Scenarios & the “General Idea”

 “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”

— Seneca

Everyone holds an opinion about roleplaying game adventure design, some quite vehemently, some quite inflexibly, some by ease of writing or preference for play outcomes at their own tables. Certain games encourage a particular format to which, understandably, writers try to adhere whether writing for the publisher or simply creating something familiar for fans. In the 50-year history of roleplaying games many adventure formats have emerged and evolved, sometimes tied to the ever-changing style of such games. Designing adventures can offer a somewhat displaced challenge; one essentially writes a kind of instruction manual for someone else to run themed action at the game table, a kind of toolkit to enabling a gamemaster to evoke a particular experience with players and their characters. Some prefer a step-by-step approach through encounters, others like a more free-form “sandbox” arrangement. Adventures require some degree of preparation from a gamemaster, even if it’s simply familiarizing themselves with a published game world...or jotting down notes of their own. I’ve done my share of designing and writing adventures, some for publication, others just for friends; lately I’ve been toying with different techniques, as I’ve mentioned before. Sometimes for games — as in other aspects of life — it helps to look at history, to see how others approached challenges, for insight on issues we face. I looked to roleplaying games’ pre-history, back in the days when wargaming slowly emerged from a Europe ravaged by Napoleon’s armies. And the idea of the scenario tied to a “General idea” seems core to designing an adventure serving as gamemaster resource for greater player agency.

Advice & Inspiration for Gaming Andor

“There will be times when the struggle seems impossible.”

— Nemik’s Manifesto

Watching the Star Wars series Andor has me thinking about running a D6 Star Wars Roleplaying Game campaign again (assuming I had any interested players...). Back in my younger years, toward the end of the 20th century, I would have hoped to see a specific roleplaying game sourcebook covering all elements we saw in Andor: planets, weapons, characters, locations, vehicles, starships, organizations, character templates, and gamemaster advice But after 30 years, multiple versions of an official Star Wars roleplaying game, and a flood of Star Wars media I’m encouraged I — and maybe the hobby overall — have grown from focusing on formally published game supplements to embracing the wealth of media resources available in today’s information landscape so fans can create their own do-it-yourself roleplaying game experiences in their favorite settings. So I’m re-watching the media, browsing through relevant sources (and eyeing new ones), and, in reflecting on the kinds of stories in a resistance-driven “Dawn of Rebellion” era, looking to similar, adjacent resources for knowledge and inspiration.

“Prep Is Play”

 “It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.”

— Mark Twain

I haven’t engaged with roleplaying games in a while, owing to a lack of interested players and time. Gathering multiple friends for any regular game session these days has become a common meme trope for the adult gamer generations. So I’m exploring a solitaire roleplaying game to engage my urge to return to that form...and immerse myself in some much-needed gaming escapism to deal with an onslaught of personal stress and <waves hand> all this nonsense going on in the world. My game of choice? Ironsworn: Starforged by Shawn Tomkin. I backed it in Kickstarter and, though I’ve read it and explored its numerous oracle tables, I’ve not yet sat down to play it. I’ve been developing a character in the back of my mind, along with an initial contact and a sector with some locations, but otherwise I’ve relied on the random table “oracles” to guide my sector set-up and other bits for which I’ve no immediate inspiration. I’m having fun determining the elements for my future adventures, even though I’m not actually playing the game. Or am I? Starforged includes a heading I think all roleplaying gamers can take to heart: “Prep Is Play.”

Lifepaths & Templates

 “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

— George Bernard Shaw

Lifepaths and other background mechanics in roleplaying games help players gain some sense of the world their characters inhabit, even if they themselves just discovered it. They provide backstory and motivation, context for developing characters over future misadventures. Few games use them, despite their origins in the earliest days of the roleplaying game hobby. Many prefer to rely on genre stereotypes to define character roles, leaving the (often optional) job of developing a backstory to players, if they bother at all; some fill it in during play, but most focus on where their character is going, rather than where they’ve been. Lifepaths and templates serve as game mechanisms to provide some sense of a character’s past — even if only defined in terms of stats and equipment — but offer more story hooks to entice players to create more depth to their fictional personae.

Rules as Written, Game as Played

 “The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience.”

— Gary Gygax

Chevy Chase's character from
Community prepares to run D&D....

After last week’s missive about “rigid” and “free” rules I started thinking about the flexibility roleplaying games have always offered and the variable experience they provide when mixing a rules system with a setting, a particular gamemaster, and a certain group of individual players. Sure, all games provide some variability with different participants within the more rigid structure rules impose. But roleplaying games offer a lot of room for interpretation to suit different play styles: which rules a gamemaster relies on and which they use infrequently or even ignore completely; to what degree the participants focus on rules, character roles, or setting; where an adventure moves and how it involves players and their characters. Roleplaying games give us lots of freedom between the rules as written and how we run them, subject to interpretation and collaboration between everyone at the table. All these variables sometimes lead to inconsistent quality. Sometimes game sessions can be terrible; but with the right combinations, the experience can seem magical. Each person at the table and their interpretation of a game (internally as a mindset and externally through play) represents a wide-ranging variable...all of which can affect the course of the game and the satisfaction each person finds in it.

A Character’s Bequest

“A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.”

– Niccolo Machiavelli

I’m currently dealing with ongoing in-law drama filling our life with overwhelming anxiety. Games often provide us refuge from real life’s miseries...so I’m channeling my frustration at the onslaught of trust law, inheritance legalities, an uncommunicative and sanctimonious trustee/brother-in-law, and dubious lawyers flooding my consciousness into something productive: writing about heirs and inheritance in roleplaying games. Rules for such things have been little more than a footnote in the earliest games, strange given their emphasis on killing monsters, taking their loot, and amassing incredible fortunes of coin, material, and magic. As games evolved from that model into ones with greater emphasis on characters such concerns seem to have evaporated or become naturally absorbed into more narrative or cinematic game elements. Rather than adhere to rigid rules (or even more liberal “rulings”) about the state of a character’s possessions at their death, such bequests offer rich opportunities to add depth to surviving characters and expand the scope of future adventures with related story elements.

Tables of Possibilities

 “That is the exploration that awaits you! Not mapping stars and studying nebula, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.”

– Leonard Nimoy

I love randomized tables in roleplaying games. They offer a quick-reference, thematic list to help define some aspect of a setting. A character’s past experiences. Encounters for a particular environment. Things that go wrong when you roll a critical failure. Some keep it simple, others elaborate with extra information or reference to other tables to determine more details about the results. Most provide a die type to roll to randomly determine results, though one might simply glance down the table and pick something appropriate for the moment. I’m definitely of the “roll or choose” camp, leaving things up to fate when I can’t decide, or choosing something that best reflects where the action or characters are going; though I rely on the dice when using table related to character creation. But tables themselves provide only half the necessary material; gamemasters and players bring their own involvement, perspective, and creativity when enabling table results to add richness to their games.

Monsters & Motivation

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

As I mentioned back at the end of my New Year’s missive (“Rejuvenating after the Lost Years”) I’m developing a medieval fantasy setting (possibly using B/X Dungeons & Dragons, maybe system-neutral; that’s a debate for another day). It’s a vast moorland of heath, mires, and hills created ages ago when kingdoms banded together to destroy the power of a great mage. Rather than rely on the usual explore-slay-pillage tropes on which some games and gameplay rely, I’m trying to focus more on the relationship of the region’s inhabitants with both the environment and each other. So in designing this setting I’m looking beyond basic, superficial stereotypes and trying to craft for each faction, individual, and even monsters a relevant motivation when interacting with each other and with player characters. This inevitably leads me to examine the role we give “monsters” in fantasy roleplaying games. like my favorite B/X D&D.

Customizing My B/X D&D Experience

My son and I have been gaming on and off recently, occasionally testing the waters of intro roleplaying games between Pokemon card game duels and an occasional board game. We’ve enjoyed Hero Kids, though each adventure requires a good deal of prep, whether I’m printing and adapting an existing scenario or devising my own (with the requisite maps). We’ve also tried the forgotten Pokemon Jr. Adventure Game – a wonderfully simple yet entertaining intro roleplaying game experience that capitalizes on the popular Japanese license – which I’m enjoying for its very basic, read-aloud scripted scenes and simple combat system printed on the various Pokemon cards. Both games still hold some potential for several more play sessions, especially if I can wean everyone off Hero Kids’ maps. At some point, though, I’d like to transition to something a bit more mainstream that also caters to my own gaming urges. So I’m re-evaluating my current views regarding Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons, as many of you know, my preferred version of D&D and, despite my general explorations of the Old School Renaissance, my preferred OSR game. I’m looking to make it more comprehensible for a seven year-old and provide a more heroic (read” less-deadly”) experience for characters.

Advancement Influences Tone

Most roleplaying games include some kind of advancement system to encourage players to join game sessions and improve their characters. It’s been an essential element of roleplaying games since their beginnings, this ability to continue playing to gain more experience and build a more powerful character over time. Yet the particular mechanics of how in-game action translates to character experience influences the tone of the game. Players naturally want to improve their heroes; characters’ in-game actions tend to focus on those that best reward them in the context of the specific game scenario. Games that reward experience for slain monsters and looted treasure have a different tone than those giving points for solving problems, gaming in-character, managing encounters, and achieving goals.

Level-Up Lifepath

Dungeons & Dragons and Old School Renaissance retro-clone games in particular often rely on the “zero to hero” idea that characters begin at first level and rise through the ranks by going on adventures, killing monsters, and taking their stuff...or die trying (emphasis on the latter). Of course nothing stops players from rolling up higher-level heroes simply by adding level adjustments to first-level characters. It’s an exercise in bookkeeping, adding levels and experience points, adjusting to-hit modifiers, adding spells and special abilities depending on the character race and class. This all seems shallow to me and doesn’t offer the roleplaying opportunities to enhance a character actual play provides. I started thinking how to change that, looked back at some classic, well-loved roleplaying games for inspiration (and one recent acquisition), and discovered the sometimes-used “lifepath” method could provide some enhancements when creating higher-level characters.

Making Spellcasters More Effective at Low Levels

We continued our exploration of Hero Kids this week with a Thursday Game Night adventure I whipped up because the Little Guy wanted some action in a forest. My wife is playing a healer and the Little Guy is running a warrior. As we’re playing I’m appreciating how Hero Kids handles magic. Each spellcasting character has a magic-based attack they can use each round against a target within range. Each also has a special ability related to magic, such as the healer’s ability to brew replacement healing potions. I’m sure at some point we’ll transition to more involved roleplaying games, possibly even Basic Dungeons & Dragons, my personal favorite. Yet I’ve never been a fan of “Vancian” magic, in which spellcasters memorize a set of spells and, once used, can’t access them again until they find time to rest and study (with a similar prepare, use, and lose structure for clerics). Sure, I cut my teeth on B/X D&D and thus for many years just accepted the system as standard; spellcasters have a limited number of spells prepared from their spellbook, and they’re gone after cast until the character rests and memorizes them again. So I started thinking about an alternate magic system in my quest to make Basic D&D easier on beginning characters.

Equipping the Party Off List

Paging through Kabuki Kaiser’s Ruins of the Undercity for a recent post I realized how much I liked this approach to buying equipment in Dungeons & Dragons or other Old School Renaissance (OSR) games. Rather than simply purchasing items off a few lists in a rulebook, readers can wander tables for aptly named shops filled with wares both conventional and extraordinary. I prefer the characters shopping in a setting than players buying stuff off a rulebook’s limited list. Yet from its earliest days D&D focused more on the dungeon delve than down time at the nearby base of operations; certainly this aspect of character creation and maintenance could form the basis of some adventurer base interactions that enhance both characters and setting.

Equipping characters remains an essential step in character creation. For OSR games and B/X D&D this step sometimes seems like one more bit of record-keeping on the character sheet, though choices like armor and weapons affect armor class and weapon damage. More recent entries into the fantasy roleplaying game stage have handled this differently, offering starting characters a choice of pre-determined kits based on race, class, or background. But after the initial adventure players can spend their characters’ gold as they please, often by perusing equipment lists like some medieval mail-order catalog, choosing the items they want, paying for them, and jotting them down on a character sheet.

What Makes A Good Adventurer Base?

I recently indulged a nostalgic urge to check out some old beginner-level materials in my collection. My occasional foray into Old School Renaissance gaming (OSR) and my preference for Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons started me thinking about the towns new adventurers use as bases for their explorations of nearby dungeons. Recent solo gaming in this regard exposed me to the city-state of Cryptopolis in Kabuki Kaiser’s Ruins of the Undercity, which provides a diverse base of operations. I also pulled out the second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons boxed starter set, First Quest, since I recalled it included a town characters could use, and, of course, one of the classic B/X D&D modules, Gary Gygax’s B2 The Keep on the Borderlands. While investigating these three examples I came to a few conclusions on what essential elements make a satisfying adventurer base.

Adventurer bases cater to “downtime” character maintenance instead of core activities of exploration and combat. Certainly such an environment can take on a life of its own, but for some it’s a matter of finding a place to simply buy provisions, heal wounds, cash in treasure, level up, and tend to other technicalities marked on a character sheet. Providing the necessities to recover from the last dungeon delve and prepare characters for the next one stands as the bare-bones foundation of a base; yet it can, if artfully crafted, offer elements that interlock with and enhance other setting components. A good base fulfills three criteria: it provides a place where characters can find support, offers potential for future adventures, and reinforces the setting.

The Challenge of “Anything Can Be Attempted”

“Role-playing games, however, aspire to an ideal where anything can be attempted, where the player can direct that a character attempt any action that one can plausibly contend a person in that situation might undertake – the referee...decides the results.”

– Jon Peterson, Playing at the World

I’ve done my fair share of writing across the various fields in the adventure gaming hobby: lots of roleplaying game material, some miniature wargaming rules, even dabbling in board game design. Each requires its own set of skills, a particular approach to organization and execution, and a great deal of work. By far writing roleplaying games, and particularly scenarios for them, remains the most difficult. Even the most fantastical wargames and board games have established rules, ordered turn sequences, limited, clear, yet meaningful player choices, and a relatively predictable set of outcomes. But, as Jon Peterson noted in Playing at the World, in roleplaying games “anything can be attempted.” And therein lies the challenge.

Board and wargames follow fairly rigid structures, both in general game presentation and in actual gameplay processes. Some have elaborate rules and numerous player choices, but overall these strive to establish patterns of action and steer players away from the concept that “anything can be attempted.” For instance, a board game usually has an outline of the player turn, often summarized on a card or reference sheet. A wargame follows predictable steps of movement, combat, and resolution (including casualties, morale, and reinforcements). Players try to achieve their goals within the scope of the actions the game allows them to choose.

The Complete Character Sheet

In my forays into solitaire B/X D&D gaming I find the classic character sheet lacking in its organization and presentation of stats and rules I find most essential for solitaire play. But everyone customizes mechanics to their personal game style – one of the hallmarks of the Old School Renaissance movement (OSR) – and the character sheet should reflect that. The more complete the information on a character sheet the less one needs to constantly add modifiers or reference the rulebook.

Take the character sheet for West End Games’ D6 Star Wars roleplaying game. Almost everything needed to play is on that sheet. In October, when Nuke-Con generously flew me out to Omaha as a guest, I had to carefully pack everything for the convention into one manageable bag (which I checked anyway, but still...). I was running a healthy slate of game scenarios which would normally necessitate me packing the Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2nd Edition – Revised & Expanded and D6 Adventure rulebooks for reference at the table, or at least to prop up to promote the game. They wouldn’t fit with all the other stuff I brought (how I managed to bring enough toys to run a Panzer Kids game is beyond me). Instead I made sure I had one spare pregenerated character sheet for each scenario to serve as my gamemaster’s reference. Everything short of difficulty numbers – which I’ve memorized or were in the scenarios – was on that sheet: attribute names and their requisite skills, wound levels, basic damage for weapons.

Playing Yourself in Games

Gaming is an escapist hobby. We play games for recreation, as a break from the many real-world challenges we face every day. Sure, sometimes we play games to educate, to pursue an interest in history or some other academic field. But for the most part, for many players, and certainly in our society, games fall under the non-essential recreational category. The fantastic worlds within roleplaying games offer a chance not simply to explore a new and exotic setting but to examine our selves through aspects of characters with amazing abilities far beyond our mundane, everyday selves. Occasionally a roleplaying game offers the chance for players not to run a fantastic persona but a character based on their actual self. While this seems like an interesting exercise – even a possible campaign premise – it’s not one for someone like me who doesn’t like mixing my fantasy with reality, even in a recreational pursuit like roleplaying games.

A recent review of the first entry in Fantasy Flight Games’ End of the World roleplaying game line inspired me to think about playing myself in a real-world scenario, even one as fantastic as a Zombie Apocalypse. In examining the issue, I realize two things about myself: I don’t like much dose of real-world in my roleplaying games and I prefer games where the characters have heroic roles to play. The marketing promoting the game line – including future end-of-the-world releases like Wrath of the Gods, Alien Invasion, and Revolt of the Machines – highlights the novelty that players can game as themselves, and, according to the solid review of the first game, offers a group system for determining one’s game stats. (Of course the rules – and the online-only preview features – state you don’t have to create a character based on yourself, but then why promote that as a major selling-point of the game?) I’m going to resist the urge to discuss the apparent excess of offering four, $40 games relying on the survivalist theme, the novelty of playing yourself as a character, and, presumably, including the full, similar game rules in each setting volume. Whatever your flavor of contemporary apocalyptic scenario, playing ones self in gritty real-world settings cuts too close to reality for me, eliminates the heroic nature I enjoy in games, and mixes my fantasy with reality, my free time with real-world anxieties, in a combination that really doesn’t satisfy me.

Basic & Advanced Rules

Some games offer basic rules or “quickstart” sample rules to provide a taste of the essential mechanics behind gameplay; in some cases these rules are simplified from the more advanced, “full” game, but in many they represent the essential core elements required to play a meaningful game. This approach remains a great way not only to sell games to new gamers but for those gamers to more easily introduce games to their friends through the basic rules.


My recent acquisition of yet another game including both basic and advanced rules prompted me to ponder the benefits of such presentation, particularly when introducing a game to a new audience and those not yet familiar with the adventure gaming hobby

As both a player and a game designer I’ve long admired this approach as an effective means of presenting a new game to established gamers and introducing newcomers to the adventure gaming hobby. The strategy helps newcomers overcome the often daunting feeling that they must master all the rules in a game before playing, instead offering a basic or quick-start version that overcomes that hurdle and gets them playing the game as soon as possible. It represents a thoughtful refinement of a game that its essentials can fit into a basic version and yet can provide even deeper gameplay and a more fulfilling play experience through the application of advanced rules once players have mastered the basics. The model also enables a preview marketing strategy; a publisher can offer the basic rules for free, as a teaser of the core mechanics to tempt players to purchase the more deeply developed advanced version. Even as an adult, especially one with limited time and focus, I really like having basic rules to give me a feel for the game and play it out fully; advanced rules give me tidbits to enhance the basic rules if I can easily understand them and feel they augment my gameplay.

In another online venue I mentioned several games using basic and advanced rules I liked, but I want to focus on a few I felt did that extremely well and consider why they appeal so much to me:

Wings of War: Dawn of World War II (since reincarnated as Wings of Glory WWII): I’ve talked about this game before and admire its simple mechanics of card play on the game surface to simulate World War II dogfights. The basic rules cover the bare minimum to enjoy a game: movement, shooting, and damage. Advanced rules add more technicalities, including altitude, special damage, and bombing runs. The intuitive card-based system for moving and the assumption that anything within range takes fire (though with variable damage results) makes for a fast and easy-to-learn game; the advanced rules add options any solid wargamer would expect but that aren’t integral to enjoying the basic game. The full-color rulebook also includes plenty of illustrative diagrams demonstrating the essential principles of play.

Sirocco& Red Storm Rising: A desert-warfare strategy battle game simulating the World War II conflict between Patton and Rommel in North Africa, Siroccoteaches the core concepts of movement and combat in the basic rulebook, while adding a host of optional rules for terrain, range, command, supply, and troop quality -- plus several scenarios -- in the “Masters” rulebook. Simulating a hypothetical Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany against defending NATO forces (as depicted in the Tom Clancy novel of the same name), Red Storm Rising offers some very concise yet intuitive division-level wargame mechanics in the basic rulebook with many more complex yet realistic options to add in the advanced rules. Both games include separate booklets for the basic and expert rules and include nicely illustrated map-boards. Sirocco uses plastic pieces shaped like military units (perfect for wargaming newcomers), while Red Storm Rising uses cardboard chits in plastic stands (for the fog of war mechanic) with only one essential combat value on the piece to avoid intimidating new players. Both games come from the late 1980s when TSR released such fare in an attempt to broaden their audience with “easy to learn” wargames that could appeal to more seasoned gamers with advanced rules.

Star Frontiers: The basic rulebook in the boxed set offers a stripped-down character creation process (eliminating skills and a host of other details) with the basics of task resolution, combat, vehicle chases, and equipment, all put to the test in a programmed-format solitaire tutorial adventure (a personal favorite of mine for introducing roleplaying game rules) and a more freeform group scenario using included location maps and character/creature counters. The expert booklet serves as the full rules set expanding on the introductory booklet’s rules and setting foundation. The game’s basic and expert rules booklets did a far better job of introducing roleplaying game concepts than the Basic and Expert D&D game rules, albeit the science fiction setting wasn’t as popular as dungeon delving.

[Basic & Expert Dungeons & Dragons: I’m hesitant to mention Basic/Expert D&D in this list (hence the bracketed text) because, though it employs the similar “basic” and “advanced” designation in its titles, the game remains far too complex and introduces to many concepts essential to roleplaying games to really fit my more concise ideal for a basic/advanced set-up. The advancement of the “expert” set simply reflects its expansion of the levels (and hence challenges and rewards) more experienced characters can attain; however, the games did introduce many newcomers to the fantasy roleplaying game hobby in the 1980s, arguably the “Golden Age of Roleplaying.” It offered an elegant explanation of roleplaying (which I discussed in a past Hobby Games Recce post) and thus in my view deserves some honorable mention.]

Practicalities in Projects

How does this admiration for basic and advanced rules affect my approaches to current projects? I’ve carefully balanced the urge to take this approach with the nature of each product I’m designing -- it’s not appropriate for every game -- and decided this approach might work best on two projects intended to introduce young and new gamers to aspects of the adventure gaming hobby: miniature wargames and traditional medieval fantasy roleplaying games.

The Miniatures Wargame: I’m dabbling with a simplified miniatures wargame for kids with a World War II tank warfare theme, with the intent of introducing kids to some wargaming basics without overwhelming them with the intense yet often enjoyable accuracy of other immensely popular systems like Flames of War. The essential game mechanics exist and have undergone some playtesting. I’m looking to develop a basic rulebook containing the bare-bones yet playable system followed by an advanced rules set with options kids can add to enhance their play experience to reflect more generally accepted elements of miniatures wargames, including close range bonuses, terrain and obstacles, anti-tank artillery, minefields, veteran crews, objectives, command distance. While I expect I’d present the advanced options in a standard rulebook format, I’d like to offer summaries of each option as a half- or quarter-page reference card players could put on the gaming table as a reminder of what additional rules are in play. This is clearly a case of the egotistical game designer thinking he can do better than the myriad offerings in the field ranging from homegrown rules to well-established hobby games. About the only one that adopts the basic/advanced rules presentation is the Axis & Allies Miniatures Game, which unfortunately relies on the collectable nature of the miniatures and has minimal support from manufacturer Wizards of the Coast.

The Fantasy Roleplaying Game Project: Offering a full roleplaying game in both basic and advanced rules presents some challenges on the basic end, considering all the myriad and sometimes complicated elements such a game requires. I intend to create a fantasy roleplaying game combining elements appealing to old-school-renaissance gamers as well as those seeking to introduce kids (10 and up or so) to such games (despite the recent prevalence of such products). As I began developing elements of the game to present to playtesters I found myself relying on my favorite “solitaire tutorial adventure” model: offering some flavor text to define the setting and situation followed by enough basic task/combat resolution rules to run encounters, then a “programmed” scenario demonstrating those rules. While such an adventure presentation could certainly serve as a promotional piece showcasing elements of the game, it’s far from even a “quick-start” version of the full rules. I envision most of the easy-to-play elements in the basic rules will evolve in the design, writing, and presentation of the rules themselves, keeping an eye on being clear and concise. I regret I’m falling back on the Basic/Expert D&D model where the “expert” version simply expands the character advancement opportunities (including additional powers, new monsters, and more magical items/treasure).

I’ll see how these approaches work out as both games receive more development as time allows. While the tank miniatures game percolates on the back burner of my mind (even as I write this I’m devising new ways to further streamline the mechanics), I’m actively developing and playtesting the fantasy roleplaying game. I’m hoping some early stage playtesting offers some guidance in the mechanics and presentation.