Basic RPG Game Engines

In my gradual shift from huge roleplaying game tomes to short-and-sweet mechanics I’ve come across a few very basic systems that appeal to me. They might not have the depth of complexity many other games offer – both simple and comprehensive – but they provide a core task resolution system with potential for expansion and an ease of adapting to various settings.

Since the dawn of roleplaying games in the 1970s gamers have tended to take existing systems and modify them to reflect their personal play style and expectations from the mechanics. Initially this came from deficiencies gamers found in the earliest versions of Dungeons & Dragons, classes, monsters, and other rules they felt the original rulebooks lacked (as Jon Peterson documents in Playing at the World). Wargamers had already been “modding” rules for years, creating new scenarios and variants for their favorite titles. The trend continued throughout roleplaying games’ further development. Some variations remained “house rules” among small groups, while others found momentum and support to become original games for publication. While I enjoy playing and house-ruling games to reflect my own expectations for established games, I find intuitive, basic core mechanics engage my urges toward more simplified systems to adapt to appealing settings.

Although the game systems that caught my eye recently have their merits (as outlined below), this trend toward basic mechanics with further adaptability isn’t new. S. John Ross accomplished this in Risus: The Anything RPG way back in the 1990s with its system of die pools assigned to broad (and often humorous) clichés; it remains one of the most elegantly intuitive roleplaying game systems with the potential to expand the core mechanic and ability to adapt to any setting. The system works well in both group and solitaire play, with the free solo adventure Ring of Thieves masterfully demonstrating the solo potential. The basic Fighting Fantasy system from the eponymous solitaire game books also provided a basic framework with its Skill, Stamina, and Luck stats, each working in their own way to determine attacks, absorb damage, and modify rolls. (The Sorcery! series also factored in a basic, memorization-based spell system). The mechanics worked well for the solitaire adventures, though the self-regulated combat often devolved into back-and-forth die-rolling contests between the hero and monsters. An ambitious gamer could easily adapt either system from its original form and modify it for a deeper complexity and specific setting (though Risus remains solid on its own without much system modification and encourages adaptability to any genre).

Grown-Up Games & Kids at Play

“A game is a form of play with goals and structure.”

– Kevin Maroney, The Games Journal

As a gamer parent I encourage my son to join in my games. I’ll freely admit my enthusiasm sometimes gets the better of me, that I don’t always have realistic expectations, and that – like some parents do with sports, careers, or other interests – I gently force my own expectations on my son against his childlike wishes. Kevin Maroney’s basic definition of a game outlines a balancing act gamer parents face. Kids naturally want to play freely, but are they ready for the structure of a game, especially the more daunting structure of a game their parents enjoy?

Frequent readers know I introduced my son, the now-six year-old Little Guy, to games at an early age. He’s always been interested in Daddy’s toys despite the heaps of his own toys spread in the living room and his bedroom. Like most kids his age he enjoys going beyond the bounds with his toys, not simply playing with them as intended but crossing genres and making up his own entertainment unhindered by rules or restrictions. He’s exhibited very imaginative play tendencies, both on his own as an only child and with his parents and friends. He plays out adventures (“movies” or “episodes”) with his Godzilla, Doctor Who, and Star Wars toys, often mixing them up and substituting other toys for missing characters. With his introduction to more formalized games we started small and worked our way up from kid-level fare like Dino Hunt Dice to more sophisticated fare. We’ve rarely turned to children’s board games like Candyland that rely on random mechanics and severely limit player choice (though the completely random Destroy Death Star game proved – and continues to prove – a delightful diversion despite its total lack of player choices). He’s grown over time as we’ve explored new games, particularly ones that merge mechanics he can grasp with themes he loves.

Browsing to Expand Horizons

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something (or so Thorin said to the young dwarves). You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”

– The Hobbit

In this Internet Age it’s easy to rely on search engines and lists of recommended product/content generated by computer-driven algorithms. Unfortunately this limits our exposure to potentially interesting or inspiring material. Perhaps we could occasionally venture beyond our cozy, narrowly curated experiences and return to that pre-internet habit of browsing, wandering through landscapes likely to cater to our interests in search of something new. You never know what you’ll find.

Browsing informed my earliest exploration in the realm of fantasy and science-fiction literature. The summer before my senior year in high school I immersed myself in novels and short stories thanks to the independent bookstore in my hometown (Books on the Common, about which I’ve reminisced before) and a keen bookseller who always made sure he stocked all the titles in any series engaging my interest. In the cozy corner near the single bookshelf unit devoted to such fantastical fare I could browse paperbacks, marvel at cover illustrations, and take my time perusing beguiling back-cover copy before deciding which book to purchase for my week’s reading. In the days before the internet enabled access to a worldwide network of fans, online bookstores, reviews, and author bibliographies I browsed that small sci-fi/fantasy section and exposed myself to the wonderful writings of Niven, Eddings, Moorcock, and others I’d never have found otherwise.

In college, as a Creative Writing major, I was paging through a dictionary seeking the meaning of some unknown word...a practice I don’t hear encouraged as much as in my time, certainly one replaced with the expediency of surfing over to Merriam-Webster.com and looking up words in the search field. As I was paging through “M” I noticed an interesting guide word. Remember guide words, those words in the upper corners of the dictionary pages that indicated the range of alphabetical listings on each page to aid reference? “Memnon.” I’d never noticed the name before despite a great interest in myths, science fiction, fantasy, and other fantastical literature. “Memnon: 1. an ethiopian king killed by Achilles in the Trojan War and made immortal by Zeus. 2. a gigantic statue of an Egyptian king at Thebes, said to have emitted a musical sound at sunrise.” That definition – encountered by sheer chance browsing through the dictionary – fired my imagination and spurred me to investigate more about the singing statue, inspired me to wonder about an archaeologist who might have found the artifact and what he might have learned from it. My initial explorations formed the basis of a historical short story for my creative writing fiction class and later, in an altered form, my first professional short story sale, “Memnon Revived.” The experience started my long immersion in both ancient and Victorian Egypt.

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.

Multiple-Choice Dungeon Room Contents

I was almost out of junior high school when, while hanging out with some neighborhood kids, I watched them play Basic Dungeons & Dragons with module B2 The Keep on the Borderlands; it inspired me to create my own game along a similar vein (what eventually became Creatures & Caverns) before immersing myself into the officially published roleplaying game hobby. In the inaugural dungeon crawl for Creatures & Caverns I designed for the game I included several rooms with multiple possible contents. One sentence seemed to suffice for most entries. But a few descriptions looked something like this:

19) This room contains several cots, a table, and a bench.

a) The two Amazons here draw their swords and attack!

b) No sentries are present to guard a trunk sitting in the corner:

     1) The trunk is filled with 500 gold pieces.

     2) Six animated skeletons leap out and attack.*

* I have, of course, revised these somewhat so I don’t show off my extremely mediocre composition and spelling of the time.

The gamemaster could choose between given options, sometimes to reward or challenge players, or just to change the room contents from the last time they ventured into the dungeon.

Grinder Characters & Heroes

In exploring some solitaire B/X Dungeons & Dragons gaming recently I’ve realized yet another distinction in my preferred play style. Some “old school” games like D&D or other retro-clones in the Old School Renaissance movement (OSR) exemplify a “grinder” mentality, where new characters, rolled up in large crowds, are funneled through deadly dungeons and meet horrible deaths, with only the most worthy surviving to rise through the levels (a kind of “survival of the fittest” mentality devised by some roleplaying game Darwin). Yet I’ve spent much of my life enjoying games that treat characters as heroes in a greater saga, ones with mechanics to reinforce that concept while still imbuing the setting with a degree of risk and suspense. While I’m currently enjoying my exploration of my B/X D&D roots with a resurgence of excellent OSR supplements, I can’t help but question the grinder mentality and seek ways to ensure my characters survive more as heroes than ground meat.

Two elements stand out for me in the balance between grinder and heroic play: the literary origins of fantasy roleplaying, which emphasize a central hero who grows and faces risks but ultimately triumphs; and the mechanics of early class-and-level games which emphasize chance and, in doing so, deal mercilessly with beginning characters. While the literature (and to some degree other media) influencing the development and early popularity of D&D offers rich setting inspiration, the form requires a linear plot and protagonists readers care about who survive through much of the story. Literary influences play such a large role in D&D that both the Dungeon Masters Guide and versions of the basic rules include references, the infamous “Appendix N” in the DMG and the Moldvay Basic D&D rulebook’s “Inspirational Source Material” page. As a kid I was invested heavily in similar influences, particularly in tales of myths and legends, Tolkein’s Middle-earth, epic Ray Harryhausen films, and Star Wars. The literary tradition focuses on the central hero overcoming obstacles; this isn’t always conducive to the kind of experience games offer. Roleplaying games merge elements of heroic literature and other media with the uncertainties generated by game mechanics. Randomness plays a major role in many game elements, from creating a character to determining who succeeds in combat and other critical tasks. As I’ve written before, the random nature of conflict resolution in games, despite one’s best effort to hedge their bets with modifiers and bonuses, can lead to some intense frustration at dice that keep rolling poorly.

Classic RPG Books as Gaming History

“The task of each generation is to interpret accumulated experience and to adapt it to new conditions. The past and the present are useless to us unless they enable us to see boldly into the future”

— Major Alexander De Seversky, military aviation advocate (1894–1974)

Now and then I try expanding my horizons gaming-wise, whether trying new games (successfully or otherwise), reading more “academic” game books, or stepping back to look more closely at how newcomers (especially children) approach games. I’m a firm believer in examining history to see where we’ve been and how we might approach the future. Looking back has certainly changed the face of the roleplaying game hobby; the success of the Old School Renaissance movement (OSR) is only one example. I recently perused a few of my oldest game books from my first forays into the adventure gaming hobby during my high school years. They stir nostalgic feelings and resurrect faint memories of characters and games long gone. Yet they occasionally strike a more analytical chord with me, making me consider how publishers used to approach game issues and how we might learn from their successes and mistakes.

Years ago I maintained a short list of classic, out-of-print game resources I sought to acquire. Some of these I’d seen while immersing myself in gaming in high school, others I’d just heard about. Part of this came out of nostalgia; I wanted books I’d seen or heard of in my early years in my collection. Part came from an urge to see how publishers produced product, imparted core mechanics, and graphically presented their games; perhaps by examining them I could learn which techniques worked, which ones didn’t, and how they compared to current approaches.