In a Strange Land by James D. Hargrove, hardest of the Hargroves, is a pulp fantasy hex crawly game.
Layout is clean, art is very cool. It's a short game clocking in at 8 pages. Tight.
The opening paragraph has a cryptic reference to a "solo-play board game of the early 80s". I believe this might be a reference to Dwarfstar Games' Barbarian Prince, but that's just a wild conjecture since I know nothing of that particular lost artifact of the past.
Mechanics are interesting. Blows are resolved by subtracting the Fighting scores of opponents to get a modifier, then making a 2d6 roll and modifying it with the number you got. There's a table then that you look at and if your final result is on the table it will tell you how many wounds you dealt. This is really interesting to me because it means the scaling isn't intuitive. For example, if you end up with a 6 you have scored 1 wound. But if you get a 7 you score no wounds. A 12 is 3 wounds but a 13 is zero wounds.
Weird, but neat. Not something I'd be attracted to in an RPG. But I'd give it shot for fun because it is so damn weird.
Much of the other content is related to hex travel. How far can you go in a day, how much food do you have, etc.
I dig how sorcery is handled. PCs are not wizards. Sorcerers are evil, alien, sinful, wicked, dangerous. Much of what they do is reduced to a single d6 roll where, on a 5-6, they deal wounds to every PC in the group with a blast of wicked energy. Cool beans.
Seems like a fun little game. Not too complicated. Very focused on exactly what you see on the cover: pulp fantasy hex crawls.
Echoes of the Labyrinth by Scott Malthouse is a Tunnels & Trolls hack. I know very little about T&T in terms of game play, so I'm taking a look at this one as a total noob without any idea what I'm talking about.
It's a short game that weighs in at 16 pages. It cuts right to the chase by telling us that it's a traditional GM/Player game (GM = Heart, Players = Yearning Delvers... I'm down with that!) and giving us the core mechanics right on page one. In this game you only use d6s. You make skill rolls on 2d6 + mods vs. a target.
Combat is different. All combatants on a given team make 2d6 + mods roll and then everyone adds their results together. The other side does the same. Compare the rolls to see who was the victor. The difference between the rolls is divided among the losing side as points of damage, which are distributed as the losing side sees fit.
That's very interesting. Is that part of classic T&T? It's a very cooperative method, it seems. If I'm down to a single hit point and you have ten then maybe you absorb all the damage so I don't die. There's a big meta-gaming aspect to that, which is taboo in some RPG modes, but which doesn't have to be taboo. I am not sure I love it, but I do find it terribly interesting.
Characters have six abilities that are generated by rolling 3d6 each... which of course is exactly what classic D&D does. But that's expected to me since I know that T&T came out a mere year after OD&D and is inspired by it.
I like how monsters are statted-up. They just really have 3 elements. FR = Foe Rating; this is how many hit points the monster has and half of the FR is it's Combat Points (bonus to attacks). Armour = how many points of damage the creature can ignore. Special = whatever special abilities or notes it has. So monster listings are super short.
This is an easy game. Based on reading it alone I can see that it would play fast and free. I like that the game's central conceit* is that it takes place in The Great Labyrinth, which is potentially unlimited in size and scope, possessing entire cities and nations deep within it. I dig it. I would play this game.
*You know, I have seen the phrase "the central conceit of..." many times and I only assume know how to use it. I am assuming here. It's one of those phrases like "damp squib" that I have heard and never fully understood except through context. Weird.
Barbarian Prince was one of my foundational games. So I'm super excited that somebody made an RPG out of it. I still have my battered copied of it, I played the heck out of it as a young teenager, and the little 15mm mini that came with it was the first miniature I ever painted. Sadly, Cal Arath usually was killed or starved to death within a week of crossing the river.
ReplyDeleteThe 2d6 table with scattered entries was a feature of at least a couple Dwarfstar games I remember. I believe the idea was to smooth the probabilities out.
Oh, neat. There's a whole world of gaming stuff out there I have never known about.
Delete