I was honored to be interviewed by the Vintage RPG Podcast! Have listen herehere!
I talk about Fantasy Wargaming and my book about Fantasy Wargaming. The interview was unscripted but I think they’ll have edited out my worst fumbles.
Fantasy Wargaming news…it’s kind of a big deal
It’s hard to believe that it was over a decade ago that I decided to revisit Fantasy Wargaming. It all began with a search of a bibliographic database (WorldCat) to see if the authors had written anything else: Bruce Quarrie was a familiar name from his books on historical wargaming, but the rest of the authors were more mysterious. The name “Bruce Galloway” turned up on an intriguing array of titles: some histories, some political tracts, even some guidebooks for hikers. I decided to find out if any of the authors were the same as the FW author, and the journey began.
Since then I’ve learned a lot more about the authors and the larger circle of people who were involved with developing the book in various ways, most of whom were very generous with their time and memories, helping me put together a picture of how the book was written. The blog posts became quite numerous as new bits emerged, and I gave the rules a cover-to-cover read. I concatenated the posts into one page, which has seen a regular flow of visits and even been cited in an academic paper on gaming. Someone even asked if I could edit the posts into a short book, and during the COVID shutdown I took up the task in earnest.
I soon discovered that there was more interest in FW than I realized, with many blogs, YouTube channels, and podcasts posting their own revisits and reviews. I also began to find more reviews from the period when it was published, and several other people passed along their finds. The one coauthor of the book who is still with us even found a cache of documents that adds a lot more more information and fills in gaps I thought unrecoverable — letters to and from the main author, notes for a sequel, and more. The new information I’ve gathered since posting the page has revealed a lot of new information and confirmed or refuted many of the guesses and conjectures I made.
And now the book is here, with a lot of updates, corrections, and additions to what I originally wrote. It might be a book no one reads about a game no one played, but I can honestly and with pride say it will be a contribution to gaming history, covering what I still believe to be a fascinating and singular work in roleplaying game history.
Preparing the book has been a trip. Initially, I was pretty sure that a small academic press would be publishing it, but that press became a casualty of COVID. Nevertheless Heather Ford from that the press went ahead and did an amazing and flattering job of making my manuscript into a gorgeous illustrated book — providing many original illustrations no less. And we found a new home for the book at Carnegie-Mellon University’s ETC Press, a publisher of academic and trade books on entertainment technologies.
The price for the full color hardcover will be commensurate with the markup you see on academic books, partly due to the costs of distribution but also due to the higher quality paper needed for the images to come out clearly. ETC Press is an open access publisher, though, so you can also download the full PDF for free. I’m also looking at options for making another edition that will be more accessible for those using assistive technologies, or for those preferring a traditional e-book. Watch this space.
You’ve read my blog, so why should you buy or at least read the the book?
- I added a full and as-comprehensive-as-possible literature review with all the reviews, notices and discussions of FW I could find, annotated.
- I was given access to Bruce Galloway’s personal file of clippings and manuscripts, which answer some questions about the rules and outline the sequel to FW which would have covered the ancient/classical world. Some of that material is reproduced in appendices.
- Heather Ford’s cool art and graphic design made this into a gorgeous artifact for your RPG research collection. I mean it really looks amazing and could be a coffee table book.
- Lawrence Heath, who illustrated FW, has allowed me to include some of his artwork from the period, and it’s pretty dang awesome too.
Click here to download the *free* PDF of the book (or buy a hard copy) from ETC Press!
Click here to buy the full color, hardcover book from Lulu.com!
Click here to buy the full cover, hardcover book from Amazon.com
coming soonish(?): an ebook edition for purchase
The buyer’s guide to Fantasy Wargaming
I’ve posted a lot about my love for Fantasy Wargaming, the (in)famous book that dared to challenge D&D and made it into mall bookstores and the Science Fiction Book Club. The fact that it had such wide distribution means that copies are still pretty plentiful on the used book market, but I’ve noticed that the listings can be rather confusing.
There were three editions of Fantasy Wargaming, each with some interesting features. They vary physically and in content. I’ve included photos of my copies, which you can, as always, click to embiggen.
The UK edition, published by Patrick Stephens Ltd., in 1981, is identifiable by the fact that it has a unique ISBN (international standard book number) — 0850594650. Physically distinctive are the extent (222 pages, 25 cm tall) and the comparatively dark printing of both text and illustrations. The dust jacket also has the most vivid color of any edition.
The UK edition
Two editions were produced in the USA by Stein & Day. The US “trade edition” or “first US edition” (I use scare quotes as it is not a named edition) is a bit larger, such that it is about the same size an AD&D book. It also had an ISBN (0812828623) for ease of distribution. The extra height and width meant they could spread the content over slightly fewer pages — xii, 208 pages, 28 cm. The cover boards are printed with the jacket design, and it has the well-known tag “The highest level of all” included on the cover. The US publisher also took the trouble to index it, and introduce a few errors. The text erroneously states that the animal table at the end of the bestiary follows on the overleaf. More importantly the first printing (1982) lacks the second page of the weapons table and instead repeats the armor table; second printing (1984?) corrects this though. Otherwise the content is mostly the same. The publisher did change British spellings to those customary in the US, and made some revisions to the explanation of money conversions which I understand introduces some inconsistency because the editor didn’t understand the references to modern British coinage. From what I can tell, at some point Henry Holt & Co. must have been involved in the distribution, as used booksellers often list them as the publisher.
The US trade edition as seen in Waldenbooks, B Dalton, etc.
The “book club edition” also appeared in 1982. It has no ISBN, which is usual for book club editions. It is closer to the size of typical novel, at 300 pages and just 22 cm tall. Like the UK edition it has a dust jacket, and like the trade edition it has an index. There are several internal typos, such as sentences repeated or lines reversed here and there, but as far as I can tell all printings are complete in terms of the tables. The print is noticeably fainter than that of the other editions, and the paper is rather thin. The dust jacket has the title in a box that takes up comparatively more “real estate” on the cover and Baphomet’s horns are covered by it (intentionally, perhaps, to downplay the image’s satanism in a time of Satanic panic?). Many popular magazines carried Sci Fi Book Club ads, and a thumbnail of the cover featured prominently for a while in the two-page spreads next to familiar fantasy, horror, and science fiction novels.
The Science Fiction Book Club edition
When FW is offered for sale, the sellers may not be especially careful about which edition is on offer, at least between the US editions. It will be worth your while to ask for the page count or a photo as the speediest identifier. Otherwise note whether a dust jacket is mentioned, which points to the UK or book club edition, and the presence of “Highest level of all” either as part of the title or in the description will tell you it’s a US edition. Note also that booksellers may use the 13-digit ISBN, which technically would not appear on any printing as 13 digits were only adopted in the 21st century. But the US ISBN-13 is 9780812828627 and the UK ISBN-13 is 9780850594652. Most frustratingly, the ISBN may be on listings for the book club edition, perhaps because the seller can’t find an ISBN on it but sees the trade ISBN in some other source. (Here’s where I could write more about the dismal practices of used booksellers but that’s depressing.)
Prices vary widely. Right now the US editions can be had for under $10 but you can pay much more if you want. The UK edition is scarcer, at least in the US, but can be had for under $30 at the time of this writing. [These prices are based on a quick search at Bookfinder, an aggregator of Amazon, eBay, and various larger used book dealers. Depending on how saturated the market is, these prices can easily double or triple, at least temporarily.]
In my opinion the trade edition is nice to have as it uses larger print and some tables are more readable, but the UK edition has the most careful layout of the three.
Fantasy Wargaming : the audiobook
This is some very old news, but I’ve just noticed a DAISY version of the venerable early roleplaying game Fantasy Wargaming available for borrowing from the Internet Archive! DAISY, for those unfamiliar with it, is a “talking book” format developed for people with disabilities that prevent them from using printed books, such as blindness, dyslexia, and so forth. So really a DAISY book is much more than an audiobook (which would be a recording reading of a book). The DAISY format allows much more sophisticated manipulation of the text, both as audio (changing reading speeds, using searches or indexes, and so forth) as well as including image files for low-vision users needing larger displays. you will need to create an account to “borrow” it from the Internet Archive. I have not actually tested the DAISY file, and it is certainly easier for someone who can read a standard format book to obtain a copy (going for as little $5 on Amazon last I checked). But it’s pretty cool that someone took the time to make this book accessible to folks with disabilities.
Venomous sheep (updated)
In the first battle three hundred of the men of Lochlann were killed, but in the next battle Eolgarg Mor did not fight fair, for he let some venomous sheep out of a tent, and these attacked the men of Ulster and killed nine hundred of them.
So vast was the slaughter made by these sheep and so great the terror they caused, that no one could stand before them, but by great good luck there was a wood at hand, and the men of Ulster, warriors and princes and charioteers, were forced to climb up the trees, and they roosted among the branches like great birds, while the venomous sheep ranged below bleating terribly and tearing up the ground.
Fiachna Finn was also sitting in a tree, very high up, and he was disconsolate.
“We are disgraced!” said he.
“It is very lucky,” said the man in the branch below, “that a sheep cannot climb a tree.”
“We are disgraced for ever,” said the King of Ulster.
“If those sheep learn how to climb, we are undone surely,” said the man below.
“I will go down and fight the sheep,” said Fiachna. But the others would not let the king go.
“It is not right,” they said, “that you should fight sheep.”
“Some one must fight them,” said Fiachna Finn, “but no more of my men shall die until I fight myself; for if I am fated to die, I will die and I cannot escape it, and if it is the sheep’s fate to die, then die they will; for there is no man can avoid destiny, and there is no sheep can dodge it either.”
“Praise be to god!” said the warrior that was higher up.
“Amen.” said the man who was higher than he, and the rest of the warriors wished good luck to the king.
He started then to climb down the tree with a heavy heart, but while he hung from the last branch and was about to let go, he noticed a tall warrior walking towards him. The king pulled himself up on the branch again and sat dangle-legged on it to see what the warrior would do.
The stranger was a very tall man, dressed in a green cloak with a silver brooch at the shoulder. He had a golden band about his hair and golden sandals on his feet, and he was laughing heartily at the plight of the men of Ireland.
–from Mongan’s frenzy, an Irish legend
full text here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/ift/ift09.htm
If that’s not awesome, dunno what is. And yet everyone makes fun of the “venomous sheep” entry in the bestiary of Fantasy Wargaming by Bruce Galloway.
In my Telengard game, the players rescued a halfling town besieged by ghouls and what they thought might be venomous sheep (but were just variant spidergoats).
While the venomous sheep in “Morgan’s frenzy” sound a bit like the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, I think they should actually be bit more subtle. Not a secret weapon to unleash on the battlefield, but creeping menace that might destroy a village or two before anyone realizes what is happening.
So while my spidergoats were venomous in the sense that they bite you (causing a deep sleep that lets them consume you without waking up), venomous sheep would actually be toxic rather than venomous — they don’t have a venomous bite, but actually release a sleep-inducing gas. Unlike most monsters they don’t eat their victims either. They just trample the unconscious bodies of their victims as the herd grazes around them. Although sheep are not all that big, they have a very small footprint and the pressure their feet exert is rather huge. My brother, a civil engineer, once mentioned that in olden times, you’d herd a flock of sheep back and forth across an area where you wanted the soil compressed (say, to build a road) and those funny-looking knobby steamroller things you see on construction sites are called sheep’s foot rollers, and used to compress the soil.
So anyone coming within a certain range, or downwind of venomous sheep will need to make a saving throw or pass out. The murderous flock will then very slowly trample the victim to death, perhaps dealing d6 or d8 damage per turn, representing multiple stomps as sheep pass over and walk on them. (I wouldn’t make the exact range known until a character comes close, and I’d absolutely have them prefer windy pastures with variable wind direction.)
The magic goes away and The magic may return
The magic goes away, by Larry Niven, was a short, fun read. I’d read Ringworld a year or two ago and liked Niven’s style, which is one selling point. I also learned that Bruce Galloway, primary author of the brilliantly demented game Fantasy Wargaming was inspired by this novel when he developed the magic system for that game. He adopted Niven’s use of the Polynesian term ‘mana,’ and the basic idea that mana is a limited resource, but not the central conceit of the novel — that the world’s mana is being depleted by vain and selfish wizards.
So, yes, The magic goes away is sort of a satire or allegory of the 1970s energy crisis, as well as a loving parody of sword & sorcery novels, but it does have some fairly serious undercurrents. The story is a running commentary on man’s shortsightedness, and there is also a straight-faced critique of religion. But most importantly, it is entertaining, and presents a plausible ancient world, not quite our own but not so alien either. Niven basically assumes all the old myths and legends are true, it is just that the loss of mana has caused magical creatures to die off, lose their fantastic qualities, or simply disappear (“go mythical”). The main characters are a trio of wizards and a remorseful swordsman, and while they aren’t terribly deep, neither are they cardboard cutouts.
There is an afterword, of sorts, written by Sandra Miesel, that traces some of Niven’s influences and attempts to categorize fantasy novels into several broad categories: high fantasy (Eddison, Tolkien, Morris, & Le Guin); eldritch horror (HPL, CAS, Derleth); sword and sorcery (Howard); and logical fantasy. Niven and de Camp & Pratt are considered the exemplars of logical fantasy or “rivets and sorcery”. Miesel describes this genre as taking a playful attitude toward the fantastic, treating marvels matter-of-factly and says such writers generally treat their fantasies as intellectual games. (Avram Davidson’s The mirror and the phoenix must fall in this category too, as would Lester Del Rey’s The sky is falling.) So as an attempt to categorize fantasy using a new label, this is an interesting essay.
I should also mention the illustrations. This novella is stretched to short novel size by the addition of some really cool pen and ink drawings by Esteban Maroto that do a great job bringing the characters and events to life. I understand a graphic novel was also made of this story and that makes perfect sense. Maroto has become a fairly well-known comics artist.
Some of the art is realistic…
Some of it is psychedelic…
Some of it is pretty badass
The only fuck up in the package is the Boris Vallejo cover. I kind of have an axe to grind with Boris anyway because long ago, as teenager, I asked for a Frank Frazetta art book one birthday, only I couldn’t remember his exact name … I said “Boris Frazetta,” confounding the two… I ended up with a Boris Vallejo art book, which was OK but you quickly notice that Boris uses the same models over and over again, and makes no effort to conceal that he is the hero of almost every painting, and he also tends to use the same women in every damn painting. It’s a little thing that doesn’t bother you when you see his works in isolation, but put them all into a book and ugh. Also, now that I have read a number of the books he painted covers for, I notice that he must have been barely familiar with the books themselves; whether he holds them in contempt or just isn’t a reader, he can’t be bothered to get any details remotely right.
Take this cover, which presumably is depicting two of the characters — Orolandes, a Greek mercenary, and Mirandee, a sorceress. Orolandes carries exactly two weapons over the course of the story — a broken Greek sword and another straight sword — he chooses the straight sword over a similar curved one because it will fit in his old scabbard. Not a scimitar. And what’s with the slacks and Viking boots? Mirandee’s most distinctive attribute, remarked on repeatedly in the book, is her hair, which varies from pure white to black with a prominent white streak (it gets whiter in low-mana areas). It’s a neat painting, but it has basically nothing to do with the story it was commissioned for, apart from having a man with a sword and hot chick. You could use that to illustrate, I don’t know, 50 million other fantasy novels.
Anyway, there is a ‘sequel’ of sorts; The magic may return, which includes an earlier story by Niven, and several other stories, by a variety of S&S writers, all also set in the same world. Niven’s story “Not long before the end” is pretty good. It is a prequel to The magic goes away, and features one of the characters from that book. Fred Saberhagen’s “Earthshade” is just OK. It kind of reinforces the themes from the first book but seems unnecessary. “Manaspill” by Dean Ing (who I’m not familiar with) was pretty good, and a nice example of Bronze Age fantasy. “…But fear itself” by Steven Barnes (a frequent collaborator with Niven) was very good. It moves the setting to a folkloric Africa. Apparently he’s recently written a couple of books in a series called “Ibandi,” which I am guessing expands on this story, as it features the same tribe called the Ibandi. The last story, “Strength,” by Poul Anderson and Mildred Downey Broxon (I’m not familiar with Broxon either), was my favorite. It depicts a town that relied on magic for almost everything and a man who practically has to force them learn to survive.
The second book is also illustrated by a very different artist I’m on the fence about, Alicia Austin. A lot of her characters look like clones, especially in the first couple of stories, but the style is very clean, and sort of reminiscent of early 20th century fairy-tale illustrations — dream-like and gentle, even when they depict violent scenes. Click her name above to see some of her art — I couldn’t find any samples of her work from this book. It’s funny that you don’t see a lot of books illustrated like this — now that graphic novels are so popular, I would think there would be more interest in illustrated adult fiction.
Bogeys — finish my table
One of the really odd but somehow cool things Fantasy Wargaming had in the character generation process was ‘bogeys’ — a chart of characteristics that helped individualize characters with personality traits, advantages, and quirks. The table was constructed so that when you roll a percentile, a 01-32 was nothing, and all the remaining odd numbers were bad traits/stigmas/disadvantages, and all the even numbers were beneficial/advantageous traits.
The problem with the original bogey table in my opinion was that there were an inordinate number of sexual traits — you might roll bisexual, homosexual, fetishes, etc. I guess I’d just rather leave sex out of the game, or at least not encourage a player to make their character’s sexual preferences a defining trait for roleplaying. So I mostly took them out. There are also bogeys like heretic/atheist/Jewish/Muslim … which I can understand being a major thing in a medieval game but for fantasy, I’d rather avoid that kind of stuff too.
So my bogey table made a lot of changes, and I took GURPS’ advantages and disadvantages for more inspiration, and came up with this chart.
I think in hindsight, there are way too many “choice” results, and I should either use two d30 tables, or revert 1-32 to “Nothing”s. Or add 30 more results. That seems like the kind of thing that would make a good crowdsource/Gygaxian democracy project. So hey — if you can think of some more traits that would fall in line with these, drop ’em in the comments. Generally speaking, if there is any kind of mechanical effect, they should be a plus or minus one to certain rolls, nothing too major. I just copied the table from my document, which used two columns, so all the odd are first and then the evens. I’ll fix it in the final version if I can get some more entries. you’ll notice hald-elf and half-orc are bogeys, as I am using race-as-class and assume that half-humans just use human classes.
01-32: even, player’s choice; odd, DM’s choice
33. Ugliness, -1 Cha
35. One eye/one hand/no nose etc.
37. Poor sight. Can’t read or -1 to hit with missiles
39. Hard of hearing
41. Stammer
43. Limp, base move 25′ (15′ if dwarf)
45. Asthma/Allergy, -1 Con
47. Belligerent
49. Gullible, -1 Int
51. Insomnia
53. Hypochondria
55. Alcoholism/Addiction
57. Gluttony
59. Compulsive gambler, can’t refuse a bet
61. Spendthrift
63. Miserly
65. Depression
67. Paranoia
69. Distrustful
71. Kleptomania
73. Absent-minded, -1 Wis
75. Phobia (pick one)
77. Half-orc, -1 Cha
79. Hunchback, -1 Str
81. Superstition (pick one)
83. Sense of duty
85. Vow
87. Overconfidence
89. Fanatic
91. Cowardice
93. Overweight
95. Color blind
97. Albinism
99. Dwarfism/Giantism
34. Beautiful. +1 Cha
36. Presence of mind, +1 save vs. fear
38. Critical thinker, +1 Int
40. Gift of sleep, can sleep anywhere, +1 Con
42. Iron stomach, +1 save vs. poison
44. High pain threshold, +1 hp/HD
46. High alcohol tolerance
48. Keen eyesight, +1 to hit with missiles
50. Keen hearing
52. Keen smell
54. Animal empathy
56. Green thumb
58. Born swimmer (x 1.5 rate)
60. Born climber (x 1.5 rate)
62. Sense of location
64. Empathy
66. Good luck (reroll any die once/session)
68. Gift of tongues, +2 starting languages
70. Half-elf, +1 Cha
72. Hot blooded, -1/die damage from cold
74. Ambidextrous
76. Common sense (one Mulligan/session)
78. Artistic talent (choose 2 arts)
80. Double-jointed
82. Tremendous lung capacity
84. Honest face (people believe you)
86. Mechanical genius
88. Graceful, +1 Dex
90. Strong willed, +1 to Will saves
92. Alert, +1 Wis
94. Barrel chested, +1 Str
96. Lightning reflexes, +1 to Reflexes saves
98. Inconspicuous, +2 to stealth checks
00. Visions (1 in 6 chance of prophetic dreams)
Telengard 2.0
Last night we played a FATE-based game (A Fistful of FATE, I believe it was called; I missed part of the beginning as I had some parenting to do). It was pretty good, once we got accustomed to it. The pre-generated characters were interesting, but I chose very poorly: an assassin whose attack was really only usable on living foes (all the foes were undead) and who had next to nothing for equipment (a short sword, bracers, & a backpack with pen, paper, and chalk). So, there were several situations where I really didn’t have a lot to contribute to the adventure. I think we all had fun though.
Right before that, I had the group ‘roll up’ their PCs for Telengard 2.0, which will run on a simplified C&C, basically eliminating “primes” and changing the saving throws to the three ones in 3e, which will be based not on attributes but level. Also demihumans are classes. So really a B/X-C&C hybrid. They chose a Bard, Ranger, Cleric, Rogue, Fighter, and I think a Dwarf (Tom was going back and forth on that or a Wizard). I had them use the “Iron Heroes” stat arrays rather than rolling, and max HP at level one, since there are some crybabies players who like to start out more heroic. Then they got to roll on the Bogey chart, lifted from Fantasy Wargaming but minus a lot of the sexual fetishes and with a number of GURPS advantages and disadvantages added. I’ll post that later. Some “Bogeys” had mechanical effects, and some are just for role-playing. I think I put in too many “DM’s choice” and “Player’s choice” results…either should have had them pick, or made no choices. Oh well. I gave a three sentence or so explanation of the setting (I was kind of scattered) but said I’d send out some more background by email.
Since I wrote up this long-ass email anyway, I might as well put it on the blog too for reference. I sent this to the players to give them some frame reference of what the ‘known adventure areas’ are in the setting. There are some in-jokes, mainly garbling the old PC’s names, because it’s funny, and to maybe add an unwritten goal of achieving lasting fame…the last group just kept having their just glory denied them.
email follows … I edited out some types etc.
Most of you played in the first Telengard campaign, but Chad and Aaron did not, so for their benefit here’s a very brief outline, before moving on to the situation as the new campaign begins (everyone else can skip the next paragraph if you want):
There was a small, bustling city called Skara Brae at the foot of a mountain range, the nearest and tallest mountain being called Mt. Telengard. Mt. Telengard was the site of numerous ancient mining operations. The culture is similar to the Vikings, but with later medieval technology and a medieval-style church — The Norse Catholic Church (Imagine Odin = the Father, Thor = the Son, & Yggdrasil the World Tree = the Holy Spirit, with the other Norse gods as saints, and giants, trolls, etc. as devils). Several hundred years ago, humans arrived and established Skara Brae, and about that time the dwarves disappeared, possibly due to some sort of conflict between the humans and dwarves. Some time later the mining operations were reopened, and at the time the last campaign began, a mine intersected with a some ancient underground passages — in fact an underworld filled with monsters and magic, a dungeon which was also called Telengard. A band of adventurers (the party) explored part of Telengard, and some of the other old mines and tombs dug into Mt. Telengard. They explored two and a half levels of Telengard, two other mine complexes on the mountain (the Ancient Copper Mine and the Haunted Mine), part of the Ancient Crypts, and also a cavern lair that erupted from the face of Mt. Telengard overnight. There was also a vast open pit mine on the side of the mountain, and the party explored part of that. They had a few adventures in the city and surrounding countryside as well, slaying ogres that preyed on a halfling village, clearing a tavern’s basement of a rat-cult, exploring a sunken pond, looting the Alabaster Tower that appears only during certain phases of the moon, entering and destroying a vast demon (no, really), excavating some dwarven ruins beneath the city, and finally getting involved in defending the city from an invasion of pirates and humanoids. The last adventure involved saving a gnomish community from a family of fire giants. Along the way a number of PCs and hirelings died, some being raised, and one being reincarnated as a hobgoblin, who became an NPC. I ran out of steam and put the game campaign “on hiatus” with a lot of loose threads.
So, picking up the campaign, I decided to move forward about 500 years. Skara Brae has fallen to invaders (the Vulking Empire* to the west), but these invaders eventually left when the Vulking Empire collapsed. All that remains of the Vulkings is their religion: the region has adopted the Lords of Light as their gods. The Lords of Light are a pantheon of a dozen or score of deities, each of whom assumes various names, so that Thor and Baldur from the Norse Church are accepted as Lords of Light, smoothing over the transition. Skara Brae has fallen into ruin and was mostly abandoned, as a Vulking city was built on the site of the old Porttown to the south. Puddington, the halfling village, survived the years of chaos by fortifying their village and establishing a disciplined militia under the reforms of “Quincy”. Gnomestead, the gnomish village, has dwindled to a few huts in the woods. The old heroes of Skara Brae are all but forgotten. They are said to have disappeared on a flying ship, pursuing a vampire called Swindle or Swingo. All that remains of their legacy are some statues in Skara Brae’s ruined plaza. The locals still hope that “The battle leader Stonefoot, and his companions Maxim, Little Cam, Orroz, Quincy, Charmin, and their captain, Mr. Growley” will return some day in Skara Barae’s hour of need.
A number of towers have appeared on the landscape — some overnight — dark and ominous but silent and impenetrable. The legendary Alabaster Tower, absent for hundred of years, has reappeared on the shore, stained green and draped with seaweed. Skara Brae has a few diehard holdouts living in it, but much of the old city has been overrun with goblins, morlocks, serpentfolk, and other undesirables, and is walled off. The once proud Adventurer’s Guild was bought out long ago by the Hireling’s Guild, which in turn was dissolved when the dungeon-looting industry fell into recession. The old dungeons of Telengard have not been entered for many years, and most people believe they are empty, trap-laden tombs.
As if the appearance of the towers were not portentous enough, lately a series of comets or shooting stars were observed over Mt. Telengard, and the sages say this can mean nothing good. But lo! A band of promising young scalawags has gathered at the Goodly Mead Inn, and perhaps they will turn the tides of chaos and ruin?
[then I closed with an oft-cited passage from Perdido Street Station:]
“There were three of them. They were immediately and absolutely recognizable as adventurers; rogues who wandered the Ragamoll and the Cymek and Fellid and probably the whole of Bas-Lag. They were hardy and dangerous, lawless, stripped of allegiance or morality, living off their wits, stealing and killing, hiring themselves out to whoever and whatever came. They were inspired by dubious virtues. A few performed useful services: research, cartography, and the like. Most were nothing but tomb raiders. They were scum who died violent deaths, hanging on to a certain cachet among the impressionable through their undeniable bravery and their occasionally impressive exploits.”–China Mieville, Perdido Street Station
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.
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*The Vulkings were on the map in the last campaign, but never came into play. Completely ripped off from The well of the unicorn.
Microlite-FW musings
I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of cobbling together a better organized version of FW. I love the book, and have found the investigation really fascinating (not least because the two gentlemen involved in the game’s creation who I have been able contact have relayed such interesting, funny, and human stories). But the fact is that the game is much more complex than I really would want to run, and more importantly I am not altogether enthusiastic about running a more “logical” game. I want to run a dungeon crawl, more in the tradition of D&D (a tradition that FW mostly rejects).
Still, there are some really great ideas in FW, and they seem worth porting to a house-ruled D&D type game. My brother has been pushing Microlite20 a bit and although I was initially turned off by it, I suddenly see some interesting possibilities. Microlite’s great strength is that it has shed many of the worst aspects of 3/3.5 edition D&D and is fairly malleable. So how about adapting Microlite20 to incorporate some of the better elements of FW?
The standard Microlite spell-casting system, where your Hit Points serve as spell points, would work out to be reasonably close to the mana system, but you could just as well create a “Mana” pool instead. I could also eliminate divine spells and just cook up Appeal/divine intervention rules, which could be a roll of, say, (Religious Level + CHA) vs some target number based on the level of the spell effectively being cast. Maybe add Piety points as well which are burned up in appeals and turning.
Microlite seems to encourage players to advocate for when they think an attribute should be added to their skill checks (I may be reading that into it; maybe the intent is for GMs to always decide). I would similarly require players to advocate for the bonuses they believe thy are entitled to on spell casting and appeal rolls (which would inject the FW flavor of correspondences and areas of favor but keep it simple).
For skills, the basic five skills of Microlite20 (+ Expert) are Physical, Knowledge, Communication, Survival, and Subterfuge. These would be based on the character’s background (Social Class score and social background –urban, rural, warrior, or clergy). I’d envision these setting the limits on which skills the character can spend an initial 3 or so points improving. Clergy could start with the option to improve Knowledge and Communication; warriors with Physical; rural dwellers might get to add to Survival; lower Social Classes that qualify to be Thieves in FW get Subterfuge, etc.).
Which reminds me — the three attributes in stanard Microlite seem too limited. I’d probably throw them all back in, and adjust the system so Endurance sets base HP, Faith is used for magic and religious rolls, and so on. Also, adding the “vice” stats would give a basis for rolling versus temptation, which is an important part of FW‘s flavor. An unguarded purse may be a DC 10 or 12 temptation (roll under with d20 + Greed adjustment + Bravery adjustment?). Maybe berserking is a DC 15 Anger roll (d20 + Bravery bonus – Intelligence bonus?). I suppose I’d have to work out a way to make all rolls over or under though, which should be easy enough.
I’d probably keep the Zodiac and gender modifiers, but give female PCs a bonus of 2 levels or so. Likewise if I allowed non-humans, all humans would have to get spotted a couple of extra levels to counterbalance the fairies’ 2 magic levels from self-conjuration.
This all seems workable.
Of course if I’m dropping the SRD spells, classes, races, and abilities, maybe I don’t need to stick in the OGL either? I guess it could stay in just to be safe.
Fantasy Wargaming…a brief history
What have I learned, then? After a pretty good chunk of research and based on recollections of two people involved in the project (who however admit not remembering everything and who in any case were not hardcore gamers), I’ve come up with this timeline:
1974-1977: A group of Cambridge University students and wargamers begin playing D&D and/or Tunnels & Trolls; Bruce Galloway collects a large circle of gaming friends.
early 1979: Bruce Galloway, a history grad student at Cambridge, and another Cambridge student (Kevin Prior) run Leigh Cliffs, a medieval adventure set in a somewhat gonzo village with outlandish characters using the rules that would eventually form Fantasy Wargaming. Influences include a desire for more serious and historically-based fantasy roleplaying, wargaming, a lot of research at the Cambridge University library and ideas from various sources including Larry Niven’s Magic goes away series.
1979-1980: Bruce plans and run a very complex 1930s espionage and murder mystery game, again assisted by Kevin Prior, and concurrently works on Fantasy Wargaming with Bruce Quarrie (historian and wargaming author), Nick Lowe (another Cambridge student), Mike Hodson-Smith (the author of reviews in White Dwarf and other magazines, and who went on to become a teacher), and Paul Sturman (another gamer). Each is assigned a topic in the book and they write an introductory essay and a section of rules covering the material. Galloway edited and revised the whole to some extent. This partly explains the disjointedness of the rules. Additional playtesting is done but not as part of an ongoing campaign.
October 1980-1981: Fantasy Wargaming is published by Patrick Stephens Ltd., a publisher of books on many topics but including a large number of war gaming & history books, several by Bruce Quarrie. Quarrie was probably the mediator between the publishers and Galloway. PSL (or Quarrie?) assigns Lawrence H. Heath to do the cover and chapter frontispieces. (Heath also does some amazing illustrations for a series of ads in White Dwarf. I can’t find anything else by or about Heath). Margaret Welbank does many interior illustrations, mostly in a medieval style. Some look a bit like Edward Gorey’s work, if he’d been drawing heraldric animals. (Margaret would later draw a graphic story for Interzone and move on to illustrate more mainstream topics, and do some cartoons, etc., and married Nick Lowe.)
1981/2: Bruce Galloway mostly abandons gaming to pursue writing on other matters (hiking in East Anglia, political campaigning, history, etc.)
1982: Day & Stein pick up Fantasy Wargaming for US publication. Both a quarto (letter-sized) edition for chain book stores and an octavo (hardcover novel sized) book club edition is offered through Science Fiction book clubs. The other FW authors graduate, move on, or otherwise pursue their own interests.
1982-1984: Day & Stein go through at least four printings of the large sized edition.
1984: Bruce Galloway dies.
1985: Day & Stein goes out of business, FW goes out of print (at least in the US, maybe in the UK too?). Thousands of copies still exist, though, and are still readily available through most large bookstores for most of the 1980s and then through used/remaindered book dealers.
1992: Mike Hodson-Smith, who had been working as a secondary school teacher, dies.
2004: Bruce Quarrie dies.
The play-testing appears to have been sporadic, occurring mainly during the Leigh Cliffs adventure (before the rules reached their final form) and then piecemeal as sections were written.
I am disappointed that I have been unable to find any of the other authors, and the two Bruces are both dead, & I doubt much more will come to light regarding the rules specifically.
FW was not reviewed in White Dwarf or The Dragon, as far as I can tell. (FW is cited in Dragon #65, however, on p. 59, in an article on legal systems in fantasy worlds by Ed Greenwood.) Other smaller magazines reviewed it and generally did not rate it well. For the interested, there is a review of the game at Board Game Geek (very negative and uniformed, IMO) and a summary of reviews at RPG.net (the rating here is very low too, and I think the problem is that the raters are people unfamiliar with the early days of RPGs and wargaming, as the comments again seem pretty uninformed) but RPG.net does have citations of reviews written in period magazines: Different Worlds #18 (1982), Space Gamer v. 1, no. 56 (1982), and Adventurer #2 (1986). If anyone has access to those magazines I’d love to see a copy of the reviews there!
<Update — I have found a copy of Adventurer #2 and will eventually examine & discuss the review.>
Swords & Dorkery