Glorantha ORE, maybe?

I have managed to misplace my copy of Heroes and other Worlds, so I had to get on Lulu and order another copy today. Before that I tried to sort through all my games and find it, unsuccessfully. While doing that I did find some gems I had not seen in a long time. Boy do I have many game books or what? I need to stop working and play games full time!

One game I found that made me stop and browse it was Reign. For some time it was a game talked about quite a bit. Now I have not heard about it in a long while. Maybe the fact that the built in fantasy setting was not all that interesting, and that the weird world just felt weird for it's own sake made people shrug and walk past it. But, the rules are interesting and the idea of playing on a higher level, as lords and leaders, still resonate with me. I felt that resonance way back, and long time readers know.

I've never played the so called "end game" of D&D and all that jazz, neither have I ever played Pendragon. I've always felt Reign was the way to go, though. Especially as an alternative to D&D, since you would get there from the get go, and I never was that into knights.

Consider Glorantha. When the rules set Hero Wars and Hero Quest were published, Greg and friends really pushed for the social aspect of the game to come to the forefront. I seem to remember there actually being a book all about "hero bands", like they called the party. It was a group of individuals with contacts, relationships and resources. I kind of liked the idea, but never tried it in play.

Enter Reign. That's the game that's all about playing a "company" of some sort. Maybe it could be married to that setting where you no longer exist (things were different in thr RQ days) as a lone adventurer?

Playing games full time sounds better and better every time I say it...

(anyone want a copy of the flawed but brilliant Glorantha game Hero Wars? Pay shipping and it's yours...)

How to make time mean something in your campaign

What does it mean you have to hole up for two weeks to wait for natural healing, or wait two weeks for that magic item you ordered to be made? Some games actually make time mean something, and not something to be glossed over. Recently I listened to an episode of Ken and Robin talks about stuff where they talked about time in games. It made me think of my old 3rd ed campaign. In that campaign I had the opportunity to see time as an obstacle being circumvented in a not so cool way.

The deal was that with the Craft skill, you can produce items. In this case it was items which should be enchanted, and thus they had to be of Masterwork quality. Unless I remember totally wrong, it wasn't that much harder to do them, or even something you needed a certain level of skill for, but you paid in time. Now, if you delve in the dungeon and the time in between is just that, time in between, then it means nothing. It doesn't matter if it takes one hour or two week if you let it go with "and when it's done you get back to the dungeon". It reminds me of how some spells in older editions of D&D used to age the caster. As far as I remember, that didn't make it into 3rd ed. but item creation rules still had a "time cost".

Can we say something about how time was used to be handled in the olden days, and how time is handled in newer games? I think it's pretty clear that all the talk of the 15 minute game game day, and then back to town for healing and re-memorization of spells signifies something.

Let's think back to the Blackmoor campaign. We know that the players there were in command of armies, and that Arneson in the FFC mention things like yearly events. Clearly time were advancing at a decent pace if it made sense to have random annual events for the kingdom.

But, I am also pretty sure I have read enough of old school campaigns where the only time that mattered was in the dungeon, and I find it significant that in the Mentzer edition of D&D there are no healing rules. You go back to town and when you start the next adventure you are healed. Some time have passed, I guess.

Clearly there are different ways of handling time at work here. There are more examples, and they are not all clearly and easily align chronologically. Maybe someone have done some research in this area. There are some excellent scholars of old school gaming styles, so it would not surprise me. For me it's a stepping stone for ideas on how to play.

Let's say you would like to have time matter. Without keeping those famous records of time, you probably can make the "time tax" useful. Let's take a look at two games where time matters. In Ars Magica and Pendragon time is of importance. Maybe they can teach us something?                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                    
In the latter game, you often only play one of two adventures each year, and then it's the "winter phase" where you do macro management of your character, talking care of manor economics, childbirth and marriage. Step by step your character age, and later on you probably get to retire your character and play with his heir.                                                                     
                                                                                                                                                                                                    
In Ars Magica, you play multiple characters and the mage will probably do research that take years to finalize. Since you will be able to play another character while that happens, it's no impediment to being engaged in the game, but it will still matter that your mage is doing research and not out on adventure.                                                                                
                                                                                                                                                                                                    
How can we use this?                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                                                                                                    
Would it be useful to have a limit year year on how many adventures you can participate in? One way would be to have three delves a year, and if you are injured you have to make a save or loose one of those three opportunities being holed up for healing. I think that would be a cool mechanic.                                                                                                    

Let's then take a gander at long term projects, like crafting items and researching magic. If magic of any complexity takes time, then it makes sense to combine that with the idea of a set amount of adventures per year. If a project takes more than a month, one of the yearly adventures is forfeit.

If we in addition to this takes a a cue from Ars Magica and let all players have a "stable" or adventurers we can have our cookie, and eat it too. A stable of characters is a phenomenon I first heard of in 5th edition of T&T. So even if it's a way to hand a player a cookie when her other character is busy doing magic research or crafting, it actually is as old school as it gets. :)

So, what do you do in this game?

I realized today, when I was looking at my collection, that there are a few of these games which don't answer that well the question in the title of this post.

Everyone who have followed the Steve Jackson Games line Transhuman Space, knows that one of the more questions about that game is "what do you do in this game"? While there are things to do, and they are even presented in the core setting book, it still seem to baffle people. Considering I myself have asked the question even after reading the book, I think they failed at presenting it like they should have. Now, imagine some other games and how they have handled that problem.

From 1981 to 1996 would Call of Cthluhu be a game where you often spend time doing things your character could barely afford, for reasons which only made sense to the player. At least that's the way it might sound when a fan of Delta Green gets going. Even though that many years and editions indicate that the problem might not be that serious, there is a disconnect between what makes sense to most CoC investigators and their players. Trail of Cthulhu solves it by introducing psychological traits, Drives, that suddenly put the reason for adventuring down on the character sheet.

How about a game like Pendragon? It has game mechanics for Glory, which makes it advantageous to behave like an Arthurian knight. I guess the theme of the game is advertised enough in the book as well.

My problem child, the game I have never managed to work for me, Traveller is another interesting piece. In that game there are three classic paths to walk, or travel if you'd permit me saying so. They are the path of the merchant, the mercenary and the sleuth. For me the biggest problem have always been that it's a big universe and the path is not as easy to discern in starlight as I had imagined. I seem to wander.

Of these four games, two can be considered oldies. But, I'd suggest that that matters little since if we compare CoC and Traveller to D&D and T&T we will find that in the latter it's easy to find out what you do. Explore, loot, kill and level up. Lather, rinse and repeat. Compare that to DragonQuest and you once again have a game that while it's very similar to D&D/T&T again it more open and less focused.  At least it seems that way from my reading it.

It could maybe be argued that games with a strong, focused setting (like Pendragon) have an easier time answering the question. Let's dodge THS and ponder Stormbringer/Elric! and Fading Suns. What do you do in Stormbringer? Planewalk and be the chess piece of the gods? I see, hand me the dice. No. Then there's Fading Suns, which have a central mystery and a structured society to play in. It should be easy, just find out why the suns are fading! Well, except that there are quite few examples of how that is done, since the reason have never been published!

Where am I heading with this? Well. I think one reason why it's harder to make some games sing is that you will have to create the reason for adventuring, and the buy-in, yourself. I never tried to do that for Traveller, and maybe that's why it didn't work for me. Maybe there is a lesson here for game designers as well as GMs. If you don't include a clear hook in game, the game should contain some clear advice on how to make it work for you, or at least point out there need to build upon what's been given. I think there are a few interesting conversations to be had about games designed from that point of view.