Travel(ler) Times

Back in the halcyon days of Google Plus – the only social media platform I've ever really liked – I floated the idea of starting up an open-ended, multi-group Traveller sandbox campaign set in a single subsector of space. For those unfamiliar with a subsector, here's an example:

Each hex represents a week's travel time in a starship outfitted with a Jump-1 drive. So, to travel from Regina (hex 0310) to Forboldn (hex 0206) would take two weeks – one to jump into either Ruie (hex 0209) or Hefry (hex 0309) and another to jump into Forboldn itself. Of course, Jump-1 is the least powerful form of jump drive, with others rated as high as Jump-6, the number being how many hexes it can travel in a single week. In my example, a starship equipped with a Jump-2 drive could thus reach Forboldn from Regina in a single week. And so on.

The relative slowness of interstellar travel is an important part of what makes Traveller the game that it is, regardless of whether the setting is GDW's Charted Space or a homebrew one. Since there is no faster means of communicating between star systems, information travels at the speed of the fastest ship available, much as did during the Age of Sail on Earth. This means that interstellar governments either have to delegate authority to local worlds or risk making decisions based on intelligence that may be weeks or even months out of date. This set-up creates a fun dynamic that's very conducive to adventure.

It also presents a bit of a problem for the kind of campaign I proposed on Google Plus. My idea was that I'd have several different groups of player characters operating within the same subsector, each starting on a different world. Their actions would be independent of one another and, unless they were significant in some way, they'd probably never even know about what the others were up to. However, I had hopes that, over time, each group would have sufficient impact on the worlds of the subsector that there'd be reverberations that could be felt elsewhere.

The difficulty was timing. If, for example, one group of characters, acting as mercenaries, helped overthrow the planetary government of Roup (hex 0407), word of that would travel slowly throughout the subsector. Depending on where the other groups of characters were, it might be some time before they heard of it. Furthermore, suppose one of those groups was adventuring on a single planet for weeks of real time, but only a few days of game time. They'd very quickly fall out of sync with the others, creating a timekeeping headache for me as the referee, since, as we all know, YOU CANNOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT. 

It's not an insurmountable problem, to be sure. Gary Gygax does provide some genuinely helpful advice on how to manage groups engaged in different activities at different times within the same campaign in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. Nevertheless, it's still a lot to juggle in a way that allows regular play to proceed without interruption. If all the character groups spent no more than a single session on each world, this would be easier to manage, but that's unlikely to be the case. I don't want to enforce an artificial limit like "You must complete your mission on this world in four hours of play or else you must leave" to achieve the kind of campaign I want to run, but that seems to be the simplest way to achieve it and that's disappointing.

Am I missing something obvious? Is there a good way to referee an open-ended sandbox campaign with multiple character groups acting independently of one another without either artificial time limits or having to coordinate several out of sync timelines? If so, I'd love to hear about it.

REVIEW: How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox

There were two great obsessions at the dawn of the Old School Renaissance: megadungeons and sandboxes. Each was a distinctive element of many of the foundational roleplaying game campaigns of the 1970s, like Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and Tékumel. Their rediscovery and promotion are among the lasting impacts of the OSR – so much so that both massive dungeons and open-ended hexcrawls are now permanent fixtures of the even wider RPG scene. 

Of the two, I'd say that megadungeons are probably the better understood and more commonly used, thanks in no small part to the many examples of them now available in print. Furthermore, a megadungeon is, in many ways, just a scaled-up version of a dungeon and almost everyone who's ever played a fantasy RPG, whether tabletop or electronic, knows what a dungeon is like and how it's constructed. However, sandboxes are, in my experience, both less common and less well understood. There are no doubt many reasons for this, but a big one, I think, is they require more preparation beforehand by the referee and preparation of a less formulaic sort than what's employed when designing a dungeon, regardless of its size.

Fortunately for those of us who enjoy fantasy sandboxes – my ongoing House of Worms campaign, for example, is something of a sandbox – there are resources out there to aid in their creation. The very best of them has long been Rob Conley's twenty-four part series on "How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox," whose first post appeared in the far-off time of September 2009. It's a terrific collection of blog posts, filled with good ideas and wisdom drawn from years of refereeing sandbox campaigns. I long ago bookmarked many of the posts and refer to them often in my own work, such as designing the Eshkom District for Secrets of sha-Arthan. If you've never read these posts before, I highly recommend you do so.

An equally good – maybe better – option would be to purchase How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox, 180-page compilation of Conley's blog posts, rewritten and expanded with examples, maps, and artwork, available in PDF, softcover, or hardcover formats. In the book's introduction, Conley provides both a nice overview of what a sandbox campaign is and his own reasons for enjoying them:

One of my favorite things to do with Tabletop RPGs is to create interesting places with interesting situations and then let the players trash the setting in pursuit of adventure.

That certainly encapsulates much of the fun my players and I have had with my House of Worms campaign. He goes on:

My focus is not to create any type of narrative. Rather, I focus on helping my players experience living their characters' lives while adventuring. It's called a sandbox campaign because like in life, the players are free to do anything their characters can do within the campaign setting.

This wide-open world with unlimited choices can be very challenging as a Game Master/Referee. The key to dealing with this challenge is organization. A systematic approach is needed to break down the enormous task of dealing with an entire world. Organized into bite-size chunks that one can do in the time they have for a hobby.

Once again, I think Conley has done a fine job here of distilling the essence and unique pleasures of a sandbox campaign, while also recognizing that creating and maintaining such a campaign is not always easy, hence the need for a guide such as this one. 

With that out of the way, he first describes and then elaborates upon thirty-three distinct steps in the process of designing a fantasy sandbox, from creating the map to placing settlements and lairs to choosing a "home base" for a new campaign. It's all presented clearly and methodically, so that it's easy for even a neophyte to follow. Best of all, Conley includes lots of examples throughout, drawn from his own experience of making fantasy sandboxes. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that these examples are among my favorite parts of How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox. They not only serve as illustrations of design principles, but they also give some insight into Conley's own gaming past, which I found delightful and inspiring.

Throughout the text, the Isle of Pyade serves as the main example of how to implement the thirty-three steps to creating a fantasy sandbox setting. I found this very useful, because it's eminently practical and concrete rather than merely theoretical. If you follow the steps through, one by one, you'll see Pyade grow out of a blank hex map into a fully-fleshed out and complete location. Whether you're a novice or an old hand at this sort of thing, you'll learn a lot from the example of Pyade.

By the conclusion of How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox, the Isle of Pyade is now ready to use. However, many of its details – maps, NPCs, encounter tables, etc. – are scattered across its 180 pages, making it less suitable for use as a reference. Should you wish to make use of Pyade yourself, a better option might be the separate The Isle of Pyade book (available in electronic, softcover, and hardcover format), which takes all the relevant details and consolidates them in one place for greater coherence and ease of use. There's also some additional content in the form of artwork and color reproductions of the original maps Conley made in the late 1980s. If you're fan of RPG "archeology" as I am, this only adds to the value of The Isle of Pyade.

How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox is a very good book, one I am very happy to own and one I am certain I'll refer to and make use of in the years to come. In addition to all the thoughtful insights and clear instructions Conley provides, he "shows his work," which is to say, he lays bare how he works and why, right down to including very useful appendices of resources, hexmapping guidelines, travel and encounter rules, and information about the process behind creating Blackmarsh, his earlier published sandbox setting. Aside from some minor quibbles about editing, I have only praise to offer about this book. If you have even the slightest interest in creating and refereeing a sandbox campaign, consider picking up a copy. You won't regret it.

Interlude: The Aquabot

Before taking a look at Famine in Far-Go as the fourth part of my ongoing examination of the setting of Gamma World, I wanted to draw attention to another article from Polyhedron. As the official 'zine of the Role Playing Game Association (RPGA), Polyhedron often published some very fascinating articles for TSR's non-D&D RPGs, articles that introduced new rules or setting elements that would never appear elsewhere. This made Polyhedron of great value to me and receiving it was, in fact, the only reason I became a paid member of the RPGA, since I was never much of a convention goer, nor did I ever participate in official RPGA events. 

Issue #20 of the 'zine (1984) presents an "encounter" for use with the just-released second edition of Gamma World, the Aquabot, featured on its cover in an illustration by Roger Raupp.

The article, written by James M. Ward and Roger Raupp gives very little detail on the origins of the Aquabot (this would be rectified in a later Dragon article, which I'll discuss in an upcoming post). The bulk of the article focuses on the Aquabot's game stats, followed by a two-page schematic of the immense machine of unspecified height.

I bring this article to your attention because it introduces the Aquabot as part of a military force attacking a stronghold city of the Radioactivists cryptic alliance on the west coast of North America. The Aquabot had come out of the ocean and it's stated to be part of a larger invasion force with unknown intentions. At the time, I found this interesting, because it was the first hint of an ongoing, unfolding event within the setting of Gamma World, which had previously been presented largely as a traditional sandbox. As we'll see in an upcoming post, the Aquabot would also herald the introduction of something else to the setting of Gamma World.

REVIEW: Other Dust

While the OSR has produced fantasy games aplenty, the number of science fiction games has been relatively small. One of the most significant of these recent old school SF RPGs has been Stars Without Number, which is not only a fine game in its own right, but the first example of author Kevin Crawford's talent for producing extremely useful utilities for running sandbox campaigns. Very few other designers have produced such a wealth of material for the creation and maintenance of sandbox campaigns as Crawford and the fact that he keeps doing it, each time refining what he has done before and expanding on it, makes it all the more remarkable.

So, when I heard that Crawford was producing a post-apocalyptic sandbox game, my interest was immediately piqued. Called Other Dust, it's actually set in the same universe as Stars Without Number and focuses on what became of "Old Terra" after humanity traveled to the stars and the psychic catastrophe known as "the Scream" washed over all of mankind's worlds, including his world of origin. Other Dust is 208 pages long, available as either as PDF (for $19.99), a softcover book ($34.99), or a hardcover book ($39.99). Like previous releases from Sine Nomine Publishing, Other Dust presents its material using a densely-packed two-column format. Black and white line art is more abundant here and is generally used to better effect, though, as always, it's the text and not the illustrations or presentation that matters most.

There are twelve chapters in Other Dust, along with an index. The short first chapter ("The World Is In Ashes") is merely an introduction to the game's setting and conventions. The next chapter details character generation. Those familiar with Stars Without Number will find this familiar, with six ability scores identical to those of D&D and with the same range (3-18). Characters have classes (scrounger, slayer, speaker, and survivor), in addition to background packages. Classes provide attack bonuses, saving throws, hit dice, skills, and a unique ability, while background packages provide additional skills. There are also a variety of "training packages" associated with each class that provide further benefits. Characters can be further customized through rolls on mutation tables, if so desired, while starting equipment is entirely random.

Chapter three details mutations, which are described as the effects of nanites released by Terra's Highshine planetary disaster response system to deal with the aftermath of the Scream. Unfortunately, the Highshine system was perverted by a group known as the Crazed, so the nanites don't function as they were supposed to, instead warping bodies in unexpected -- and often detrimental -- ways. Most mutations come with drawbacks in addition to benefits and the game mechanics associated with them are pleasantly brief -- on par with first edition Gamma World or Mutant Future. Chapter four details the game's basic "systems," like combat, saving throws, advancement, and so on. Again, readers familiar with Stars Without Number won't find too many surprises here. Other Dust uses mechanics very similar to those of old school D&D and its clones.

Chapter five ("A History Writ in Dust") provides lots of broad details about the world before the End. The chapter not only shows how Old Terra fit into the larger setting of Stars Without Number, but what life was like on the planet. Similarly, the history of the two hundred years since the Scream is covered. These sections take up only seven pages of the entire book, but they're very useful in properly establishing what the game is about. Chapter six is dedicated to "Creating Your Wasteland" and provides extensive advice on how to create a post-apocalyptic sandbox campaign, complete with many, many random tables to assist the referee. It's here that Other Dust really shines, since each entry on the random table is given sufficient attention to inspire lots of ideas. It's fairly easy to create random tables, but far harder to give meaning to make those tables truly -- repeatedly -- inspirational, but Kevin Crawford has done so.

Chapter seven is about "Adventure Creation" and, once more, offers advice and random tables to aid the referee, along with random loot tables. This chapter is solid but not quite as inspirational as "Creating Your Wasteland," but that's hardly a criticism. Chapter eight describes "Groups and Enclaves" and is another inspirational chapter. Crawford breaks down power groups and settlements into various types (Cabals, Creeds, Polities, etc.) and then provides specifically tailored random tables for creating them for insertion into a campaign. Likewise, the strengths and weaknesses of each are quantified in ways that work with the game systems introduced elsewhere.

Chapter nine is devoted to "Equipment and Artifacts" and is as good as such chapters can be. Chapter ten is a "Post-Apocalyptic Bestiary" and provides both rules for creating opponents, in addition to plenty of examples of them. To my mind, that's the best approach to such things. Chapter eleven is a detailed Wasteland example called "The Bonelands," which represents one vision of what the northeastern coast of North America might be like in Other Dust. Chapter twelves contains "Gamemaster Resources," consisting of a wide variety of random tables, sample maps, encounters, and game stats. It's a good selection of material that will no doubt prove useful both in preparation and at the table.

All in all, Other Dust is a formidable post-apocalyptic science fiction RPG. Its greatest strength is the vast amount of support it provides for sandbox play -- from advice to random tables to fully-fleshed out examples. Indeed, I'd recommend the game on that basis alone. Whether you're playing Other Dust or some other post-apocalyptic game, the vast majority of this book's content is a treasure trove of good ideas and inspiration. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that a lot of the material is just as useful for creating and maintaining a fantasy sandbox as a science fiction one. That Other Dust plugs into Stars Without Number is also to its credit, since it provides new avenues for adventure in that game. I'm hard pressed to find any weaknesses in Other Dust, since it does exactly what it set out to do: offer up rules for playing in and running a sandbox campaign set on a far future post-apocalyptic Earth. It's an excellent addition to the pantheon of RPGs, old school or otherwise.

Presentation: 7 out of 10
Creativity: 10 out of 10
Utility: 9 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for a simple, flexible post-apocalyptic RPG that fosters and supports sandbox play.
Don't Buy This If: You have no interest in post-apocalyptic RPGs or in sandbox-style campaigns.

REVIEW: An Echo, Resounding

I've mentioned before that I'm not a big fan of PDFs. The vast majority of the products I'm sent to review, though, are in electronic format. Speaking as a publisher myself, that only makes sense, since sending a PDF to a reviewer costs little or nothing and is instantaneous, while sending out a physical copy takes both time and money. And when dealing with Luddites like me, sending an electronic copy might just induce them to buy a hardcopy, provided, of course, that I like it. In the case of An Echo, Resounding, I most certainly did like it, so much so that I snagged a print-on-demand copy from RPGNow, which I wanted to get into my hands before I wrote up a review for it.

An Echo, Resounding is both a generic Labyrinth Lord sourcebook providing rules and advice for "lordship and war in untamed lands" and a supplement to the Red Tide campaign setting released last year. Like all Sine Nomine products, this one is penned by Kevin Crawford, which means that it's written clearly and unpretentiously. The 110-page book uses the same two-column format as all Sine Nomine releases, with the text broken up by a variety of stock art images. This doesn't make for the prettiest of books, especially when compared to many recent releases from other publishers, but the content is compelling enough that I don't think it much matters. An Echo, Resounding could have been released with no interior artwork and I doubt I would have cared.

The book consists of six chapters, plus an introduction and an index. The first chapter, "Domain Play in a Campaign," introduces the concept of domain-level play and how it interacts with "regular" Labyrinth Lord adventures. This chapter is brief compared to those that follow and isn't rules-focused. Instead, it's mostly advice about the benefits and drawbacks of including the clash of empires into one's campaign. The second chapter, "Creating Campaign Regions," gets down to the nitty-gritty, providing the foundations on which later chapters depend. What becomes immediately clear is that the rules presented in An Echo, Resounding are somewhat abstract. That is, they're built on concepts like "regions" and "locations" and "obstacles," with the meanings of these concepts being variable rather than being precisely (and narrowly) defined. That's not to say that these concepts are "fuzzy" or meaningless, only that the rules weren't written with bean-counters in mind. Once the basic concepts are laid out, the chapter goes on to provide both advice and examples on how to apply them to one's campaign setting. If you're already familiar with any of the Stars Without Number books or Red Tide, much of this will look familiar.

Chapter three covers "Domain Management" and provides rules for creating and ruling domains. The rules depend on a "domain turn" that represents approximately one month, though the actual timeframe, like most other aspects of these rules, is flexible in either direction. During a domain turn, a player whose character rules a domain may make two actions (referee-controlled domains may make only one), with actions covering things as diverse as military attacks, establishing assets (such as markets, temples, etc.), and dealing with disruptions/obstacles. The chapter also includes brief descriptions of all the available assets, along with the associated game values, and an example of domain play. Like earlier chapters, this one is both comparatively short and abstract, leaving many details to individual referees and players to flesh out.

Chapter four presents a mass combat system that uses mechanics very similar to normal Labyrinth Lord combat. Thus, units have hit dice, armor class, movement rates, and saving throws, in addition to upkeep costs and special traits. It's designed to be playable without the need for miniatures, but I think it'd work just fine with them if one were so inclined. Chapter five introduces the idea of "Champions," which are powerful PCs and NPCs, whose abilities are such that they can benefit both domain and mass combats. Characters who become champions -- the process for doing so is somewhat vague -- gain a parallel "class" in which they advance. Every time they gain a new level as a Champion, they gain a new ability from a list of nearly 50 of them. These abilities might be something like "Administrator," which gives a bonus to the Wealth and Social values of a single town over which the Champion has control or "Overwhelming Sorcery," which lowers the saving throws of enemy units against his magic on the battlefield. I rather like the idea of Champions, though I wish the rules were a bit more clear regarding how and when PCs gain levels as Champions. Even so, it's a solid concept that, I think, nicely represents the power of PCs without making them demigods.

The final chapter of the book is also its longest, providing detailed examples of the domain system for use with the Red Tide setting. There's a map of a region called the Westmark, which includes 40 locations, each of which has a page-long write-up. These write-ups provide everything needed to use the locations as adventuring locales or focuses for the domain and mass combat systems. Though it's probably most useful for referees and players using the Red Tide setting, I think it'll serve as a practical primer for newcomers to the supplement's rules systems.

I liked An Echo, Resounding quite a lot, since it suits my preferred style as a referee. I'm not the kind who cares all that much about counting gold pieces or determining exact population figures for a given location. I like things to be easy to use and abstract, since I can always make up the details on the fly as needed. For that reason, I imagine its domain rules would work very well as a separate, parallel "game within a game" where the referee and players use it to generate macro events that affect the campaign setting. That's certainly how I plan to use it. At the same time, I suspect that the book's approach might be frustrating for those whose style gives greater weight to knowing the precise details of a domain's inhabitants and resources. Consequently, An Echo, Resounding isn't a panacea for every campaign where domain-level activities is important; it largely caters to one approach and should be viewed in that light.

Presentation: 7 out of 10
Creativity: 9 out of 10
Utility: 6 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for abstract and easy to use domain and mass combat rules for use with Labyrinth Lord or other old school fantasy RPGs.
Don't Buy This If: You prefer domain and mass combat rules that are concrete and "bottom up" in their presentation and approach.

Retrospective: Wilderlands of High Fantasy

I think it's fair to say that two of the lasting effects of the old school renaissance are the popularization of the term "sandbox" to refer to an open-ended campaign setting and the holding up of Judges Guild's The Wilderlands of High Fantasy as the premier example of a sandbox setting. The term "sandbox" is one I'd never heard, let alone used, in a tabletop RPG context until a few years ago, being, ironically, borrowed from the world of video games. And, while I knew of The Wilderlands of High Fantasy and even used it (briefly) back in the day, I never held it up as a model I wanted other campaign settings to emulate. How things change!

Originally released in 1977, The Wilderlands of High Fantasy is one of oldest published settings for use with Dungeons & Dragons. Nowadays, the release of a new campaign setting is often met with disinterest and even eye rolls, in part, I suspect, because campaign settings have become a very common product in the years since this was released. In 1977, though, this wasn't the case and one sometimes gets the impression that there was some skepticism among even their creators that gamers would have any interest in such a thing. Consider, for example, that the credits to The Wilderlands includes the following disclaimer:

All within are merely inspiration for the active and pontifical judges of the guild. Please alter, illuminate, expand, modify, extrapolate, interpolate, shrink, and further manipulate all contained to suit the tenor of your campaign.

I really like that quote and it nicely highlights one of the continually fascinating things about the Wilderlands setting: it's very flexible, even protean. Every time I have ever encountered or heard of a referee using it for their home campaign, I've been struck by just how different his home campaign is, not only from the "official" Wilderlands as published by Judges Guild but also from every other Wilderlands campaign run by other referees.

A big part of why this is the case is that The Wilderlands of High Fantasy, despite focusing on five of the sixteen regions of the overall Wilderlands setting, nevertheless devotes a lot of its 32 pages to collections of random tables and new rules. Thus, there are tables for ruins, caves, and lairs, in addition to rules for hirelings, prospecting, and income, among other topics. These tables and rules are clearly designed to facilitate campaigns where the characters wander about the world, exploring it hex by 1056-foot hex, in search of fame and fortune according to their own lights rather than any overarching plan concocted by the referee beforehand.

Another big part of why Wilderlands campaigns differ so much from one another is the sketchy nature of the setting information The Wilderlands of High Fantasy presents. A typical settlement is given a name, a population, a racial "type," general alignment, the name and characteristics of its ruler, and its primary resource. Hexes containing features of interest get a single line of description, such as "The crystallized skeleton of a dragon turtle is buried on the sandy beach. The skull houses a giant leech." There are no game stats or explanation here, just a very basic idea for the referee to read and, it is hoped, to be inspired by.

As a younger person, the Wilderlands didn't thrill me much and the presentation of the setting in products like The Wilderlands of High Fantasy was the main reason why. From my youthful perspective, I felt that authors Bob Bledsaw and Bill Owen hadn't done "enough work" for me. Sure there were maps, including player's maps that didn't have complete information about settlements and geographic features, but what I really wanted was a lengthy historical overview of the setting and more detailed information about its peoples and locales. The Wilderlands of High Fantasy gave me none of that, instead expecting that I'd fill in those blanks myself, using the vague details, random tables, and new rules as raw materials from which to craft my own setting. After all, that's what being a referee is all about, isn't it?

Retrospective: Descent into the Depths of the Earth

One of the most obvious ways that the hobby has changed from its early days can be seen in the concept of adventure modules. Nowadays, we're prone to expect large and detailed products, replete with maps, fully fleshed-out NPCs, and a coherent plot made up of "scenes" that lead toward some kind of clear climax. Back in 1978, when TSR released Gary Gygax's Descent into the Depths of the Earth, such expectations, if they existed at all, weren't the norm. Then, an adventure module generally provided a locale, whether a "dungeon" or a wilderness, and its inhabitants that the referee could flesh out in play. There may or may not be any broader context for this locale, but, regardless, the module's focus was on that locale and its inhabitants rather than on anything approaching dramatic coherence.

In the case of module D1, the immediate context is as a sequel to modules G1, G2, and G3 -- later compiled as G1-3, Against the Giants -- in which the player characters enter and sack the strongholds of three different giant leaders who have, for reasons unknown, been coordinating their attacks against human lands. The PCs discover that this coordination is at the behest of the drow, a nation of evil subterranean elves, who leave behind a map leading to their city. If the characters choose to use this map, Descent into the Depths of the Earth provides the referee with an underground "wilderness" map and some keyed locations, along with random encounter tables, to simulate their explorations.

Unlike the giants modules, where the PCs have been ordered, under pain of punishment, to investigate their titular locales, there is no such compulsion in module D1. The choice to move forward or not is entirely left up to the PCs, as is the course of their travels. For that reason, the referee needs to be prepared to make use of the many random encounter tables included to flesh out the underworld. There are several well described encounter areas in D1, but the vast majority of them are presented simply without much exposition -- once again demanding significant improvisation by the referee to use effectively. That's not a criticism as such, but, looking back on this module, I was surprised to see just how little information it straightforwardly includes.

When I was a younger man, I would have ranked Descent into the Depths of the Earth as one of my favorite AD&D adventures. I had a lot of fun using it in days of yore and there are a number of set pieces it includes, such as the lich Asberdies, who has cast over 600 magic mouths in his cavernous lair, that I still recall having a lot of fun with. Of course, back then, I readily accepted that a module couldn't really be used "out of the box" and that no self-respecting referee would expect such a thing in any case. It's a perspective that I've only, in the last few years, come to embrace again, believing that, sometimes, less is more.

That said, I'm not sure that, even given that, module D1 is one of Gygax's better works, certainly in comparison to, say,  Shrine of the Kuo-Toa, let alone Vault of the Drow, both of which retain the open-ended "sandboxy" feel of D1 while, at the same time, providing more structure on which the referee can hang his own creations. The whole module feels very much like an introduction to the subterranean wilderness of the drow, a kind of primer of what's to come. That might explain why it was later combined with module D2 in 1981. Together, I think they complement each other nicely, which is a topic I'll return to next week in my retrospective of D2.

REVIEW: Blackmarsh

I'm usually down on gaming products that explicitly imitate -- or "ape" in my preferred phrase -- the graphic design of the older products they're meant to recall. That's why, for example, I have little love for the covers of all the adventure modules being produced today that are reminiscent of those produced by TSR in the Golden Age. I've come to accept that my opinion on this score is probably in the minority, but I nevertheless wish that more contemporary old school products broke free of the esthetic choices made by TSR circa 1978-1982 and blazed their own trails. While I don't think "nostalgia" is a dirty word, I do think the old school renaissance would be well served by stepping out of the long shadow cast by TSR, many of whose decisions, even those that bore good fruit, were rooted in a combination of inexperience and expedience far more often than in some coherent "vision." While I think it's great to look at the past for inspiration, the last thing we need is to be forever plowing the same creative fields as our illustrious predecessors.

So, by all rights, I really ought to dislike the cover of Rob Conley's Blackmarsh campaign setting, which obviously reminds one of the cover to the original The World of Greyhawk folio -- but I don't. If anything, the cover makes me even more fond of Blackmarsh than I otherwise would have been (and I already liked it a great deal). That's because Blackmarsh is probably closer in spirit to 1980 The World of Greyhawk gazetteer than any campaign setting product released in the last few years. Yes, there are plenty of differences in content, tone, and presentation, but, like that folio of old, Blackmarsh does a lot with a little, making a surprisingly tasty meal out of nothing but bare bones and leaving one with the impression that many more equally tasty meals could be had with its ingredients.

In that respect, Blackmarsh might more rightly be said to be the child of the original The World of Greyhawk folio and Judges Guild's various Wilderlands products, with some DNA from Blackmoor as well. In the span of 16 pages, Blackmarsh presents an area of 95 by 135 miles in area, called (naturally) Blackmarsh, after the strange swamps that dot the landscape of this region. Those 16 pages provide a basic overview of the setting and its particulars, in addition to maps, rumors, and brief descriptions of noteworthy 5-mile hexes. Those descriptions make up the bulk of Blackmarsh and clearly point to the Judges Guild "hexcrawl" heritage of this product, though there are enough settlements and dungeon locales scattered about the region to support other traditional elements of campaign play.

The region of Blackmarsh is characterized by two things. First is "The Mountain That Fell," an asteroid that struck the area long ago, shattering the landscape and scattering a substance called "viz" that is valuable as a reagent in many magical effects, including spellcasting. The second is its isolation from the centers of civilization, as the region's former rulers, the Bright Empire, retreated to the south several centuries ago, leaving Blackmarsh to fend for itself. If you recognize the name "the Bright Empire," that's because it's from one of Conley's earlier efforts, Points of Light, though there's no necessity that you own that product to use Blackmarsh. Taken together, these two characteristics of the region create a wide-open sandbox environment lacking in a centralized authority and rife with adventuring opportunities -- the perfect place to start a new campaign.

Blackmarsh is largely devoid of game statistics beyond very basic ones (level, class, hit dice, etc.), making it readily usable with almost any fantasy game system, even though it's specifically noted as being compatible with Brave Halfling's soon-to-be-released Delving Deeper. Indeed, a copy of Blackmarsh is included in the boxed set of Delving Deeper as an example of what a campaign setting might look like. I think this is a sound idea and is in many ways worth a great deal more than pages of advice to the referee on how to design a campaign setting, especially in a game geared to beginners. This is doubly true when the advice one is attempting to impart runs counter to so much of what is seen elsewhere in the hobby. A straightforward, unpretentious sandbox setting like Blackmarsh can concretely demonstrate the old school way of campaigning far better than several chapters on the subject.

This isn't to say that Blackmarsh is or should be the last word on the subject. There's still plenty of room for other takes on the old school campaign setting and I sincerely hope we'll see them. Furthermore, Blackmarsh isn't flawless. There are some editorial snafus here and there, like mistaken hex references, that weaken its presentation. Likewise, there seems to be a tension in its hex descriptions between those that present purely factual information -- "The leeward side of this island is choked with groves of thorny bushes and hedges." -- and those that present action in media res -- "A mother black dragon (old, HD 8) and her child (young, HD 7) have slaughtered a herd of deer and are in a meadow consuming the carcasses." I personally prefer the former and find the latter a clumsy way to present an adventure hook.

That said, Blackmarsh is presented as wholly Open Game Content. Anyone who wishes to uses its maps, locations, or background is free to do so for any purpose. In fact, the book includes the following commendable note:

It is the author's intention that the Blackmarsh setting is open content and free to use for commercial and non-commercial projects.

That's frankly the kind of attitude I can't help but applaud. If we see others take up and run with some of what Rob Conley has put on offer here, Blackmarsh will have proven its value above and beyond what you can read in its 16 pages.

Presentation: 7 out of 10
Creativity: 7 out of 10
Utility: 9 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for a bare bones sandbox setting to use or to loot for ideas for your fantasy roleplaying game campaign.
Don't Buy This If: You have no interest whatsoever in using a setting of someone else's creation.

REVIEW: Red Tide

I've come to realize that I take PDFs far less seriously than I take printed books. That's probably why I'm far more quick to read and review printed products sent to me than those in electronic form. That's not necessarily a comment on the quality of the products in question by any means, since I only own the product I'm about to review, Sine Nomine's Red Tide, in PDF form, but it is a comment on my own idiosyncrasies.

Until last weekend, when one of the players in my Thousand Suns playtest group brought a printed copy of Red Tide over my house, I'd barely looked at the PDF author Kevin Crawford so kindly sent to me some weeks ago. When I did, I soon realized that I'd been foolish not to do so, for Red Tide is, in many ways, to fantasy what Stars Without Number is to science fiction. The analogy isn't perfect, since, to start, Red Tide isn't a complete game but rather a setting supplement to Labyrinth Lord, but it's nevertheless a good one, since, like Crawford's earlier effort, Red Tide is, ultimately, a toolkit for running a sandbox campaign.

Red Tide takes its name from a magical catastrophe that overtook the world, a wall of crimson mist issuing forth from the sea and consuming all in its wake. Its arrival was foreseen years before by a wizard named Lammach, who prepared to save a portion of the Ninefold Celestial Empire by taking it in a vast fleet to safety somewhere. That somewhere proved to be an archipelago in the far-off Western Sea known as the Sunset Isles. There, Lammach and the survivors of the Empire and other nation destroyed by the Tide began the process of rebuilding their shattered civilizations.

Of course, things aren't that simple. Though the Sunset Isles are largely protected from the Red Tide because of the presence of veins of a mysterious stone called "godbone," that doesn't prevent it from occasionally extending its tendrils and leaving behind Tidespawn monstrosities to wreak havoc. Likewise, when the refugees arrived, the Isles were already inhabited by tribes of intelligent beings that, were it not for their strange skin colors and fearsome manner of dress, might easily pass for human beings. Calling themselves the Shou, one human culture calls them by various names -- bugbears, goblins, hobgoblins, and orcs. The Shou hate humans and see them as invaders and, under the leadership of their witch-priestesses, they've waged many wars against them.

Red Tide is 171 pages, divided into 11 chapters and an index. The first two chapters provide an overview of the setting and its history in just enough detail to understand the setting but not so much as to be tedious. The third chapter described the various peoples of the Sunset Isles, both the refugees and the native Shou. What I find particularly interesting is that the Ninefold Celestial Empire is a fantastic China analog ruled by mages. But the Empire was vast and had subjects of many cultures and they, too, are represented among the survivors of the Red Tide. Likewise, other cultures, such as the Viking-like Skandr and the demihuman dwarves and elves, also escaped the world's end and can be found living cheek by jowl with the Imperials. This provides a good in-game excuse for an adventuring party consisting of both European and Asian character types, with fantasy non-humans thrown in for good measure. It also lends the Isles a cosmopolitan flavor without either being patronizing or inaccessible.

The fourth and fifth chapters provide overviews of the Sunset Isles -- maps, wilderness encounter tables, places of interest, societies, cultures, governments, and religions. Though more detailed than the history sections earlier by necessity, Crawford continues to maintain a good balance between providing too much and too little information. When purchasing a campaign setting, one expects some of the "hard work" to already be done for you, but there can be too much of a good thing and Red Tide never comes close to that particular vice.

The sixth chapter is a useful one on the role of adventurers on the Sunset Isles. It's a valuable look at all the standard Labyrinth Lord classes to help players and referees alike integrate them into the setting. In some cases, there are mild tweaks to the standard rules, such as granting halflings a +4 bonus to saving throws against fear, as well as a handful of new classes, like Shou witches and the Vowed, which is a nicely done version of the monk for Labyrinth Lord. There are also elven scions, which are elven souls reborn in human bodies. Unlike normal elves, they don't cast spells but instead possess "wyrds," which are a new type of magic power, described in the seventh chapter, along with new spells for all classes and magic items. The eighth chapter gives us a bestiary of original monsters.

The real meat of Red Tide and what will likely make it of interest even to gamers disinterested in its setting comes in the ninth chapter. Here, Crawford offers up a wide variety of tables for use in sandbox play. Everything from courts to borderland sites to city sites to ruins are given careful treatment, each with unique tables that not give the referee the ability to describe a locale with a handful of dice rolls but also to create adventure hooks and NPCs associated with it. Readers familiar with Star Without Number will see a number of similarities in this chapter, but I should make it clear that this is no simple port from one game to another. What appears in this chapter is almost entirely new and tailored both to fantasy and to the Sunset Isles setting. There are also special sections on NPC groups, like "outlaws" or "tide cultists," with quick stats for ease of use and a table of "twists" that give each encounter with them the potential to be memorable. All in all, it's a great chapter and probably worth the $7.99 price of the PDF alone.

The tenth chapter lays bare the "secrets of the mist," which is to say, all the hidden aspects of the game setting. I really appreciate this, because Crawford holds nothing back, explaining, for example, what the Red Tide is and why it has come. This gives the referee a leg up in evaluating what details of the published setting he might wish to change and what the effects of doing so might be. Likewise, it ensures that future supplements (should there be any) won't contain any setting-shattering surprises that might catch him off-guard.

The eleventh and final chapter is a collection of "resources" that, again, should be familiar to readers of Stars Without Number. There are random tables of names for each culture (both personal and place names), quick NPC creation, room dressing, and generic maps that can be used either as-is or as part of a clever-presented geomorphic system. Armed with these resources, it'd be very easy to create entire locations on the fly, which is exactly what's needed in a sandbox campaign.

If Red Tide has a flaw, it's that it's a bit more specific than was Stars Without Number. That is, it presents a detailed setting for sandbox play and, while its tables and resources can most assuredly be used in other contexts without too much trouble, they probably work best if used in conjunction with the Sunset Isles. I don't personally think that's a big deal, since the Isles are very well done and interesting. I think they'll be of particular interest to gamers who like to mix and match between the myths and legends of East and West in their fantasy campaigns. Likewise, Crawford's takes on staples of D&D-style fantasy, such as elves or goblinoid races, are different enough without being wholly alien that I think they could be inspirational even to those who don't want to use the whole Red Tide setting.

Ultimately, though, Red Tide's specificity is a small quibble. With this product, Kevin Crawford has once again demonstrated that he's a man to watch in old school gaming these days. I can hardly wait to see what he comes up with next.

Presentation: 7 out of 10
Creativity: 9 out of 10
Utility: 8 out of 10

Buy This If: You're in the market for a well done East-meets-West post-apocalyptic fantasy setting with traditional elements or if you're looking for a variety of useful tools for sandbox play.
Don't Buy This If: You don't want a new fantasy setting or if you're not interested in sandbox-style play.

A Sci-Fi Sandbox

The Sandbox

Since my Dwimmermount campaign remains on hiatus (and is likely to meet only once a month at any rate), I started up a second campaign in its absence. I batted around a few other ideas, which I'll talk about in a future post, but, after consulting with my potential players, we settled on my SF RPG, Thousand Suns. This is convenient, since I'm in the process of revising the rulebook, and because I've been feeling a bit of a sci-fi itch lately anyway. As I've probably said more times than anyone cares to hear, science fiction is actually my preferred genre for roleplaying. However, most other people don't share my preference and so I've likely played fantasy RPGs far more often than SF ones.

As written, Thousand Suns is a toolbox game. It provides only a very thin setting based on the tropes of what I call "imperial science fiction," which is to say, SF stories written from the 1940s to the 1970s by authors like Poul Anderson, Bertram Chandler, H. Beam Piper, and E.C. Tubb, among many others. The game doesn't even specify whether the primary galactic government is a federation or an empire and in fact provides for either option.

Consequently, in this campaign, I'll be doing something very similar to what I'd done with Dwimmermount: making up the details as I go along, using my players' ideas and the actions of their characters as a springboard for setting development. So, I started with a basic jumpline map of the frontier sector of Limzano and established only that the Federation -- I decided to go with a corrupt but democratic galactic government rather than the more clichéd benevolent but autocratic empire -- laid claim to the whole sector but only exercised direct control over about half its worlds. Sizable portions are in the hands of two non-Federation powers (one of the alien) and another chunk is made up of independent worlds founded by Terran colonists who left the Federation in hopes of making a better life for themselves. Beyond that, I didn't tell my players much else and figured, as I did with Dwimmermount, that it'd be more fun to let the setting evolve according to the logic and demands of actual play.

The first character created was Malos Vermilion. He hails from a "barbarian" world beyond Federation space. This world was colonized by genetically engineered soldiers who eventually reverted to a pre-industrial, animistic society subject to periodic raiding by space pirates and slavers. His player decided that Malos was captured on one of these raids but soon impressed his captors with his courage and skill at arms. They eventually trained him to be part of their crew, learning the ins and outs of starship operation and other high-tech vocations. Ambitious, Malos wanted a ship of his own, which he got through a deal with a sector-wide criminal syndicate known as the Malavara Entrepreno -- "Bountiful Enterprise" -- who now expect him to act on their behalf.

To ensure that this happens, Malos was assigned a "consultant" named Jakomo Bahun, who's a technical prodigy and hacker, as well as an initiated member of the Malavara Entrepreno. Possessed of an eidetic memory and a devotion to rationality, Jakomo doesn't just keep Malos focused on their mutual employers' business. He also acts as the ship's engineer and keeps its transponder ID changing constantly in order to keep it from being pursued by the Federation Navy. Also aboard ship is Lajla Suleiman, an evangelist for a religion whose exact tenets seem to change every time anyone asks her about them. She claims to have been persecuted for her beliefs on another world of the sector and is thus in need of quick transport elsewhere, but it's pretty clear that Lajla is a con artist possessed of considerable people skills, thereby making her a useful person to have around.

The campaign began with my asking the players to pick a planet on the sector map and I'd take it from there. The chosen world was Nova Nova Kalifornio, which I immediately decided was a rhodium mining world, rhodium being a particularly valuable metal and thus a source of much smuggling to avoid Federation tariffs. The PCs set down on the planet carrying a cargo of "fortified sodium-positive imitation shrimp food" for sale to the miners. In reality, they were there to meet with a criminal contact with whom they could arrange the smuggling of a shipment of rhodium. Naturally, that was far too free of complications to provide a basis for conflict, so I quickly decided that security had been tightened at the mine, thanks to the presence of a new administrator from the megacorp running the place, and the PCs would need to go to the mine and find another way to acquire the shipment in question. thereby kicking the campaign off.

What I discovered is that it's far, far easier to start off an open-ended D&D campaign than an open-ended sci-fi one, especially if the PCs have their own starship. I was lucky in this case because the players decided their characters would be associated with a sector-wide organization. This gave me an easy means to give them hooks into possible adventures, but, unless I choose to be heavy-handed about it -- and I don't -- there's still a great deal of scope for the players to wander very far afield into areas I haven't the slightest notion about. I won't deny that I was more than a little worried about this and so the first session of the campaign, most of which was taken up by character creation, was probably rockier and more tentative than I would have liked, as I struggled to stay one step ahead of the players in creating NPCs and situations for their characters to encounter.

In the end, I think it went very well and am sure future sessions will be more relaxed on my part. Having now laid down some basic information in that first session, I have a better sense of what might exist on Nova Nova Kalifornio and beyond it into the wider sector. I've also got plenty more ideas of hooks to offer the players. As in Dwimmermount, though, I won't be sitting down and filling notebooks with details of worlds and NPCs and adventures before the players make any decisions in play. If anything, I'm even more dedicated to this campaign's being a seat of your pants style affair and, while it'll probably be a bit more harrowing than was Dwimmermount, since I don't even have a dungeon to fall back upon, I also think it has the potential to be a lot more fun for me personally, since I'm getting the chance to referee a sci-fi sandbox, something I've wanted to do for quite some time now.

Retrospective: 76 Patrons

76 Patrons isn't my favorite Traveller product by a long shot, but it's definitely one of my favorite gaming products. Written by Loren K. Wiseman and first published in 1980, 76 Patrons is, in my opinion, the ultimate supplement for running and maintaining a sandbox-style science fiction campaign. I used the heck out of my copy back in the day and, were I ever to start up a Traveller campaign in the future, you can be sure I'd be looking to 76 Patrons for ideas and inspiration.

In Traveller, you see, there's the concept of a "patron," which is little more than the game's equivalent of the mysterious stranger who meets your characters in an inn and offers them money in exchange for exploring a conveniently-located dungeon. What differentiates the patron from the hackneyed mysterious stranger is that the characters seek out patrons, not the other way around. Indeed, the finding of patrons is one of the key activities of old school Traveller adventurers, which is why there are rules for doing so -- rules, I should add, that include the possibility of the patron's finding the PCs unsuitable to his needs and failing to hire them. It's the sort of the reverse of OD&D; instead of the characters looking for hirelings to assist them, they are the hirelings.

Because of this, a Traveller referee needs to be flexible and create many different potential patrons for the characters to meet and enter negotiations with, some of which might never be used in play. That can be a significant burden on any referee, even a very improvisational one, which is why a supplement like 76 Patrons came in handy. As its name suggests, the book provides 76 different job opportunities (16 of which are actually mercenary tickets requiring the PCs to command military units of varying sizes). These jobs briefly describe the potential patron offering them -- "a newly married couple ... [who] have reason to believe that their respective parents are not pleased with their union" or "a nervous looking gentleman" -- as well as the nature of his offer and the remuneration for succeeding. Each entry also notes any required skills or equipment.

But what really made 76 Patrons useful was that each patron includes up to six different variations on the patron's offer. The referee rolls a die to determine whether, for example, the newly married couple are correct in their suspicions and what action, if any, their parents are taking. This random element not only made it impossible for players who also owned the book to determine in advance the nature of the job, but enabled certain patron listings to be reused again with a little bit of tweaking, thus extending the utility of the supplement. Furthermore, each patron entry served as a model to referees in creating their own patrons on the fly -- a skill all good Traveller referees had to master if they were to keep the campaign from grinding to a halt.

76 Patrons has its flaws, most notably a certain repetitiveness in the nature of many of the jobs offered. Many boil down to some variation on "illegally break into some place to get something," but, then, that's true of a great many scenarios for most RPGs (and literature, come to think of it). I'm willing to overlook such defects, though, because supplements like this were a treasure house of ideas and inspiration. As an inexperienced Traveller referee, they gave me the raw materials I needed to construct adventures for the PCs, as they traveled from place to place without any warning in search of employment. I've lately thought that a similar supplement for fantasy sandbox campaigns might be useful, though, lacking the patron structure of Traveller, it's harder to imagine how this might be achieved. Even so, I continue to regard 76 Patrons quite highly and see it as the kind of useful, no-frills products that we don't see as much these days as we did in days gone by.

Abandoned

Forgive me for quoting George Lucas (who was himself paraphrasing someone else, I believe), but it seemed on point for this post -- "A movie is never finished, only abandoned."

That's my experience with sandbox campaigns too. Whether this is a problem or not depends on one's point of view. For me, it's neither good nor bad, but abandonment does, in my experience anyway, seem to be the end state of every sandbox campaign in which I've ever participated. Because there's no relentless drive toward a foreordained "climax," sandboxes just chug along happily until they run out of steam. Depending on the players and referee involved, this can take years or it can happen in mere weeks -- I've seen both happen.

Speaking as the current referee of a sandbox campaign, I'll admit that this can sometimes be a drawback. There are rarely any convenient "breakpoints" in a sandbox campaign. That makes it hard for me to put the the campaign "on hiatus," something I've contemplated from time to time. Now, that's not necessarily a terrible thing; the lack of breakpoints certainly ensured that the campaign survived my own occasional bouts of Gamer ADD. However, like most people, I appreciate closure when I can get it and just moving on from a campaign while still in media res never feels right.

Conversely, I have never successfully returned to a campaign that had an overarching story and that had ended upon the conclusion of that story. I've frequently wanted to do so, but, every time I've tried, it always felt a bit like I was gilding the lily. That is, if, at the end of the campaign, the characters defeated their long-time nemesis and saved the world, what more is left for them to do? Indeed, almost anything the characters might do threatened to cheapen their previous accomplishments by one-upping them, as seems to be the rule in such sequels (because, let's face it, why bother with a sequel if it isn't going to be more impressive than what came before?).

In the same vein, I have successfully restarted sandbox campaigns after they'd been abandoned. In fact, I've done it several times. The main difficulties are two: disinterest and forgetfulness. Once you stop playing a campaign, you can "lose the taste for it," if you know what I mean. A big part of what makes a campaign successful is regular play, which reinforces interest in continuing to play. Few things are more detrimental to a sandbox campaign than the lack of regular play, for without it, the campaign lacks cohesion and direction. Too great a gap between sessions also feeds forgetfulness, another bane of sandboxes. If either the referee or the players can't really recall what was going on in the campaign or why, attempting to return to it can be painful, like reading an Isaac Asimov sequel written decades after the original tale.

As I get older, I find I much prefer regular sandbox play to adventure paths and story-driven campaigns, but I also realize that my preference means that I am locking myself into playing a single game in a single setting for an extended period of time. I certainly don't mind that, but I have mused before that the relative lack of popularity for sandbox-style gaming is likely related to most gamers' desire to play lots of different RPGs rather than focusing on a single one for an extended period of time. When I was younger, we dealt with this issue by running several campaigns at once, but we had near-infinite free time in those days and it will be many, many years before I am similarly blessed again (if ever).

Retrospective: Night's Dark Terror

Most of my retrospective posts focus on games or game products produced between 1974 and 1983, the period I call the Golden Age of D&D, because it's the period when the game was still expanding outward rather than inward. It's also closely associated with my early involvement in the hobby, when I paid a lot more attention to the games and game products released than I did in later years. Consequently, if I remember a product published after 1983, it must be memorable in some way, whether good or bad.

1986's Night's Dark Terror is pretty solidly in the former category. Written by Jim Bambra, Graeme Morris, and Phil Gallagher, this "Special Basic/Expert Transition Module for Levels 2-4" was one of the last products of TSR UK, whose legacy is still a matter of debate amongst fans on this side of the Atlantic. The module thus combines dungeoneering with wilderness travel and a thin structure in order to provide the PCs with purpose as they adventure throughout the uncharted reaches of the Dymrak Forest of northeastern Karameikos. The module book itself is 56-pages long, contains extensive maps, and 120 die-cut counters for use in adjudicating the siege of a trading outpost by humanoid raiders. Even if its contents hadn't been excellent, Night's Dark Terror is an impressive artifact in its own right.

But, as I stated above, module B10 is indeed excellent, something all the more remarkable given the date of its publication. If one were to examine TSR's output in 1986, there are few standouts among its adventure modules. Between the large number of Dragonlance offerings, the "super-module" compilations, and a large number of licensed properties, such as the Red Sonja modules, one cannot really call 1986 a banner year for the company. More importantly, module design had, by 1986, begun to seriously embrace the principles of the Hickman Revolution, making Night's Dark Terror, with its rambling, (largely) unfocused presentation seem like even more of a throwback than it was.

For the most part, module B10 is a location-based adventure. The characters travel from place to place as they wish, either purely for their own reasons or to follow up on clues and hooks they've encountered earlier. There are times when NPCs or circumstances somewhat heavy-handedly point, "This way to adventure!" -- such as the capture of an NPC's brother by goblins and dogged pursuit by agents of a powerful slaver whose headquarters is nearby -- and these do weaken the module somewhat. However, in its authors' defense, I should point out that they take pains throughout the text to state that "There is no set order in which [fixed encounters] take place," meaning that it is up to the referee to determine how and when to use them rather than sticking to a rigid structure or timeline independent of player decisions.

Night's Dark Terror is a solid Silver Age module, filled with Gygaxian naturalistic details, such as weather and moon phase charts, designed to enhance verisimilitude and facilitate certain encounters (such as the presence of lycanthropes, for example). Indeed, it's filled with details of all sorts, providing the referee with dozens of random and fixed encounters to use as the PCs wander throughout the uncharted wilderness. While far from a true Judges Guild-style hexcrawl, Night's Dark Terror nevertheless provides a mini-sandbox setting that has great utility even after the antagonists and threats that it details have been defeated. There are plenty of unexplained elements, unresolved conflicts, and mysteries in its pages that an enterprising referee could easily use it for many, many sessions without exhausting its possibilities.

It's often said that the "basic" D&D line had a great deal more going for it throughout the Silver and Bronze Ages, when compared to AD&D, at least as far as its modules and supplementary material go. I'm not yet convinced that's true as a blanket statement, but I do believe there are some forgotten gems in the line, Night's Dark Terror being a prime example. It's a pity that the model it puts forth was not more widely embraced and employed by TSR (or the hobby generally), but that's no reason for the old school renaissance not to do so. In fact, I'd love to see a new module written in this style. Something to do after I finish Dwimmermount perhaps?

When Players Attack

I think by now it's pretty well established that, in a sandbox-style campaign, referees need to be prepared for players wandering off to do something or go somewhere you hadn't expected. Judicious use of random tables, swiping ideas from pre-made modules, and good old fashioned quick thinking all help in this regard, as does jotting down germs of ideas to which you can turn for inspiration all help in this regard. I've used all of these techniques in my Dwimmermount campaign and there are many others too, depending on how much preparation the referee is prepared to put into his campaign. (I veer toward a very low-prep style, so nearly everything my players do unexpectedly is met with an extemporaneous response rather than something I'd thought deeply about beforehand, though there are exceptions)

A question I don't often see discussed, though, is how to deal with players who show complete disinterest in what you've placed before them. Even diligent, well-prepared sandbox referees (i.e. not me) have limits to how many lairs, encounters, clues, rumors, treasure maps, and hooks they can place before the players. After a certain point, a referee is being reasonable to expect that at least one of the things he's created will generate some interest in his players and thus provide a segue to adventure.

I suppose I've been lucky in that I've never encountered such intransigence from my players, but I have observed it in action several times. In most cases, the players are not so much disinterested in the obvious options placed before them but rather unhappy that the options placed before them all seem to take them to the same place. In my experience, players dig in their heels when it looks like the all their choices are false ones intended to lead them back toward something the referee really wants them to do see or do. I recall one memorable failed campaign where the characters became so unhappy with an NPC whose answers were so clearly designed to get them to take up a course of action they didn't like that they trapped him, along with many other innocent bystanders, in an inn and burned the place down. So great was the players' unhappiness that even the player of the paladin looked the other way while his comrades committed mass murder.

In the Dwimmermount campaign, there was only one thing I planned extensively beforehand and that was the mystery behind the cult of Turms Termax. In planning the game, I'd hit upon an idea I really like and thought would make a great MacGuffin, something that would encourage the players, through their characters, to delve more deeply into both the dungeon and the world of which it's a part. To my pleasure, it's largely worked and, while I continue to add and subtract elements from my original idea in response to events in our sessions, the core idea has remained the same.

Now, if the players had not responded as I'd hoped they might, what would I have done? I can't say for sure, because, as I've said, I've never experienced a case where the players wholly rejected what I set before them. I'd like to think, though, that I'd either have reworked my idea so that it'd have become more attractive to the players (this is a practice I've used before) or that, if they really demonstrated an utter disregard for the mystery of Turms Termax, I'd have dropped it and found something else to engage their interest.

The willingness to drop elements from a campaign (or at least diminish their importance) is, I think, an important trait in running a successful old school sandbox campaign. No matter how good I think my ideas are, it's ultimately the opinions of my players that matter most. If they're not interested, there's little to be gained -- and much to be lost -- by forcing something on them. I try to remember that ideas are cheap, but player interest is often priceless. For some, it can be a hard lesson to learn, but, once understood, it more than repays the time and effort spent acquiring it.

Kingmaker

No, not that Kingmaker. I'm talking about the latest adventure path produced by Paizo for their Pathfinder RPG, about which I was informed this morning thanks to an email sent to me by the company. As everyone knows, I wish Paizo well. I'm very fond of many of the guys and gals who work there, particularly Erik Mona, who shares my love of all things pulp. Likewise, I'm forever in Paizo's debt for the Planet Stories line, of which I am a proud subscriber.

At the same time, I'm no fan of the Adventure Path concept, for reasons I hope I don't have to explain. I think the Pathfinder RPG is a very impressive piece of work, but it's not my cup of tea and I'm only slightly more likely to play it than I am to play D&D IV -- and that's not saying very much. However, "Kingmaker" intrigues me, I must admit. Here's part of what the email I received said:

We're very proud of Kingmaker, as it marks a new kind of Adventure Path for us. As always, there's an underlying story—this one involving a secret villain and a bandit lord and trolls and barbarians and missing villages and superstitious kobolds and drunk thugs and so much more—but how that story unfolds is going to be left in large part up to the players. In each of the six Kingmaker volumes, you'll find several quests for the PCs to complete. And don't be surprised if players make up their own quests as they explore the land!

Not only are we tackling a more nonlinear "sandbox" approach to adventure construction (which means that it's very likely your PCs will work through this adventure in a completely unique order), but as the Kingmaker Adventure Path unfolds, your PCs will settle towns, gather followers, raise nations, and fight wars. By the end of Kingmaker, chances are good that one of your PCs will, indeed, be king or queen of his or her own nation!

That sounds very much like something I'd enjoy, especially since each of the six volumes that make up the adventure path will include additional support for sandbox play, including "a new system to establish, develop, and expand a living fantasy community" and "streamlined rules to resolve mass combat."

I have absolutely no idea how easily these rules could be adapted to my preferred versions of D&D nor do I know if any of the volumes' other content would be of use to me. The free, dowloadable Players Guide to the series definitely piques my interest and the hex motif to the layout hits my nostalgia right between the eyes, so I am sorely tempted by this -- but I am also wary. I don't play Pathfinder nor am I likely to do so. I appreciate the virtues of its campaign setting and the way that the Paizo folks have managed to honor D&D's past while at the same time forging ahead with their own vision of things. Is that enough to convince me to plunk down $19.99 for each of the six issues of the adventure path? I really don't know, but this is the first product written for a contemporary rules set that I've considered buying in quite some time, so I may well succumb to temptation.

Anyone else know any more that might help me decide?