Review: Dungeonslayers

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

Dungeonslayers – So much for so…nothing.

Review by Guest Blogger Kelly Davis

While the dinosaur in the fantasy RPG room is going through yet another edition change, its former third party provider fills the void with an ever increasing pile of books, and yet others attempt to recapture the old school, GM focused days of yore – we the consumers are left with many, many options to satisfy our fantasy RPG cravings. I don’t think we’ve had this many choices in quite some time.

While edition wars rage on, supplements fill the shelves and 70’s van art enjoys a renaissance – most of our lives haven’t changed. The economy still stinks, we have kids, demanding jobs, and houses under the curse of entropy itself. Many of us simply don’t have the money to spend on another pile of books, or the time to invest in a game where fights take an hour or more to complete and you need to be an engineer to devise an encounter.

One German gamer apparently felt the same way, and unlike most of us, he did something about it. Christian Kennig made his own roleplaying game; his own FREE roleplaying game. It’s on the web. It’s in PDF and printable, and most importantly, it’s under the Creative Commons. That means that not only can we play it, we can help contribute to its future.

It’s called Dungeonslayers and while the title may put the game into a box, the rules system does anything but. Designed to be simple, quick to teach and learn, and customizable; the Dungeonslayers rulebook clocks in at 170 pages, and only 10 of these are rules. The rest is character creation, equipment, talent and spell lists, a bestiary, treasure, game mastering tips, a sandbox campaign world and a trio of adventures.

The Basics

The game only uses one die: The 20 sided. It’s used a little differently than you may have used that die before. You are looking to roll equal to or under a target number, usually determined by combining a primary and secondary ability score (plus or minus various modifiers). A success is a success, but you are really shooting to get as close to your target number as possible. Why? Well, in combat – your roll, the one you used to roll to hit? That’s also your damage.

What’s that, you say? Let’s say you have a melee attack score of 14. You want to attack that goblin. You roll your d20 and get a 12. You do a potential 12 points of damage to the goblin. He gets to roll a defense roll, using his defense stat as his target. He has a defense of 7. He rolls a 2. That reduces your 12 by 2, or 10 damage. Since he only has 8 HP, he goes down!

Remember the joy of rolling a 20 in D&D? That’s a critical hit! Not so in DS. A 20 is a fumble. You drop your weapon, your skill check fails, sometimes other bad things can happen – like your shield breaks. (Yes, you can fumble defense rolls too.) If there are fumbles, you know there are critical successes, too. They are called ‘coups’ in DS and it’s whenever you roll a 1. When you roll a coup, you get your target number as a result. Have a 14 melee attack score, it’s like you rolled a 14.

DS doesn’t require a battlemap, figures, tokens or things like that, but it also works well with them. Everything is in meters. Dungeon maps use 1 meter squares, movement is in meters, so it’s pretty straightforward. There are optional rules for sighting, multiple opponents, wielding two weapons and more. So if you crave that tactical detail, you can have it.

Characters

The character choices are deceivingly simple. You pick from one of three races: Dwarf, Elf or Human. Each race grants you certain perks. They follow the expected tropes familiar to fantasy gamers. Dwarves are tough, Elves are nimble, Humans are skilled. Your choice grants you a bonus to your abilities, too. If you feel too pigeonholed by only three races, there are race creation rules in the back of the book.

After you select your race you choose your class. There are three classes to choose from: Fighter, Scout and Mage. If you select mage, you must select from Healer, Wizard or Sorcerer (Think white, gray and black magic). “Where is the ranger?” “What, no paladin???” you might be asking. Hold on. I’ll get to that. Think of your character as your swim lane for future specialization. Right now choose if you want to be ‘fighty’, ‘shooty/sneaky’, or um…’magicy’. Your class grants you yet another bonus to ability and helps determine what talents you can select as you advance in level (We’ll get to talents in a moment).

You have 3 primary Attributes – Body, Mobility and Mind. These values will most likely never increase. Each attribute has two related traits. These 6 traits should sound somewhat familiar to most gamers: Strength, Constitution, Agility, Dexterity, Intelligence and Aura. These are the abilities that your race and class bonuses are assigned to, and you can increase through advancement.

There are also several derived stats called “Combat Values” that use cute little icons to help you identify them on your character sheet and in the bestiary. The calculations are explained both in the rulebook and on the character sheet and you may refer more to these than your attributes and traits while playing. Things like Hit Points, Defense, Initiative, Movement rate, attack values and spell casting ability – some of which affected by the armor you wear.

In almost every action you perform in DS, you determine your target number by adding the values of an attribute and a trait, modified by conditional effects, equipment modifiers, and more. So when you are choosing your race, class and assigning your abilities, you need to think about the typical actions you’ll be performing and adjust accordingly.

You also start with a talent (or 2 if you are human). These are somewhat like feats in some editions of D&D. There is a large list of talents, both combat and non-combat in nature, that grant bonuses to tasks. You can take some of these multiple times as you advance, increasing the bonuses.

Leveling

Advancement comes very fast at lower levels, you get experience from defeating enemies, exploring rooms, achieving adventure related goals and even some for roleplaying. When you level, you get points to spend to raise your traits, your hit points and gain/improve talents. When you reach 10^th level you may choose to change to a ‘hero class’. These classes represent some of the traditional themes we love so much in our fantasy gaming. There are 3 heroic classes for each base class. Fighters can become Berserkers, Paladins or Weapon Masters. Scouts: Assassins, Rangers and Rogues. Each type of mage (Healer, Wizard and Sorcerer) have three as well, like Druid, Elementalist and Blood Mage! Picking a Hero class opens up some talents unavailable to any other classes and really helps you define your character’s role in the party.

Game Mastering

The game master has a lot of help in designing adventures for DS. First, there is a large bestiary filled with some of the traditional creatures encountered in any good fantasy game. There are guidelines for creating tougher, more seasoned version of monsters. Each monster has a “Foe Factor” to help you determine if your adventuring party is ready to fight them and if so, how many at once.

Treasure tables abound, making on-the-fly gaming much easier, as you can roll random loot after the encounter. The monster ‘stat block’ includes suggested treasure table choices as well.

The rulebook includes a brief introduction to the DS campaign world “Caera”. It’s a small but varied world filled with all the types of locations you’d expect. The game designers intentionally made it a small world, to encourage you to run a forest game one week, a city game the next, a desert adventure after that – and avoid explaining how your characters trekked thousands of miles to get there. There are lots of interesting little ruins and enticing locations on the map, guaranteed to start the seeds of adventure.

There are also three adventures in the book as well. Each one designed to be played in one session. On the DS website, there are about a dozen more adventures, each one page in length. Most are simple dungeon crawls and they provide a night’s entertainment. The maps and icons are common among these adventures so they are easy to pick up and run without ANY prep time on the GM’s part.

Licensed to Create

The creative commons license (which basically says make what you want for this game as long as you offer it for free) really inspires people to design more cool stuff for DS. It’s been around in Germany for a few years, so there is a lot of material in German waiting translation. Some of the materials are promoted on the DS website. There is a whole new spell system you can try out, for example. In Europe, people have taken the skeleton of the DS system and used it for other classic RPG genres including: Zombieslayers (modern zombie apocalypse), GammaSlayers (mutant future apocalypse), and DS-X (an X-Files/conspiracy/MIB type setting). I can’t wait to see these translated into English! Play with this system a few times and you will want to create something with it too.

Summary

What can I say? I love this little game. I love that it’s one booklet, I love that it’s free, I love the open license, I love how quick it plays and what little time it takes to prepare for. There is absolutely no reason not to download this and let your gaming group know about it. Will it replace all those other fantasy games out there that we’ve shelled out hundreds of dollars for? Maybe not, but I guarantee you that you will have as much fun (or more) playing it. It is a great ‘go to’ game for when your gaming group can’t all get together, or for when your GM needs a break, and it would make a great game to run at conventions. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.dungeonslayers.com today.

Bio

Kelly Davis has been playing roleplaying games for most of his 40 something years. Most of that time has been spent as a game master. He works as a contract system analyst for General Motors and is happily married with two creative kids who he is hoping will take up his hobbies. His favorite games include D&D (all editions), Gamma World, Savage Worlds and now Dungeonslayers!

Rolemaster: Introducing Spell Law

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

The post below is written by UbiquitousRat, a guest blogger for The Iron Tavern.

Having had roughly 36 hours to read and digest (at the time of writing) the new Rolemaster rules, this article presents an overview of what Spell Law is all about.

Spell Law was the second book released for the new Rolemaster public playtest, and it sits alongside Character Law and Arms Law at the core of the rules.

What’s in Spell Law?

The top 10 cool features of Spell Law are:

171 Spells Lists, or roughly 4, 275 spells
Three Realms of Magic
Base, Open, Closed and Evil spell lists, helping GMs to manage the power
Loads of utility and informational spells, not just combat magic
Options for GMs which magnify the roleplaying aspects of magic
Possible spell failure, making magic risky but manageable by clever players
Cool and simple magic enhancement items
Magic Ritual rules to allow for larger magical endeavours
Spells for 15 of the 21 Professions in Character Law
The possibility for even a Fighter to learn a spell or two

Spell Lists

It was with genuine glee that I printed off and poured over the 171 Spell Lists in the book. A Spell List is a collection of related individual spells which are learned in progression from the easiest rotes towards the most powerful effects.

Each list has 20 levels of spells, one through 20, and then additional spells at levels 25, 30, 35, 40, and 50. In short, you can cast a spell at the level equal to your Skill Rank in the related Spell List. Doing the arithmetic, you will see that Spell Law contains around 4, 275 spells. But that’s not all.

Spell Lists are also classified based upon their ease of learning and power. Open Lists are the easiest to grasp, while Closed Lists (and also Evil Lists) are the toughest to learn. Each magical Profession also has their own customised Base Lists, which are of medium difficulty to learn.

Realms of Magic

Rolemaster presents magic through three distinct yet interconnected Realms of Magic. These are the Essence, Channelling and Mentalism realms.

Essence is the classic Mage magic, utilising the raw energies of life to create elemental and other cool effects. The elements of Cold, Earth, Fire, Light, Water and Wind are all at the mercy of the Essence worker.

Channelling is all about pulling down power from an external power, usually imagined as a deity or other supernatural entity. Of course, as with everything in Rolemaster, this is up to your own setting and GM’s call, but the spells are tangibly different in feel to those of the Essence Realm.

Mentalism is the magic of the internal self, projected into the world, the power of the mind and will. Mentalists (yup, I still love that name) are all about influence and shaping perceptions. In some ways these are the most limited spells in terms of range and scope, focused on individuals or small groups, but their power can be profound.

We also need to mention that there are Semi- and Hybrid- spellcasters. Semi-spellcasters, like the Paladin, Ranger or Bard, mix their own Base Spell Lists with skill at Arms. Hybrid-spellcasters, like the Sorcerer, mix two of the realms of magic (in this case Channelling and Essence to make lovely destruction magic).

An All-Round Magic System

There are a lot of aspects to Spell Law that I really enjoy. At the risk of skimming over the details, here’s a run-down.

Firstly, I like that magic is risky and yet manageable through clever play. You need to make a Spell Casting Roll each time you cast, but you can decide how long you want to spend wiggling your fingers and chanting. You can decide cast fast at higher risk, try to cast with either hands full or your mouth gagged, or even try to be subtle and sly so that others don’t notice. All of these options are handled by simple modifiers to a basic Spell Casting Roll. One d100 roll, pass or fail. Spell failure gives you a roll on a nasty table tuned to your realm of magic.

Secondly, I love the way that Rolemaster helps the GM to make magic more believable as a roleplaying issue. For example, spellcasters learn spell lists as they ascend in level. However, the GM is reminded that the spellcaster needs access to the spell list within the context of the setting in order to progress in their learning. Thus, as a GM, I am reminded that I can arrange for spell books to be stolen, lost or destroyed if I want to frustrate the linear development of magic for the heroes. This kind of detail is not onerous, is also optional, but is written right into the fairly “Old School” tone of the rules.

A third thing I enjoy is that there are cool rules for Magic Rituals too. These involve multiple casters working in concert. They also allow for slower-to-cast effect with altered parameters. One example would be casting the Level 4 “Concussion’s Way” spell, Heal III, for up to a x5 healing effect; this makes 15 Hits recovered into 75 Hits healed, all for the trade-off of visiting the local temple and getting the priests to perform the ritual over a few hours. This gives the GM all manner of roleplaying options, and the players have incentive to use local priests and temples even if they reach high levels.

Overall, I like that this is a system geared towards all-round spellcasting, not just combat casting. Anyone can learn a spell or two (if you allow it in your campaign) but magic reaches into all aspects of play, not just the combat scene.

Last Words

Spell Law excites me because it puts a lot of options back into roleplaying. Instead of simplistic generic effects conveniently labelled as “magic”, this book gives you a coherent magic system which feels magical.

Spell Law is available as a FREE download for the duration of the Rolemaster Public Playtest. Why not grab the .PDF and have a look for yourself?

Bio

UbiquitousRat is a long-time roleplayer and gamesmaster who has a history with gaming going back to 1979. In 1994 he joined Games Workshop, spending 12 years in the gaming industry at the coal-face of tabletop wargaming. In 1998 he founded the Friday Night Roleplay group at his home in suburban Nottinghamshire, UK, and ever since has been the primary GM. The group was involved in the playtest of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2^nd Edition and Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay, as well as giving air to the development of 6d6 RPG. The core five players are all looking forward to the new Rolemaster and everyone is excited to be sharing the story in The Iron Tavern. Oh, and he’s also a high school teacher during the daytime.

Review: Through the Cotillion of Hours

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Jeffrey Tadlock

Author: Daniel J. Bishop
Publisher: Purple Duck Games
Art: Scott Ackerman
Price: PDF $3.50 / Print(+ PDF) $7.50
Pages: 15

Through the Cotillion of Hours is Purple Duck Games third release in their Adventure Locale line supporting the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and the second written by Daniel Bishop. The Adventure Locale series of adventures written to be dropped into nearly any DCC RPG campaign with minimal prep. One of the unique characteristics about this particular release is it can be used for any character level and any number of characters.

As noted in the blurb text for the adventure, sleeping characters are invited to a masked ball of the Dreaming God, Somnus. Donning masks the characters are granted entrance to the palace where they are left to find the Dreaming God Somnus to possibly ask him to grant them some request. Best be careful though as not all requests are met with pleasure.

The adventure can be run as a drop-in as it can occur while characters sleep. That keeps a DCC RPG judge from having to work it into the current campaign as it can literally happen at anytime in a campaign path.

I mentioned earlier the Adventure Locale series are designed to be run with minimal prep and dropped into existing campaign worlds. This adventure truly delivers on the drop-in factor. Given that it can be run with any number of players and any level of character, it really is quite flexible. I could easily see prepping this and having it ready to run for nights that we are a couple of players short. This module could certainly save me from needing to cancel a session due to last minute cancellations. All I need is for the characters to sleep and I have an adventure for them to take part in.

The other nice thing about this adventure is that they might not complete it the first time through. That isn’t an issue as it can become a recurring dream. So if I were to run it for a couple of players one night I could always pick it up again on another week where we were short some players.

The prep factor of this one is higher than the first two in my opinion, mainly because the judge needs to learn the dream world and how things work there. The adventure is also timed and the judge needs to be ready to track that time and know how to advance that “clock” forward. The previous two adventures I could literally run after a brief skim of the PDF. This one needs a slightly more thorough reading to be ready to run. The time needed is well worth it in my opinion, but it does need a bit more prep time.

Another thought that kept passing through my head as I read this one was the tie-ins to Coliseum Morpheuon from Rite Publishing. I reviewed Coliseum Morpheuon here at The Iron Tavern several months ago, but it covered a whole dream world as well. It could be an interesting area for a DCC RPG judge to explore if they chose.

All in all another solid adventure from the Purple Duck Games for DCC RPG. This one will be nice to have in the back pocket for times we have a couple of players cancel. I look forward to the next in the Adventure Locale series.