There’s a lot of pop personality typology, from astrology to Meyers-Briggs Type Indicators to the Enneagram of Personality. The most scientifically elaborated typlogy of personality is the Big Five personality traits, based on five continua: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Let’s use these to generate NPC personalities for TTRPGs!
Here’s a table with the extremes of each traits, framed in positive and negative terms. Roll a d20 and record the character’s trait. You can only have one trait from each row, however—for this purpose one couldn’t be both “unreliable” and “disciplined”. So if you roll again for another character trait, ignore results from a previously-selected row.
{betleH batlh je}, or Bat’leths & Honor, is a roleplaying game. I have translated it into Klingon from the Lasers & Feelings RPG. (The Klingon language lacks a word for “feelings”.) Perhaps it is the first Klingon-language roleplaying game? For many months I’ve been chewing this over, but now finally I need to release it. Enjoy it!
So, I read 64 books in 2020, and of all the new-to-me books, I’d especially recommend two:
“Exhalation: Stories,” by Ted Chiang, is an anthology of philosophical science fiction. The most fantastic tale is a time-travel story set in medieval Baghdad, but most of the stories reflect on how technology mediates a person’s understanding of themselves, reflecting on memory, identity, family, determinism and choice. Like “Black Mirror” but not horrible?
“Thousand-Year-Old Vampire,” by Tim Hutchings, is a book-length writing exercise or game that prompts you to write the necrography of a centuries-old undead monster struggling to hold on to ancient memories despite time’s ceaseless erosion. My first vampire was a Byzantine soldier from 10th-century Bithynia who fought the Bulgars with Basil II, wandered medieval Persia, tagged along with the Ottomans for the Siege of Vienna, and was finally burned at the stake in 18th-century Innsbruck. My second vampire was the daughter of a Sabine woman who lived among the Etruscans and Carthaginians for five centuries before her destruction in Sicily during the First Punic War.
Finally got a submission in for the One-Page Dungeon Contest. I’ve been taken with hand-drawing taverns in the style of Dyson. But… One-page taverns should be a genre unto themselves! Every fantasy gamer needs fresh, distinct tavern maps, and most taverns should be small enough to fit on a single page with a 5-foot grid: tiny watering holes should surely be more common than massive alehalls hundreds of feet long. So I made one. The map was drawn at 1-inch battlemat scale, but we did a bad job with the scan (no time to fix it on deadline!) Just print off the page and throw it on the table.
The Crying Cricket Tavern is an odd little goblin bar with a couple of secrets. It’s also a one-page tavern adventure and printable battlemat.
Come convention season, it’s time to look for games that I would more rarely get an opportunity to play. So I’ve organized all the games I want to play but never actually have into two top-10 lists. Might be fun to revisit this in a few years.
Top 10 adventures I want to play right now
Dungeon #70: Kingdom of the Ghouls—(tenfootpole.org) This is something I have wanted to play since I read it in Dungeon in the ’90s. It is the best example I’ve read of “Underdark as the mythic underworld,” full of weird and creepy encounters that are fresh in my mind after reading them 20+ years ago.
S1: Tomb of Horrors—The original deathtrap funhouse tournament module.
Lair of the Lamb is, like Tomb of the Serpent Kings, an introductory adventure, but organized around teaching the idea that the solution is something you create, not something that’s on your character sheet, rather than the basics of dungeon crawling. Creepy, weird body horror, playable in any system but I guess it’s written for the GLOG.
The Caverns of Thracia (OD&D)—The original version of this is pretty crazy, I think it predates the era when adventures are designed for character level ranges. Read but never played.
DCC #68: People of the Pit—Awesome level-1 adventure for DCC RPG. I’ve run the first few encounters but not much more than that.
Rrypo: Get a Head is ZARDOZ-based adventure compatible with The Ultraviolet Grasslands (a psychedelic heavy metal mashup of Dying Earth and Oregon Trail).
Fever Dreaming Marlinko—Exploring a weird Slavic acid fantasy city. Gonzo. Read but never played.
Broodmother Skyfortress: Weirdo giants descend from a floating city to wreck your precious campaign setting. Not read yet.
The Stygian Library: Exploring a procedurely-generated dark weird-fantasy infernal planer library. I love Emmy Allen’s game commentary, but haven’t actually played any of her games. This seems a little more immediately gameable to me than The Gardens of Ynn. Not read yet.
Old School Essentials (SRD) is the perfect game system for an OSR player that wants to hew to the very familiar play style of old-school D&D with plenty of room for table creativity. It is the rules of Basic D&D, but simplified and reorganized for maximum DM utility and teaching to new players. I am transitioning away from Labyrinth Lord (mostly I need for the COVID-19 pandemic to ease in order to buy physical books) and was also interested in Bloody Basic and others, but after running B/X retroclones for a couple of years, OSE is far superior. It’s not an ersatz of the B/X D&D rules, it actually is the rules, organized and presented in a useful and comprehensible way.
The Petal Hack Big fan of Tékumel worldbuilding, a wild and deeply imagined mix of Mesoamerican and South Asian mythology with science fantasy and sword & sorcery, but the rules sets are a little old-fashioned. The Petal Hack is extremely lightweight, and looks like the perfect way to explore this amazing setting.
Scum & Villany is a Blades-in-the-Dark-based game about pulling off space heists, inspired by Firefly and the Millenium Falcon. The cool thing about this is that the party works together to develop the ship as a character, with its own character sheet.
Troika! Numinous Edition is a wild science fantasy RPG that riffs off the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks more than D&D. Everything looks beautiful and kind of crazy, but it looks like a somewhat different way of engaging imagination, creativity, and narrative than most OSR or storygames.
Trail of Cthulhu is a Lovecraftian horror and investigation game that uses the GUMSHOE framework, which is intended to make mystery and investigation-themed RPGs run more smoothly. I’m a little skeptical that this will actually be satisfying, but I’ve never actually played it out and am interested in trying it with a Cthulhu theme.
The Quiet Year/The Deep Forest is by Avery Alder (the author of Monsterhearts); this is more of a one-session game, where you play out a year in life of an isolated community. It’s more of a novelty, but looks interesting to play at least once.
Maze Rats is a two-page RPG system with a couple extra pages of random tables for character development; it seems ideal for a one-shot session. There’s a really cool mechanic where spellcasters randomly generate their spell titles and must collaborate with the GM to figure out what their spells do, which makes magic both otherworldly, unpredictable, and oriented to creative problem-solving. Things like Five Torches Deep and the Black Hack fill a similar role, but Maze Rats is particularly small and has that cool random spell system. You don’t have classes, what would be class abilities are handled by what equipment you pick up.
Lasers & Feelings is an adorable Star Trek-themed mini-RPG good for a one-shot. I’ve translated it into Klingon (still a WIP), but never actually played, I need to fix that.
FATE is something I’ve only ever played in a jokey, comedic game, but I’ve been assured by random people on the Internet that it’s good for serious Star Trek-themed games, and I’d like to give it another try.
The GLOG isn’t a game system, it’s a manifesto of DIY RPG design that is a hot mess just crawling with ideas.
Modern game design tends to have very uniform and tightly-integrated resolution mechanics. But one of the things I’ve come to love about the rulings-not-rules OSR as well as the baroque mechanics of 1970s/80s (A)D&D is the way that trying to make sense of lots of overlapping and inconsistent rules really empowers the table to make the game their own. It forces GMs to really be the game designer, not just a referee—tabletop RPGs are best when GMs/players aren’t just passively consuming published material, but are making up their own stuff. To that end, these days I’m trying to collect as many resolution mechanic options as possible.
Ability checks—checking whether an action succeeds by rolling under a relevant ability score on a d20—is a resolution mechanic of long pedigree, and I use it all the time in my Labyrinth Lord game. Sometimes you need to do an opposed roll, though, and I’ve never seen anyone try to spell out all the ways to do that. Here’s a stab at it!
Opposed Ability Checks
In some cases, an ability check doesn’t represent a simple success or failure, but a contest between two or more people. This could represent an arm-wrestling competition, a singing or shoving contest, or a skillful card game. Opposed ability checks can be handled in several ways; the GM should determine which method is most appropriate to the situation.
• Simple Comparison: The contestants compare the relevant ability scores and the highest one succeeds. No die roll is made. Any modifiers are applied to the ability score (for the purpose of this contest) before comparison. This is useful for contests which require a swift resolution or which innate ability is more important than chance.
• Modified Ability Check: One contestant rolls a d20, and they receive a bonus or penalty on their ability check equal to 10 minus the opponent’s relevant ability score. In this case, rolling lower is better. For example, a wizard (Strength 8) is arm-wrestling a fighter (Strength 13) and gets a +2 bonus on arm-wrestling checks due to a spell he has devised. The number he must roll under to succeed is 8 + (10 – 13) + 2 = 7. This is most useful when a player character is vying against a single non-player character.
• Highest Roll Wins: Each contestant rolls a d20 and adds their relevant ability score modifier and any other bonus. The contestant with the highest result wins. This is useful for contests of chance where a character’s innate abilities are a minor factor.
• Highest Success Wins: Each contestant makes an ability check, and any who fail are eliminated. The remaining contestants apply any other circumstance bonuses or penalties to their roll, and compare results. The contestant with the highest modified roll wins. This is useful for contests that are a balance between chance and innate ability.
• Highest Margin of Success Wins: Each contestant rolls d20, subtracts the result from their relevant ability score, and adds any other bonuses or penalties to the sum. The character with the highest modified score wins. For example, a thief with a Dexterity of 14 and a circumstance bonus of +2 rolls an 8. The thief’s margin of success is 14 – 8 + 2 = 9. In this case, rolling lower is better.
Trying to wrap my head around how many Star Trek RPGs exist. There are fan supplements for Savage Worlds, science fiction RPGs like the Cypher System (which was boring the only time I played it), and then there’s the Traveller RPG, which (with multiple editions, publishers, and retroclones) I really don’t know where to start with. Here’s a list of officially licensed Star Trek RPGs and some comments on miscellaneous science fiction RPGs that may work for the theme:
Licensed Star Trek RPGs
Heritage Models’ Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier (1978)
Star Trek Roleplaying Game (Decipher)
Decipher published licensed Star Trek RPGs from 2002 to 2005, featuring material from The Original Series through Voyager. I’ve only seen the Creatures book, and the stat blocks are clearly quite differentfrom a lot of D&D-style RPGs, but it also has a lot of good writing about running an episodic and cinematic game. It has some good reference books, but it’s extremely out of print and not available in PDF. This shows the pitfalls of running a licensed-property game that it not an open game: it is almost impossible to find accessible reference materials for this game online. These days I run games from electronic system reference documents, PDFs, and community material as well as the hardback reference books, but this is simply not available for this system. Even the print reference books are limited to what’s available on the used market, and getting copies for each player would not be cheap.
Star Trek Adventures (Modiphius)
Modiphius published a licensed Star Trek RPG from 2017 to the present, using the 2d20 system that is used for Conan, John Carter, and other RPGs. My understanding is that this kind of system lets players “buy” successes; this is supposed to be “heroic” in the case of Conan and John Carter due to their superhuman abilities, or (I suppose in the case of Star Trek) due to the power of far future technology. Generally I have found games with mechanics like this to have a low level of danger and be kind of boring, although I haven’t played this system. With a PDF available on DriveThruRPG.com, it’s more openly available than the out-of-print games, but it still has a fairly high buy-in price at $40+ for full-color, full-art hardcover book, or $25 for the Starter Set. There’s also a free Quickstart Guide. Modiphius has to be commended, however, for publishing a series of high-quality, 30mm miniatures for nearly all of the major factions. There are unlicensed miniatures out there, but they can be expensive and hard to find, whereas these are relatively cheap and available on Amazon.com. Modiphius’s miniatures are very attractive, but 30mm is out of scale with the 25mm and 28mm miniatures more commonly used in gaming. Maybe that’s OK, because so many 28mm figures are not true to scale either.
Fate Core
Some people run Star Trek-themed games in this. To me it seems tonally at odds with Star Trek. It might be great for a Galaxy Quest RPG, however, or a The Orville RPG. The Atomic Robo RPG is designed to support action science RPing, and is said to have rules for brainstorming your way out of problems. Diaspora is a Fate-based RPG for hard science fiction that won an Ennie for best rules in 2010 (review at RPG.net). Mostly I see Fate used in more gonzo and comedic settings than more serious ones.
Uncharted Worlds
This is a game of space exploration using the Powered by the Apocalypse engine. I haven’t read this game in particular, but I am not a huge fan of PbtA relative to OSR games—I think there is too little real danger or mystery. Mazirian’s Garden has made some great points comparing and contrasting the PbtA and OSR in developing emergent story and open worlds, and I generally prefer the OSR approach.
White Star RPG
White Star is an OSR science fiction RPG written by James M. Spahn and based on the Swords & Wizardry retroclone. It has lot of material to support the major scifi IPs, but with the trademarked elements aggressively filed off. For example, instead of Jedi and Sith, there are Star Knights and Void Knights. White Star takes a lot of its cues from Star Wars-style space opera, as can be seen in its classes (Aristocrat, Mercenary, Pilot, Star Knight), races (Alien Brute, Alien Mystic, and Robot), and starship classes. However, it does have rules to support elements of Star Trek (such as cloaked starships and species resembling Borg and Klingons), Doctor Who (with as a species resembling daleks), or Firefly (with a species resembling the Reavers). The rules themselves will be straightforward to anyone who plays D&D or OSR RPGs: characters are defined by classes that specify attacks, hit points, and abilities, but there is no skill system per se. The lack of a skill system makes a certain amount of sense for a swashbuckling space opera game. The text discusses character classes, equipment, personal combat, starship combat, psionics, and alien creatures. There is also a section of campaign ideas, a sample sector to explore, and a sample adventure. Starship combat here is not very elaborate, with AC and hit points as in melee
combat.
Lasers & Feelings
This is a lovely one-page RPG inspired by nerd-folk band The Doubleclicks. It has extremely simple mechanics—each character has only one statistic for event resolution—but enough depth to support one or a few sessions of play, which is perfect for a one-shot scenario or a new group. After a few sessions, the group will probably want a more complex system, but it would be a lot of fun to play this occasionally.
Prime Directive d20 Modern
This is the most recent RPG published in the licensed Star Fleet Universe, which is a licensed Star Trek setting somewhat different from canonical Star Trek. Back in 1979, the company acquired perpetual rights to publish games based on Star Trek: The Original Series and The Animated Series (but not later material), and since the game world has been under continual development for forty years it has diverged from Star Trek canon in that time. Prime Directive PD20 Modern is the ruleset based on d20 Modern, and so is related to 3E D&D; it should very familiar to 3E D&D, but omits most of the tactical grid movement elements. The text details more than 24 species, several character classes (Marine, Orion Pirate, Pilot, Rogue, Security Specialist, Engineering Specialist, Science Specialist, Bridge Operations Specialist, Galactic Intelligence Agent, Medical Specialist, Ambassador, Merchant, and prestige classes), skills, feats, technology and equipment, the Star Fleet Universe setting, and a sample adventure. There is a discussion of integrating the Star Fleet Battles game for starship combat, and using an abstract system for more trivial starship engagements is briefly discussed.
Mothership RPG
Mothership is an OSR space horror game that in 2019 won a Gold Ennie for Best Game and a Silver Ennie for Best Adventure. The system is not immediately analogous to D&D games, but it is an OSR game, and character creation should be fairly streamlined. There are mechanics for accounting for the stress that characters are under in tense situations, which fits with its horror theme.
Although this game takes more of its cues from “Alien”, it might be a really interesting game to run with a Star Trek theme—perhaps in the Star Trek: Discovery era.
Scum & VillainyRPG
This is a version of the Blades in the Dark RPG about space smugglers and scoundrels. Whereas Blades in the Dark is about a gang of thieves pulling off heists, Scum & Villainy is about a starship crew pulling off capers. The inspiration here is clearly more Firefly and Star Wars than very much of Star Trek, but it does have some interesting ideas for a space opera RPG. For example, the ship is a “character” that the players collaborate to design at the beginning of the game.
Ashen Stars RPG
This is a version of the GUMSHOE investigation-based RPG set in an original science fiction universe and focused on the adventures of a band of freelance troubleshooters. The implied setting is very cyberpunk-in-space, but the investigation focus might be interesting.
Stars Without Number RPG
This is a relatively simulationist game that seems like a simplified, space-ified version of the d20 Modern RPG—the rules seem a lot busier and more granular than is my taste these days, although it was the norm a decade ago. Characters are made with classes, skills, backgrounds, and foci (like feats). Alien characters are handled with an “origin focus”, which is an interesting way to do this. The skill system is fairly extensive, but there are relatively few roleplaying skills (a plus for me, since the players and not the characters should be doing the roleplaying IMO). This game’s extensive equipment lists tie it fairly closely to its default setting, a world circa 3200 CE, “…almost six hundred years after the catastrophe that ended the Golden Age of Man…”, in which “…the sprawling, glorious domain of human space has been reduced to a scattering of squabbling powers and long-lost worlds” (121). One area where this book really shines, however, is in its rules for creating an populating a sector of space ripe for adventure. This consists of more than 40 pages of simple tables and explanatory text for generating interesting, varied worlds to explore. This is a great resource for a sandbox space exploration campaign that would suit Star Trek; the sandbox world generation rules are fairly portable, and could be used with another RPG system. There is also a good amount of solid GM advice on adventure creation and factions, which is elaborated into a mini-game. The last half of this book is an amazing GM resource, even if the player-level game itself seems fussy.
Far Trek RPG
This is an expansion of Where No Man Has Gone Before, an 8-page spin of Microlite d20, themed around Star Trek: The Original Series and The Animated Series. It is a free, noncommercial (unlicensed) fan work available only in PDF. Thus is it technically a distant descendant of 3E D&D via the OGL. Thematically it’s based around The Original Series, which has a more “action captain” and ’50s pulp SF aesthetic. This is wonderful: action-oriented ’50s pulp SF probably fits a role-playing game (and an RPG-playing community accustomed to D&D) more than later iterations of Trek.
As a Microlite d20 game, Far Trek has simple, clean mechanics generally familiar to D&D players, but this book a lot of great ideas for a Star Trek-specific theme. Whereas most d20-based games roll a d20 and get higher than a target number to succeed at a task, Far Trek has players roll 3d6; this results in a very tight range of target numbers with few modifiers to stack. In Far Trek, characters do not have hit points or deal damage with successful attacks. Instead, when hit with an attack, a character must make the equivalent of a saving throw or be knocked out. The target number for this saving throw escalates with more dangerous weaponry as well as the length of the fight—a punch will rarely knock a person out on the first round, but several rounds in it’s likely to. Characters who are knocked out will rarely actually die, given transporter technology and the advanced medical care available in the future. This is extremely simple, clean, and thematic, while maintaining a high danger level.
The GM resources in this book for generation a space-sector sandbox for adventures is second only to Stars Without Number (above); again, this material is not system-specific.. There are pages of useful tables and charts for generating star systems and episodes, and some good advice for organizing adventures into episodes and seasons. There’s also a small bestiary with most of the classics (Denebian slime devil, tribbles, mugato, sehlat, Kzin). However, the system for handling starship combat seems a little half-baked. Some of this ruleset’s ideas are a little corny, like naming the classes by their shirt color (Yellow, Blue, Red) rather than specialty (Command, Medical, Engineering, Security), and some ideas are half-developed and require elaboration by the GM, but overall this is an excellent Star Trek-themed RPG.
This RPG is almost perfect for Star Trek. Would I change anything? You could make character creation even simpler, more customizable, and more varied by removing official classes and races entirely and just creating a category of “species talents”. A player would need to name and describe their character’s species, of course, and role-play some cultural background. Not all members of a species would come out the same, mechanically, but that should be fine: planets are not uniform, and maybe a character comes from the tropical paradise of their snowy tundra world, or vice-versa. This would address any racist connotations of RPG “races”. Moreover, removing the IP-dependence of the system encourages players to contribute to the game’s worldbuilding (since the species definitions are player-generated), and a player could make an authentically “Klingon” character without needing to buy a licensed Klingon supplement. You could do the same with classes also; remove the shirt-color designation and make each class a simple Role (Command, Medical, Engineering, Tactical) with some suggested skills rather than class-based skill restrictions. Character customization would be more about picking talents than class-specific options, allowing characters differentiation to grow organically. This would be simpler, with most of the virtues of a lightweight OSR game, but with much more character customization.
Starships and Spacemen 2E
This RPG updates a 1970s-era Star Trek-themed RPG and board game to create compatibility, with Labyrinth Lord, which is my favorite retro-clone of Basic D&D. It creates a fairly simulationist race/class game with recognizable-but-renamed Star Trek species (“Taurians” instead of “Vulcans”) but presents a timeline and set of interstellar relationships substantially different from Star Trek canon. There are some rules for enerating your own species, including a delightful d100 chart of alien foreheads. S&S adds a very light roll-under skills system, with just five skills (Combat, Contact, Technical, and Science), as well as some psionics rules. There are some rules for space travel and starship combat that revolve around tracking energy units, and integration with the Star Explorer board game. There is also a system for generating hex-based sandbox galactic sectors for exploration, but these are much less interesting than in Stars Without Number. Overall this seems to be a very servicable ruleset, and it’s probably what I would run if I weren’t so taken by the combat system of Far Trek, the simplicity of Lasers & Feelings, or the sandbox generation of Stars Without Number.
Back in the early 19th century, the backwoods pioneers of Kentucky and the Ohio River were commonly described as “half horse and half alligator” for their fierceness and woods lore. Here’s the War-of-1812 song “The Hunters of Kentucky”: “We’ll show [the foe] that Kentucky boys/Are alligator horses.” Here’s Mike Fink a-braggin’: “”I’m chockful o’ fight! I’m half wild horse and half cockeyed-alligator and the rest o’ me is crooked snags an’ red hot snappin’ turtle[!]”
How colorful is that!? Half the monsters of D&D are heraldic beasts come to life, and what better heraldic beast for the Appalachian backwoods and Ohiana than a creature that’s half horse and half alligator. It reminds me a bit of the erect crocodylomorphs from the Late Triassic, like Postosuchus (from North Carolina) and the Rauisuchidae.
Keep in mind, though, these Kentucky pioneers were a group of settlers all hot and ready to march into Indiana up to Prophetstown and fight Tecumseh—this is the political constituency for indian removal.
So here’s some game stats for Labyrinth Lord. They are slower than horses on open ground, but faster through rivers and swampy backcountry, and far more expensive to feed.
Gatormount
No. Enc. 0 (1d8)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 120′ (40′)
Swim: 90′ (30′)
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 3
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d8
Save: F2
Morale: 7
Hoard Class: None
XP: 50
The gatormount is a chivalric beast of the river folk, and has the body of a horse and the head, scales, feet, and tail of an alligator. They stand 6 feet tall at the shoulder and weigh about 1,500 pounds. These fearsome creatures are trained as combat mounts by some river folk, and such gatormounts have a morale of 9. Gatormounts hunt near water in swamps, plains or forests, although females gather to build nesting mounds in swamps or marshes in the spring.
There were a couple of different combat systems that are said to be used in the first plays of what became Dungeons & Dragons, and it’s often noted that the first combat systems used—at least for a session or two!—were from Chainmail: Rules for Medieval Miniatures by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren. Here I’ll be going through basic combat in Chainmail (and later OD&D) to see how it worked. I’m looking at a PDF of the 7th printing (April 1979) of the 3rd edition of the rules (copyright 1975).
These rules were developed to use Elastolin and Starlux 40mm miniatures, as well as Airfix Robin Hood and Sherriff of Nottingham (recently reissued by HaT) 25mm miniatures. They assume a ratio of 1:20 figures:men and a groundscale where 1 inch equals 10 yards. For smaller figures it is reduced to 1:10.
Interestingly, Chainmail allows both alternating turns and simultaneous turns (where players secretly write down orders before turns are resolved). A turn consists of initiative, the first move (including split-moves, missile fire, and taking any pass-through missile fire), the second move (including split-moves, missile fire, and taking any pass-through missile fire), artillery fire, missile fire, and resolving melee.
Here we’ll assume that, since this is “how to kill a goblin,” the humans are the aggressor.
Mass Combat
Vanilla Chainmail has no goblins—you’re thinking of the fantasy supplement!—so we’ll assume this initial melee concerns a band of human brigands rather than goblins. Fighting forces are categorized by unit type (Armored Foot, Landsknechte/Swiss, Arquibusiers/Crossbowmen, Heavy Horse, Medium Horse, Light Horse, &c), and armor level (Unarmored, 1/2 Armor or Shield, and Fully Armored). A contemporary experienced historical miniatures wargamer, should know what level of armor each troop type is supposed to have. It’s probably there in the Osprey Publishing books that you consulted when researching this era to accurately paint your miniatures. Chainmail has little to say about this directly, although it’s probably obvious which of the figures in your Elastolin collections are Vikings or Turks.
Brigands are possibly best represented in Chainmail as a unit of Light Foot/Archers (Move 9, Road Bonus —, Charge Move 12, Missile Range 15). Possibly the closest thing to the standard low-level D&D fighter in chainmail is Heavy Foot (Move 9, Road Bonus —, Charge Move 12, Missile Range 3*)—their ranged attack is equivalent to Viking or Saxon throwing axes and spears, while Armored Foot is much slower. Heavy Foot is later described to include Normans, Saxons, Turks, Vikings, Men-at-Arms, while Armored Foot includes Dismounted Knights, Sergeants, Italian City Levies, and Condottiere.
So, a single figure of Light Foot/Archers is atop a hill, to represent Team Brigand. A single figure of Heavy Foot (Team Adventurer) advances up the hill toward the brigands. They are armed with halberds. Team Brigand can attempt arrow fire against the advancing Heavy Foot, but the Missile Fire table is heavily oriented toward mass combat. The Missile Fire table uses a single d6 roll compared against the number of attacking missile troops and the armor level of the defenders—a single unit of archers can’t generate enough arrowfire to take down half-armored troops.
Team Adventurer can march up to Team Brigand. This is a mass combat game,and not designed for single figures: according to the Combat Tables, both Light Foot attacking Heavy Foot and Heavy Foot attacking Light Foot roll one less die than the number of figures attacking. Team Brigand would roll 0 attacking dice (d6), which kill on a 6. Team Adventurer is armed with halberds, however, and so gets one additional die when attacking, and kills Light Foot on a 5 or 6. Team Adventurer rolls a 2, so they do not kill Team Brigand. Both sides check morale by multiplying the number of surviving figures by a morale factor specific to their class (4 for Light Foot, 5 for Heavy Foot) and doubles the value since there are less than 20 figures per side. Since the total is less than 19, the melee simply continues (without the side with lower morale being forced to move back, retreat, rout, or surrender). On the next turn, Team Adventurer rolls a 5 and scores a kill on Team Brigand.
Man-To-Man Combat
The man-to-man combat rules are of course much more appropriate for this scenario. In man-to-man combat, the missile tables are identical to mass combat (so Team Brigand still can’t kill Team Adventurer with arrowfire). However, some things are a little different—attacker and defender simply trade blows until one is slain, and roll 2d6 for attacks rather than 1d6—and initiative is determined by what weapons are being used. Let’s say Adventurer is wearing chainmail and a shield, and fighting with a flail, while Brigand is wearing leather armor and fighting with a battle axe.
Adventurer is the attacker, so they would attack attack first, which is doubly true since a flail is two ranks higher than a battle axe. A figure with a flail must roll 7 or higher on 2d6 to kill a figure in leather armor, and Adventurer rolls an 8. Since the battle axe is ranked slightly lower than the flail, Brigand can elect to parry; this subtracts two from the attacker’s roll, making it a miss, but Brigand doesn’t get his counterblow on this round.
On the second round, the attacker would go first, except that a battle axe is ranked two lower than the flail, so instead Brigand goes first. A figure wielding a battleaxe needs to roll a 7 or higher to kill a figure in chain mail. Brigand rolls a 6 on 2d6, which is lucky for Adventurer, since a flail can’t be used to parry a battle axe. Adventurer gets his counterblow and rolls a 10, killing Brigand.
This is certainly more suitable for use as the combat system of an RPG—if you’re willing to tolerate extremely high levels of character death!
Fantasy Supplement
Reading the fantasy supplement is a fascinating look at original, implicit setting of D&D. Ogres are halfway between men and giants, whereas trolls are explicitly the regenerating monsters from Three Hearts and Three Lions. A fireball spell is equivalent to a catapult shot, whereas a lightning bolt is equivalent to an attack from a ballista. Many of the distinctive D&D spells and monsters are here, like cloudkill and phantasmal force.
But these are definitely mass combat rules. Goblin and kobold units have identical statistics (Move 6″, Ability to see in normal darkness as if it were light, Charge 9″, Fly —, Range —, Attack as Heavy Foot, Defend as Light Foot). Combat otherwise proceeds as in mass combat: the two combatants need to attack in a group to have a chance to score hits, unless they are armed with halberds. Heroes, however, are extremely powerful (Move 12″ (18″), Ability to raise morale of friendly troops, Charge 15″ (24″), Fly —, Range 18″, Attack and Defend as four men of the appropriate unit type depending on armor and situation). Thus a Hero in chainmail with ordinary weapons would roll three combat dice to attack, and would have to suffer four hits on a single turn to be destroyed. Superheroes are even better, since they attack and defend as eight men—they’re a one-man army.
However, certain monsters (Dragons, Elementals, Treants, Giants, Heroes, Lycanthropes, Rocs, Super Heroes, Trolls, Ogres, Wights, Ghouls, Wizards, and Wraiths) use a variant of the man-to-man combat rules when fighting each other. The attacker rolls 2d6 (instead of 1d6) for the attack, and the Fantasy Combat Table records what target they need to hit. For example, a Hero attacking a Troll or Ogre needs to roll a 9 or higher, whereas a Troll or Ogre fighting a Hero needs to roll an 8 or better. If the attacker rolls under, there is no effect; if they roll the target number exactly the defender must fall back back one move, and if they roll over, then the defender is killed. The creatures differ widely in power levels. A Hero cannot kill a Dragon (unless perhaps he has a magic sword), but a Super Hero has a small chance of it. The strongest monsters are Dragons, followed by Wizards and Giants, then Super Heroes and Elementals.
Jousting!
The Chainmail rules for jousts, in the man-to-man combat section, are amazing. This is essentially a mini-game that adjucates a jousting match in a single page and a half of rules, and which takes just moments. You could run a whole tourney in 15-20 minutes.
What’s great about these jousting rules is that it’s based on simultaneous action selection and wholly deterministic. Players secretly choose an aiming point and defensive position, and simultaneously reveal their choices. The results are given on the Jousting Matrix, and one or both players may break their lance, have their blow glance off, knock off their opponent’s helm, injure the opponent, miss outright, or unhorse their opponent—or some combination of them. The two opponents conduct rides until one or both are unhorsed or they complete three rides, and score the results.
So for example, say the Knight Errant is jousting the Goblin Knight. On the first ride, the Knight Errant aims for the sinister chief of the shield and sits shield low, while the Goblin Knight aims for the dexter chief of the shield and sits shield high—the Knight Errant deals a glancing blow and the Goblin Knight simply misses. On the second ride, the Knight Errant aims sinister chief and sits shield low, while the Goblin Knight aims dexter chief and sits leaning left—the Knight Errant breaks his lance and the Goblin Knight misses. On the third ride,the Knight Errant aims for the fess pale of the shield and must sit steady seat (since he broke his lance), while the Goblin Knight (knowing his opponent must sit steady seat) aims fess pale and sits shield high—the Knight Errant breaks his lance and is unhorsed, and the Goblin Knight breaks his lance and is unhorsed and injured. The Knight Errant scores 18 points (+20 for unhorsing the opponent, -2 for breaking his lance twice) and the Goblin Knight scores 9 points (+20 for unhorsing, -1 for breaking his lance, and -10 for being injured).
Overall, it’s extremely quick, thematic, and tells a story. It plays sort of like a baroque double game of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock. This is a little awkward with just the tables, but would be awesome as a miniature card game.
Gary Gygax expanded this for AD&D in Dragon #17 with a one-page article describing how to account for the relative level of the jousters and any magic arms and armor. The aim points and sitting positions are the same, but are cross-referenced to generate a numeric modifier. The jousters add modifiers for magic lances and shields, a modifier based on their difference in level, and add these to the result of d20 rolls. Depending on the value, they may unhorse their opponent, break their lance, or deal a glancing blow; there is a percentage chance of injury, depending on whether the defender is unhorsed or loses his helm. This is a lot more complicated to resolve, and it appears to be the result of high-level AD&D players complaining about losing jousts ;)
One thing I’m working on is making NPCs more vivid, memorable, and plot-hookier. Not only does this make the world more interesting, but giving the NPCs more plot hooks gives the players more agency. “Everybody has their own story,” I thought, “and problems they can’t solve”—and then happened upon the Wikipedia page for The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations.
Now, not all of these are appropriate for a fantasy or sword-and-sorcery RPG campaign. For example, the myth of Oedipus is certainly dramatic, but is tonally quite at odds with most sword & sorcery ;) and also probably requires a content warning/discussion and some RPG safety tools ;) OTOH, there are dramatic situations where NPCs and PCs could fill differing roles. There are a lot of romantic plots here that won’t interest some people, and some things are to be used with caution, if at all (“two adulterers are conspiring to murder a spouse”, lol), but at the least this chart fronts some less-common backstories for NPCs.
How to roll d36? There is no d36, but there are senary dice, if you use a 6 for a 0. Roll 1d6 for the tens column and 1d6 for the ones column.
Table: d36 Plots & Dramatic Situations
d6
d6
NPC…
6
1
needs help appealing to an official for relief from a persecutor.
6
2
will need help to avoid justice for a wrong they did committed.
6
3
will soon escape justice for a wrong they committed.
6
4
seeks vengeance on a relative for a wrong committed against kin.
6
5
is fleeing vengeance by kin for a wrong committed against a relative.
1
6
is a fugitive from wrongful punishment.
1
1
rightly fears a disaster will befall their patron or faction.
1
2
is beset by unremitting misfortune and woe.
1
3
is plotting rebellion.
1
4
seeks to thwart a conspiracy against the rightful authority.
1
5
will be the target of a coup attempt within their sphere of influence.
2
6
has a quest for a special object, but which requires defeating a powerful adversary.
2
1
is plotting the abduction of someone from their guardian.
2
2
is guarding someone they fear may be abducted.
2
3
has a riddle to solve.
2
4
needs an arbitrator to determine whether they—or their adversary—should receive something of value.
2
5
is conspiring with kin that they hate.
3
6
is the rival of a relative for the affection of one they both love.
3
1
is conspiring with their lover to murder their spouse.
3
2
is in a cycle of madness escalating toward wrongdoing.
3
3
has lost something important through ignorance or neglect.
3
4
has unknowingly slain a relative.
3
5
must make a terrible sacrifice for their ideals or family.
4
6
will soon lose their lover despite making a terrible sacrifice.
4
1
is vying with a rival to acquire an object.
4
2
is conspiring with their adulterous lover against their spouse.
4
3
suspects their cheating spouse is conspiring with a lover against them.
4
4
is in a secret and taboo relationship.
4
5
suspects a villain of dishonoring their beloved.
5
6
is facing a challenge alongside their lover.
5
1
is secretly in love with an enemy that their ally openly hates.
5
2
openly hates an enemy that their ally secretly is in love with.
5
3
is contending with a deity.
5
4
seeks to thwart any investigation into how they have wronged someone else.
panglott 