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Looks like it really is aces.

It seems like evertime I do an image search on google, I get at least one slightly Not Safe For Work totally WTF? result. I was looking for a cover pic for Clash Bowley's In Harm's Way: Aces in Spades when I found that pic. Clash was kind enough to comp me a review copy, which I got in the mail yesterday. I'm about a quarter of the way through this game and I am totally digging on it. World War One flying aces is one of the few purely historical genres that interest me for rpg gaming. Well, maybe not purely historical. Like Westerns, I'm more interested in the slightly larger-than-life mythology that has grown up around the era. That's sort of a middle ground between hardcore historical simulation and the kind of game where suddenly zombies appear for no particular reason. Not that I have a hate-on for things like Crimson Skies or Deadlands, mind you. I just don't require a lot of superscience or magic in a game that already has the awesomeness of Doc Holliday or the Red Baron.

Anyway, I haven't finished reading the book, so I can't offer a review at this time. But I like what I see so far. The game mechanics I've read are all straightforward stuff. I have yet to see a fiddly bit that looks like it would trip me up. And the emphasis on competition between players for promotion and decoration looks like a hoot. I could totally see getting together some of the more competitive roleplayers in town for a playtest, just to see them go at each others' throats while simultaneously fighting off the aeroplane squadrons of the great Hun menace. It takes a certain special something for game to immediately get me thinking about what kind of group to get together to play it.

Anyway, big thanks to Clash for the free game. I look forward to reviewing this puppy and hopefully playing it, too.

quote of the day

If the players don't amuse the GM, then the GM will amuse himself at their expense.

--Dave Arneson

Jeff's Long Box*

In preparation for our upcoming move I finally broke down and bought a long box at the local comic shop. Just in time, it turns out. All my floppies together pretty much filled it up. I would have had a little wiggle room, but the bargain boxes had some new stuff. I found four or five issues of Sensational She-Hulk and a like number of The Omega Men. I don't really know anything about the latter except that it's set in outer space and the covers look full of soap operatic melodrama. Come days, that's all I need to know to spend a couple of bucks on back issues. I also found the last issue of Sectaurs, a crappy toy tie-in book. I don't normally buy crappy toy tie-ins, but this one was written by Bill Mantlo. That guy is awesome.

*With apologies to David Campbell.

morality in Ultima IV

This post is mostly for Stuart's benefit. I haven't played Ultima IV in years, so if anybody has something to add or wants to clarify my addled memory, please speak up.

Chargen in Ultima IV is unlike any other game I've played. You are in a gypsy fortuneteller's wagon, where she asks you a series of moral questions. None of these questions has a right answer, but instead you must choose one virtue over another. "You and your friend battle a dragon. He thinks he slew the beast, but you know that you are the one who struck the telling blow. Do you Honestly correct him when he claims the glory for himself? Or Humbly allow him to take credit?"

After a series of these questions you end up favoring one of eight virtues over another. Each virtue is tied to a class. The first time I played I ended up being a Bard, because my answer's favored their virtue. Compassion, was it? I think so. The second time I played I gamed the system, picking Humility at every opportunity so I could play a Shepherd.

Within the game you must achieve all Eight Virtues by meditating at the eight Shrines of virtue. Locating and gaining access to the shrines is a big part of the game, as is learning the proper mantra to chant for each virtue. After successfully achieving a virtue, you can lose it. Steal from people in towns? Lose a random virtue. Speak to beggars (some of whom have valuable clues) but fail to give them alms? Looks like you need to purify yourself at the shrine again, bub. Becoming virtuous was hard work. Staying virtuous means avoiding a lot of rascally behavior that many PCs get up to in D&D games.

Some of this looks a little hamhanded and hokey nowadays. But for a computer game with swords and orcs, circa 1985, this was pretty sophisticated stuff.

PC to tabletop: Ultima IV

There's been a lot of talk lately about video games like Worlds of Warcraft and Final Fantasy informing design decisions in the upcoming 4th edition of D&D. I fall in the camp that I don't care where a good mechanical idea comes from, but I'm not yet sure whether I want what other people consider to be good ideas in computer gaming. Still, I agree with the basic premise that a video game has the potential to positively impact tabletop play. Case in point: Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar.

I don't really play PC games any more and Ultima IV represented the highpoint of my interaction with computer gaming. I had played a bootleg copy of Ultima III, a less ambitious but still fun predecessor and I tried to enjoy the sequel but largely found it exchanged the soul the the earlier installments for greater technical sophistication and graphical embellishment.

Ultima IV featured great exploration of a huge overland map, secrets to be discovered, clues to be found, and interesting people to interact with. I found the dungeons genuinely thrilling and travel by sea exhilarating. And the quest of the game featured something previously unencountered in various Bard's Tales and Might & Magics and such: the evil to be defeated was not an external threat like an evil wizard or something. Rather the goal was to ennoble the hearts of the inhabitants of Britannia by leading an exemplary life of virtue. It was a game with a genuine moral dimension, not just a lameass alignment system.

The graphics were pretty weak, even by '80s Commodore 64 standards, but I loved the overhead view of the overland and town maps. The art was stylized in a way that made the lack of detail less important, in the way that a chess piece can be abstract but still symbolic.

One of the greatest thing abotu Ultima IV was the extra thing-a-ma-bobs that came in the box. (I guess someone at EN World decided that we would start calling this stuff "regalia".) For starters, you get an awesome cloth map of Britannia. Most of it is quite accurate, such that you can navigate large chunks of wilderness travel with it. The labels are all in a modified Viking style runic. A key for translation came in the box, but it wasn't necessary to use it to finish the game.









You also got two nifty stapled digest-sized books. I love digest-sized gamebooks. They just seem so light and fun. One of the books was titled The History of Britannia as told by Kyle the Younger. It was a great little mechanics-free overview of the gameworld, printed on a lovely heavy stock cream colored paper with brown ink and adorable little illustrations. Flipping through this book is a delight. Everything a starting player needs to know about the gameworld is contained in this small book, all presented in nice little snippets.

The second book was the spellbook. The cover was dark red with shiny gold runes on it. How can you not like that book? Inside each spell gets a one page description, largely free of mechanics and such, and a fullpage illo of some cool-looking wizard using the spell. Spells in Ultima IV weren't divided along class or level lines. Magic was just... magic. You might not have enough Magic Points to cast a particular spell, but you would only find something like that out via trial and error. The spellbook also explained the spell component system. There were only six or eight components and all spells made use of one or more of that set. The majority of these components could be bought at magic shoppes. But the two most potent components had to be found in the game.

Finally, each Ultima IV box came with a little cheap metal ankh, the symbol of morality in the game. In retrospect this use of the ankh has shades of Crystal Dragon Jesus written all over it. But I still treasure the ankh that came with my original copy of the game.


I look back at Ultima IV and see a lot of stuff I would enjoy in my tabletop games. Wouldn't it be great to be able to hand out a cute little booklet of campaign information, instead of a drab printout? And presenting a spellbook that looks like an occult tome would be the bee's knees. A cloth or parchment player map that looks genuine and is useful but that doesn't exactly match the official campaign map would be great. And I'd love to give out some sort of little gew-gaw to give players as a momento of a campaign. That's not even touching on the actual morality at work in Ultima IV. I'm not sure exactly what to do with that.

the true progenitor of Arduin

One of the books I've listed for sale in my third round of eBay auctions is David Hargrave's The Arduin Adventure. It's to Hargrave's original Arduin trilogy what Basic D&D is to the Little Beige Books of OD&D. While charming, I find it much less useful than Hargrave's earlier work, which is crazy-go-nuts awesome. I really dig two things about The Arduin Adventure though. The first is the character sheet. It's a stock boxy charsheet typical of the era, jam-packed with game data of various sorts. But right in the middle of the various stat fields is a small box labeled "Best friend". I haven't read the book in a long time, but I don't recall any game mechanics attached to who your best friend might be. As far as I can tell, there's just a box to note the name of your closest pal. I totally dig that. Roleplaying would probably be a lot different if D&D's standard charsheet came with fields like "Best friend", "True love" and "Sworn enemy".

The other thing I like about this book is chapter XV, the bibliography. First we get a long list of non-fiction books on fictional topics. I love books like that. Below is the list. I'm leaving off publisher and date of publication because I'm a lazy ass.

Alien Landscapes, by Robert Holdstock and Malcom Edwards

Authentic Thaumaturgy, by PEI Bonewitz

Beauty and the Beast, by Chriss Achilleos

An Atlas of Fantasy, by J.B. Post

The Complete Guide to Middle Earth, by Robert Foster

The Complete Illustrated Book of the Psychic Sciences, by Walter B. and Litzka Gibson

An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures, by Katharine Briggs

The Encyclopedia of Magik & Superstition

The Encyclopedia of Withcraft and Demonology, by Russell Hope Robbins

Faeries, by Brian Froud and Alan Lee

The Fantasy Almanac, by Jeff Rovin

Giants, illustrated by Julek Heller, Carolyn Scrace, and Juan Wijngaard

A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration, and Use of Arms and Armor in All Countrys and in All Times (And Some Closely Related Subjects), by George Cameron Stone

Japanese Short Stories, by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, translated by Takashi Kojima

Magic, White and Black, by Franz Hartmann, M.D.

Martial Arts, by Michel Random

Medieval Warfare, by Terence Wise

Men Of The Earth, by Brian M. Fagan

The Morning of the Magicians, by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, translated by Rollo Meyers

Mysterious Monsters, by Daniel Farson and Angus Hall

The New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology

The Phoenicians, by Donald Harden

Secrets of the Samurai, by Oscar Ratti and Adele Westbrook

Seven Magik Orders, by Shan Mui and Ruth Tabtah

Solar Wind, illustrated by Peter Jones

The Supernatural, by Douglas Hill and Pat Williams

A Tolkien Bestiary, by David Day

Tomorrow and Beyond, edited by Ian Summers

War Through The Ages, by Lynn Montross

Wonder Works, by Michael Whelan

Zoo of the Gods, by Anthony S. Mercatante

Looks mostly like an interesting blend of standard Middle Ages stuff and nerdy occult tomes with a dash of Orientalism for flavor. I always find it fascinating what non-game stuff game authors think their audience should read. Mr. Hargrave also recommends the magazines Alarums and Excursions ("the greatest of all fanzines"), Different Worlds, and Sorcerer's Apprentice.

After the lengthy list of non-fiction resources I expected a long list of fantasy fiction, but Hargave keeps this section very short. He namechecks Robert Asprin and Stephen R. Donaldson. The first Thomas Covenant book is described as "a tour de force on Role-Playing if ever there was one". The entire works of Tolkien are listed as "a must read for every adventure gamer". The Elfquest graphic novels get a mention. And Hargrave notes that Marvel comics are "an unlikely, but valuable source of inspiration". And then there's a memorium to Clark Ashton Smith. The Zothique tales are noted as "the true progenitor of ARDUIN".

I'm not in a rush to run out and buy every book on Hargrave's list, but I do see some intriguing stuff there. I've been meaning to get a copy of the Zothique material for some time, and rereading chapter XV has only renewed that interest. Some of the nonfiction works also look intriguing. And Zoo of the Gods is a great title.