Pick #5: Ancient Books on PDF

In my recent RuneQuest review I had some qualms about a lack of usable background. Background which was not in the boxed game that I had. Background I thought I might never lay hands on. Because it was lost forever in second hand bookshops in Cheshire and suburb garages in Arizona.

Not so. Many games and supplements are now re-released through the internet. In Portable Document Format.

And indeed, a huge RuneQuest first edition background source pack is recently re-released, and for sale for $60. US dollars that is, less than 50 euros at the moment (unless I missed a crash).
You can find the pack here on RPGNow, an online seller of role playing products.

And if RuneQuest is not your cup of tea, you might find a lot of other stuff you like here. They have quite an impressive collection indeed. Just don't overdraw your credit card... too much.

Now let's see if I can collect some sponsor money from these guys.

Classic RPG Review #3: RuneQuest

First Edition Boxed Set, Games Workshop version (UK market)

by Steve Perrin, Ray Turney and friends

1980 The Chaosium

Certainly in the days the game was published, its cover was sure to draw a boy's attention. And a girl's attention too, maybe. The lady on the cover is not only beautiful and fighting a vicious lizard, she is also hardly wearing anything. Yes, she does wear a helmet and some scant armour, but I would not want to go into combat in her clothes. Then again, she is very nice to look at. I see now she even wears make up. Hm.

The rules are boxed, with classy dice of all sorts, a rules booklet, a prerolled monster booklet, a sample adventure and a small booklet called Basic Role Playing. And this last booklet may be the best deal in the package. Aside from that cover of course. Basic Role Playing is a simple role playing system, loosely based on Runequest but without the frills and without the complicating details. It's a well written, clear and enticing introduction to role playing. So it's a shame it is “Not to be sold separately”. It's still one of the best introductions to the game I know. For game masters too.

Runequest itself is a bit more complicated, but it is also well written and easy to understand. And if you should fail to understand anyway there are many examples featuring “Rurik the Restless”. He is the type of young adventurer you are obviously supposed to play. Not always too smart, but very willing to learn. There even is humour in most examples, and some nice black and white artwork.

Runequest is still one of the most realistic games around. That was also its selling point. But there is realism and realism. Among my friends it became known as “the limb chopping game”. You can actually hit a specific arm, leg or head in this game, and without armour a bit of a sword will most certainly severe the extremity from the body. So everyone in this game wears a lot of armour. Not like the lady on the cover.

Tasks in the game are resolved rolling percentile dice. One ten-sided die for the tens, another for the single figures. To succeed, you have to roll lower or equal to your skill percentage. And if you roll very low you may have a critical success. Double 0 is one hundred, and means a fumble or botch up – you break your sword, hit yourself, or stumble and fall. This sometimes unnerving, but very funny innovation is one of Runequest's gifts to many later games. If you used a skill during a game, you may try to increase it by rolling a percentage above your skill. So after a typical session the dice are shaken like it's a regular casino.

There is battle magic too, and as everyone can learn spells, everyone does learn spells. And everyone may eventually become a Rune Lord or Lady. There are no clear classes or professions either, making everyone a generic adventurer. Everyone plays a Rurik or Rurka the Restless, it seems, the only difference being the number of limbs you have left.

There the beautifully crafted Runequest game goes a bit awry. It gets worse once you try to play the provided “Apple Lane” adventure. To me it felt like stepping into a kiddie cartoon, not into an exciting fantasy novel. And then there are non-human races like “ducks”, humanoids with heads of ... ducks. A crafty game master could still make a scary game out of the given ingredients. But in most people's hands, certainly if they are beginners, at best it will become silly.

Yet I have the impression that Glorantha, the original fantasy world which Runequest uses, is a very inspiring and magical place. Greg Stafford, who also wrote the Basic Role Playing booklet, thought the place up for a different goal. Maybe for unwritten novels or just as an exercise in fantasy. But Runequest does not seem to fit in completely, and most of Glorantha remains shrouded in mystery. Maybe the Runequest politically correct, emancipated unisex approach to adventure hid it away.

RULES 4/5

(rules are innovative, logical, elegant, flexible and sometimes painfully realistic. Low damage is however hardly possible, making the game often too deadly. As an added minus, a fair amount of bookkeeping is involved.)

INSPIRATION 2/5

(Glorantha may be a very inspiring world, but what's left of it in Runequest is alas a bit stale)

PLAYABILITY 3/5

(playing the game is fairly easy, keeping it exciting is harder because the backdrop is so unclear)

GAME FEATURES

(ancient world fantasy, in the tradition of Conan or ancient Persia, human centred but with elves, dwarves, dragonnewts, trolls and ducks, skill based with virtually no differing professions, percentile based combat and tasks, separate roll for damage, separate hit locations each with their own armour, magic accessible to all)

OVERALL 6/10

Pick #4: Dark DungeonS

If you wonder where our name Dark Dungeon originates... If you wonder if it has anything to do with this "Dark Dungeons" publication by mr. Chick... You may be right.

Chick's followers hid these booklets (and there are many other booklets) in games to warn of the dangers of role playing. According to the comic you may start believing in the occult, do black magick, invite demons and commit suicide if you play these games. Only radical conversion to Christianity and burning your core rules could save your soul. One of our players got hold of one of the booklets, and we were amazed.

Actually, we thought it was kind of comical at the time. So we named our game after the little booklet. We just dropped the "s". Our first edition was lavished with an upside down pentacle and mystical runes on our rule book cover. If you deciphered the runes to understand what it meant... they spelled "You don't know".

But we didn't take the book burning thing, nor the occult implications of mr. Chick very seriously. If you want to slip into darkness, you can do so without role playing fine. Unfortunately you can even find darkness in religion. And if you want to see the light, you can also see that in playing a role playing game. It's a matter of perspective.

I prefer the positive perspective.

Update: The newest edition of the Dark Dungeon role playing game is now called The World Beyond.  Jack Chick, writer of the booklets that have nothing to do with our game has recently passed away at the venerable age of 92. May he rest in peace.

Old Free Download: Dark Dungeon Character Sheets

Update: Dark Dungeon's new edition is named
The World Beyond.

Most players in our group just scribble their character stats on a piece of paper. Or they have a special booklet for each hero they play. Or they constantly lose their character sheets. Or they spill hot coffee on them (to age the sheet artificially I suppose). Or... they have complete filing systems in their briefcases, weighing a ton each.

You don't need to do any of these things. You can just download and print these character sheets. Male or female. Fill them out. And have them with you always.

Update: these files have been offline for a while. You can now download free The World Beyond hero sheets from RPGNow.

Free Download: Island of Samaris

Update: You can no longer download the old free Samaris Island of Adventure supplement, though you might find it floating around on the web. Instead you can buy the full color 300+ page Samaris book, which contains an immensely enhanced, fleshed out version of the city. Or, if you're not sure if it's your cup of tea, you can first try The World Beyond RPG sampler for a ridiculously low price. This booklet contains samples from Samaris too.

The new Samaris Game Companion

And a map from the old one

The old  Dark Dungeon 2nd Ed. Samaris setting was used in our own gaming group for many years, and featured in hundreds of our adventures. The new Samaris is updated for The World Beyond (the commercially available update of Dark Dungeon), and is a full color book with special tools to engage your players (or your game master!), and make your city games easier and more fun. It also features a hundred contacts, a hundred location descriptions, hundreds of illustrations, dozens of creatures, items, adventure ideas, and so on.

And the old Samaris booklet

(Almost) Free Download: Dark Dungeon 2nd Ed.

Update: Dark Dungeon 2nd was the forerunner of The World Beyond.
You can no longer download the DD2 set of rules, but you can buy a sampler of The World Beyond for a ridiculously low price on DriveThru or RPGNow. It's even better in print form. The sampler will allow you to make a basic hero, and will allow you to have a taste of the system.

You can also find the full rulebooks on DriveThru. Try, read and enjoy!

The game this site was launched for.
Fantasy Role Playing Beyond Your Imagination.
From the Dark Netherlands, since 1989, common calendar.

Dark Dungeon 2nd Ed. is one of the most elegant, fast, and yet "realistic" sets of rules you'll find. And it's here, in lite form, free for download.

Featured in the 25 page booklet are:
- how to play
- character creation with eleven sample professions
- innovative spell weaving with ten sample disciplines
- faith and miracles with three sample saints
- advice on game mastering
- a sample adventure

Try, read, and enjoy.

Pick #3: My First Computer

The machine was hardly fit for role playing games, only slightly fit for classic text adventures, and not fit for word processing. It wasn't ready for the internet, and as I bought it only few had dreamed of something like the world wide web. Its keys were rubbery, like dead meat. But I loved my ZX Spectrum, back in the eighties. And I also loved its many arcade style games.

If you miss them too, or want to know what on Earth I'm talking about... have a look at Retrospec. Its coders and artists rewrote a good number of Speccy games for PC. Including Atic Atac, the arcade dungeon crawler of Ultimate Play the Game. Or the even more frantic Dr. Who like Halls of the Things. Or search for a emulator or game at world of spectrum, and find most any game rom you're looking for.

Sixteen colors, hardly any pixels, and a host of old joys!