Tall Tales is Mark Hunt's wild west B/X adventure game. It's a cool game. If you enjoy B/X D&D then maybe you'd dig the idea of doing it cowboy style.
I like how the classic 3 alignments here are Law-Abiding, Neutrality, and Dishonest. This nicely mirrors the way Law, Neutrality, and Chaos are described and used in B/X D&D. Yes, I know some folks argue that these categories are not necessarily about good and evil but if you have actually read the descriptions of them in the game then you'll know why those people are wrong about that. And no, that's not any claim about how alignments may have been described and/or used in other versions of the game. Just this one. Pay attention.
I like how AC is handled. It is exactly BX. But instead of leather and chain you have fancy duds and heavy clothes. Because if you kept the BX combat system and didn't have actual armor (no cowboy was riding around in full plate) then gunfights would be ridiculously lethal. Which would be realistic... but nobody plays these games because they want a realistic experience. They wanna have crazy gunfights that last more than five seconds.
So browsing the character classes I can see some classic western tropes at play, such as the Desperado and Gunslinger. But there's something missing here. Where's the lawma--- oh wait...
This is a small book of additional classes for Tall Tales. And here we find the Lawman, along with the Gambler and the Preacher. C'mon, Mark, how did you leave these out of the main book? Perhaps space or maybe they got dropped on the floor the day of layout? Hah.
Anyway, it's a welcome addition to the core game.
Hey... wait a second... I recognize some of these nutty drawings. A guy shaving with a giant bee near his face? Yeah, I think I drew that. But don't let that deter you from picking up this slick little number. It's stuffed full of funky items. Like electric razors that attract giant bees.
Arnold Kemp of the Goblin Punch blog has given us the Goblin Laws of Gaming, or GLOG. I have heard rumblings about this in various online posting places but never really took a good look at it.
Ok. This is a simple document obviously not meant to be a nice, flashy, finished package. It's more like the author's personal way of running OSR style games. So I have no criticisms of the plain layout or any of that. It isn't a "finished" product and thus isn't eligible for my nay-nay-saying about it's appearance.
The core mechanic of the game was really weird for me at first. I admit I might be a little stupid because I had read the Base Mechanics section three times before it clicked. The idea is this: You roll under a stat. So if your stat is 11 you need to roll under 11. This is modified by the opponent's Defense, for example. The more the Defense is from 10, the bigger the modifier. So an opponent with Defense 12 means you need to subtract 2 from your stat. You need roll 9 or less to hit that son-of-a-bitch. If the guy's Defense was 9, you'd get +1 to your stat and you'd need to roll under 12.
I get it. This is a method that allows a roll-under-stat that still is modified by difficulty. But it feels a little clunky to me in me old head. I dislike adding complications like adding and subtracting where it isn't necessary. Still, it feels like it would work.
I read on later in the document about combat and I am more confused than before. I attribute this to my own brain because the GLOG seems to have a decent following so it can't be completely broken. I must be the one who is completely broken.
It seems that by level 4 a character is pretty much maxed out in terms of what they get for leveling up. The rules state that any advancement beyond 4 is a result of adventuring. And I quite like that idea. I like any sort of idea that shifts character development to actual play and away from pre-determined hallmarks. I'm actually writing a thing like that right now, so this is a funny little coincidence.
One of the design goals of the game was to eliminate some tables in favor of formulas. I also get this, and I'm not necessarily opposed to it. But if it's the difference between a little ability modifier table vs. a formula for cipherin' my ability mod gimme that fuckin' table. That's just me though. I have no fear of tables, man. No fear.
Convictions is a neat little mechanic that I think would lead to some fun times. A conviction is a thing you believe or that drives you and might make you act in a way that you know is not in your best interest. Doing this earns you 1 point of Conviction. You can spend that point later to get +8 on a d20 roll that is related to a conviction or +4 if it isn't related to a conviction. But then the text after this states that spending conviction has to be related to the conviction... so why the +8/+4 difference if the +4 isn't possible in the first place? I might be a dumbass reading this wrong. It's late and I'm not at my peak performance right now.Initiative is handled much the same way as The Black Hack. You roll under Wisdom to go before your god-damned enemies instead of Dexterity.
It's pretty funny reading the blog post about GLOG because the author understood the writing yet another hack of D&D is not something a lot of people want to do or see. The accompanying picture of the author in the moment the dread deed was completed is priceless.
There are some interesting hacks of GLOG, such as this one by Skerples and this one by Type1Ninja. There are probably others but I'm too lazy to look.
