Evolving RPG Collection Habits

Right now I have this urge to tidy and organize everything. Maybe it’s that “spring cleaning” bug that bites people this time of year. Amid all the other household and parental organization projects tugging at my attention, I want want to re-organize my vast collection of roleplaying game materials acquired during more than 35 years of gaming. Recently I’ve seen many gamers I know trying to pare down their collections, especially given the great accessibility of new and classic materials through electronic publishing or print on demand. Yet I’m of an age where reading or referencing too much on a screen reduces my comprehension levels; I’d much rather page through a physical book and retain more information from the printed page. (Perhaps the physical act of turning a page slows me down, whereas scrolling through pages encourages me to mindlessly skim the material.) Sure, I’ve sold or traded many roleplaying game books that no longer interest me, won’t ever see actual play, or don’t cater to my latest role as a gaming parent; but I still have a large collection of materials I plan on keeping.

How did I acquire all these roleplaying games? All 23+ linear shelf feet of them? Kept through several arduous moves? Throughout my gaming life I passed through several stages as a player and consumer. Where I stood often influenced what and how much I bought.

Screen or No Screen?

The gamemaster screen remains a stereotypical part of roleplaying games. Even members of the general, non-gaming public with popularized impression of the hobby view the gamemaster as a guy hunched behind a screen secretly rolling dice and consulting esoteric charts.* The screen became popularized as a seemingly required accessory by early editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Numerous other roleplaying games issued gamemaster screens; traditional ones still publish screens even today, when some might view the accessory as outdated. In today’s varied landscape of games new and nostalgic, are gamemaster screens still an essential part of gaming? Using a screen remains one of those choices individual gamemasters make; it’s sometimes helpful but certainly never required.

In my early days of roleplaying a gamemaster screen of some kind was essential. Goodness, how else would a gamemaster keep all the scenario information and die rolls absolutely secret from the players? Although I never owned the AD&D screen, I did acquire one for B/X D&D, AC2 Combat Shield and Mini-Adventure, more because I could find it a the local hobby shop when the stock of AD&D screens had already been bought up by die-hard players. It was nice to have various reference tables from the B/X rulebooks in one handy place. Besides, having a screen between the players and gamemaster was just how the game was played; obviously if I didn’t have a screen I just wasn’t playing the game right.

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.

Thoughts on the “War” on D&D

I’m not sure why a lot of “War on D&D” blips were flitting over my internet radar the past week or two, but they’ve shown up for some reason and attracted my interest. From my earliest days playing roleplaying games D&D has had controversy surrounding it, though for me it was thankfully playing out in the distant background and hardly affected me directly. Certainly it was unlike any other game the general public had ever seen, let alone understood. When combined with fear-driven sensationalist associations with suicide and Satanic rituals, D&D passed beyond mere curiosity and became a controversy. The reaction in public communities and private families varied from zealous opposition to quiet acceptance. Whether one might call it a “war” on D&D or simply society’s growing pains in understanding and accepting this creative phenomenon remains open for debate.

I never would have considered my experience in the “Golden Age of Roleplaying” (the early 1980s) anything like a war, though I was aware of a certain degree of controversy about D&D and kept my head down for the most part. I was fortunate to have parents who – though they might have had concerns about the effects of the game on young minds – encouraged my various interests, including roleplaying games. After my initial exposure to some neighborhood kids playing D&D I devised my own game, what later became the extremely basic Creatures & Caverns. After observing this interest my parents bought me the Moldvay edition Basic D&D boxed set...as an Easter gift in 1982. I played with neighborhood kids and school friends frequently throughout that year and into high school. Through these activities I made a few close, lifelong gaming friends who continued their enthusiasm for roleplaying games well into adulthood.

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.

Dictionary of Adventure Gaming Biography

Way back in my high school days I frequently took refuge in the library. During the occasional free period each week (after suffering through mandatory “study hall” as a freshman) I’d hang out in the library using the now-extinct card catalog to research interesting subjects (mostly geared toward my Dungeons & Dragons hobby), browsing for science fiction to read (not much at the time), and even trying out new game designs with friends in the group study area (until a British librarian kicked us out for “gambling” because we were using six-sided dice...).

The school library had a full set of the Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) which, as part of various English class projects, we occasionally consulted. I was delighted to find a volume covering fantasy and science fiction authors, many of whom had captured my imagination. While the articles didn’t help my academic pursuits, they showed me how various authors got their start and the scope of their literary accomplishments. My college library also had a set of the DLB which I occasionally consulted when seeking refuge among the labyrinthine stacks. The DLB still exists today, possibly as a relic in some libraries, but more prominently as a website accessible through paid subscription. While one might consult Wikipedia and other online repositories of group-contributed knowledge, the old DLB still holds authority (at least for me) with edited, well-researched materials under a tried-and-true brand.

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.