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White Star – White Box SF RPG

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White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying, by +James Spahn of Barrel Rider Games is all the rage at the moment. It has a vibrant and rapidly expanding G+ Community. It also has its own compatibility logo!

Appropriately enough, it was released on May 4th, for Star Wars Day.

I am a big science fiction fan and my first love in reading was science fiction over fantasy. I have played Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Traveller, plus various board games such as Imperium, and several video games. I tended to be the one who ran Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World, to give my brother a break from DMing AD&D.

However, my days of playing/GMing science fiction RPGs faded and have not revived like fantasy based RPGs, like AD&D or recently DCC.

I recently bought the Metamorphosis Alpha PDF and printed it out and read it through, with plans of making my own version of the starship Warden, perhaps for a Roll20 campaign.

All the hoopla about White Star is contagious, and I bought the PDF.

I had plenty of interruptions trying to read the PDF. This whole working for a living thing interferes with all my fun.

The art, maps, and layout make it easy to read. The system is designed to be totally compatible with Swords & Wizardry White Box, so any creature or item can easily traverse the two genres. Like the AD&D DMG discussion of combining Gamma World and AD&D, or Boot Hill and AD&D.

The original six standard abilities and 3d6 make it quick to pick up and play.

Rules are presented with a framework, and a clear Rule 0 reference that the Referee can make any changes they want to games in their world.

If you need a lizard man/reptile man in space, you have them stated in Sword & Wizardry already. Take any creature and “re-skin” it by changing its description, and any creature found in S&W is ready to go in White Star.

That is one powerful thing about all the clones and play alikes in the OSR. I have not specifically played Swords & Wizardry, but I “get” it, and since I am used to it, it will not require a lot of effort to run it.

I like how ship to ship combat is a simple abstraction from regular melee combat, with AC, HP, etc. for ships. While certain details are nice, I know that some SF RPG’s are so “crunchy” with rules for every little thing, that the rules get in the way of moving on. Combat can take way too long even in some “rules lite” systems. I’ll have to whip up a couple ships and have them fight it out.

The rules as presented are a sufficient framework to get playing quickly. This framework is familiar to so many, that it is easy to add house rules, ideas from other games, genres, etc., that one can make White Star their own.

Any SF sub-genre could be crafted with this, a generation ship scenario like Metamorphosis Alpha, post apocalyptic like Gamma World, space opera, exploration, war, space pirates, etc.

Race As Class

One thing that others complained about, and I didn’t like at first, until I thought about it, is race as class. In most fantasy worlds with retro-clones or AD&D, demi-humans have level caps. I don’t like that. Also with OD&D clones, there is race as class. I don’t like all aspects of that in fantasy, or in Science Fiction, but I see it making sense in a planet hopping scenario.

If the humans are the dominant group and the “aliens” are tagging along, the level limits will exist because the aliens don’t fit well into the culture, architecture, and design of the human controlled worlds, buildings, and ships. When a handful of aliens are among a huge number of humans, their uniqueness only gives them so many advantages. The hindrances of being surrounded by human sized items, furniture, doorways, etc. will limit how well they can improve their skills among humans. For example, a creature that breathes methane will require special equipment to travel with humans. For aliens that are humanoid to the point of being indistinguishable from humans apart from outward appearance and interior biology, such limits would not be as severe. A ten foot tall alien, however, would have major limitations on space travel.

If the situation is reversed, where a few humans are among a bunch of aliens, surrounded by alien technology, then the humans would have the same issues. I can see someone building a campaign where the humans are a tiny minority in a vast alien empire. If the humans have to have special equipment to breathe while travelling on a ship, it will limit how well and how long they can function outside any special accommodations on the ship added for humans.

Non-humans on their home planet would have advantages that humans would not have.

Humans could have variations leading to sub-species, such as those who inhabited a high gravity planet and get a bonus on their strength when on lower gravity planets and ships.

Rule 0 trumps race as class. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. Problem solved.

Forget Rule 0, There’s A Problem

One minor thing is buying bullets for firearms in preloaded magazines. I don’t know why that minor lack of verisimilitude bugs me. Handgun ammunition is usually available in boxes of 50 and shotgun and rifle ammunition is often in boxes of 20. Detachable magazines are usually reusable. In fact, I am not aware of any firearm for which magazines are not reusable. Of course, Rule 0 and all.

High tech firearms in the universe could be different. People are separated from manual drudge labor, to the point of not having to load magazines. What do you do with the empty one? Turn them in for a magazine deposit? Like bottle deposits in Michigan?

Also a pistol with ten rounds – is it small and easily concealable, or bigger and harder to disguise? Is it ball ammo, hollow point, etc? Can I rack the slide to chamber a round and drop the magazine and top it off to carry 11 rounds? It is all too easy to get hung up on little details and need a rule for it. There is always something that we know from our personal experience that makes it seem like a good idea to add complexity to handle it. Rule 0 still accommodates this. If I really wanted to get down to it, I could build rules for different calibers, revolvers vs. semi-automatics, hollow points vs. ball, ceramic/metal/polymer/combination, breech loaders vs. muzzle loaders, etc.

I don’t have a problem with how computers and other technology is presented in games, so why should this bother me? For example, I know a lot about computers, but their functions are so abstract in the internals and have changed so much since the first computer my parents bought in the early 1980’s that I can handle computers being small and powerful with interfaces much simpler than today. The whole touchscreen “revolution” has changed a great deal about interacting with computers. Voice recognition is better and primitive voice interfaces exist with smart phones, such as, the well-known Siri for the iPhone. The whole exposure to the idea of computers in movies, TV, and the written word have shaped our thinking to allow the devices we use every day to still hold some mystery that makes it easy to ascribe special powers to them.

Aliens & Creatures

Chapter eight on creatures leads with an explanation that specific details about color, activity, and diet is left to the Referee so that their imagination is not restricted.

There are a great many aliens and creatures to fill all the desired tropes of science fiction.

Campaigns

There are several ideas for types of campaigns, plus a campaign based in the Kelron Sector.

Adventure

There is a short sample adventure at the end to get things started. It is an interesting scenario with many familiar ideas from multiple movies, TV shows, books, and stories.

Art

The artwork of the cover and interior is awesome. Maps by Matt Jackson are cool too!

Ideas

Even if you don’t specifically play these rules, there are ideas in here that can be used in any variety of science fiction and other genres of RPG’s.

Editing

There are a few oddities in the flow of words and a few misplaced commas, and some other minor things. If you plan to print this out, I would wait for the update to the PDF. These errors increase towards the end.

I think that I will buy this in print, hopefully the textual issues are resolved quickly.

Other than the few issues in the text, the layout is well done, and it is easy on the eyes.

Other

I let my reading this jump ahead of reading and reviewing the White Box Omnibus also by James Spahn, that I won on the Happy Jacks Podcast for Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day.

I have heard good things and after reading White Star, I am sure I will find something good!

RPGs

Campaign Design

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Back in mid-March +Sophia Brandt posted a query [on a now nonexistent G+ page] seeking advice on tools for beginner DM resources for hexcrawls and building your own campaign.

I recommend reading the full comment thread, but I liked what I wrote, as it is a nice summary of what I have used in my efforts in recent years. I have added other links and information that I could not recall off the top of my head, mostly for my future reference.

+Joe Johnston recently published a free PDF, How to Hexcrawl.

Bat in the Attic, The Alexandrian, Ars Ludi, and  The Welsh Piper all have a series on sandboxes and hexcrawls.There’s another blogger who did something on hexcrawls that I am not recalling.

Bat in the Attic- Hexcrawl Series            The Alexandrian Hexcrawl Series               Ars Ludi: West Marches            The Welsh Piper on Hexcrawls

For building a world, the hexcrawl is generally a bottom up way to do it. Pick a starting town and generate a few hexes around town with various terrain, and objects and places of interests and dungeons and monsters. The world is built as the player’s explore it.

One can also do the top down approach, plan out a world, cosmology, mythos, nations, peoples, cities, etc. and pick a certain spot for the players to start, and use a hexcrawl to detain a smaller area.

For me, designing a detailed mythology of divinities is a challenge, so I use either Greyhawk dieties, or something from Dieties & Demigods.

It is easy to get lost in the details, so I think the DSR episode about world building sufficiency, is right on point. Some of us, like me, can easily get lost in details that will never come into play. Build enough to give color and flavor to your world.

My quick suggestions:

  • Decide which monsters definitely will or won’t be used.
  • Generate a ridiculous amount of names for streets, places, businesses, taverns, and NPCs . (You will be asked for what is the name of this or that all the time!)
  • Stay just enough ahead of the players that you can roll with their sudden course changes. At the end of a session ask if they will continue in their current situation, or go somewhere else, to give you time to prepare for a course change.
  • Make index cards with pre-generated random encounters of the creatures they are likely to encounter, so you can just grab it and go. Just make packs based on your encounter tables, whether it is the default tables in the rules, those by others, or your own. I put stats, treasure, etc. on them so I don’t have to slow play to figure it out. Some monsters I use all the time, I can easily wing them. But I like the cards to make sure that every group of goblins is not the same 10 goblins with spears.
  • Once you get a few sessions under your belt, and you and the players get attuned to this world, it will start to make sense how to proceed.
  • If this is your first campaign, there is no right or wrong way to do it. Everything you do, even if it is never used in play will help you figure out what style of world building works for you.
  • Tables – Tables can help give ideas. The OSR is full of new ideas for tables to flesh out or fill in perceived gaps for different tables. You don’t have to roll on tables or accept the results, but they can give a LOT of ideas you might not come up with on your own.
  • Maps – There is a plethora of online maps for RPGs for dungeons, cities, ruins, and other settings. If you play using theater of the mind, then the maps may only help you to solidify your ideas for a location and its layout.
  • d30 Sandbox Companion – New Big Dragon Games game aid for generating all kinds of things for a sandbox setting.
  • d30 DM Companion – New Big Dragon Games game aid for ideas for fleshing out dungeons, not limited to the dungeon.
  • Weather  – Have a quick and easy method to generate weather.
  • Rumors – Have a few rumors to start and come up with new rumors all the time.
  • Events – Use something like the yearly and monthly events in Oriental Adventures.
  • Festivals & Celebrations – What kinds of parties will be going on?

Another person pointed out a couple of resources that I also turn to:

Jeff Rients’ twenty quick questions for your campaign setting has some interesting ideas to define certain elements of your campaign that your players may ask about, or for some reason tends to come out in game play.

One Page Dungeon Contest (OPDC) Maps to quickly generate where a treasure or other found map leads, or for a quick adventure idea when you are running dry.

I find that as I place monster lairs and determine what is in them, that it is easy to make up a story to explain how they all fit together. Are certain groups of humanoids working together? Is there a big bad who is trying to get them to work for him? Are there monsters that can’t be reasoned with or controlled and the big bad leaves them to guard his flanks, and his minions fear them. For example, a group of owlbears in an abandoned mine?

There are all kinds of ways to determine what the various lairs and ruins are. Place them underground in caves, tombs, dungeons, ruins, mines, quarries, etc. Hills, towers, and other prominent features above ground.

Use the lairs closest to the starting village/town/city as sources to begin interacting with your world. Have a known area of fairly picked over tombs in the hills near town, but with the possibility that there are still tombs that haven’t been found, or that have become the home of something else with treasure.

Plan NPCs for all the PCs to interact with, that have the same classes your PCs will use. If you allow paladins and rangers in your game, plan some low and mid-level NPCs so that your players have someone of their class to turn to for advice, training, support, etc. Having a reason for these NPCs to be in and out of town and sometimes inconvenient for the players to interact with makes them a bit more real. Paladins and rangers tend to be out doing good in dangerous places, or on quests and secret missions. Wizards and illusionists and sages tend to get busy doing their research. If the players can’t afford to pay for information or magical aid, perhaps they can pay in favors.

Then there need to be the other NPCs, tavern keepers, bar maids, street vendors, and other types of vendors that your players will tend to seek out. How many from the starting location will be available for hirelings and mercenaries? Is the supply never ending, or will you define how many are available? Will the players have a hard time finding help if they get a reputation for getting their men killed?

As you get to know your developing setting and your chosen rules, you may find that you are comfortable winging various aspects of play. Perhaps all you need is a list of names or a simple name generator, and some generic stats of hirelings. I have found that I can make up all kinds of stuff on the fly. I am amazed at some of the stuff that I come up with and how the players never know I made it up on the spot. However, the players can be quite inventive and always manage to find some avenue in the course of play that I had not anticipated.

If you tell the players that there is someone in town who sells maps, for example, you better know about the maps. Are they all forgeries made by the map maker, or are they the real deal. Where do they go and do any forged maps actually lead to something, or is the loot still there if the map is genuine?

Whatever you mention, be prepared for the players to run with it, so keep some basic notes of what you have told them, and pay attention to them showing interest in certain things.

I have a few background plots running in my campaign that are affecting their immediate area, the kingdom, and the greater region. The players are seeing a pattern to some events that are just random encounters, but I am able to retcon a story that makes it work, because I built my own encounter tables to fit the lairs I randomly placed and populated. The players are able to influence events through dumb luck, or by choosing to follow or ignore hints of something else going on. Players will start connecting dots from what they see, but these connections are tenuous, coincidental, or circumstantial. It is fun to have your narrative as the DM about what all this means, and see how the players actually interact with it.

With a hexcrawl, you can put as much or as little detail and effort into it as you need to make it work. You can do the just in time generation a few hours before the session, or do it as you play and both DM and players figure out the world at the same time. You can obsess over planning your world and generate tons of information that will never enter into play. Whichever way you prepare, make sure it is focused on preparations that leads to play first, and explanatory, fill in the blanks later. As I mentioned above, as you follow this process, you will discover the style that works for you. If you and the players are having fun, then you are doing it right.

RPGs

Genetic Map of the British Isles

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My interest in genealogy and RPG’s cross pollinate ideas, like any other interest or experience in life, many things influence our creative ideas.

In late March, there were several articles about a new genetic map of Britain and how it shows that much of the regional populations there is very similar to what it has been for 1,400 years!

I am of Scottish, English, and Irish ancestry, so this resonates with me. It shows that even with the sweep of mass migrations, war, famine, and plague, that populations are resilient. Without massive slaughter, populations may only be pushed out of their exiting area. This would show just how hard it is to wipe out all the humanoids, for example. They might be driven out of the area, but not eradicated without a lot of effort.

Three articles with a bit of different information in each can be found at Medievalist.net, The Independent, and The Telegraph.

Genealogical Map of British Isles
Genealogical Map of British Isles

 

RPGs

Arbalest vs. Heavy Crossbow

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I did not make note of the article I read this on, but I wanted to get this scrawled note from an index card recorded so I can ditch the index card. I believe this is the article, but there’s no date on it, so I’m not sure.

It discussed the arbalest, a heavy crossbow, that used spring steel arms for the bow and had a range of about 300 meters, longer than 3 American football fields! It also had a fire rate of 2/minute.

They could shoot bolts or stones or shot. I’ll have to dig up the article, but it would be a heavy+ crossbow in D&D terms. Since a longbow is often credited as 12 aimed shots a minute and that is translated to 2 shots per round in AD&D, it makes sense that one shot per round for an arbalest. The heavy crossbow has a more complex cocking procedure, so one shot every other round.

Or is an arbalest just one expression of what the heavy crossbow in AD&D represents?

I mentioned in two past articles (one, two) about my brother, Robert, allowing a Chinese style self loading crossbow that could fire 10 shots a round, and our foolish characters ended up as orc food because we elected to fight with swords instead of our cool crossbows.

Finding the proper scale so that one isn’t dropping a combat changer into the midst of the game is the only part of balance I am concerned with.

RPGs

Worlds Beyond Ours – Curtis International Library of Knowledge

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Worlds Beyond Ours [Amazon Affiliate Link] is a book I have from my parents. It is copyright 1968, so I am only a few years older than this book. It mentions the Apollo program and if all goes well, man will set foot on the moon in a decade.

It is interesting to see color photographs of stars and planets in the age before the Hubble Telescope.

It talks about man looking to the stars and planets and the development of telescopes and rockets and has some maps of planets.

We can get much better pictures and maps from NASA online now. I didn’t have regular internet access until I was a few years past 30. Before then, one either had a set of encyclopedias to refer to at home, or you made a trip to the library.

I was blessed to have a 1969 set of Encyclopedia Britannica in my home growing up. My siblings and I would pulls out a volume and read about a topic and any related topics that caught our interest, much like surfing from article to article on Wikipedia, or I suppose the online Encyclopedia Britannica.

Seeing this old Worlds Beyond Ours emphases just how much the world has changed. Especially one that was published so close to Apollo 11 landing on the moon. Such old books I find fascinating.

If you want a science fiction based game, these things can be interesting. The number of planets and the number of moons around those planets has changed drastically in my lifetime. The true number did not change, we just discovered it.

I recall the Viking Landers on Mars in 1976, Voyager I and II making their way past Mars to Jupiter, then Saturn, and now on the far edges of the solar system. Is it still debated if one of the Voyagers has left the solar system yet?

I am old enough to remember the last Apollo missions to the moon. What I recall most is how SLOW the Atlas rocket ascended. It was quite the shock when the first space shuttle launched and it was so FAST! The movie Apollo 13 was NOT realistic with how fast those rockets actually left the launchpad. I remember my parents and siblings and I all having the same reaction to just how quickly the space shuttle leapt off the pad.

Old books like this can be found at garage sales and used book stores. Like many DMs and players, we tend to collect odd bits of information in the form of books and other things that serve as a basis for our own worlds and games.

I ran some of the science fiction games that my high school group played, mostly Metamorphosis Alpha or Gamma World, but we were predominately a AD&D group. I still love science fiction as well as fantasy.

My recent forays into reading the original Metamorphosis Alpha from DriveThruRPG has me digging out my old books. I wish I still had all of my science fiction collection of paperbacks. Moving from a house to a small apartment years ago forced me to get rid of so much. I can’t easily re-build it, but I have the memories of what I read and the books I want to read again, I can track down.

Perhaps I’ll run another science fiction related game or campaign. At least enough to scratch the itch….

RPGs

Kingdom of the Dwarfs

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I bought the book, Kingdom of the Dwarfs [Amazon Affiliate link], by Robb Walsh [Now a food writer and critic in Texas. Made me hungry for some good BBQ….] and illustrated by David Wenzel, back in the 1980’s. The copyright date is 1980, so I’m not sure what year I bought it. I know it was before I graduated high school, so sometime between 1980 and 1983.

I keep it with my RPG materials. I was trying to think of something to post about, and I remembered this book. I have not read it probably since I first read it after I got it home three plus decades ago.

I have looked at the art since then, and marveled at the skill of the artist, and wished I could do the same. Perhaps with intentional practice and some art classes I might do better than my present attempts.

I strongly identify with dwarves for some reason. I really liked the dwarf character from The Sword of Shannara  [Amazon Affiliate link].

Oddly enough, my favorite character is a half-elf. Although I play a dwarf in my Wednesday night online AD&D game.

The Wikipedia article about David Wenzel calls this a children’s book. As I recall, it was in the fantasy/science fiction section of the bookstore, so it was not marketed or sold in that store like a children’s book. I don’t think the theme is of a children’s book.

I remembered the basic story, but of course, the details eluded me. So I read it again.

It is a fast read. The text is mostly a set up of the book and then brief blurbs to set the scene for the art. The art tells a very detailed story.

Now I’m in the mood to detail the dwarven realms in my campaign. There’s never enough time to do it all!

If you want to build a dwarven kingdom or lost kingdom, this is a great source book!

RPGs

Day 26 Z is for Z Axis

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Z – Z Axis

As Kirk and Spock discussed in Wrath of Khan, don’t have two dimensional thinking.

Think of below the street level and above the tops of the towers.

Is there an issue with burrowing creatures or flying creatures?

Would a dragon or someone riding a dragon attack the city?

Is the ruined city so isolated by geography that the only way to arrive is by magic or by flight?

Is it a living but hidden city?

Is there a magical effect above the city, like the area of a rope trick, or other pocket dimension type space that is hidden from view? A place for observation of the surroundings and a great spot to ambush invaders, or trouble makers.

RPGs

Day 25 Y is for You Owe

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Y – You Owe – fines, taxes, tariffs, fees, tolls, etc.

If there is a fine, fee, or tax, where are the tax collectors? Where might the remnants of ancient taxes be today? This ties in with X Marks the Spot and with Vaults.

If a living city, where are the points where the government or local gang imposes fees for its services?

If a fallen city that is now occupied by new inhabitants, do they impose taxes and fees? If inhabited by ogres, they will just take all your stuff as the fee, as will most other humanoids and intelligent monsters. The ones that don’t eat you, will likely enslave you, or just kill you for the sport of it.

Intelligent monsters might impose exorbitant fees on passing caravans to let them pass mostly unharmed. This would affect the price and availability of certain goods.

If the city is not fallen, how far beyond the city walls to taxes and fees begin to be imposed? Is there a fee for every bridge and ferry, beyond the operator’s base fee? Are their toll booths at key locations along the road? If you have never had to pay a fee to cross a bridge or to drive on a tollway, this concept might be foreign to you. The AD&D DMG has a good overview on this. If the PC’s hang around civilization, they will run into lots of taxes and fees, which might induce them to go seek further fortunes.

For fallen cities, will random coins be found periodically near abandoned toll booths? Will the coin box be lost and found in some random location?

Will a tax collector have a hidden stash of his share, legal or illicit? In the ancient world, taxes were collected by tax farmers who bid how much they could collect, and they got to keep what they collected beyond that point, thus making them quite disliked by the taxpayers.

 

RPGs

Day 24 X is for X Marks the Spot

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X – X Marks the spot.

Note important locations, map it out – It does not have to be fancy, even a node map and rough idea of where things are will suffice.

With all of the free maps from so many talented artists and map makers in the OSR, and via many various websites, like Cartographer’s Guild, one can easily come up with a map. There are also lots of maps from the medieval and renaissance periods that are available online to give one ideas. There is more than one G+ community for maps and world building ideas. There is a surplus of riches in maps and adventure ideas, thanks to the internet.

For some city and town maps, I have taken something I found online that was close to what I had in mind, and used that to help craft something for my own needs.

Where is the important stuff? Where is the treasure in relation to the palace or the temple?

Have the rich buried or hidden their wealth when they fled, is it still there? Is it inside the city, or somewhere outside the walls?

If an abandoned city for hundreds or thousands of years, what groups, monsters, wizards, cults, etc. have made a home or base? Is that base still there? Is it inhabited by the original founders of the base or has it changed hands over the years?

All of the other articles in this series mention many different things that will have a location. Each of those things will have a quality of the original construction, degree of routine maintenance given when in use,  and the use, damage, neglect, etc. that these things have undergone if the city is abandoned.

RPGs

2015 One Page Dungeon Contest – My Revised Submission

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I re-did the map for my OPDC submission, The Dire Druids of Delver’s Deep. I did the new map by hand and scanned it. The only thing I put on the image with a program, are the numbers for the rooms/areas.

Doing my map old school, i.e. like I did when I was a teenager and before we had our first computer, microwave, or cable TV.

I’m not that good at getting the result I want out of a graphic’s program, so hand drawn it is. Being out of practice with the details on hand drawn maps doesn’t seem to be a problem for this small one. If I had time before the deadline to fiddle with it and get a cutaway effect of The Deep and the cavern, I would.