Astonishing Swordsman and Sorcerers of Hyperborea

I recently had the pleasure of acquiring the pdf version of the Astonishing Swordsman and Sorcerers of Hyperborea Players / Referees manuals.

I have to say, after an initial review I'm really impressed. While it isn't quite as clean and elegant of current house-favorite Lamentations of the Flame Princess, it has a lot going for it.

The color cover from the box set catches the eye off the bat, wearing its pulp influences on its shoulder, both in fearless display of anatomy on the front cover (can you claim sexism when the guy isn't wearing anything but a loin cloth either?) and the delightfully retro typography of the logo. The individual pdfs have covers that evoke the original white box set in many ways. Though I don't have the physical edition, I'll post an image here from their website:

Very cool.

The internal layout is very spartan and relatively clean. In some ways, it reminds me of the AD&D1e book, albeit not nearly so cluttered and crowded. There are a large number of illustrations throughout the book, and it seems clear that they retained the same artist to do all of the work. I can appreciate that.

The game in many ways appears to be an AD&D retroclone, and it is probably closest to that edition from what I can tell. However, because of its specific Sword & Sorcery bent, they have made a few changes to fit thematically. For instance, Races are human only, but they have a good amount of information on different "races of men," representing them in a suitably interesting fashion. Many of the spells are flavored in a similarly S&S fashion, attempting to further etch out a flavor to the book.

Classes are very interesting as well, as they offer the "classic four" of  Fighter, Magician, Cleric, and Thief, but within each category exists a fairly comprehensive list of sub-classes. Fighters have the Barbarian, Paladin, and Ranger options you might expect, but also have Berserker, Cataphract, and Warlock as additional options that add some flavor to the setting. That said, even the book advises that for those seeking to closely emulate the genre, the classic four are often the best.

Most classes have progression listed up to only level 12, which might be a disappointment for some, but is entirely keeping with the genre being portrayed. Even in classic D&D editions, the levels above "name level" have always been the stuff of super-heroics.



Another interesting feature that strikes me is the separation of attribute tests into "Tests of X" and "Extraordinary Feat of X" with X being Strength, Dexterity and so forth. By way of explanation, a Test of Strength is an X-in-6 chance of doing mundane tasks that require significant strength - forcing open a stuck door, carrying an ally, and so on. These range between 1:6 chance at Strength 3, to a 5:6 chance at 18. Extraordinary Feats are defined as such heroic tasks as bending bars, breaking manacles, forcing a portcullis open, and so on. Stuff of true Conan stature. This is handled as a percentile role, outright impossible at 0% for Str3, and only 8% at Str14. At the upper scales, this then goes up to 16%, 24%, and finally 32% at 18. For the genre, this is a very neat touch and helps make the difference between ability scores feel even more pronounced.

I still have reading left to do through the Referee's Manual, but overall I definitely like the style. If you're at all interested in OSR style games in general, or Sword & Sorcery in particular, it's definitely worth picking up and giving a read through to mine for ideas if nothing else. Hopefully, I'll get time to play a game or two of it in the near future and report in.

Until next time,

My Love Affair with Chronica Feudalis

Chronica Feudalis carries for me the title of "Best Game Ever Forgotten." It's one of those little gems that sets a goal for itself and follows through elegantly.

The game sets out to be a historical RPG, and the text under the clever premise that the original authors were monks passing the long, dull hours of monastic life, complete with a foreward by the translator, and translators notes within the text itself. The game works in a way very similar to FATE, in that it's based on the invoking and evoking of Aspects, but it develops the concept in different ways. It's a bit more focused than FATE, and also has its own die scheme that is elegant in its own way.

Chronica Feudalis is a very tight little machine. It plays quick and easy, and with the FATE-like method of damage resolution, can be as forgiving or bloody as the group desires. Character creation is quick and dirty, with characters essentially picking up to three "mentors" that determine their collective skills at the start of play, such as Artisans, Courtiers, Knights, Minstrels, Peasants, Thieves, etc, in effect making each character a gestalt of the three classes chosen. The three mentors also determine starting equipment and funds, so character creation takes practically no time at all. This can be a little restricting, but individualization can easily be done through choice of Aspects, and additional kit can be bought during play. Of note though, the Mentors aren't just classes - they are expected to be brought in as NPCs from the start, helping the character to not just have a background, but to actively fit into the world.

I played quite a bit of CF over the years, and I'll be posting some of my house rules as I get a chance. Definitely worth trying out though, particularly with the hacks floating around out there. Some of my favorites are by Nathan at Platonic Solid, who managed to both expand the scope of play some, and made an excellent fantasy hack for the system. Posts of particular note are:

Chronica Feudalis Fantasy Hack - Wherein he sets up some basic premises for modeling orcs and other baddies.
Chronica Feudalis Fantasy Hack: Scaling - Where he works out how to represent dragons and the like with the system.
Chronica Feudalis Fantasy Hack: Magic -  which adds a flexible, fully functional magic system to the game.

I got so much expanded play out of these extras that I would consider them essential for anything but the most historically-based games.

Earlier, I called Chronica Feudalis the best game ever forgotten, and I think this is the most tragic thing about it. As much potential as it has as a simple system, the author seems to have forgotten about it entirely. The last post on the subject was back in 2010, wherein was Keller was beginning to hype the expansion book Noblesse Oblige. Some time thereafter he ran a kickstarter for Tech Noir, and the project seems to have disappeared off the map. A true shame.

I can only hope that he decides to come back to it one day. With several more years of design, and several additional projects under his belt, I'd look forward to seeing what he would do with the expansion.

Until then,

Lamentations of the Flame Princess Review (aka Gushing like a Fan-Boy)

After a taste of pathfinder, I found myself digging through my old D&D books and really jazzed at the notion of running an old-school campaign. Here defining old-school as having objectives in line with the pulp "explore ruins, get rich" style of gaming that started it all. That was about the time someone turned me onto Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

Alright, odd name, but I'll roll with it. And there's a redhead on the cover, so there's that (I'm easy to market to). After some digging, I came across the free pdf version of the above and figured that was the best place to start. Now, it's an art-free version, so I'm sure I'm missing some of the ambiance here but can I just say: Holy crap, that layout. I guess we're doing a Lamentations of the Flame Princess review.

The thing that strikes me immediately is that it is so clean. I don't just mean the lack of art. There is a complete lack of bullshit here. There is no three page foreward about the OSR movement, or even the pretense of "What is a role-playing game?" in the beginning. He knows what you're here for, you know what you're here for. It goes from index straight on to character creation. The opening section of character creation lasts all of a couple pages, and each class is summarized in a page of text (save for the Specialist, who takes a page and a half.)

I have to congratulate James Edward Raggi IV (If but my own name were so impressive), there is this beautiful and ruthless efficiency in the text. If you are at all familiar with my blog or other writings, you know I am an invariably (perhaps regrettably) verbose bastard. I really have to admire and respect his writing style. Raggi said exactly as much as he needed to get an idea across or give you the vibe he intended to, and not a word more. I cannot stress enough how refreshing this is. There is a tendency in indie-games of all stripes to over-explain and talk about their book in their book. No, this is exactly what you need to play. Go.

The result is that you have an impeccably clean layout that flows very quickly from section to section, requiring the absolute minimum amount of reading to actually get the information down and ready to play. This is made even more impressive by the book's formatting - A5.

Can we take a moment to appreciate the A5 format? I know that most games are published in big textbook sized layouts, but I have a deep love of A5 hardbacks. They look good on a shelf, they feel nice and solid in your hands. They take up less space on the physical gaming table, and even if they would wind up with a higher page-count to fill the same number of words, they are much easier to navigate in practice. You can kind of flip through the pages in one hand. When I bought the gold edition of Burning Wheel, I was extremely impressed by the format, and that's a 600 page monster that requires a lot of page-flipping at the table. It works beautifully.


Inside, it appears to be very similar to B/x in a lot of ways, or at least how I remember B/x going, so you have the relatively light rules and the expected race-as-class setup. There are some noticeable differences though. The major one is the theme: Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a very different kind of aesthetic than your typical fantasy game. There is a huge emphasis on horror and weird-fiction, of a very Lovecraft / Robert E. Howard style. This may put some people off, but I eat this up.

I make the argument that the game's design should itself convey the setting, and LotFP does this quite well even with it's B/x roots:

The game uses AB and Ascending Armor class (as many OSRs do - yes, THAC0 isn't terribly difficult, but it is a pain) but only Fighter's AB gets better over time. Every other class starts with +1 and never increase. Fighters start at +2 and increase every level. How's that for niche protection?

Alignment has been rewritten in a brilliant fashion. Rather than being simply a statement of personality, it takes on a flavor of cosmic meaning. Lawful becomes the belief in a cosmic and unwavering plan, of destiny and omens. Chaotic is the stuff of magic, the otherworldly - the "howling maelstrom," of ruin and unmaking. That Which Should Not Be. Neutrality is the domain of most people - the lives of those who are lucky enough not to be part of cosmic drama. Adding to this flavor: clerics must be Lawful, and Magic-Users must be chaotic.

The spell list reflects this in spades, with the difference between those two classes exaggerated. Raggi seems to have removed most of the redundant or even overlapping spells between the two, even creating the notion that the arcane version of Dispel Magic can't be used to dispel divine spells. Clerical magic is very geared towards their archetype, with clerics gaining iconic powers of protection, walking on water, or creating plagues of insects. Their list is relatively limited, but very powerful. The magic user lists wild and diverse, but untamed and in many cases outright dangerous. The Summon spell doesn't just call forth a dire badger or goblin to fight for you, it randomly generates some terrible and eldritch horror from a tear in the fabric of space and time. It includes the series of tables you roll to work out the nature of this creature from scratch, creating all manner of lovecraftian horrors. And if that wasn't enough, the creature can be up to twice your level in hit dice and did I mention you aren't guaranteed to be able to actually control it? No? What If I then pointed out this is a first-level spell? Glorious. 

 

As much as I love the theme, the most impressive aspect to me was actually unrelated to the setting. One of the problems I had when dealing with AD&D was the urge to condense and consolidate some of the rules. You have a 1-in-6 chance of detecting a secret door, unless you're an elf then it's 2-in-6. If you're a thief, you start out with a 15% chance to blah blah. The various ways everything was handled always seemed like such a headache to me, so I had it in mind to hack and rewrite it into something simpler - possibly putting everything on a d10 or a d20.

Lamentations beat me to it, throwing everything on a d6 setup, and slapping it all on the sheet for you. The design for this makes it even better, with the character sheet laid out in such a way that the actual tracking is done on squares resembling d6s. Each "rank" one might have in a task is then represented as a single pip filled in on the die. I can't tell you how in love I am with that concept, just from a design standpoint.

Despite its A5 formatting and copious amount of blank space (read: art!), Lamentations manages to deliver a remarkably complete game in relatively small package - about 170 pages total in the pdf. It covers all the bases, from the expected basics of dungeoneering, encounters and combat, to wilderness adventure, maritime exploits and even managing properties and investments. In the back, he even includes additional rules for advancing the technological timeline to represent a setting in the 16th or 17th century, complete with black powder and buff coats.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess is an excellent study for game designers, aspiring and otherwise. It is a great example of economy in writing, elegant mechanical design, and of mechanics supporting theme and feel of a setting. Even if the setting isn't your thing, it's definitely worth taking a look at. The pdf is free. You have no excuse not to go take a look. As for myself, I'll be picking up the hardback cover shortly. Fantastic.

Until next time,