Review: Truth on Consequences
I’m extraordinarily tired, so what follows may make painfully little sense. Before I collapse in to my bed however I would like to quickly record my impressions of a wonderful weekend spent at a games convention called Consequences F. Don’t stop reading just yet though — this is not just about my usual roleplaying games hobby. 
This weekend I have been Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle, a spiritualist medium in 1920′s Arkham attending a gallery opening, a troubled English aristocrat in 1938 England, a brave (but rash) young Viking warrior trying to prove himself, an industrialist on a backwater planet, an AI programmed to open a stargate, and … well the list goes on!
You may be familiar with the idea of murder mystery games, often played at dinner parties, where people dress up and play a character, trying to solve a mystery. They are a type of roleplaying game, but unlike “tabletop” games which are played with a group of frreinds, dice pencil and paper around (as the name implies) a table, these “freeforms” are a form of LARP (live action roleplaying). You walk around, talk to other players in character, and physically interact. Unlike the kind of LARP you occasionally see on Facebook or even the TV, these games are played without bashing one another with foam rubber weaponry. I think the Americans call this “theater style gaming”, but I’m not sure that is much more use, unless you realise all the actors in the game have freewill, and the script is determined by their actions and in character actions. No one knows whether the mystery will be solved, your chap will get the girl, your pig will win the contest, you starship will survive the battle; until it happens! A hard working teams of referees (GM’s) write the games, and cast characters, and you take your role and try and achieve your goals while everyone else tries to achieve theirs! The rules cover the outcome of inevitable conflict, but your ability to piece together information, understand clues, scheme and manipulate others or just convince folks your character is a nice person, that is what determines how you do.
Anyway Consequences (so called as it is held nine months after another games convention for tabletop games called “Conception”) is an annual freeform game convention held down in Naish, near Christchurch, Dorset. The site is a holiday camp, and all the players stay in chalets on site under bleak November skies, gathering in the main building to play whichever of the many games on offer have taken their fancy.
Now I can’t afford to go on holiday: I really, really can’t. However this year I went to another great gaming convention dedicated (mainly) to tabletop roleplaying games called Continuum up in Leicester, with my friends Lloyd and Hugh. There we met some lovely people (who shall remain nameless – I’m not going to name any other names, because people may not want their gaming hobby exposed 
) who persuaded me that after five years of reading about Consequences this year we should all attend. So we saved up £78 each for a chalet for four nights (!!!) , Hugh agreed to drive, and we paid our £30 booking fees to attend the con. I had always thought Consequences sounded pricey – but that was because I mistook £312 or whatever a chalet costs as being the cost per person. Nope that is the cost per chalet, each of which has two twin and two double rooms — so in theory you could have 8 people stay for four nights for just £312 – less than a tenner per person per night. The trick is to go with a friend or two, and as the chalets are self catering this is possibly the cheapest holiday I have ever had, and i specialise in pretty cheap holidays when I taken them at all.
OK, so what happened? Well about a month ago, having paid up front in July, I suddenly realised I had best sign up for some games. I chose Starship Aries, a Star Trek style game, Dulce et decorum est (set in 1938 during the Munich Crisis), Midsummer Mischief based upon the characters of PG Wodehouse, Gallery of Shades a Cthulhu game set in the 1920′s and Come Hel or Hiawatha, a game set in Viking Vinland. There were many many more games, Tolkien inspired, Science Fiction – the space marines were very colourful to look at, and even some games set in Zelazny’s fantasy worlds of Amber. Hugh played a cyberpunk game Marlowe 2020, and a different one, Collision Imminent, set on a spaceship (he had a great time in both!)
OK my experience: after Continuum where the costuming had astonished me – people REALLY dress up – I was dreading having to costume for 5 games. However, I need not have worried as much – while my costumes were fairly cheap, as I borrowed, scrounged and improvised what I needed, anything from perfect historical dress to theatrical minimalism – a pair of mirror shades say for cyberpunk – was perfectly acceptable, and some folks who stepped in at the last moment for games did not costume at all. I could not costume for Gallery of Shades because I did not see my character till the day of the game, so I used the same outfit for the 1920′s as I had for 1938 — and that worked fine, but actually I found that dressing as a character and having a single prop (a book, a cabbage, whatever) helped me get in to character and probably enhanced my enjoyment of the game!
Getting down to Christchurch was a nightmare. Lloyd went ahead, and Mark a friend we met at Continuum who was sharing the chalet with us also drove down earlier. Hugh and I planned to set out quite early, but by mid afternoon gales and widespread flooding not to mention torrential rain had closed many roads, and we finally waited till 9.30pm before setting off, missing the first half day of the con. Luckily neither of us had signed up to any games till Friday. When we set off we agreed if conditions were too bad on Salisbury Plain we would just turn back, and the trip was to be honest pretty harrowing. The worst of the weather had passed over by the time we set out, but I honestly did not think we would be able to make it. Still by Marlborough I was more confident, and once we passed Salisbury things improved, and we arrived on site by half midnight.
Of course we were too late to sign in: luckily I knew the chalet number, and the others were there with keys, but if you have ever looked at the ranks of chalets in a holiday park in pouring rain in the teeth of a howling gale a hundred yards from the cliffs down to the English Channel on an icy November night, wondering just where ML65 might be, well you will appreciate our concern as we stood in the car park looking at a scene devoid of human activity, outside a locked reception!
Just then Lloyd hailed us. Quite by chance he had gone back to some folks chalet for drinks, and considerably the worse for wear had got lost wandering back, and had returned to Reception to get his bearings. We fell upon him like a guardian angel sent to deliver us – we might have kissed him had he not seemed so bewildered at our great joy in seeing him a few hours after we last had in Cheltenham. He directed us to the chalet, and we unloaded our many bags of costume, food, and necessities.
Wow! Chalets are far more luxurious than I recall. We had two toilets, a proper bath, a fully equipped kitchen, a TV, and it was all toasty warm. Despite the late hour we knocked up some food, greeted Mark with equal joy, and played a quick game of Dominion (a board game) before crashing out. I really recommend Naish as a holiday venue, though obviously it costs more in high season.
Friday morning saw me up at 8am, ready for the 9am start of Starship Aries, a game run by friends of mine. It was what is called a “horde” game; a very clever device by which some folks play one character for the whole game ( the starship bridge crew in this case) and others like me had up to 5 different roles to play, sequentially. I really enjoyed this — I was Ambassador Lexington, out to make contact with a frontier world, then I was … anyway I can’t really say. The wonderful thing about freeforms is you can run them many times with different players — and I can’t give spoilers, because I am sure this one will run again. Costuming required was also minimal – any black trousers and something red as a shirt , or blue if you were bridge crew. This worked just fine. The game lasted 3 or 4 hours, but I had no time to grow bored, as I had to keep changing roles and the fiendishly clever plot was worthy of (several) Star Trek episodes. I took part in a coup, failed to keep my secret relationship with my professor very secret, and almost destroyed the Starship Aries: but they are not spoilers, as if the game runs again whoever runs the characters I had will do things completely differently I’m sure.
After Starship Aries it was back to the chalet to dress in white tie, or some semblance thereof, for dinner at Markyate Manor, home to the Viscount Markyate. The Athertons in 1938 are a troubled family, and Geoffrey who I played was certainly troubled with reason. I am afraid I can say almost nothing about him or what transpired, but this was emotionally intense dramatic gaming about people more than plot, and was one of the best games I have ever played of any type, freeform, tabletop or whatever. It helps (if a chap at least) if you have some knowledge of the period, and the politics and issues of the time, but after the first half hour that need faded for me as Geoffrey’s own personal issues and goals became increasingly paramount. The character sheet was brief, and I had no clearly laid out goals; nor did it tell me how Geoffrey felt about things, leaving that for me to decide. I knew facts about what had happened in the past – my own response to them was however left to me as Geoffrey, and a few very simple events quickly spun me in to a web of intrigue, mystery, complicated romantic and familial relationships and an increasingly rising pace until I suddenly heard a referee call “5 minutes left” and realised I had spent three or more hours completely immersed in being Geoffrey, and that I needed to do something to try and resolve the desperate situation I found myself in. Geoffrey had a final scene talking with his father, a terribly fumbled pass at a French opera star as he stalked out, and a rather harrowing leave taking of his family. Even I don’t know exactly what he did after he shouted his final sardonic farewell to the assembled guests and walked out in to the night. Epic stuff! I’m no actor, and I hope my bumbling at times portrayal of Geoffrey did not spoil anyone else game, but I did really get in to this one, and liked the character a great deal, whatever his (many) flaws. Dulce et decorum est is certainly an apt title for this game: very highly recommended.
Dressed as Geoffrey Atherton for Dulce et decorum est
After a quick meal in the chalet I was back to gaming, this time in the 1920′s for Gallery of Shades. I had mixed feeling about this one. I have loved HP Lovecraft since boyhood, love the Cthulhu Mythos, and am particularly fond of Robert W Chambers King in Yellow cycle. I have written a book for Call of Cthulhu; I own almost everything for that game, and loved Cthulhu Live, running a very successful Cthulhoid larp with it over seven weekends in the year 2000. Yet recently Cthulhu has become a constant geek cliché, and is endlessly parodied, and HPL has become increasingly reinterpreted in more and more parodic and playful ways. There is even an episode of Supernatural I am told that references Lovecraft and the game Call of Cthulhu! Furthermore I know from experience of running my own games that doing scenarios about the king in Yellow and Hastur cycle are extremely hard, if the players are to have any meaningful input in to the outcome. I fear my reservations on this as least proved true.
I finally signed up for Gallery of Shades because the referee is known to be outstanding, and the level of game prep in terms of the game environment was very high. That however is no replacement for a pre-game issue at least the day before of a character sheet so one can dress for the part, and think about how to play the role. I actually liked the character, someone who had experienced an apparition with an enigmatic message and had become a medium — but I would have asked to play a very different role if I had the chance to fill in a casting questionnaire. The reason why was the fist few minutes of the game, when none of us were sure if we were “in character” or “out of character”. Some poor soul asked me “what can you tell me about the theories of ghosts?” I was really pleased someone was interested in my research and replied in character (just in case) limiting my response to the state of the topic in 1927. I fear I may have bored them to death — this essay of mine is pretty much what I related, though it brings the survey of the field up to date. At least I was not asked to play a parapsychologist (though Tischner does not coin that phrase I think until 1929 — So I mean psychical researcher I guess )
There was another moment once the game was in full swing a while later that shows the perils of trying to keep in character and out of character knowledge separate – my character had been intensely religious in youth, so when it came to the inevitable debate with a vicar suspicious of my spiritualism, I was ready to quote scripture and make theological arguments. The poor vicar’s player of course can not be expected to counter that, as they have probably not thought about the issues quite as much as an Anglican ghost hunter like the real life me — but they took it in good grace, and we laughed about it, and broke off the conversation when it was clear that I was going to go the full ten rounds. I still felt a bit of an arse about it, and thereafter limited myself strictly to what it said on my character sheet, however likely I thought it the character would know something about Spiritualism.
Anyway this started out as a great game: and it ended wonderfully, with some incredible effects. However… I am not one to critique others games. I have written what I am sure were lousy games, and some players probably avoid me after one bad experience. The set up here though became intensely frustrating – it was not that we could not do things – we did all kinds of things, and there were some wonderful pieces of characterisation, the suffragette was amazing, the decadent flapper Greta a perfect mix of boredom, indifference and sensual amorality, the utterly insane (literally) lady in the burgundy dress was magnificent, and Walters, Bream and others fine characters and great fun to play with – the PI and I had our moments too – nothing wrong with the characters, they were all great, or the players – nope, the problem was we felt we could not do anything to resolve the issue we faced. The game went on an hour to long, because the person who needed to act in a certain way to provoke the next scene did not realise it, and despite my best efforts to find the catalyst, it seemed a very long time till the resolution, while a few players appeared to me bored and not committed, as they felt there was no way to influence the outcome?
This is a game by one of the finest freeform authors there is: it has a magnificent climax, but in disempowering the characters, and driving them to madness frustration and a realisation of cosmic futility, it is important not to alienate the players. That is a very hard trick to pull off. For a few I don’t think it worked. This was a first run, and Gallery of Shades should certainly run again, but it needs a few minor tweaks to give those battling to save their characters sanity a sense of small gains, and large losses, rather than a static brick wall of frustration and inevitable doom, no matter how Lovecraftian that may be in essence. Recommended for future runs, but needs a tiny bit of work. I enjoyed it though.
Friday night the Belgian contingent threw a wonderful chalet party, and I got to chat to some of the other delegates I had not met before. This was a great part of the whole experience. I woke up late on Saturday, perhaps at ten, and I had taken a whole day off gaming. A friend came down to visit us, and we enjoyed a long walk with Lloyd around the beach and cliffs, and down the “bunny” and back. In hindsight I probably could have played another game on Saturday – everyone has their own endurance on how many games they can face in a day,and two I think might be my limit really; perhaps tiredness leads one to not enjoy a game as much as you should.
Saturday night however was to prove amazing, for me at least. I was off to Blandings Castle – my castle in fact, for I was Lord Emsworth, and with the county fete just four days away I was determined the Empress of Blandings my prize pig would take the prize. Midsummer Mischief is a perfect slice of pure Wodehouse, and whoever the authors were, I wish to thank them for this heavenly madness. There referees did an outstanding job, time flew by (one day an hour, and four hours till the end) and one had a real sense of freedom to scheme, plot, interact and do some pretty odd and very very silly things.
Dressed as a despondent Lord Emsworth: the Empress was off her cabbage!
Now one of my biggest fears in any game where I get a chance to play an over the top character is that I will spoil it for others with my rather exuberant performance in the role – I certainly never wanted it to get too silly, because then comic characterisation fails as absurdism creeps in. It can work in a Monty Python sketch, but there is one episode of Father Ted that I felt became just marginally too surreal: for me a brilliant comic character is like Basil in Fawlty Towers extreme but (just about) believable. I’m hoping I managed to stay just the right side of the line, and keep dear old Emsworth eccentric but acceptably so, rather than making him a thin parody! However some players clearly liked my Emsworth, which genuinely surprised me, but I guess it was my sheer love of the character and the enthusiasm and real joy I found in playing the role that shone through, whatever the deficiency in my “acting”. Beach was absolutely perfect in the role, Connie and the other two sisters present were fantastic, and Pru and her bloody cats, Vee and Aggie and their romantic arrangements, blasted Freddie my son and the insufferable Popjoy all kept me running around in increasing panic, while bloody Huxley — I can say no more. Maudie the librarian was great, and Lord Vosper with the pig kept me so so paranoid, while that slime Parsoe-Parsoe (beautifully played) outwitted me as I expected. I should have asked Gally to biff him!
This is an older game, and the use of item cards can to me be distracting, as can the multiple envelopes and sub-systems of the rules certain players need to know, but it all works perfectly. I don’t recall speaking to a ref once in Dulce in decorum est – there was simply no need, the game ran itself. Gallery of Shades needed a couple more refs, Starship Aries was just right, but the three referees in Midsummer Mischief were worked off their feet and served admirably. They were marvellous, simply marvellous. I can not give a best game, as they were so VERY different, but Dulce and Midsummer are certainly among the best games I have ever played, and if you love Wodehouse you must play this game!
Another shot of me as Lord Emsworth, here in a happier mood!
Saturday night saw an amazing chalet party, and astonishingly good hospitality, plenty of booze (which I did not partake of ) and great company. I’d like to thank our hosts, and hope the chalet survived the influx! I was home by 4.30am and in bed by five — shame I had to be up at eight thirty today…
The final game of the weekend for me was Come Hel or Hiawatha, a fun game set in Vinland. Some Vikings have landed in the wake of an earlier failed expedition, and met the natives, the Skraelings. Plots involve the tense negotiations between the two parties, tempered by romances, personal ambition and the epic consumption of mead. Strange things are afoot, and my character was a rash young Viking warrior, who I played as wildly impulsive, hotheaded and not exactly bright. I hope that I did not take it too far, but I did really enjoy the character, and while he had the same name (Gunnar) as my dad, they were very very different Vikings! My character married the girl of his dreams and gave up on a career as a warrior to farm ducks. I called them all Anders, in case you were wondering.
My Viking attire!
This is a gem of a game, that could be played slightly comically, or totally straight. We played it straight, with my character providing occasional moments of mild comic relief from the tense negotiations. Well crafted, definitely worth playing!
OK, so we left after the closing ceremony, Hugh driving back through driving rain, but finding time to take in the Rufus Stone, Stonehenge and Avebury en route. I had a great weekend, and if anyone is interested in learning more about Consequences or Freeforming do check it out or email me: a good place to start with friends at home might be these excellent games.
A wonderful memorable weekend, but I’m off to bed.
Night all
cj x
Ars Magica the Computer Game: Interview with the Black Chicken Kickstarter Team
First up, do me a favour. If you don’t know or care about Ars Magica, but you enjoy strategy games, or fantasy games, or history games, go to this Kickstarter and think about pledging $20. If it funds, you get a download of the game when it is completed. If the funds aren’t raised, your money never leaves your account. $20. Do it for CJ I’m not involved with the project, but this is a computer game based on the rpg I spend my life writing books for, so I’m keen to promote it as hard as I can If you help fund, and later play and enjoy the computer game,perhaps one day you will understand what this whole Ars Magica thing is about So $20 – and you either don’t have to pay if it fails, or you do and get a cool game.
I’m pretty sure all fans of Ars Magica were delighted to hear about the kickstarter to raise funds to allow the funding of an Ars Magica based computer game set in the Schism War, and a lot of people would like to know more. Funding is going well, but after 4 days the project is still only 10% funded, so I think it’s vital now to push it as hard as possible, and let as many people hear about the project as I can. I think it probably will fund, but I am an optimist: yet very few roleplaying games have the beauty of setting and design that Ars Magica provides, and a lot of people who might never want to play the tabletop rpg might be excited by a game of wizards in England in the century of the Norman Conquest. Atlas Games have licensed it: if funding allows it will go ahead!
Now I won’t explain in detail what a Kickstarter is, or what Ars Magica is - basically a Kickstarter is a way to raise funds for a creative project, and you buy in at a certain level, pledging money if the project funds. If it funds in 30 days your money is debited and you receive certain rewards, based upon the level of your pledge – if the project is even a dollar short of the total, no one pays anything at all, and the project never goes ahead.
The guys at Black Chicken have a history of delivering high quality computer games, and are also genuine fans of the Ars Magica system – so here is my (slightly redacted) light hearted interview with them!
Very much so. Shame that could have been a bonus at a pledge level! What will be the likely minimum specs to run the game? Is it true you don’t even require people to learn ecclesiastical Latin to play your game???! Jokes aside, Ars has a reputation for complexity and at times perhaps being a bit heavy historically, so will people who prefer high fantasy (and who aren’t sure of the difference between Harald Hardrada and Harold Godwinson at thirty paces) be engaged? Go read it here!
About My Hobby for Non-Gamers: An Introduction to the 5th Edition Ars Magica Roleplaying Game
OK, many of you will know I play a game called Ars Magica about medieval wizards and have written on a lot of books for the line over the last nine years or so. I really enjoy the game, but even hardcore gaming friends of mine don’t really know what it is all about often. Well soon my blog will be filled with stuff on poltergeist cases and research related to that again, so I thought it would be nice to try to explain a little bit about the game. I have set out to teach it to ten new people this month by playing games with them, and so far have managed to play with 9 people but only four so far completely new to the system. Still we are only four days in to September. If you’d like to play a game and live near Cheltenham just email me on chrisjensenromer@hotmail.com
Annoyingly I somehow missed out the following slide, so before you scroll down and have a look at the presentation some absolute basics–
My little presentation below was developed really for people who know roleplaying games a bit, but non-roleplayers should get the idea too, and learn enough to be able to join in a game and have some idea of what is going on. It’s in several bits, but you don’t need to know anything or own a rulebook to understand this first presentation. Even if you have no interest in games you may find it mildly amusing as an exercise in playing with Latin words and thinking about how a medieval wizard might solve problems, if you stick with it for the quizzes and exercises. Click on the presentation controls at bottom to change slides.
The bits useful to print as a cheat sheet are here for convenience -
The Battle of Fornham 1173: re-fought with Ars Magica!
I have written a lot on games recently and not much else, but back to the normal soon. Despite the title this post is as much about real English history as my game, and therefore possibly worth reading — you can skip the sections with green headings and read the ones with dark blue heading to find the fact rather than the game stuff! I have just finished hosting Grand Tribunal 2012 the Ars Magica roleplaying game convention, and so am still full of enthusiasm for my gaming exploits. This year saw a rather unusual one — trying to recreate a rather important if obscure event in English history (a battle at Fornham, just outside Bury St Edmunds in 1173) with a combination wargame/freeform/rpg game set in the world of Ars Magica, using the 5th edition rules.
However, let’s start with the real world history…
The battle took place immediately north of Bury St. Edmunds, between Fornham St Martin, Fornham All Saints and Fornham St. Genevieve in the Lark Valley.
Why was there a battle at Fornham?
During the reign of Henry II Henry was persuaded to grant his son (also called Henry) a coronation, making him effectively “junior king”. From this time on he is referred to as “Henry the Young King” to differentiate him from his father. This was deemed necessary to ensure a smooth succession on Henry II’s death — after The Anarchy of the 1150′s when the rival camps of the Empress Matilda and King Stephen fought a bitter civil war in England over the throne, it seemed like a good idea.
Unfortunately Henry the Young King felt his father had given him the title but none of the power, and rebelled against his father. The rebels fought a campaign in Normandy, then part of the Angevin Empire which Henry II ruled over. Henry, Geoffrey and Richard all attacked their fathers castles, and various baron’s including Hugh Bigod, Earl of Suffolk and Robert Beaumont Earl of Leicester rose in support of the siblings against their father.
Henry II however fought a brilliant campaign, and the rebels were smashed in Normandy despite the French joining them and the Scottish too entering in to the alliance and invading England in the north. Humphrey III de Bohun (the Constable of England) crushed the Scottish invasion and pursued them back north of the border forcing them to end hostilities, while Richard de Lucy (the Justiciar) took the rebel stronghold the city of Leicester and besieged Leicester castle.
In October 1173 Leicester tried a last gasp invasion of England, landing at Walton on the Naze with a formidable force of Flemish mercenaries. He attempted to take the port of Dunwich (which no longer exists, a victim of coastal erosion, except as a couple of gravestones on a cliff and a fish and chip hut as I recall from my last visit) but the townsfolk closed the gates against him and bombarded the besiegers with rocks and the contents of chamber pots.
Leicester withdrew, probably to Framlingham, where he met up with another powerful rebel Hugh Bigod. English history often turns on minor events, and in this case it was a squabble between two women. Bigod’s wife Gundreda and Petronilla de Grandmesnil, wife of Leicester, fell out soon after meeting. The two women simply could not stand each other — and all plans for a united rebel attack on London faltered. This may well have proven to be the disastrous moment for the rebel alliance. Leicester decided march east and try to reach his power base in the East Midlands, and perhaps relieve Leicester castle. Bigod was to proceed south through Essex. However once Leicester reached Bury St Edmunds where predictably the townsfolk closed the gates against him, and the monks raised a huge force of 1,200 men to repel him, he discovered the forces of Humphrey III de Bohun and Richard de Lucy waiting to prevent him crossing the River Lark.
Where was the battle?
As far as I can make out, the area bounded by Fornham St Martin, Fornham St Genevieve, Fornham All Saints and the Tollgate, Bury St. Edmunds. The Priory near the tollgate had a mural bridge across the Lark, heavily defensible (similar to the one you can see in Eastgate Street, Bury St Edmunds on the edge of the abbey ruins – a few flint remains exist which I discovered when I was fourteen and lived on the battlefield, behind the supermarket car park and to the right – also many oyster shells from the staple diet of the times in a midden slowly collapsing in to the river!)
You can walk along a footpath from Fornham All Saints Bridge down to the Mildenhall road which crosses the golf course and gives you a great view of the battlefield if you wish to take a look, and many artifacts from the battle included some wonderful swords and crested helmets (far more elaborate than I had expected from Ars Magica artwork, looking more like later full plate helms) can be seen in Moyses Hall Museum on the Buttermarket, Bury St Edmunds (admission free to Bury residents btw!). I worked out where I thought the troops were on the morning of October 17th 1173, and then assigned starting positions, though players had considerable flexibility in their exact set up.
Map of the battlefield for Fornham 1173
How did we build the battlefield?
I have fought Fornham twice before – once as an Ars Magica adventure as part of my ongoing saga, using tabletop rpg rules, and once as a skirmish wargame. For Grand Tribunal 2012 I decided to combine the two. Counters would be used for the main units, plastic 20mm toy soldiers from the Airfix Robin Hood and Sheriff of Nottingham packs for the leaders and unique characters (each represented by a player) and then a light green king-size bed sheet was painted with the River Lark, villages, fields and water meadows. With help from Tom Nowell, Becky Smith, Phil Jenkins and Hugh Wake we ended up with a simple, cheap-ish and visually appealing set up for the game.
Becky made up paper models of the Priory and two churches, and the remaining church was one Hugh and I had built. They were lightweight and actually all looked rather good on the table, and dark green cloth cut t shape made excellent woods. We had planned to use books to make the hills (just placing them under the sheet) but I forgot to mention it to Hugh who did the set up and this being Suffolk they are more ‘slight rises’ than hills, except for Tut Hill and Barton Hill at opposite corners of the map which are still very low in the terms of anywhere but East Anglia, and almost entirely off map.
The actual Lark Valley is really quite flat, only rising behind my parents’ house as you proceed up what is now the Mildenhall Estate to a ridge line that divides it from the Howard Estate. I created the counters in Paintshop Pro, researching and pasting the correct heraldry on them, and colouring them perhaps confusingly according to the heraldic colours of their leaders, which meant many counters ended up red & yellow, blue & yellow, and so forth despite being on different sides. Reginald the Ear of Cornwall and Robert Earl of Leicester both ended up with blue & yellow counters, which makes it hard to see on the photos who is who. The actual counters used however were very clear as you could see the shields of each leader, though perhaps there was scope for some confusion over heraldry — which would be historically very appropriate – but on the day it never happened. The counters were printed on thick card, then pasted carefully by Phil Jenkins on to cork cut to size. It was all a bit Blue Peter!
The whole construction process took place over two weeks, though two days would probably be enough if a few of you were involved. The most laborious task was Becky’s - building the churches and Priory, though really this was entirely for scenic effect. You could miss that bit out. Alternatively if more ambitious you could build the houses for the three Fornhams and the tollgate, mural bridge and Fornham bridge. The ground scale used was 1cm to 7 meters, which meant the battlefield was a seventh the size of the real one, as everything in the game worked on 1cm to a meter, roughly the scale of the figures and buildings.
This contraction does not matter because the units counters were made to roughly ground scale, and then cavalry scaled up by a factor of four to show them milling around and their greater “reach” on the battlefield. These choices may seem odd, but they were very carefully designed to make the game run smoothly, and worked very well in practice! 
The characters
The game as written has 19 characters and supports 19 players. Yes, really. However we fell short of this by a few on the day (some folks were tempted away to play The Jerbiton Summit freeform or other games: there is always a lot of games on offer in each slot at Grand Tribunal), and Jocelin of Brakelond is an optional character who need not be played, and if is should be used to replace someone who has died already.
We did the same with Binna & Banna, and Maggy, and doubled up one of the Royalist commands, and had Walter de Wahull arrive on the battlefield late when a last-minute player showed up. Reading the character sheets will show you who can be doubled up with who to give a player two commands. You could of course play Fornham as a straight battle if you so wish – just get rid of all the “oddball” characters, and fight it with any wargaming rules? Each of the characters had a full Ars Magica character sheet, and I used rules from Hedge Magic Revised, ROP: The Divine, ROP: The Infernal, ROP: Magic and ROP: Faerie as morale rules from Lords of Men and the core Ars Magica 5th combat system, and especially the group combat and leadership bonuses rules.
I explained all the relevant rules in the character sheets though so in fact we did not have to consult any books during the game! Each character was written with specific aims, often very tangential to actually winning the battle: these victory objectives each scored seven points in the final scoring, and there were a few bonus points available to each character. Highest score on the day was I think 24; average around 14, and a few players managed to score zero! The victory points system was important because it gives a) competitive players a reason to play in character b) gives the rebels, outnumbered six to one a good chance of actually winning and c) made it quite clear what everyone wanted out of the battle. You could ignore it though if you wanted. The characters were of three types; rebels, royalists and oddballs. The oddballs were various minor characters with no troops but whose action was to have a profound effect on how the day actually turned out, and one of them did end up commanding a unit of knights at one point.
Rebel Characters
- ROBERT BEAUMONT. Earl of Leicester
Commands 4 groups of trained knights (36 knights)
- PETRONILLA BEAUMONT, the Earl’s scheming wife.
Has a bodyguard group (4 knights)
- DIGGO OF KASSEL,leader of the Flemish Crossbowmen mercenaries
Commands 5 units of crossbowmen (100 crossbowmen) and 2 units of archers (40 archers)
- MENFRID OF GHENT, leader of the Flemish spearmen Commands 5 units of spearmen (100 men)
Loyalist Characters
- BROTHER SAMSON OF BURY ST EDMUNDS
Commands 5 groups of knights (25 knights) and 10 groups of Bury Townfolk (1,200 untrained men with improvised weapons)
- RICHARD DE LUCY, JUSTICIAR OF ENGLAND
Commands 12 groups of knights (96 knights) and 3 groups of untrained spearmen (120 men)
- HUMPHREY III DE BOHUN, HIGH CONSTABLE OF ENGLAND
Commands 10 groups of knights (90 knights)
- WALTER FITZ ROBERT OF LITTLE DUNMOW
Commands 5 groups of knights (30 knights)from Essex
- WILLIAM D’AUBIGNY, EARL OF ARUNDEL
Commands 5 groups of knights (30 knights) from Castle Rising, Norfolk
- WILLIAM FITZ ROBERT, EARL OF GLOUCESTER
Commands 5 groups of knights (30 knights) from Bristol
- REGINALD DE DUNSTANVILLE, EARL OF CORNWALL
Commands 3 groups of knights (15 knights) from Truro
- WALTER DE WAHULL, ROMANTIC KNIGHT
One group of himself and bodyguard (3 knights)
ODD BALLS
- BINNA & BANNA
A little girl & her brother.
- MAGGY
An elderly lady out collecting sticks
- JOCELIN OF BRAKELOND
A monk in the wrong place at the wrong time
- LUCIAN OF GUERNICUS
A Quaesitor on important business!
- RED HANNAH
A lady of Fornham St. Martin who has not fled her home.
- PRIOR ROBERT
His house is in the battlefield, but he seems strangely distracted!
- A MYSTERIOUS NOBLEWOMAN
She rides alone across the battlefield. What does she want and who is she?
The accounts of the (mythic) battle!
Rather than say what actually happened and spoil it in case there is a re-fight, as happened historically Leicester lost. Here follow the accounts of some of the main protagonists, emailed to me by their players after the battle. I think reading them gives you a sense of the fog of war, and I have provided another map of the battlefield in which I have shown the approximate positions and movements of each of the protagonists whose accounts are listed below. Hopefully it is amusing, even if you were not there on the day, and reading it really shows why medieval chronicles are often rather hard to understand when we try and sort out what actually happened in many battles!
Robert de Beaumont, Earl of Leicester.
Poor Robert of Leceister – Luck and God was certainly not on his side that day! His overconfidence led him to lead a heroic charge to destroy the southern bridge (over a drainage ditch), where he was met by Reginald de Dunstanville, Earl of Cornwall. A battle ensued between the knights of Leceister and Cornwall as the Leceister knights attempted to destroy the bridge. Leciester’s knights suffered 3 casualties and took 3 Kent knights prisoner, but Robert himself was gravely wounded against the Cornish lord, who smote Robert’s head open. Eyes full of blood, Robert botched his retreat and fell from his horse. Taken prisoner by Cornwall, who took him bound to the Priory, he remained there for the rest of the battle. His leaderless knights were overwhelmed by the Royalists, and Cornwall impaled Robert on a red hot poker and hung him from the Priory walls, as a warning to all other godless rebels.
Historically Leicester’s fate was kinder – see below!
The critical moment of the battle in a photograph by Hugh Wake: Robert the Earl of Leicester and Reginald the elderly (and deaf) Earl of Cornwall clash with their knights on the bridge over a stream on the waterlogged Tayfen Meadow.
Menfrid of Ghent, Flemish Mercenary Captain
Boldly did Menfrid send his hundred Flemish spearmen up the road to act as a vanguard and escort for the baggage train. Menfrid himself went into the church of St. Martin and prayed and prayed for the intervention of Saint Dympna. Forty of his men formed a defensive line outside the church to hold the knights coming along the road from the north whilst the rest moved back to defend the baggage train from the knights approaching from the Priory. Suddenly a terrible soul rendering howl emminated from the woods and his men holding the northern road fled into the church leaving their spears behind. They rambled about some big black dog or other. Finally Saint Dympna intervened and Menfrid rallied his men, twenty of whom went off to capture knights lying wounded on the field outside the church for ransom whilst he led another twenty men to relieve the Flemish crossbowmen outside with the aid of another twenty spear men who moved away from the baggage train as needed. The last forty men “escorted” two wagons of the baggage train off the field of war and sensing that the battle was lost Menfrid made a deal with Sir Reginald’s knights and gave up his hostages for safe conduct off the field.
Menfrid’s men escaped, but the Flemish crossbowmen were massacred by the knights of Humphrey. Only their leader, Diggo of Kassel, was to escape. Let us move on to the royalist accounts…
Reginald de Dunstanville, Earl of Cornwall.
That mumbler Damson (Editor: He means Samson - poor Reginald was deaf in one ear) bungled things from the start by lining his forces up behind the unfordable river where they’d never get into the fray, despite my protestations. The IDIOT actually thought he knew what he was doing! God may move in mysterious ways, but not as mysterious as Damson’s men, ha!
The key to the battle was clearly the bridge in front of the priory, which Damson’s bungling had thankfully left the path clear to for my household. So along the road we trotted, spotting Leicester and some of his knights attempting to take the bridge. Putting spurs to our horses flanks we smashed into them, driving them off the bridge and back into their camp in disarray. In the ensuing melee, several of his knights fell and I personally defeated and captured the rebel Leicester. My knights having the better of the combat, I left them to it and escorted Leicester back to the Priory where Damson (bloodthirsty bugger) insisted he be impaled. I returned to my Knights who were finally receiving some support from the knights under the supposed command of Damson, come belatedly to the battle (the men-at arms never made it, and a good thing too, as all they are good for is holding castles and being ridden underfoot) By this time the left wing of the army had found a fording point and were rolling up the remnants of Leicester’s forces from the North, I having pinned them in their camp to that end. The battle was over.
I did hear after the battle that all manner of weird and wonderful happenings had been reported. The wild imaginings of men green to war if you ask me, inventing stories to excuse their own shortcomings. I never saw or heard anything of the sort!
Brother Samson of Bury Abbey
My Lord Abbot, I beg to report that through Divine favour we have been victorious this day ! I grieve for those who have died in pursuit of our cause but I know that Our Lord will grant them a place of honour at His table for their service. By the Lord’s Grace, I gathered some 1200 men of the area who love their rightful king and 25 knights who owe service to the Abbey and we arrived at Prior Robert’s house in time to stand against the rebel, Leicester. As you know, there is but a small and defensible bridge across the Lark here and the rebel forces appeared few so I gave instruction to Sir Reginald, who had accompanied us, and our own knights to ride forth and seek battle with the ne’er-do-wells while I held back the citizenry to defend the House of God and the crossing of the Lark. I had hoped that some of the local men might know of a ford across the Lark so that they could support the knights but also their knowledge proved false so the entire host was required to slowly cross via the Prior’s house’s bridge.
I believe that to the north the men of the Constable and Justiciar manoeuvred also to bring the enemy to battle, though My Lord de Lucy seemed much hampered by the Lark’s swift flow and thereafter succumbed to diverse diversions rather than pursuing the enemy with his customary vigour. Surely God’s light shined upon Sir Reginald though for in Our service he rode hard for the traitors and he and his knights struck mighty blows against the enemy forces, including Leicester himself. Such was Sir Reginald’s prowess enhanced by God that Leicester himself has struck down and captured ! Truly God moves in mysterious ways for who would have thought that Sir Reginald, in his dotage, should be the instrument of Leicester’s downfall ! However, as the knights directly under my command also advanced to drive off Leicester’s men there came a dreadful smell of brimstone and I was affeared that the chapel in the Prior’s house had been sore afflicted by great evil ! Indeed, such an evil must have been present and must have touched Prior Robert for he joined me on the walls only to give orders to our knights that they should support Leicester ! Surely he was in the thrall of Lucifer !
As my superior though I could not gainsay him but made my way clear of the infernal stench and called upon St Edmund to show him the error of his ways. Ah, glorious day ! I had not thought to be so blessed that I should see such a saint walk upon God’s earth but it was so – St Edmund himself castigated the Prior in such tone that the Prior immediately repented his actions. Alas, the infernal dominion was strong here though for Satan’s minion challenged St Edmund for the Prior’s soul; but no one can match the power of Our Lord and St Edmund carried the Evil One away. Prior Robert is even as I write reconsecrating the chapel. But what of the battle ? Well, I am sorry to say, Your Reverence, that the fighting was so heavy with Leicester’s forces that ten of our knights have fallen and drawn their final breath on this Earth. They shall surely be rewarded in Heaven ! But none were captured – and in conjunction with Sir Reginald’s men we took some nine knights of Leicester captive.
Glory be to God that Leicester himself was also returned to the Prior’s house. I am sad to say though that due to a miscommunication between Sir Reginald and myself, Sir Reginald had him put to death before he could be handed over to the King’s Justice. We have won great victory here, Lord Abbot. A traitor halted, an evil taint removed and a few pennies for Mother Church’s Holy Cause as well ! Truly the Lord smiles upon us ! Your Servant, Brother Samson
Fierce fighting at Fornham St. Martin and on Tayfen meadow
Richard de Lucy, Justiciar of England
Finally chased Leicester down just north of St Edmund’s Bury. Gave out my orders. De Bohun ranting about killing mercenaries as usual. That Samson is an awkward so-and-so, didn’t take the hint about the toll-gates. Both spent too much time talking about God and not the task in hand. And so we rode out to do the King’s will and crush the rebels, myself in the centre, de Bohun on the left and Samson on the right. FitzRobert kept pestering me about some legal document he wants me to put my seal to. Have to watch him. And so, we rode out onto the field. Tricky fellow, Leicester, got lots of archers. Hope we can buy them off, told de Bohun that we want them alive. He may have been listening. And so we rode forth, our pennons flying proudly in the breeze. The King’s men were arrayed in serried ranks, arms gleaming, before us lay the river. Distant sounds of battle came from the right and to the left the unearthly cries of some hunting beast, howling like a great hound, as I said to Sir Hugh. Most odd. The host rode forth, as yet unopposed, the enemy holding to their positions beyond the river.
At one pint, the treacherous bank gave way, plunging both me and my horse into the torrent. Emerging, I espied a most curious sight - two children, with skins as green as beans. Yes, most certainly like green beans. A very memorable simile, suitable, indeed, to be sung by minstrels. Their conversation was most charming, as they danced in the meadows. Indeed, I was strangely inclined to dance with them myself. However, sterner tasks called. So I bid Sir Hugh to gat down and give his horse to the green children, as I could not bear to be parted from such enchanting creatures, and we rode forth once more. Passing some fleeing knights of de Bohun, we stormed across the river and shortly thereafter a great victory was won, with the news that Leicester himself was taken by Reginald de Dunstanville and his forces destroyed. (Shame about the mercenaries). Good show!
de Lucy stalled by the River Lark – view looking south-east from Fornham All Saints
Humphrey III de Bohun, Constable of England
Sir Humphrey’s battle diary Good. Run Leicester to ground without most of his allies. Bu**er still has his ru**y mercenaries with him though I see. De Lucy has given me command of the northern flank along with some rubbish about trying to save Leicester’s mercenaries so he can buy them out. I’ve told him that they are all spawns of Satan and he’d be mad to even consider using them. We agreed that any left alive after the battle would be his to recruit so I’ve given orders to my lads to make sure that none of the da**ed crossbowmen survive at least. Lost too many good men to them in the past to let them get off lightly now ! Sound fellow Fitz-Robert ! Wants to go charging off to have at the traitors. Solid fellow ! I’ll follow up with my lads and we’ll crush this treasonous lot my lunch time ! Some rum goings on with that de Lucy bloke. Capering about like some kind of madman. Always thought he was going a bit soft. Probably his age. Wish he’d get his men across the Lark though as we might need his knights to keep Leicester’s footmen off while we kill the crossbowmen. Well, got my lads across the Lark and well on the road to dealing with those ba**ard crossbowmen and what do you know but I come across, Margaret, the young filly who is betrothed to me. Can’t leave the lads for too long during the battle but best get her to a church. Silly gel, doesn’t know what’s good for her like most of her high strung gender !
Tried to run off – probably in terror with the battle only half a mile away. Still, now she’s cracked herself on the noggin she’s appropriately docile. I’ll have a priest look her over and make sure she was just lost round here. Can’t be too careful given her family connections. Time to get back to the lads ! Bl**dy idiots. Some baying dog has scared over twenty of them into the Lark. Serves them right if they drowned for being such lightweights ! Still, they have at least found a ford for de Lucy. Lord knows, he appears to need all the help he can get ! Ha, just getting up towards my boys and they seem to have overrun the remains of Leicester’s baggage train and have arranged a parley with what is left of Leicester’s forces. Da**ed good lads have also dealt with the crossbowmen as well. Never suffer one of those evil little bu**ers to live, that’s what I say. De Lucy can have the mercenary footmen and good riddance to them. Assuming de Lucy ever actually gets here of course. Hopeless. Married Margaret. Not bad but I’ve had better. HdB
The Rules
The game was run using the Ars Magica 5th edition rules. Yes, tabletop rpg rules! The group rules made it very easy to run the battle. Each unit had statistics for an average member, and we used a simple method to declare if the leadership bonuses were being applied to attack or defence each turn. The movement rates (given on each character sheet) were taken from Lords of Men, as were the average stats for the units and the crossbow rules and ranges. Crossbows actually proved fairly ineffective against well armoured knights, perhaps surprisingly. The answer would be to use the knight’s Brawl (Dodge) or Ride as a Defence rather than there melee Defence when receiving missile fire – see Lords of Men for a discussion. We didn’t, because I have not included that on the character sheets. Add Ride + Quickness to work it out and archery will be much more effective; however as those stats are not given on the sheet for the units I’d default to Defence 5 against crossbows. The most important rule was only characters could take actions against other characters. So no matter if all your men were shot down by Flemish croissbowmen, only the leader of them (a player character) could shoot at your character. The game ran in four phases per turn.
1. Movement. Everyone moved simultaneously. If we had used initiative it could have taken much, much longer. You need a lot of rulers,.and if people come in to contact you work out where. It worked well.
2. Talking. The noise rules were important. Communication was 50cm (Voice range in Ars Magica), or 35cm if a melee combat or baying hound or something else noisy was within 50cm of you. You could shout a few words to any other player in that range. In reality we let people talk in character for a couple of minutes (not the few seconds of the Ars Magica combat round) to anyone they were in communication with.
3.Combat We calculated Initiative normally for each normal melee as it happened. Powers and spells used in combat were resolved in this phase using the normal initiative rules. For determining how the Leadership bonus was applied we used a sort of Paper-Scissor-Stones – players chose scissors for attack, or stone for defence, and their Leadership modifier was applied to the relevant combat score. Despite the madness of trying to run a full scale battle using table top rpg rules, it all went surprisingly smoothly, and even those who had never played Ars Magica before soon got their heads around the combat system. We allowed player characters to expend fatigue levels to boost rolls as in the normal combat rules, but ignored this option for units for the sake of simplicity.
4. Powers Magic and special character powers were resolved in this phase, in order of initiative, unless we had resolved them earlier. A second Storyguide (referee) could have sped things up here significantly, as each involved secret discussions between a player and the referee.Still it was all pretty fast. I think we resolved 9-10 turns in the three hour slot, including all discussion and rules explanations etc. Most people had their characters and a copy of the battlefield of map a few days before the game to plan, which is probably a good idea as some of the characters run to about ten pages or more.
The men of Bury cross the mural bridge in to battle from the Priory. Prior Robert stands on the roof of the Priory Church watching, and Leicester’s captured figure lies on top of a tower with his horse!
So what really happened at Fornham in 1173?
The historical outcome was not that dissimilar to the game one (though I suspect Black Shuck and the Green Children played a less important role in proceedings). ”During the troubled reign of Henry II the Earl of Leicester staged a rebellion. He landed at Walton-on-the Naze with 300 Flemish mercenaries, a body of archers and some forty knights he had persuaded to join his cause. After unsucessfully attacking Dunwich (then an important port) he marched on to Risby, en route to Leicester where presumably he intended to raise a more substantial force” I wrote in my book Spectral Suffolkback in 1990.
“In the meantime the King’s loyal supporters had not been idle. The Lord Chief Justice of England Sir Richard de Lucy gathered together 300 knights and proceeded to Bury where he was joined by the High Constable Sir Hugh de Bohun and the earls of Gloucester, Arundel and Cornwall. Between them they raised a force of some 1,200 Bury men who were willing to fight for their cause and the future of the Crown. (It is ironic that forty two years later the Barons met again at Bury to draw up and prepare the Magna Carta, designed to limit the power of the Crown.) Battle was inevitable. The Rebel forces took the high ground on Barton Hill, and Leicester’s tiny army attempted to ford the Lark. It is said that the Earl’s men were unable to find a crossing place, although this seems hard to believe today, for the river rarely exceeds four feet in depth, although things may have been different then. Perhaps Leicester decided the crossing would disorganise and weary his men and allow the enemy to fall on them from behind. Leicester must have realised defeat was inevitable. None the less he drew up his men and prepared to make a stand on Fornham meadows with the river protecting his right flank. He made a heroic speech, and seems to have truly inspired his road weary and out numbered forces. The battle began with the heroic charge of Walter Fitz-Robert who was beaten back. Then the Earl of Arundel marched forward, only to be met with withering fire from Leicester’s archers. This was followed immediately by a charge by the High Constable’s knights. It is fascinating to try to imagine the armour, plumes and pennants fluttering from the steel tipped lances as the mighty war horses thundered down the hill and across the meadows towards Leicester’s tired men. One hundred men, mainly archers were captured yet still the rebel ranks held.
De Lucy decided enough was enough and through his main force forward to the attack. Leicester’s wife now fled in terror, losing her jewellery and to no avail as she was captured by the (hopefully) gallant knight Sir Walter de Wahull. Leicester saw his mercenaries cut down and no realised the day was lost. Falling back to the parish church of St. Genevieve (this particular building burnt down in 1782) he and his knights made a desparate stand, until overwhelmed by weight of numbers they chose surrender rather than death. It was a wise choice, for the prisoners were merely deported to Normandy and then confined to Calais for their treason… “
In conclusion
I thoroughly enjoyed the project, though some one hundred and twenty man hours went in to the preparation and construction of the game. Still all worth while, and possible because of the team of people who worked on it: Becky Smith, Hugh Wake, Thomas Nowell, Phil Jenkins and Lisa Langood all played significant roles in getting the game to fruition, and I wrote the characters and designed the whole things of which I am just proud. I have made the game available to Mark from Grand Tribunal America for use their perhaps in the future, and am happy to share with other Atlas Games promoters from the Atlas Games Special Ops demo team who attend games conventions promoting Ars Magica by running games. Many thanks to John and Michelle Nephew at ATLAS Games, everyone who played and all the delegates of Grand Tribunal 2012.
I’m occasionally approached by other game companies to promote their game by a one off event at a convention – well if I enjoy your game I’m happy to consider it, and you can email me on chrisjensenromer@hotmail.com
Thanks for reaading cj x
Report from Grand Tribunal UK 2012
Grand Tribunal is the Ars Magica and Atlas Games convention held annually in the UK and USA. This year the Sixth Grand Tribunal (UK) took place on the weekend 17th-19th August, and featured 37 delegates and 3 authors from the line, but had a smaller than usual international presence.
Friday evening saw most of the delegates gather in Cheltenham, England before heading off to a local pub where we had a room set aside upstairs. While the weather was extremely warm for most of the weekend, we were able to open windows and the room proved much more suited to our needs than the cellar bar we had used in previous years. Isolated from the rest of the pub it was a private space where we could easily have played boardgames or rpg if we had chosen, but everyone wanted to socialize! one thing that is noticeable about the convention is it has attracted a hardcore of attendees who come very single year, regardless of whether or not they are currently playing Ars Magica, and catching up with old friends is an important part for the experience for many. We even have a few non-gaming ‘friends and family’ who enjoy the event and come along anyway to be sociable, and some of them try a game and get hooked each year. Only the historian David Sivier has so far resisted the temptation to play a game yet come year after year, but we will persuade him next year. One of the more amusing incidents of the weekend was when group of us were outside the pub and found this in the window display of an antiques shop. There we found in the shop window display a Jawa and Stormtrooper costume!
Saturday morning as always saw the big Ars Magica freeform conducted. This year it was Mark Steedman who ran The Tribunal of the Borders, with Loch Leglean and and Stonehenge magi from five covenants trying to resolve their differences and put an end to raiding of the covenants by each other. This was a good game, and raised really interesting issues about what happens when your grogs belong to clans with a mundane tradition of raiding; the covenants very soon are bound to be drawn in to the conflicts. This is just as much a feature of Hibernia as of Loch Leglean and the freeform really brought it home; Burnham has been raided with magical assistance from Horsingas, but the raiding clansmen slain in the attack included some from a third covenant that was not directly involved, except by having grogs who shared a clan with the Horsingas clan raiders and therefore had joined the war party without their magi assenting in any way. There was a huge amount more going on, but I never really learned much of it as my boar Heartbeast Bjornaer was more passionately consumed by his love of truffles, and his motto “I snuffles for the truffles!” It was a marvelous game, and as always people costumed beautifully, and lent costume to others.
After the freeform we took a group photo, with those who wanted to appear, but many players had already changed by the time we had a chance to arrange it back in to normal clothes. Still here are some of the Freeform group…
Some of the freeform “Tribunal of the Borders” players pose after the game…
After the freeform Mystery Playtest One saw a group of magi trying to chase down a diabolist who had betrayed them, and the most outrageous grog ever played by Taryn. Good fun! It is always good that David Chart allows delegates to sign NDA’s and take part in ongoing playtesting of books that are not out yet for Ars. At the same time Andrew ran the Oh, Doctor Bi Sheng! – or the Cathedral and the Bizarre, a very popular scenario he wrote set in medieval Quimper, and Anna ran the only 4th edition game of the weekend The Village Ghost, which I heard good reports of too! It is an interesting feature of Grand Tribunal that 3rd and 4th ed. Ars Magica games are still popular, even today, though 5th ed. is dominant now. Two groups who were playing earlier editions have switched to 5th ed. since coming to GTUK last time.
The next session again saw three games; Tom ran Mystery Playtest Two, and Andrew S ran The Jerbiton Summit, a seven player mini-freeform that proved very engaging and featured a House Jerbiton special convention seeking to resolve a Papal Schism – at least I believe that is what it was about, as sadly I never got to play as I was running the other event in the slot (see below). Both proved very popular, and I really look forward to trying The Jerbiton Summit myself next year. You can read the background for it here.
My game in this three hour slot was based on a real historical event from 1173: The Battle of Fornham, which took place between the rebel forces of the Duke of Leicester and the royalist forces of Henry II under Humphrey III de Bohun and Richard de Lucy, along with the townsmen of Bury St. Edmunds and various other loyalist knights. Becky, Hugh, Tom Phil and I built the terrain and counters and miniatures, and I believe fourteen players participated in the three hour battle, which despite appearances was as much a normal Ars Magica tabletop game as it was a wargame. I think Nick’s account of Leicester’s experience sums it up nicely –
Poor Robert of Leicester – Luck/God was certainly not on his side that day! His overconfidence led him to lead a heroic charge to destroy the southern bridge (over a drainage ditch), where he was met by Reginald de Dunstanville, Earl of Cornwall. A battle ensued between the knights of Leceister and Cornwall as the Leceister knights attempted to destroy the bridge. Leciester’s knights suffered 3 casualties and took 3 Kent knights prisoner, but Robert himself was gravely wounded against the Cornish lord, who smote Robert’s head open. Eyes full of blood, Robert botched his retreat and fell from his horse. Taken prisoner by Cornwall, who took him bound to the Priory, he remained there for the rest of the battle. His leaderless knights were overwhelmed by the Royalists, and Cornwall impaled Robert on a red hot poker and hung him from the Priory walls, as a warning to all other godless rebels
Rather more happened than Nick describes, but that was perhaps the deciding moment of the battle, when the dice proved completely against him. I wrote another blog post describing what happened overall from each players perspective, and have asked them to email me accounts of the battle as it was so amusing. Here is a shot of the game in progress, as a vision of Saint Dympna causes many men to fall to their knees (the upside down tiles). Anyway a full report will follow!
Battle of Fornham 1173 game
I must say it was huge amounts of effort to put this game together, but I thought it thoroughly worth it. Utterly chaotic, it really did serve to teach me quite a bit about why Leicester probably lost on the day, and showed standard Ars Magica 5th edition group combat rules can easily handle huge field battles, not just skirmishes, without using the character centered more narrative Lords of Men rules which are still great for typical tabletop play. iN a sense this was coming full circle for me because we playtested the 5th edition group combat rules using the Battle of Fornham as a scenario (part thereof, on a much smaller scale) about a decade ago. Yes, playtesters really do play test rules, despite authors occasional doubts!
After Fornham it was the always popular raffle, and the Meet the Authors session. The Raffle prizes this year included lovely prizes supplied by Atlas Games and by Sub Rosa magazine. If you play Ars and don’t already subscribe to Sub Rosa you really should consider it now, especially as it is a .pdf download so you can do it immediately! The Raffle raised £201 for good causes in the end, plus a small amount more on Sunday I have yet to count.
A popular new innovation this year was a deal with Charlie’s Chip Shop arranged by Andrew my co-host, who took orders and then went down and collected the food so much less gaming was missed than in previous years and we could move straight on to the evening session, where The Unquiet Grave by Leif, A Walk in the Woods by Hakon and The Shadow Over Carlisle by Lloyd were run. I chose not to play in this slot as I was to be honest utterly exhausted, but it worth noting that every session of the weekend (apart from the Friday evening social and the big freeform one) had at least three games running and no one went without a game who wanted to play. In fact we had spare slots in some games, but none so low as to prevent them running, though we did not get round to running Nathan Hook’s excellent To Strive… this year as we had so many freeforms on offer in the end. Note for delegates in future years – please tell me about your game running plans earlier! Tom & Lloyd and myself each ran two games each, but many delegates offered a game and all three of us would have been happy to run less games and let others act as Storyguides. I ran games with 14 and 9 players, without a beta storyguide to help out in others, and as GT grows in popularity we need more games. I’d rather have too much on offer than too little, and if a game has to be dropped because we can’t get the players then it can always be run in later years, as has been shown by games like the Tribunal of the Borders which Mark wrote for last year but finally ran this year to great praise. Next year I think we will introduce a game bidding system, by which potential GM’s will be invited to submit pitches much earlier, and we will have even more games on offer, so some can be smaller and less wearying for the poor harassed storyguides.
BY the time we closed the venue for the night I was utterly exhausted and ready for my bed, but I ended up doing game prep for the morning and then wandering down to meet a few delegates at the Bon Appetit 99p cafe for breakfast.
Sunday we opened at 10am and ran through till close at 4pm, and there were three games in this session. One was absolutely fascinating – Tom Nowell came up with the idea of running a game with the players as Amazon sorceresses from Rival Magics. Again I never got to play, but I heard good things and it was nice to see some of the Rivals get their day in the sun. I’d like ot hear more about how this game went. Lloyd heroically stepped forward again to run Mystery Playtest 3 .
My last game of the weekend was a little unusual, in that written originally for 8 players (!) I ended up with 9 and had to turn down two more potential players on the morning (they did get to join another game though.) Lost in the Wash once again returned to the pre-1220 period, this time 1217, and my love of East Anglia. It was October 1217, Louis of France has seized the throne and King John was at Lynn desperate to reach loyal allies at Newark, a few days travel away, as the French and Baron’s armies approached. Waking up feverish after a heavy meal of peaches, he gathered together all the people he could trust, and with eight companions set out across The Fens carrying the Crown Jewels of England in their saddle bags. Every student of English history knows what happened next, but you should not believe everything you read in the chronicles… The players were delightful for this game, and it resolved really well at the end just in time for the mad clear up session.
After an evening with the Norwegian delegates I crawled in to my bed last night utterly shattered, but I had a wonderful weekend, saw some outstanding character roleplaying and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Huge thanks are due to so many people that I have posted a Credits file to the GT list, but especial thanks ot Andrew Oakley who as co-host made my ever more ambitious plans possible, and whose magnificent organisation of many aspects of the project meant that everything feel perfectly in to place.
We have not yet confirmed a date or location for 2013, but the default will be Cheltenham again, on the weekend of 16th to 18th August. Don’t make hard plans until it si all confirmed yet, as Cambridge or Trondheim, Norway may yet turn out to be the venue and the date will change then!
Thank you to all the lovely people who attended.
I’ll leave you with a photo of the ever-cool Nick as a wild Scottish magus…
Heroquest 2 Scenario: A Summer’s Eve (download link)
I wrote this for Continuum 2012, but never got around to running it, and indeed had pretty much forgotten about it, but Jeff mentioned it while I was there, and I gave it to all my players in Pelorian Song Contest as a gift. It can be run as a freeform, or as a system-less game, but it I wrote it for HQ2 and it may work best with that system. I thought it might be nice to make it available…
HQS A Summers Eve
If you take a look do comment, and hope it amuses.If you are interested in poltergeist cases you may enjoy it, or may not!
All the best
cj x
Review: Continuum 2012 Roleplaying Games Convention
OK, so I am back from Continuum, which was a marvellous experience. In fact the best weekend I have had a in a long time! For those who don’t know Continuum is a UK games convention held bi-annually in Leicester, where people play roleplaying, board, miniatures and freeform LARP games.
This was not my first visit to the convention — I have been before but only as a day delegate, and my time was strictly curtailed by trains and buses. This time I was able to stay two nights, and the accommodation was by University halls standards excellent, with Hugh, Lloyd and myself having three rooms off a shared kitchen/sitting room with loads of space. In fact Leicester Uni students are very lucky — the rooms are nicer than a lot of hotel rooms I have stayed in, and the price very reasonable as conferences go. (We paid £94 total for two nights, including a substantial breakfast). The only issues with the rooms were the heat, which was both unexpected and outside human control, that many people complained about (my room was very cool and shady, guess I got lucky there) and the fact that one has to be out by 9.30am, but on signing in and being issued keys by the University Accommodation people no one told us that, so most people expected a slightly later time to have to be out by. Fortunately I found out on the Saturday night by asking the night warden, but this led to many people running around in the morning trying to pack urgently as cleaners waited to move in and do the rooms. Not Continuum’s fault, but a failure with the uni conference facilities to team to make the timings clear. Free car parking was available, but latecomers might have had to park across the road in another (free) uni car park — but overall the facilities were excellent, and the campus well suited to a gaming convention. Leicester is fairly central, with good communication links, and the Oadby site is only three miles from the city centre. I did not see much on public transport links but I’m assuming it is well served by buses etc. Anyone able to comment on this?
So of course as I work in the industry this was mixing business with pleasure, and I was delighted to network and meet many publishers and have a couple of really interesting meetings. However none of that is at all of interest to anyone but myself, so instead I’ll describe the convention as I encountered it. We drove up arriving on Friday Night as my freeform The Pelorian Song Contest was scheduled for a ten pm start, late to avoid a clash with the Gloranthan Storytelling session. Registering for rooms went smoothly, and I was able to get a quick look at the main gaming hall, where I immediately saw a wonderful miniatures game set in The Rubble (Pavis, a Gloranthan setting) and the Mad Knight trade stall selling beautiful Gloranthan miniatures. Hugh and Biz played a Trolls versus Broo skirmish game on the Saturday, and I wish I had time to participate…
Singing In the Hero Wars…
First event for me was The Pelorian Song Contest. This was a freeform (think a sort of dressing up Murder mystery game. Each player has a set of goals and objectives and a few sheets of paper telling them about their character, what they know and any special items they possess. They set about trying to win by satisfying that characters objectives by scheming, plotting, talking to others, trading and sometimes “fighting” using a simple non-contact mechanic – in our case paper/scissors/stones).
I had written this game and was the referee, and it is set in Greg Stafford’s fictional world of Glorantha — if you don’t know the setting skip to the next paragraph now). The players were contestants and judges in a song contest representing the various peoples of the Lunar Empire, though dark magical machinations underlay this seemingly innocuous event. The players were a delight, the costuming excellent, and the singing surprisingly first rate (though I stress players did not have to sing — all the singers were volunteers!)
Michael’s witty song about his (character) wife made me laugh and was rather touching, and Rei sings beautifully, and Fiona’s song was very poignant — players chose their own songs and lyrics — and the stirring martial “Men of Furthest” was fantastic, as was the amazing Alkothian entry. The funniest song had to be the Pelorian Rhapsody sung by Alex, complete with axe solo! I missed some of the singing because I was off in other rooms where an uprising was planned, a moonboat was built and burned, and intrigues and assassinations conducted. One of the characters was dead by the end with a knife in his back; one fled out of a window; the Teelo Norri eloped with a Talastari barbarian, and in the process saved the world; two more were reconciled and their marriage vows renewed, and finally Malk won the First Pelorian Song Contest with his amazing Hungry Sable version of Ghostriders in the Sky, which was VERY Lunar. (Of course voting was on national and political lines, and nothing to do with vocal talent!) One Night In Massos makes a hard man humble; and very tired! So who won — well most people, though the Assiday clan managed to subjugate the Temple of the Reaching Moon four years early,and Dragon Pass fell under the Glowline. Lloyd’s character may or may not have managed to pull off something spectacular – we left the game with him escaping, pursued by Malk intent on justice and saving the Empire, and despatching three Darjiini assassins on the way!
Anyway really enjoyed the game, and had fun. Thanks to all the players.
Manorcon & Musing
After the Song Contest it was midnight and we retired to the bar, where people partied long after it closed, where I met El ( I try to avoid using peoples names if it will make them identifiable) dressed as a French maid with an egg whisk and a wet stick of celery. yes she had just left Best of the Wurst, the ‘Allo ‘Allo freeform! Hugh wandered off to talk to Tony M and Hanbury, I chatted with Rei and Clare, and then Lloyd told us all about his thoughts on freeforming, at length, because he was very very drunk, in a nice way, and we all had a good time! Rei was very sweet as always, and her warmth and enthusiasm did much to help keep us all going all weekend, not to mention buying me lunch for running Pelorian Song Contest. Much appreciated Rei, I still owe you lunch back!
I got to bed about 4.30am, only to be up at 8 for breakfast and a busy second day. Saturday was a lovely day, and I enjoyed breakfast and was planning to play in Daniel’s OGRE demo and competition. I was however led astray by Alex, and after spotting a friend from Cheltenham, a fellow gamer, who was attending Manorcon XXX across the road, set off to explore the other convention. It seemed just bizarre that they had about 200 gamers playing boardgames about 100 yards away, at the same university, on the same weekend, but a different campus. I talked to their organising folks, had a good time looking ta boardgames, including Ticket to Ride India which I had not seen before, and GMT games follow up to Here I Stand, a great looking wargame called The Virgin Queen. I stayed a brief while, had a look round: it seems a crying shame the two cons committees could not come to some joint ticket agreement so we could all mingle somehow!
I returned back to meet up with Biz and old school friend, great to catch up after many years, and as he lives in Leicester we chatted about all kinds of things. One thing that struck me was just how pinkish-grey both conventions were. There were plenty of women gamers, a wider range of ages, but given the ethnic diversity of Leicester I had thought we might meet more non-pink gamers, from the Black and Asian communities. Neither of us thought gamers are generally racist in anyway — but it was notable that ethnic minorities were reflected far more in the university staff than in the players and con attendees. We had a people from all over the world, but I just hoped Leicester might be more diverse — but Biz and I finally conceded that cultural factors might still prevent a take up of gaming among non-pink (or as most forms have it “white” ) communities. This is something that hopefully will be addressed, but at the m0ment Football has more racial diversity than gaming as far as I could see, and I think that is a blasted shame. I’m aware this may be a touchy topic; but gaming crosses class, religious, sexuality and regional divides, so I can’t see why we can not become more inclusive generally in the future. Of course con attendees are a self selecting audience, so this is not a con organisers issue, but something larger about the historical development of the hobby perhaps?
Flimsey Turrets
It was on Saturday afternoon that I got to play Flimsey Turrets, a truly wonderful game modelled clearly on Fawlty Towers. Clare made a wonderful axe murderer, and the props and location were first rate. I’m used to talky games, and this one was at times a very ‘physical’ larp – up and down the stairs we went, round a building that seemed just perfect for the game. I played Cecil Flimsey, and by the end I was unutterably exhausted, indeed close to breakdown, but I have not laughed so much on a long time. Graham”s Stanley Bodgettt the Builder will haunt me for years! I had immense fun, even if I completely lost the plot, in both senses. Great game, worthy of many more runs. I was Celil Flimsey, manager of the hotel and a man with problems, and as the game started I was awakened to find an axe murder was slaying hotel guests (and my Spanish waiter, Miguel, who came from Barcelona…) While no John Cleese I can do barely suppressed hysteria, and I ran around in an increasingly frantic state, making things worse and shouting a lot, stalking down corridors and hysterically trying to cover up the failings of my hotel… It was this game that led to me appearing afterwards in my specially bought pyjamas and pink fluffy slippers in the main gaming hall, as I had come straight down from the game! I got to know Ryan a top bloke and Chris Killey who is another fantastic role-player in this game, and yet by the end I was ready for absolute collapse. I have no idea how John Cleese managed to film even 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers without a complete nervous collapse – it is incredibly exhausting to play the role, even as badly as I did. Maybe I was doing it wrong, but you are shattered to a degree it is hard to explain after a couple of hours, in a way almost nothing else has ever tired me out. If you don’t believe me, spend the next two hours at home or work trying to be Basil Fawlty, and see what happens…
My Cecil Flimsey outfit!
When I got back Lloyd had being playing Ziggurats and Zeppelins, and I hung around a few minutes before vanishing off to get some much needed rest, and work out how to quickly build a Klingon costume with almost no resources. A trip to ASDA with the lovely Hanbury and Rei in Hugh’s car, and I was all set…
Last Night On The Titanic
The problem with freeforms is that I can not really reveal too much of the plot, lest I spoil the game when run again. Last Night on the Titanic was not what I expected, but an interesting experimental game. I’m not sure I can say anything more, because surprise is a key feature of it. Suffice to say the top floor crowd seemed to have a great time, though it was not what we thought we were signing up for, and Alex made me howl with suppressed laughter as my son who received some truly awful parental advice from me. Jeff Richard was particularly entertaining, and the captain was awesome, though I did not catch his real name. The pointy eared lass drove me to distraction (in a nice way), and we had immense silly fun running around the bridge. Then things got very weird…
A very ambitious game, it maybe needed another couple of GM’s, and an even bigger playing space (though the garden seemed to be working well and I’m not sure why it was abandoned at some point, unless because it was waterlogged and turning in ot a quagmire — quite appropriate for the Titanic though?), as the play areas became very crowded at times, but it was a dramatic and exciting plot. The raison d’etre behind events was not to my taste – despite my being familiar with the milieu in question, we were all working within character knowledge, so some signposts as to the nature of the circumstances that led to the problem would be useful in future games: I’m very familiar with the background mythos, but had no clue till the debrief what was causing it all. As such the use of the background should be more explicit somehow, and I think the wonderfully played The Traveller character caused many of us to think in terms of the setting we were dropped in, rather than the real “cause”. Not that the ultimate cause mattered in anyway – magic or a vortex or something would have sufficed as an explanation, as all that was outside the players capacity to interact with or learn about.
We had however three clear goals/issues to deal with as a group, though perhaps some of the referee team were slightly under briefed, as one should have been resolved when Jeff blew the thingummy, but the threat just seemed to move further away. I guess he could have kept blowing it! In a sense it was a puzzle game, but the number of players led to some interesting interaction, but also obscured the ultimate goals, so a sense of frustration reigned at times in some areas. A fun game that had the capacity to be wonderful, but needs a little work, I enjoyed it and the upstairs crew made it hilarious at times, as did Graham’s wonderful Steward. Sorry about my dodgy costuming! This one deserves to be polished and run again. Well done to Chris Killey for a great night,a nd I’m sorry he had to deal with some players who criticised aspects during the game. I’d always leave it a week or at least sleep on it before criticising the effort a referee makes, as I know how much work goes in to writing a game all too well
It was not my best costume, but not bad for an hour when exhausted!
Talking Games!
During the day I briefly caught Jeff who showed me some new Gloranthan art for upcoming moon design books, and some maps and finally I looked briefly at the proofs of the Guide to Glorantha. I say briefly because he was off for lunch, and I’m too polite to take advantage and insist on spending a moment longer in Continuum Central than needed, as I had only popped in to help carry a suitcase and pick up Wyrm’s Footnotes 15, published a mere 30 years after the last issue in 1982. I would have spent more time there but I have a conscience, which prevented me talking to any of the VIP Guests much, though I did bore Robin Laws briefly about parapsychology at the end of Sunday while my friends wanted us to go and I was so asleep I could hardly stand up, and was amazed he still remembered me after all the years since we last met. Anyway I’ll be reviewing Wyrm’s Footnotes 15 later, so I’ll move on.
Saturday night was great fun, with Colin playing guitar, Tressey talking religion to Hugh, and Mark and Lloyd getting in to some long discussion of Ars Magica. I was mildly astounded to find mark had bought my books, till I remembered I was at an rpg convention so this was not entirely unlikely I crashed out about 4am, only to get up at 8am as we had to be out of our room by 9.30am as we were returning home Sunday night. After the day of gaming I had, I needed a lot more sleep, but a good breakfast and great chat with Steve and Paula D and Phil Masters helped wake me up a bit! I encountered Pete Nash with a wooden sword who really knows his medieval combat from re-enactment discussing the RQ6 combat system, and ended up being fascinated and watching the workshop when I needed sleep, and while I missed the Gloranthan Q & A – one of the things I went to the convention for – the freeform I played instead was really amazing…`
Night Train
Night Train is a minor masterpiece, a lovely game. At first I thought I might die of heat with us all crowded in the small space representing the train, but time flew by and it was amazing fun. I was able to use some real world knowledge to good effect in character interactions, because my character would know it, and it was a delight. The underlying causes are obscure till half way through the game, but that is partly the point, and the second half got even better, as we realised what we were up against. Beautiful costuming, and Michael magnificent as the soldier, and whoever played the J.P, the prim lady in the hat, the Security Officer, the Geek and Candace equally excellent, in fact I would talk about so many players and characters but I am bad with names when people are in costume (I have poor facial recognition and identify people by clothing and gestures, and get hopelessly muddled by who is who in a freeform, as I just recall people by characters even if I know them well!) and like Last Night this game relies on surprise. Still if there is another run, and i am sure there will be many more, do sign up for this one, it is a real gem and a Peaky classic which Charlie and the others are still polishing but which already shines brightly. If you are interested in Freeform games btw there is a wonderful mailing list you can join.
Sunday Afternoon
By Sunday afternoon I was close to collapse. As I had never met the Art of War chaps before (and still have not met Mark, we never bumped in to each other) and they had too many volunteers to GM in the end I stood down so they would be able to run the game as a cohesive group. From what I have seen the game looked wonderful, some of the costumes were breathtaking. Instead I talked to biz and many other folks, and then Charlie and Alan Paul who ran the excellent boardgames library persuade me to play Last Testament, a great game, though by the last turn I could barely keep my eyes open I was so tired. The heat was not helping, and my feet stank despite changing my socks three times during the day: not having the room available now really seemed a mistake, and maybe I should have booked Sunday night. F. had drunk the bar dry of tequila by this time, and I met up with Hugh, who had being playing a Pendragon battle game based on Badon, and had a lot of fun by the sound of things. He also came third in the OGRE tournament, and to my amazement even Lloyd tried it and enjoyed it – Lloyd does not do boardgames, and especially wargames! Mind you we all tried things we would not normally try I guess? It was Mikko’s birthday, a lovely bloke, so we stopped to sign his card, make out farewells, and left about 8pm with gaming still in full swing, though many other people left about the same time as us I believe, having to get back for work on Monday.
Final Thoughts
So really it just remains to thank Darran and Russell Sims, Colin Driver, Chris Jones and everyone else who put on such a fantastic event. I’m running my own much smaller con next month, Grand Tribunal, an Ars Magica based con with freeforms and much rpg fun, and hope to see a few familiar faces, but it will never be on anything like the scale of professionalism of Continuum 2012. I had a fantastic weekend, and can’t wait till 2014, though I guess I will have to for Continuum 2014!
Do join us in Cheltenham next month!
Playtest Review: HeroQuest 2 RPG.
I’ll be back to my usual stuff soon, but I have been meaning to post this for a while. It is actually written for a RPG review site, but for the moment, here is my review of the HeroQuest2 roleplaying game mentioned in my previous post.
OK, it’s been a very long time coming, but I wanted to write a full playtest review of Heroquest 2, or as I refer to it from here in HQ2. I have played on and off with the system now for well over a year, I finally feel that I can offer a balanced opinion on its strengths and weaknesses.
About the Reviewer
It’s probably helpful to know a little about my background, to let you see my prejudices. I first came to Runequest and Glorantha in the late 1970′s or early 80′s, and have always been a huge fan of the Basic Roleplaying System, but was from the start bewildered by the incredible depth of the Glorantha world setting. Having some serious Glorantha geeks around me always left me a little put off — simply because I did not know the difference between Yellow, Brown and Green Aldryami for example, and would have (until quite recently) struggled to locate Fronela or the city of Nochet on a map. The amazing strength of Glorantha as a world setting is this depth, and the incredibly esoteric discussions of deep background on the Glorantha email lists – but it is also a major problem to someone like me who likes to know a setting, and explore it, but who as a GM always felt put off by my lack of knowledge. Then, many of the publications that set Gloranthan canon were out of print,or hard to obtain. Finally Runequest in all its versions has a ponderously slow (to my mind) combat system, and so I was never a Glorantha/RQ fan boy.
Then I discovered Heroquest. The received wisdom in my district among gamers was that Hero Wars, its predecessor, was a buggy, difficult and awkward system, with many failings.
I have never actually played it, but I am a huge fan of the trade paperback books that were produced for that edition — but on reading the Hero Wars rules, a new game system set in Glorantha, my brain shut down. (I did exactly the same when first exposed to Ars Magica mind you, and did not come back to it for a decade. I eventually got it, and now am an established author for the 5th edition Ars Magica line with many credits, and a HUGE fan. Never let a negative first impression put you off!) Anyway I really did not get Hero Wars, so when Heroquest first edition was released it took me a very long time to pick it up, but when I did I was blown away, in a good sense. You can read my review here.
I actually eventually discovered in play many problems with the system, or what I perceived as problems. For that reason I have left posting this full playtest review a long time — because I wanted to see if extensive exposure to the HQ2 system would prove similarly disappointing. As I only review games I really enjoy, you can probably guess it did not, but there is a years worth of gaming experience and three short campaigns reflected in this review. I’m still learning though, and ask questions on simple things on the HQ2 yahoogroup quite often, so I’m no expert.
My rpg theory background would place me fully in the Simulationist camp, with a bit of narrativism and gamism chucked in for those who care about such things. I have experimented with many indie rpgs, and enjoyed them, but ultimately am at heart an old style grognard. I have played the game with 12 people, and would say that 10 of them fit that description, one had not gamed before and one is unashamedly narrativist. All enjoyed the experience, and one wrote the following for me as a comment when I told him I was writing a review (I cited it in my previous review if it seems familiar) –
“Love the system. Really flexible on character generation and storytelling. Gave me the ability to try something really challenging and leftfield which was certainly immersive, escapist, liberating and highly enjoyable. I’ll stop now before this ends up is “Pseud’s Corner” in Private Eye.”
Enough about me – I just hope this allows you to make a more considered judgment of my review…
What kind of games can you run with it?
Pretty much any you can imagine, in ANY setting. This is the second edition of Heroquest, which in turn was based on an earlier game Hero Wars.Both those games were set specifically in one fantasy setting – Greg Stafford’s evocative world, Glorantha. This new edition of the rules does contain a small section on playing Heroquest 2.0 in Glorantha, which covers basics of magic etc, but these rules are truly multi-genre – and without much real immediate obvious need for setting packs. You can run any story you can imagine with them – because they abstract the technology and vehicles etc in terms of their role in your story, NOT a simulationist attempt to define how they would work in reality. If you want starship construction rules, stats for a hundred different guns, and a detailed approach to armour and movement and maneuver rules, this is NOT the game for you. Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying might be a better bet, or GURPS? Heroquest 1.0 might also work better for you.
However, my gaming style is simulationist, and I actually have run HQ2 in a very simulationist manner: the crunch is not as important, but I can still narrate in a way that reflects a simulation of a physical universe. I have run a heist based game, which I intended to be cinematic, but actually was by the end of it more like a modern gangster movie, gritty and realistic. It worked just fine: one thing I have learned from playing is that the GM decides if any game is say Space Opera like Star Wars, or hard SF like Asimov’s novels – simulation is a function of narration and what tests you call for, not necessarily down to rules system or what game developers often term “crunch”
Heroquest 2.0 is unashamedly a game about stories and characters, where the genre defines the way the game runs — and the styles that can be supported range from satire to cinematic to gritty realism or even tragic operetta. The GM and the players set the tone, as is the case in any rpg, which whatever the authors intentions can be played from Beer n Pretzels style through to skirmish wargame style. I have played Ars Magica games that run the full spectrum, and I have run Heroquest games that range from my heist-movie series gritty realism through to the more cinematic Bonnie and Clyde game and the deeply immersive Colymar campaign set in Glorantha.
As you may have gathered, not having to play HQ2 in Glorantha was a big bonus to me, though all that changed when Moon Designs “reset the canon” and made Glorantha way more accessible with Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes and The Sartar Companion. My reviews of those will follow, but I am finally an unashamed Gloranthan fan-boy owing to the accessibility and beauty of those books.
Character Generation
Let me give an example from my heist movie game “Gone on the Fourth of July”. There are three methods given in the rules – a list method, where you choose ten abilities (and possibly a couple of Keywords, described below), a narrative method where you write 100 words about your character and then derive abilities from that, and a “fill it in as you go method”. Keywords start at 17, other abilities at 13, and then you divide 20 points among them, with no more than 10 points going on any one ability.
We used the 100 word method. As one player turned up late I was tempted to use method 3 for him, and I asked another if he would like to try the List method as he usually finds that easier, but in the end all the players elected to use the 100 word method 1. Given the game’s cinematic roots I said clichéd stereotypes were just fine for the heist characters, if they wanted to play them. We put on the tracks Self Preservation Society, I Fought the Law (Clash version) and Scooby Snacks and we were off…
Lloyd played Jake Malone. His hundred words read
“Jake Malone has been involved with crime since he was a teenager. Stealing cars and armed robbery is his game. He stole his first car at 14 but has gone on to become an excellent wheelman. He lives a playboy lifestyle, fast cars and charming even faster women. He enjoys all the benefits of a criminal lifestyle. Jake is a cockney wide-boy through and through, growing up on the mean streets of the East End, ducking and diving with the best of them. Jake hates the pigs and any form of authority. He would rather die than go to jail. “
I decided to help him interpret these in to a character sheet, and we came up with a decent fun character. His keyword was Wheelman, which we decided we would assign 5 sub-skills, and the italicized bits were his two flaws. Here is Lloyd’s character as it was after the first session, with a few hero points expended on increasing abilities…
Jake Malone
Wheelman 3W(Keyword)
East End Criminal Contacts 13
Acquire Hot Goods 13
Playboy Lifestyle 13
Gone in 60 Seconds 18
‘andle A Shooter 13
Owns Hottest Sh*t on the Road 13
Charm the Knickers Off A Nun 18
Contacts: Sound of Bow Bells 13
Streetwise 13
A Little Bit Woo, A Little Bit Wah 13
The Knowledge 13
Gift of the Gab 13
Sharp Dressed Man 13Flaws
They’ll Never Take Me Alive 3W
Rebel Without a Cause 18
The W symbol by the Keyword and the Flaw should be a mastery rune, and adds 20 to the ability. So Jake really has the ability Wheelman 23, in normal terms, but a mastery level has a specific game role, explained under contests below. Note the abilities, all invented by the player, are written in (bad) cockney argot, to reflect the mood of the game. We all understood whgat was intended by them, but having something ambiguous like Erenessa’s (below) Copper Bar of Truth is just fine: it was defined what it did when she first used it in a story.
Now an odd bit about this character. Firstly, it has a lot more than ten abilities. That is because of the way we derived the abilities from the 100 words, and because Lloyd the player decided to spend Hero Points, the experience points of the system, to buy a couple more in keeping with his character after the first session. Secondly, the ability Wheelman (basically “getaway driver”) is a Keyword. In HQ1 Keywords came with a list of breakout abilities, something like –
Drive like a Bat out of Hell (break out ability)
Plan the Perfect Score (break out ability)
Getaway Driver (break out ability)
Two Wheels Through Alley (break out ability)
Chop Shop & Respray (break out ability)
All of which could run off the Keyword, but which could be improved individually too. That is still true in HQ2, but there is no defined list of break out abilities for any Keyword. I was surprised, but this worked really well in play, and it is entirely possible, and normal, to create a character with such breakout abilities. Here is one from my run of the Colymar campaign, to show what a Gloranthan character looks like in HQ2 terms, after 7 sessions…
Erenessa, Initiate of Issaries (Communication)
Keywords
Earth Rune 17
Truth Rune 17
Communication Rune 1W
Issaries Trader +1
Darktoungue +1
Member of Orlmarthing Clan 20
*Herd Carnivorous Plants (clan secret: spell) +1
Lawgiver (Occupation) 1W
*Convincing +1
*Legal Precedents +1
*Oratory+1
*History of Sartar+1
*Matchmaker +1Abilities
Hit it with my Bludgeon 1W
Hear Gossip and Remember It 18
Swoon Dramatically in to Handsome Fellows Arms (talent) 16
Know the Cowardly Ways of Ducks 13
Impressive Silver Arm Ring 13
Geography of Sartar 13
Betrothed to Ingar of the Hiording 15
Trusted by Termertain 14
The Copper Bar of Truth (magic item) 13
Haggling spell 13
Troll friend 15
Evaluate Lead Goods 13Flaws
Matrimonial ambitions 13
Can not tell a lie 1W
Note the abilities marked *, which are all breakouts chosen by her player based on the Lawgiver Keyword. When it is raised, which costs twice as many points as to raise any other ability, they are all raised — but they can also be raised individually. For a full description of how all this works in Glorantha, see my review of Sartar Kingdom of Heroes.
Character generation is a lot of fun, and i have seen some wonderful characters created. I cite these two simply because I happened to have them to hand! The ability to create any ability, be it an item, magical power, skill in normal rpg terms, relationship or personality trait and handle them all with the same system (and augment each other with them) is really fun and rewards player creativity.
Contests
One of the oddest things to an old gamer like me about HQ2 and its predecessors has always been that the GM rolls a resistance to every single ability check. This really jars at first, and when I first ran it (well the first two campaigns I ran) I did what I normally do, and just told the players what dice to roll, and what the results were, and they were curious about why I was rolling each time as well. I thought understanding the mechanics was not important – though I always explained when a Hero point could be spent to their benefit. It worked OK, but felt odd.
Now actually in my third game we started like that, but soon the players wanted to know what a Mastery level meant, and what my die rolls were for. I explained the whole mechanics properly, taking time to show them, as I roll the dice openly they started to get involved in understanding the mechanics that led to their marginal victory or whatever. And you know what? They loved it!
I had avoided explaining the system because I like players to concentrate on the story, but understanding the rules was enabling, letting them feel they were in a game not just a narrative made up by me as I went along. HQ2 seems rules light when you first read it, but like many good games the rules have a lot of hidden complexity, and I now appreciate the players want to understand them. It’s really easy to teach HQ2, and for a couple of sessions you might not even need to, but for people who have played a lot of systems understanding the “crunch” adds to their enjoyment.
For those interested in the mechanics: the game uses a D20, and you try to roll low, with 1 a critical, 20 a fumble. You try to roll under the relevant ability, which is modified by lingering bonuses and penalties (see below) and augments, where you roll a second skill that may be relevant to try and get a bonus.
Let’s give an example… Jake (played by Lloyd) above has been rumbled as he tries to listen in to a rival gang’s discussion in a dodgy boozer. As a couple of thugs run after him, he leaves and jumps in his car, taking off at breakneck speed through the street of London. The thugs follow on motorbikes.
Firstly we have to decide what is at stake in the contest. The Thugs want to catch him and ‘ave a word, and eventually he is going to get stuck in traffic. Jake is trying to get away. This is easy: the contest has two opposed outcomes – either the thugs catch him or they don’t. I decide the difficulty will be standard, which for this session is 15, so the thugs have an ability of 15. I will treat both as a pair for this simple contest. Now we need to establish the number Lloyd is rolling against to see if Jake escapes – he has 3W, so 23, but he wants to augment this with his “Owns Hottest Sh*t on the Road 13″ ability. So first we roll a quick contest, against a base resistance for an augment this session of 14. I roll 14, a success, as narrator. Lloyd rolls 19, a failure — having a fast car won’t help this time, as he gets no benefit from the augment. I describe how heavy traffic means he just can’t use that speed. We now roll to see if he can outrun the bikers – they have an ability of 15, he 3W.
Now the weird bit. Ignore the mastery for now – the W. Lloyd needs to roll under 3, I need to roll under 17. I roll a 12, a success; Lloyd rolls an 8, a fail. Now the Mastery cuts in – Lloyds result is bumped from a Fail to a Success, and so both parties succeed. Lloyd rolled lower, and so he gets a marginal victory — in this case he gets away, but the pursuers got a good look at him and his car. I would let Lloyd narrate what a marginal victory means. My explanation is not very clear, but soon you don’t need to refer to the tables in the book and it all becomes very easy to use.
In this instance,Jake also might get a Lingering Bonus of +3 to an ability in a similar situation, which lasts till he fails using that ability. I think I’d give him +3 to outrun bikes, or drive in traffic, either of which would run off his Wheelman keyword. These are not abilities — just bonuses that are temporary, and reflect his success in this kind of thing. Wounds are similar, but penalties to the ability that is wounded. If Jake gets slashed across the face in a scrap, his “Charm the Knickers Off A Nun 18″ might take a lingering penalty till he can get stitched up, made up or perhaps have plastic surgery. If his car gets smashed up, his “Owns Hottest Sh*t on the Road 13″ suffers a penalty — in a complete defeat it might “die” as his car is a write off, and we just scrub it off his character sheet.
Now imagine we were going to run this as an extended contest, the most important part of the session. How it works is a succession of simple contests, but each one gives points to the side that wins – a marginal victory 1, a minor victory 2, a major victory 3 and a complete success (fumble versus critical ) 5. First to 5 wins; there are rules for assistance from other player characters, each round needs a new exciting augment; his ability The Knowledge refers to the test London cab drivers have to take to show they know their way round the city, so that would be entirely appropriate for instance, or in desperation he could wave his gun at the bikers, using “handle a shooter” to try and intimidate them.
There are rules for Extended Group Contests, and loads of great advice on running contests in the book. I hope my attempt at explanation has not put anyone off!
There is one other aspect of the system that needs a little attention though. Like most games, if a skill is not directly applicable, or is a “stretch” as the rules term it, then you can attempt it at a penalty. Jake has “East End Criminal Contacts 13″, but he needs to make contact with a gang member who is part of a mob South of the River Thames. He asks if he knows anyone down there — I decide this is a minor stretch, and maybe give him a -3 penalty. If however he wants to know a West End white collar criminal with a knowledge of bank fraud, well that is a real stretch – he will have a penalty of -6. If he wants to know a crook from Cardiff, I might just rule the ability is useless — it’s too far from his home turf. However, imagine a situation where Jake is trying to acquire some stolen jewellery to give to his annoyed girlfriend. This can clearly run off his “Acquire Hot Goods 13″ ability, and he can augment with several other abilities, not least the criminal contacts one.
However Lynzi, Sam’s character is a professional jewel thief. She has “Fence Stolen Jewels W5″. This ability is much more specific and relevant than Jake’s. Now as it happens Lynzi is out of town, casing the train route they plan to rob — but even though, as another player character has a more appropriate ability, Lloyd has a -6 to Jake’s ability.
This is a really neat metagaming aspect. Firstly, it makes every character have an incentive to have specific, appropriate skills — not just “Sword 18″ but “Swing from Chandelier and Flash My Rapier 18″. One of my issues with Runequest when it first came out, rather a long time ago, was that while cults and previous experience made characters different, they were far less defined than in D&D with its classes: Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief, etc. With this system every character has a strong motive to be designed as unique, with its own defined role and not stealing glory from the others. The Humakti is the deadly swordslinger walking down the street to a duel at high noon: the Storm Bull is a frothing berserker, launching himself against the horde of chaos creatures. They have a similar function as combat characters, but their players make sure they are differentiated, and have very different abilities. I really like this feature, and it has worked well in play.
Rising Stakes
If you read the above carefully you will notice that I said the base difficulty was for that session. Yes, every two sessions the base difficulty goes up, and a High difficulty task is always base +6, Very High base +9, Nearly Impossible base +W2. Likewise the base resistance to augments also goes up. Why? Well in my experience after a long HQ1 campaign, characters became VERY powerful. In HQ2 this is downplayed by this mechanic – odd, but works. You improve your character at the end of a session by spending some of the Hero Points the GM awards you to buy new abilities, or improve existing ones. However Hero Points can also be used to boost a contest result. In one of my games the players approached their clan asking for support, but had recently got the clan in to trouble with their tribal king, by an insulting limerick offered as a gift poem. While the clan do not like King Blackmoor, this could have nasty repercussions. Then the players rolled a fumble, I rolled a critical. A complete defeat. Not only were they not going to get any support, they were in real danger of being exiled given what they had done. Luckily Erenessa had a few spare Hero Points, and she spent one to boost her success from Fumble to Fail, and one more to boost it from Fail to Success. It was still a minor defeat, but it prevented the clan taking serious action against them: they all suffered -6 to their relationship with the clan as a minor penalty until the King was appeased, and they received absolutely no help and some new onerous duties. 
Without the expenditure of Hero Points it would have been much worse though.
After this experience the players were careful to keep a few Hero Points back, and not improve their characters every session. By session 7 most of them had a best ability, often a Keyword (more expensive to raise) at around 7W – the base resistance was by now 17 for a normal difficulty task. Erenessa above is unusual because her player spent most of his points boosting results. If you want to be good at something though, spend Hero Points to improve it. There is one rule which prevents characters having loads of low value ignored abilities – whenever you get one to 1W, 5 abilities at least 5 lower are increased by 3 points, in what is called a catch up. Players love this, and it appeals to their gamist tendencies!
So what’s changed from HQ1?
Everything and nothing. If you don’t know Heroquest 1.0, skip this bit! The game is still identifiably Heroquest, and everything I loved about the original is there.
Yet also it’s completely different – a change in approach comparable in the difference between D&D 3rd edition and D&D 4th edition, but in the opposite direction – from bean counting and tactical play, towards narrative storytelling.
Yet there are still a LOT of rules, they are still number heavy, but much simplified over HQ1.0, and augments which were a problem for me in Heroquest 1.0 have been totally reworked, and are now mainly about doing something new and interesting, not “add the +3 for sword skill, the +2 for Humakti, the +1 for hate Lunars, the +3 from my deathly glare and the +2 for my bunions of death, that’s +11 every turn”. One major change is augmenting is now usually with one ability, and you roll for it (or in some campaigns the GM can use the optional static augment – but then it’s now a 5th of your skill.) The need to think up something new to do each time you augment to justify it really makes the game go way faster – before it was often a tedious exercise in scanning character sheets to wring the last possible augment (a bonus to an ability based on another ability) off your character sheet, now it’s a much faster, cleaner system.
Extended contests and the consequences thereof have changed radically. Basically there are two types of Extended Contest — ones that take place during the main part of the story, which are less likely to mangle your character, and the final climax, where death or injury are far more likely. The HQ1 gambling for points bid is gone – replaced with a neat “first to 5 victory points mechanic. I was sceptical about this and planned to use HQ1 until I tried it, but actually collecting bottle tops or coins in an extended contest, and the way assists (where another character intervenes on your behalf) works really well in play. The examples given in the book, especially the long one of an Extended Group Contest are off putting, but actually using the system showed just how well it all worked in practice, and players have to narrate their actions and be creative, replacing the tedious “roll for attack, roll for parry, roll damage, subtract armour etc” of so many games.
In my opinion in an rpg combat you have three choices – let it be a die rolling contest, allow huge numbers of weapon and tactical choices to make for interesting combat, or to do what this game does and make storytelling the combat (and effective tactical choices therein) an essential element, making combat more than just an exercise in die rolling. D&D 4th ed increased participation via one a day, one a combat etc feats – the HQ2 rules have a similar effect in game play, with players trying t inventively find ways to augment, but now having to come up with something fresh every round, and often defaulting to “I just hit it!” if they are doing well. The requirement to come up with a fresh and exciting augment each round is just too much effort for a player who wants to win and get on with the next story: probably a sign I should not have used an extended contest.
On Extended Contests — almost everything in my sessions has been handled by simple contests, with one or in a few cases two extended contests per session when they really matter. They certainly have not all been combats — many have been debates, seductions, climbing a cliff, or even in one occasion making a new batch of extra-potent moonshine.
So long as it is critical to the narrative, interesting, and complex enough that you want to dwell on that bit of a story, you use an extended contest — if it is really really simple, you use a simple contest. When Frodo trekked across the marshes for days, in one of my least favourite sequences of Lord of the Rings, that would be a simple contest (if any). Trying to eject from an out of control jet fighter – that’s probably an extended contest, even though it lasts less than a second of actual time.
If you wanted you could of course still use Heroquest 1.0′s mechanic easily enough. There is loads of good advice on running contests, examples throughout, and modifiers now give a +3, +6, or +9. There are no fiddly +1 or -2 type modifiers, every modifier if worth putting in is boldly drawn. And the old weapons and armour pluses are gone too – characters are assumed to just have them as part of their abilities, and creating your own abilities is as before a big part of the game, but in non-Gloranthan settings even bigger than before. There are rules for creating communities, including for designing clan history style background questionnaires to let players have input through their choices in to designing the communities past ( like the one in Barbarian Adventures )- but now you can create your own for any setting. The community chapter also includes resource management rules, with variable scales, and where player character actions are important over and above random rolls.
The Pass/Fail Cycle
Every so often I read an idea that makes me rethink the way I think about roleplaying games. This was one of those occasions. In most rpg’s the characters face certain resistances, defined by the setting. Dragons are terrible, mighty foes, Klingon ships are dangerous adversaries, goblins are spiteful but puny, the Nazi’s vicious but dumb, the system you are trying to hack homicidally loaded with dangerous software to prevent an easy success. These numbers are dictated by the rules, the referees world vision, or even how experienced the characters are – “don’t go in to the third level of the dungeon unless you are third level!” None of this applies here.
Here, the difficulty of an encounter varies by its place in the story, and how well the characters are doing. If they are constantly failing, the challenges get easier and easier till they succeed. If they keep succeeding, they builder up in difficulty throughout the session, and either way always culminate in a dangerous a nail-biting climax!
That’s right, the difficulty of the challenges vary with how the characters are doing. A typical story will include both many successes and a few failures, which the characters will have to find ways round. When I first read this I was truly appalled – it seemed like the referee was just making the game up as they went along, and there was no way to be clever and “win” through good tactics – all story, but less game.
And then I saw - the Narrator (referee) can retrospectively create challenges based upon the next difficulty level, and is encouraged to change the difficulties to maintain genre and game world conventions – it does not matter how many times the characters failed climbing up the Lonely Mountain, if they poke Smaug on the nose with a stick they are in BIG trouble, and probably toast. Yet the Pass/Fail cycle really does seem to offer an exciting way to pace your narratives – letting the players succeed in defeating a minor obstacle before encountering Smaug may restore fun when the whole story seems to be falling apart through little more than bad dice rolls.
And if you hate it, well you can run Heroquest the “standard” rpg way, assigning all difficulties long in advance.
Now my playtest experience: I was really enthused an excited by this, and I printed off a Pass/Fail cycle sheet, and for my first two games I used it constantly, setting difficulties slavishly to it. And to be honest, it probably detracted from my game. Heresy! Robin Laws the author who I much admire has explored the role of the Pass/Fail cycle in his book Hamlet’s Hit Points — perhaps it’s my M.A. in Cultural Studies, but I really did not get enthused by it. If you love that book you will adore this aspect of HQ2 – but I finally for my third game did what Robin always intended, and set resistances as my storytelling instinct suggests, rather than worrying about the Pass/Fail cycle. I use it now as it was intended -as a guide – but most of the time i just set the difficulty of any given challenge based on my simulationist instinct, and you know what — my HQ2 games are much better for it.
It’s a shame that this element that excited me so much was not all I hoped for – but as I say, I’m a simulationist at heart. My players always get in to interesting trouble, of their own making, and I am happy to use static resistances. In the Colymar Campaign in Sartar Kingdom of Heroes many challenges have set resistances,and you can modify them of course as your story requires, and I find that liberating. It’s what GM’s have done for years. A run of good or bad luck is not dictated by arbitrary changes in difficulty anyway — I rolled 5 criticals against my players in my last session, and let the dice stand, so the story was pretty dramatic, but of the resistance was 6 or 19 the result would have been the same anyway.
So is the Pass/Fail cycle a good idea? Yes; just follow the advice in the book, and don’t follow it slavishly. I like to write down a few skills and numbers for some npc’s — and my sense of story dictates the pacing, contests, and difficulty levels more than following the cycle now.
In Conclusion
If you have read my earlier reviews you will know I loved Heroquest 1, and really enjoyed it, and was wildly excited by HQ2 when it first came out. My players however are always more alert to problems than me, and the multiple augment thing did become an issue, as did high power levels over a year or so of weekly play. Both these faults are addressed in HQ2, and while I worried about the loss of Keywords with specific listed abilities, my players took to it. I did not really get the Rune magic system till I bought Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes – for HQ in Glorantha see my rave review of that. The book has faults, and there are aspects of the rules that I still struggle with — I find gun battles are at times a bit hard to describe, but I used a lot of simple contests for most, and it worked fine. So long as you get the way contest work, and carefully read the advice, it’s a brilliant system. and while my players and I came to not dwell much on the Pass/Fail cycle, other groups will adore it. I was not keen on Hamlet’s Hit Points — if you liked that book, this is the system for you. The main rule book has loads of examples, but nothing in the way of scenarios, and having played The Colymar Campaign from Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes a while that was amazingly handy in showing how to run the game, so that was a missed opportunity. (There are scenarios on the web, and any old HQ1 scenario, or indeed almost any rpg scenario at all, would be easily converted I think. However while i could run Traveller or Ars Magica scenarios with HQ2, I probably would not want to, as I could run them with those systems they were written for…)
This is a superb rpg, and I am still excited by it, love it, and really enjoy talking about it, as you can probably tell. It joins Ars Magica and Call of Cthulhu as one of the very very best rpgs I have ever run, and I have run a lot of rpgs over 30+ years. It is bit of a struggle to master, but once you finally get it, it is a beautiful game. Highly recommended.
Heroquest 2 is available from the Moon Design website here.
RPG Review: Sartar Kingdom of Heroes for HeroQuest 2
It’s been a while since I wrote about my hobby, roleplaying games, and what follows is a brief review of a supplement for one such game, Heroquest 2. It’s a pen and paper/tabletop rpg like Dungeons and Dragons, not a computer game, though there is a computer game and iphone app set in the same background, the excellent King of Dragon Pass, and if you have an iphone or can find the original game I highly recommend it. (I have only played the pc version, but they are pretty much the same I’m told.) Anyway if you follow my blog primarily for my writings on psychical research, and have no interest in games, you might want to skip this post! If however you have ever played a traditional rpg, or are interested in trying such things, have a look at my review of Heroquest 2 and drop me a line if you would like to know more. If you have ever played Runequest or Dragon Pass, then do read on!
Sartar Kingdom of Heroes is a book I waited a very long time to get, mainly because when I had the money I could not find it in the shops, and most of the time I never had the money! While Heroquest 2 is a generic system, where you can play any genre or setting at all, from Fantasy to Romance to Horror to Hospital Drama, or whatever else you and your players can come up with, it does have a short appendix on playing in Greg Stafford’s fictional setting Glorantha, a beautifully detailed world of high myth and high adventure. My first two HQ2 games did not utilize these rules at all — I ran a heist movie game, which showed how fun and inspiring the character generation system was, and then ran a short Bonnie & Clyde inspired Depression era game about a family of moonshiners and bank robbers, which was also a lot of fun.
When I finally managed to get Sartar Kingdom of Heroes, I was tempted in to running my first Gloranthan game with the rules, and it has taught me an awful lot more about the strengths of the system. HQ2 is a great system – but with S:KoH it really sings, and purrs along. I asked my players to comment, and Rob Smith a veteran of twenty years rpg and dozens of systems wrote about HQ2…
Love the system. Really flexible on character generation and storytelling. Gave me the ability to try something really challenging and leftfield which was certainly immersive, escapist, liberating and highly enjoyable. I’ll stop now before this ends up is “Pseud’s Corner” in Private Eye.
The fact that since playing in Sartar three out of four of my players have decided to acquire Heroquest 2, and the other one I believe already owns the pdf tells you a lot. Much of what I write below is designed for people who already know Glorantha, but if you don’t the computer game Skyrim’s setting is very similar in some ways to this marvelous fantasy game setting.
So without further ado, the book…
Sartar Kingdom of Heroes – henceforth SKoH — is a physically impressive book. While most of my rpg books have a page count of 120-200 pages, this one weighs in at 378 pages – it has the look of a telephone directory, if you can remember such things before they went online and almost everyone went ex-directory. It’s a paperback book, but with nice binding and it has so far survived the trauma of extensive use in game and being moved during redecoration, and is still in good condition. Physically I must say the presentation is excellent, though for a book of this size and which I will use as much as I will this one I would have bought a hardback if it was available. Moon Designs earlier paperback books however have long outlasted my Mongoose Runequest hardbacks, which have real binding issues, so I’m delighted with the book and have no worries about it falling apart.
So what is in the Book?
Everything apart from the Heroquest 2 rules you will need to run a Gloranthan rpg game set in Sartar, a kingdom of Dragon Pass. And I really mean that. While the Sartar Companion, which I also own and will review later is absolutely excellent, this book has an incredible amount in it. If you had never played any game set in the world of Glorantha before, then I think this book would make the ideal introduction. The book is divided up in to four sections.
Section 1 – Making Your Orlanthi Character
If you are a veteran RuneQuest or Heroquest player, and especially if you have read Storm Tribe and Thunder Rebels, most of this material will be familiar to you. What it does is explains beautifully how all this works with HQ2, and it is much, much clearer than the HQ2 appendix on Gloranthan magic. We did not have to refer to the rules once, simply using the list method (previously we had used narrative in earlier non-Gloranthan games, but the players did not know Glorantha well enough to attempt this), and the players choice of Runes defined their likely cults, personalities, and pretty much everything about their characters. The runes are absolutely central in HQ2, in a way they never were, ironically, in any edition of Runequest. Reading the HQ2 rules had made me doubt if it would work well – in play it worked beautifully. Now I was a big fan of HQ1, and HQ2 has fixed many problems my players found in that system — like multiple augments leading to long tedious number crunching contests — but the way runes work now is one of the highlights of the new edition, and while fundamentally similar, it really rewards player creativity. Selecting your runes first makes you think not in terms of “creating a Humakti”, but in terms of creating a personality and then fitting that person to their cult. I really enjoyed running the flashback t the Women’s initiation, which was central to two of the characters back story, but I would have liked a little more on the female initiation rites, but it worked really well when we just went with the story and I improvised and asked the players questions about their mystical understanding of what was happening.
One thing I will definitely recommend is the useful 13 page Player’s Primer background for the Colymar Campaign (see later) which you can download free from Moon Designs site. It will give you a real feel for the book too. I asked my players to read this before we started the game, and then made sure they had read their cult description (see below) and they were away. Huge parts of SKoH can be safely be read by the players btw – the only parts I would ask them not to read are the Colymar Campaign, a series of adventures that comprise section 4 of the book, as that would spoil the fun of playing those adventures, which I have been running.
If you happen to have owned Barbarian Adventures, an early HQ1 book, or played King of Dragon Pass the PC and iphone game you will recognize the clan questionnaire which also appears in this section. As in many of Greg’s games, community and relationships with clan, tribe and family are central to your characters; they are not rootless individuals out to kill stuff and take its gold, but rounded individuals who exist in a social milieu. As such you create a unique history for your clan, by answering questions about what your ancestors did in many key events in Gloranthan history and myth, and your clan and characters are shaped by this. My players familiarity with the incredibly rich and detailed (some would say overwhelming) Gloranthan background varied, and they at times were really just answering by whatever seemed fun, but they learned a bit of Gloranthan myth and history in the process, and if they were interested in something I took the time to explain it a little – Nysalor, the First Age, the EWF, etc. We used the online clan generation sheet, and had fun creating our unique clan abilities and myths — Resist Sunspear, and the Secret of Dancing On Ice are the two I can recall now!
While this section is very newbie friendly indeed, it is perfectly readable even if you are a Gloranthan player of decades, and the introduction has a number of subtle in jokes aimed at old hands ranging from the Dragon Pass board game on that had me laughing out loud. This is something that recurs throughout the book – if you played Apple Lane, know who Rurik Runespear was or that is ransom was 300 guilders, or have ever sworn by Bladger your axe, you will love this book!)
Section 2 – Orlanthi Religion
I was tempted to skim this 120 page guide to Orlanthi religion, but I’m glad I did not. There is some great HQ2 material on how the rules and magic work in Glorantha, how different Feats can be acquired, how to sacrifice for one use specific magic, etc, etc. Even cults i thought I knew inside out like Ernalda and Orlanth had some surprises – I never thought of Ernalda as Arachne Solara till I read and understood part of this! — and their are many lovely insights even to people like me who grew up playing Runequest in the late 1970′s. Somehow the prose is fresh enough to avoid the “Kyger Litor again!” syndrome many old hands will know. Not that Kyger Litor is detailed in the book – but Orlanth, Ernalda, Elmal, Urox the Storm Bull, Chalana Arroy, Lhankor Mhy, Issaries, Humakt and Yinkin (for those who have not kept up since Cults of Prax, the Sartarite God of alynxes, the big cats who take the role of dogs in Sartarite society) are. Like much of this book all this was a huge nostalgia trip to me, but still exciting and fresh. I wanted to call Axel and Eric Quigley, the chaps who introduced me to Glorantha, and beg them to buy the book. (The Sartar Companion has an even more nostalgic elements- an adventure called Return to Apple Lane, rather bitter sweet. As a demo adventure it is available from Moon Designs free here, but if you weren’t there in the early 80′s you may never understand why I like it so much.)
The chapter also contains a good section on Heroquesting, as is only appropriate for the game!
Section 3 – The Orlanthi Book
Once again, all is familiar, yet much new. Sections on Sartarite law and culture draw from the legacy of Thunder Rebels, and I think it fair to say that you don’t need that or any earlier Gloranthan book but the HQ2 core rules to use this to full effect. Sections explain ducks, mostali, aldryami, the Lunars, the Red Goddess, Dara Happans and much else besides. This is a brilliantly written concise primer to what you will need to know to have fun in the setting. Some of it is deep history and background, mainly of use to people on the World of Glorantha mailing list, or those with a strong interest in the shaping of Sartar. It seems well researched, and completely compatible with the earlier book King of Sartar, which is a “faction” paperback that details the beginnings of the Hero Wars with several amusing nods to academic Biblical Criticism and academic studies of mythology. Fun as that book is, this section is much clearer and easier to comprehend, not being written as a Gloranthan document in the main, though one part is a Lunar report on the Orlanthi.
Section 4 – The Colymar Campaign
An admission – at the time of writing this review we have only just completed the first part of the three main “acts” of this epic adventure, which tells the story of the wooing of an Earth Priestess, and her courtship by one of the player characters. While the hook is a classic case of deux ex machina, one of the characters has to fall in love with her, from then on the storyline as written has been very useful, but not remotely constraining on our creativity, and we have had immense fun, perhaps the most fun I have had running any rpg in years, and I have recently run the superb Dara Happa Stirs campaign for Runequest. I’m not going to say much about this, for fear of giving spoilers, but it is epic stuff and if you love Gloranatha it would be a terrible shame not to read it, and I can’t imagine many groups who would not have fun trying to complete an almost impossible set of tasks to win the fair priestesses hand in marriage!
Appendix –
This stuff is important, as it describes the Calendar that is used extensively early in the book, and its placement here is a shame. It is worth if you are not familiar with the Gloranthan year reading this first, and also having a quick look at the useful descriptions of the 28 key Orlanthi holy days. The list of languages of Dragon Pass also answers obvious questions; remember also that nearly all Orlanthi are illiterate, so unless an initiate of Lhankor Mhy or you take literacy with some explanation as an ability, you can’t read anything.
Overall
Now as you may have gathered, the book is pricey. I bought direct from Moon Designs </a for $59.99, rather than going to Leisure Games site or Cubicle 7 where it costs £40. However if you buy direct from Moon Designs, who always have the book in stock unlike UK retailers, they benefit from your sale and are more likely to produce even more great books in the future, and as the shops never seem to have it in stock, I went this route. I nearly cried at the cost because I’m let’s face it far from wealthy– but when I saw the book, I realized it was worth every penny, and very reasonably priced for something this big and glossy to my mind at least, given how many times larger it is than most of my rpg books, and how incredibly useful it is.
The artwork is largely taken from previous publications of the last 40 years set in Glorantha, with some new pieces, and I like most of it, while one of my players was more critical. Nostalgia wins me over i think. The cover by Simon Bray is to my mind excellent, but my players were not so keen, but it is actually a very useful cover, and a page of the book explains all the things represented thereupon. I really like it though.
Overall, if you are fond of Glorantha, incredibly detailed rpg settings, or want to try Heroquest2 out, I can not recommend this book highly enough. A first rate piece of work, I report with pleasure the Sartar Companion is just as good. Do buy this book!
cj x
The Plot, the Story and the Players – some thoughts on running rpgs
I write about many different subjects on this my personal blog, but it is possible that some readers are not aware that one of my great passions is roleplaying games. Not the kinky “you be a naughty nun and I’ll be a Cabinet Minister” kind of thing; I mean the kind of games which are about exploring a story, solving puzzles, and developing a narrative between the players and the referee. The classic game of this type, the grandaddy of them all if D&D, that is Dungeons and Dragons. I have not played D&D for many years, but at least most people recognize the name of that game, and know the kind of thing I mean. There are nowadays a lot of CRPG’s, Computer rpgs, and some are very enjoyable — I am playing Skyrim at the moment – but my main love has always been the tabletop variety, played with pencil, paper, funny shaped dice and most of all, played with friends.
Now if you are not interested in such things, skip this post — it will be very dull indeed! If you are, I’m going to talk about hints for running games, for Gamemasters. (I prefer GM to the D&D term ‘Dungeonmaster’ — telling my friends I am off to be a dungeon-master before vanishing in to my basement for hours with middle aged men gives rather the wrong impression I find! )
Tonight I have been playing a game set in the English Civil War, with some “clockworkpunk” and real alchemy. The characters are Robert Gently-Benevolent (owner of a chain manufactory); Lord Hugo, a villain straight out of a bodice -ripper, spy and seducer (played of course by Luke); Sir Thomas Lavington, an alchemist, and last but not least Henry, a manufacturer of clockwork devices. The game is Clockwork and Chivalry, and we are on the last chapter or two of the adventure The Alchemist’s Wife. They have trekked across England from Oxford to Cambridge, bodies strewn in their path by their nemesis. Now because this is a published adventure and some people reading the blog may one one day wish to play it (and you should, it’s great fun!)
We have been playing this game weekly for a couple of months now, and the characters have grown as the tale is told. Unfortunately the players are rather clever, and worked out the identity of their nemesis, the murderer if you like, in the very first session. That surprised me, but armed with those suspicions they were able to confirm it pretty much in their mind very quickly, and even work out the motive, about half way through. I won’t explain here so as not to give away the plot, but the story became not so much a whodunnit with a quest for a missing woman also motivating them, but a pursuit of the chief villain across England.
Now the problem. In the story as written the character’s can’t get horses, and are unable to catch up with the Nemesis till the last chapter. In our game they actually had a chance to capture a mechanical device, damaged, but by some with Henry’s skill’s salvageable. Henry had wanted Henry Ireton (Parliamentarian leader and general) as a contact, and armed with letters from him and the Royalist Sir Reginald Perkinson once he had fixed the thing it made sense he could keep it at least as far as the New Model Army HQ in Cambridge. I could have had it mysteriously breakdown, be seized by roundhead patrols, become mired in the mud – but what the hell – I thought it was entertaining that he had captured it!
So I let them keep it, and inevitably they came up with a clever way to use it to catch up with the Nemesis. He managed to escape, and they tracked him dowmn, and captured him, two whole chapters early. Now is this not a bad thing?
Years ago I would have probably thought yes. I have bought a scenario book, and I would have probably intended to use as much of it as possible. Nowadays – nah, they were having fun. The plot is basically a road trip, and they already have clues which will lead them to the final chapter and the twist — having two climaxes to the story not one works just fine for me. When the players are clever, and come up with a way to outsmart the carefully plotted scenario — I just let them. There is nothing more annoying than having to come up with reasons to stop the players short circuiting the whole plot, and thwarting their every move. I t would be like running a session without protective fathers and innocent young maidens for Hugo to seduce, or without any opportunity for David who knows about such things to tell us about domestic life and architecture or alchemy or history of the period. Actually Clockworkers and Alchemists do NOT shine in this game – I think it would work just as well without either, and so letting Kevin’s character grab the “ironhorse” and eventually use it to outrun the Nemesius, was the right thing to do dramatically.
The scenario is basically a “road trip” across England, and players can feel “railroaded”, denied opportunity to go their own way and having to stay on predefined tracks in such scenarios. I don’t think any of the things that have happened outside of the guidelines of the scenario actually break the plot as regards the next supplement Thou Shalt Not Suffer, and I want the game to not just give the illusion of Free Will to the players, I want to be prepared to allow them to be clever and solve the problem however they want. What if they had made straight for Cambridge, via a different route, and sort a political solution to they problem they were faced with at the start of the game?
I’d have let them. If your players trust you to let them significantly shape how the game develops, and believe rightly they have significant influence over the plot, then sometimes you need to throw away the scenario entirely, and think on your feet, but most of the time they accept that the plot lies that way, and when the old man offers them three silver pieces to go in to the gloomy dungeon at midnight to recover the Runespoon of the Volemage or whatever, they play along. If they think however you are forcing them to follow your tightly scripted plot, and resisting all their efforts to be clever, then they will grow tired of your game, and resist by every means they can, even opening a shoe shop and giving up the adventuring life.
Hey just a few thoughts, Any alternative opinions?
cj x
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