Fantasy Heartbreaker, by Russell Bailey

Matthew J. Finch’s A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming has been around a while, and, in certain Dungeons & Dragons circles, is held as a sort of Leviticus on how the game is supposed to be played. I, however, did not start gaming in 1974.¹

I’ve gamed in a lot of different circles, and in a lot of different ways. With luck, I’ll continue to do so. I play the old games, I play the new games, I’ve obviously played a lot of the nineties games. Any way you want to play is cool with me.

That said, here’s some of what I’ve learned so far.

We’re all friends here

River Song is the hottest Carmen Sandiego.

We wouldn’t be sitting here in a spare room full of Apple IIs arguing about which Carmen Sandiego poster is the hottest if we weren’t friends. And it’s certainly because we’re friends that we stopped naming Oregon Trail characters after each other.

Now, being friends isn’t some magical thing where you never argue or always do everything together or whatever. And just like you don’t always get along, your characters don’t get always get along. They also don’t always work together. For the most part, an adventuring party is a social group, not a sports team.

If the rules break your game, break the rules

The core mechanic behind middle school gaming is “stat + skill = whatever the GM says.” Rules are important, because they lend structure to play and provide a common vocabulary for the game, but the main adjudication remains in the hands of the human beings at the table.

The GM shouldn’t be a tyrant. Forcing people around to obey your will is for Debbie and Ms. Frost. Which brings us to:

The GM’s supposed to provide action

No aspect of the game is so important that things should stop happening. Forget puzzles and “player skill” and all of that… if the characters are stuck for ten minutes at a dead end, something should happen and it’s usually GM’s job is to provide that.

The GM should also keep the world moving. I don’t mean you need to map out the troop movements of every city state or envision every insult a vampire makes to another. But there needs to be a sense that the world isn’t sitting, paused, waiting for the characters to wander into the appropriate hex.

Do what seems like a good idea at the time

If a cool idea strikes you, run with it. Player or GM, doesn’t matter. What you planned earlier isn’t as much fun as what you’re doing now and you’ll all have better memories of the session if you broke it.

Middle school gaming is not about the strategically or tactically optimal path. Leave that to the old school with its ten-foot poles and the graceful death ballet of D&D 4. Middle school gaming is also not about maintaining perfectly the mechanics of a great novel.

Crib Shamelessly

Come on, this guy deserves to be in the Monster Manual.

If White Wolf asks you to turn your game into a novel, you may have some problems here, but otherwise? Go nuts. Like the Octorok from The Legend of Zelda? Give him some hit dice and you’ve got the Roktopus. Think Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer would be more awesome as a Nazgul? Time to make that noise.

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Fantasy Heartbreaker is now accumulating spam at about the same rate as actual comments. I’m amused by some of the subjects.

Ren Faire garb

Henry VIII, local version

This is kind of funny, because one of my favorite genres of fantasy gaming is what I call “ren faire fantasy.” The main characteristics of ren faire fantasy are a large, somewhat inexplicable middle class, pirates, lots of specialty shoppes, colorful clothing, and a lot of “cheeky wenches.”

Honestly, it’s kind of Warhammer FRP with less fantasy races and less James Wallis.¹

Anyway, the odd bit here is that I’ve been meaning to do a discussion of ren faire fantasy and why it’s actually quite a lovely thing, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. So it’s rather as if I’m getting spam from the future.² Complete with wenches!

Christian Dating

It’s nice to know that robots don’t believe all those Jack Chick stereotypes.³ A Christian Dating web site stopped by to tell me just how much they enjoyed “Dudes of Legend: How to be Fucking Awesome,” which I thought was sweet.

Unfortunately, I still have very little use for Christian dating, which if you believe this particular robot is very hard to do without the aid of their web site. I don’t want to put too fine a point on this, but my involvement with Christianity has led me to believe that it’s the easiest way to meet people ever. There are weekly events packed with people looking for meaning in their lives. It does not take a fiendish time-traveling android intelligence to see the dating possibilities.

Someone Who Mistook the “Red Box” for a very different reference

I’m backing away quietly.

Pretentious Book Reviews

This book cover is actually titled "To Pick a Rose," which I think we can all agree is pretentious. It hangs outside my office.

It was hard to figure out if this one was spam, because it pointed to an entirely innocent-seeming web site of some guy reading a lot of minor European novels in translation. The site had a decent theme, relevant comments, discussion… all pretty normal, right?

Well, except for the fact that it left repeated comments about discount motor scooters. Which, well, I can sort of imagine the guy who runs that web site riding one (Ben does, after all), but don’t really believe he’s trying to sell them on my Dungeons & Dragons blog.

I figure what actually happened is that the robot was trying to disguise itself by pointing at a legitimate web site, but it kinda fails in that it then didn’t leave any way of reaching wherever it was going to try and sell me the dodgy scooters.⁴

Hate

This is what hate does to you.

“This is about everything I have ever hated since creating my blog.”

Given that this site is, explicitly, about love and pain, I initially figured this was some kind of threat from my arch-nemesis. But it’s actually a sort of stock scam that you’d probably have to understand something about finance to even fall for.

So, let me state two things I don’t have time for here, for the edification of future bots:

1. Hate
2. Math more complicated than THAC0.⁵

“Justin Bieber would be my top! He is extremely sweet!”

I’ve been too busy wondering about a sword fight between Lady Gaga and Ziggy Stardust to really keep track of who Justin Bieber is, but I know he frequently trends on Twitter.

It’s nice to know that he’s a sweet top, though. I’ve always thought kindness was underrated in some BDSM circles.⁶

Those Margaret Weis Novels that aren’t Dragonlance

Aside from the link, all this one said was “I am not good at posting comments.”

Sexual Harassment Lawyers

Which of them needs the lawyer?

Sexual harassment — in the workplace, at school, and, yes, even in the gaming group — is a serious issue. We all have a responsibility to make the world a better place by stepping up and saying something about it. And yeah, we should sue the shit out of some folks along the way, agreed.

But… uhm… that post was about The Legend of Zelda.

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The Legend of Zelda

I think I’ve mentioned before that I consider the original The Legend of Zelda an almost perfect example of a game design. The game flows beautifully, challenges the player, and provides lots of rewards for exploration.

It’s also one of the finest dungeon crawlers of all time, despite a surprisingly small number of clones to its name.¹ Despite clearly adapting the wilderness/underworld model of tabletop roleplaying, Zelda doesn’t adapt the experience/level model.

The original Dungeons & Dragons leveling scheme has four elements:

1. Increased hit points.
2. More spells/skills.
3. Magic items.
4. Money.

In D&D, these are presumed to be gained by trekking across a dangerous wilderness and completing more and more challenging dungeon levels. Just so in Zelda.

Zelda takes the brilliant step of combining the effects of leveling with the completion of dungeons. In the middle of each dungeon, you gain a magic item which is (usually) key to your progress. At the end of each dungeon, you’re rewarded with additional “heart containers,” or hit points.²

But what about wandering the wilderness to gain a few levels and gain an edge on the monsters? Zelda‘s got you covered there, too. Additional heart containers can be found in out of the way places on the overworld map. And some magic treasures (like the equivalents of +1 swords) can be obtained only by exploring the wilderness.

I admire the elegance: one reward halfway through each dungeon that you can put into play immediately, with an increase in power provided at the end of the level. Plenty of cherries for players intent on scouring the map. There’s both an economy and completeness of design that only a few games have, even those from the early eras of video gaming.

I’ve often thought of incorporating a variation of Zelda‘s leveling scheme into one of my games. Much as 3:16 requires a successful mission to advance, I’ve considered making a full exploration of a dungeon the key to leveling in one of my own fantasy heartbreakers. Here’s an excerpt from something I’ve been playing with:

An experience box may be checked by:

• Rolling the same number on every die on a core roll.
• Finding a cache of treasure unguarded by monsters. (Doesn’t count if you killed them.)
• Killing a monster.

An experience line is a special accomplishment, such as:

• Defeating a special monster.
• Completing a small dungeon.
• Completing a level of a large dungeon.
• Performing a deed of legend.
• Being recognized by a non-player character authority figure in some significant fashion, such as knighthood.

Thoughts?

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