgh’s Forest Road. I was there to pick up Chivalry and Sorcery. Even at thirteen, I was a howling medievalist and that game seemed like it would be my game.

However it was a box of little black books — Traveller RPG! — that I came away with that day.

Sure, I’d played it before… briefly… with a kid in the year above and I’d liked firing pulse lasers and negotiating the mean streets of human space.

However, I hadn’t seen the possibilities.

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Take a Crash Course in the History of Computer Role Playing in The Ultimate RPG Handbook

Take a Crash Course in the History of Computer Role Playing in The Ultimate RPG Handbook

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The Ultimate RPG Handbook-smallI’ve been a subscriber to PC Gamer magazine for over 22 years, since it launched as a British “Euro mag” in November 1993 (back in the days when computer hobby shops here in the US would carry British gaming magazines for the Amiga and the PC, and the magazines had disks taped to the cover. And there was such a thing as computer hobby shops.) The magazine has long had a terrific stable of writers — including Editor-in-Chief Gary Whitta, who famously left the magazine to become a screen writer. And he did, too, writing The Book of Eli and Rogue One, among others.

The artifact at right is PC Gamer Presents: The Ultimate RPG Handbook; I found it in the magazine section at Barnes & Noble on Saturday. It sorta looks like a regular issue of PC Gamer, except it has no ads, and is totally devoted to my favorite video game genre. Sweet!

Much of it is composed of reprints from the magazine, but there’s new stuff too — like Richard Cobbett’s massive 28-page full-color history of computer RPGs, starting with Temple of Apshai and Beneath Apple Manor, through Wizardry, Bard’s Tale, the SSI Gold Box Games, Star Control 2, Deus Ex, Witcher 3, and half a zillion titles in between. Cobbett lingers on several of the major series, like Ultima, and particularly influential games like Elder Scrolls:Arena, Baldur’s Gate, and Fallout 3. He doesn’t cover everything, of course, but his breezy style makes the whole thing entertaining and highly readable.

There’s plenty more crammed into the issue, including a feature on the future of RPGs, a long article on Witcher 3, and reviews of major new RPG releases like Fallout 4, Dark Souls III, and Tyranny (maybe they didn’t fit in the regular magazine?) There’s also a few production glitches, like the invitation on the cover to “Flip For More,” and an arrow pointing to the inside cover… which is totally blank. Nonetheless, whether you’re new to the genre or an obsessive collector who (like me) has every single game they mention, this is a terrific way to spend a few hours. Recommended.

The Ultimate RPG Handbook was published by Future Publishing in December 2016. It is 98 pages, priced at $9.99 (US edition), and 148 pages for £9.99 (UK edition). There is no digital edition, though one is promised. Get more details at the website.

Modular: Oz’s Bag of Holding: Breaking Out Basic D&D for the Next Generation

Modular: Oz’s Bag of Holding: Breaking Out Basic D&D for the Next Generation

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D&D_Basic_Rules_1981I have here a bag of holding. I am going to pull some things out of it now…

Well, I’ve gone and done it. I’ve broken open the floodgates and moved my children on from Dungeon! The Board Game to the real deal.

This is fortuitous timing, as M Harold Page has launched a new series of posts (READ HERE) on Black Gate about introducing kids to tabletop role playing (which I have been reading with newly-relevant interest).

My daughter and son will soon be turning 8 and 6 respectively. Bringing the son in on things might have been a bit premature — he’s more apt to grab the miniatures and fight with them like action figures than to sit and patiently listen to a Dungeon Master try to paint a scenario in his mind’s eye.

To introduce these acolytes, I dug out my 1981 D&D Basic set (1981 edition). After decades of d20, revisiting this chestnut three decades later is kinda hilarious. D20 is so elegantly simple in concept: Hit a monster with AC 18? Roll a d20, add modifiers, and get an 18 or better. But with old-school D&D, no! You look at the monster’s AC and then have to consult a chart (I confess I’d forgotten what THAC0 even stood for). Cross-reference monster’s AC with character’s level to see what you have to roll. Basic? No, not really. Pretty damn cumbersome!

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Modular: The RPG Fusion of Dragon’s Dogma

Modular: The RPG Fusion of Dragon’s Dogma

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Dragon's Dogma-smallDragon’s Dogma is Capcom’s attempt at creating what could be considered Skyrim meets Monster Hunter. The game is an open-world RPG where you and your party fight giant monsters, and I do mean giant.

In their attempt to combine these two, they took one of my least favorite games and mixed it with one of my favorites; leaving me somewhere between the two.

A Dragon-Gone Day

The story of the game is that you are an Arisen; a being with the ability to lead beings called Pawns to battle. When your heart is eaten by a dragon, you begin a quest to get it back and save the world.

The game space is huge for a Capcom game, as you wander through a world full of monsters and really big monsters (but more on that in a minute.)

Unlike other RPGs where you’ll create one customized character, Dragon’s Dogma lets you create two. Your main pawn is your constant companion and you are free to completely customize them as you see fit. Pawns are the name of the game, and will determine whether you’ll succeed.

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Modular: Three Viking Age Supplements and One Role-Playing Game

Modular: Three Viking Age Supplements and One Role-Playing Game

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GURPSVikingsWhen I first discovered the Yggdrasill roleplaying game, I had the understanding that that Vikings-specific system existed in near-isolation. Oh how wrong I was! As I have purchased, downloaded and read Norse-themed rpg materials from DriveThruRPG and other sites, I have discovered that interest in the Northern ethos has been quite lively for some time. When, either out of mere curiosity or out of design to add to my home game, I first thought to collect Viking Age supplements, my mind naturally went to I.C.E.’s Vikings supplement for both Rolemaster and the Hero System: this was because, in my coming-of-age in the late 80s/early 90s, I was an ardent GM of MERP (Middle-Earth Role Playing, a scaled-down version of the Rolemaster rules set) and passionate about the Hero System in the form of Champions, a super-hero roleplaying game. But in those years, a young gamer with limited funds, I never could justify a pragmatic purpose for purchasing the I.C.E. Vikings supplement.

That situation has changed, now that I’m older and I have extra cash, but I still don’t have that I.C.E. supplement. The reason? Because it’s out of print and only available in hard copy via third party purveyors. The process of obtaining this seems like needless trouble when there are so many instant-gratification products available as immediate PDF downloads.

Today I will be reviewing, in the order in which I discovered and read them, three of these: GURPS Vikings, Troll Lord Games’s Codex Nordica, and Vikings of Legend for the Legend RPG System. All three of these seek to evoke a Viking Age roleplaying experience while using an existing rules set, the second type that I outline in my last post. I’ll say at the outset, though, that Codex Nordica read a lot like Vidar Solaas’s Vikings RPG, and I’m certain this is because of the similarity of the two systems that were being adapted for the Viking Age feel. Both Solaas’s D20 system and Brian N. Young’s Castles and Crusades engine have their foundations in Dungeons & Dragons, which has enjoyed so many iterations now that most of them aren’t even called Dungeons & Dragons anymore. Last post I allowed Solaas the distinction of having created an “original” Old Norse game, since he had to “hack” the D20 system so much. I’m tempted to award Young this same distinction, since in my view he visibly wrestled with many of the inflexibilities that I perceive in D&D games. But ultimately it belongs in the rpg supplement group; the following observation shares only one reason for this designation.

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