I like light systems, and I cannot lie. Sunday I moved all of my comics and games out of the storage unit where they’ve been for the last month. One of the things that unpacking and organizing all of these boxes of games has pointed out to me is how much I have changed as a gamer over the years. Looking at my shelf of GURPS boxes as I arranged them in their new home reaffirmed my preference nowadays for lighter games systems.It doesn’t take away all the fun that I had over the years with these games, and I might revisit those games someday, but for now my eye has wandered to the lighter end of the gaming spectrum.
As I have mentioned, our group tends towards shorter campaigns with story arcs, so I am often on the outlook for new games for us to play. Rather than fitting what I want to do in a campaign into an existing game, I prefer to find the rules that fit the campaign that I want to run. Today I am going to talk about three games that I have been looking at lately. The first two Into The Odd and Beyond The Wall And Other Adventures are both games that I picked up via various bundles at the Bundle of Holding website. Whitehack 2nd edition was a gift from a fan of my blog who thought that I would like it (spoiler alert: I did).
Let’s talk about Into the Odd first, written by Chris McDowall and published by Paolo Greco’s Lost Pages. I’m starting with Into The Odd because it is the shortest game. Including the cover, the PDF is only 48 pages, but they are 48 pages that are packed with a punch that many longer, crunchier RPGs don’t have. In those 48 pages you get a complete character creation system, task resolution and GMing tips. Also, as is popular in the DIY D&D movement, you get a number of charts and tables that can be used to flesh out a game’s setting, NPCs and monsters. This is how McDowall manages to pack so much into so few pages.
Don’t be confused that this is an attempt at a retroclones, or a simplified D&D. Into The Odd has its own system, and while the inspirations from D&D are there in some of the underlying resolution mechanics this isn’t another rehash of rules under the OGL. Here’s the thing that will probably blow the minds of many reading this: you don’t roll for attacks in Into The Odd. Attacks are assumed to succeed, and the randomness comes in when you are determining damage for your attack. Oh, no, not “autosuccesses” again! Do I think that this is good for all games? No, but the idea is a fun one to explore, and makes me want to try the game out.
Like in my piece about Gumshoe, the idea of the autosuccess is to speed up a part of the game that the designer felt was lagging, in this case combat. Into The Odd assumes a level of competency that means that the characters are badasses who often succeed at what they are doing.
I came to Into The Odd for the weird fantasy, and stayed for the interesting mechanics. For many games, “weird fantasy” is defined as a mix of fantasy and horror. Into The Odd is a weird game, from the art to the implied setting of the game. One of the places that the weirdness comes out in Into The Odd is the Arcana. Arcana in this game is somewhere between spells in a standard fantasy game and Cyphers from Cypher System games. Purely “defensive” Arcana can also change up how combat will work at times.
Like in an OD&D game, Arcana are a mix of weird items, scrolls and artifacts that have ended up in the path of the characters. Like in games like Numenera and The Strange, these things are sometimes the debris from strange places, and the Arcana can also hint at the larger world outside of the character’s adventures.
Not everyone is going to get into Into The Odd’s approach to mechanics, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But for people who want a pick-up game to fill in those nights when a regular game doesn’t happen, or for those who like games that get out of the way of role-playing opportunities, you should check out Into The Odd.
There’s also Odditional Material, a supplement of fanmade material in PDF form.
Whitehack is an OGL game, based off of Matt Finch’s Swords & Wizardry Whitebox rules. Designed by Christian Mehrstam, is another slim tome at 64 pages. Whitehack is different from the other two games in this review in that it is only available in print form from Lulu.com. Combat works like in traditional games, as do many of the mechanics.
Instead of the traditional classes, Whitehack instead uses three generic classes that you can then customize: The Strong, The Deft and The Wise. These classes work around classic fantasy archetypes and can be used to generate equivalents to most of the characters that people might want to play. Magic is player-generated and called “Miracles.” There are no spell lists to read over or memorize, which means that magic in a game of Whitehack is not only a personalized thing for spellcasting characters but it also means that magic will be unique to the setting that you play in as a group. This goes a long way towards creating a more wonderous feel in your games.
If you want something closer to more traditional approaches to magic, the rules do talk about that, but I think doing that takes away some of the purpose of the game.
One of the interesting innovations in Whitehack is what Mehrstam calls Rare Character Classes. These are classes that are unlocked through play, and give more variety to the character options in the game. When a character dies, when the player makes a new character they have a couple of choices in that they can start again with a “base” class or pick one of the rare ones. The rare classes are The Brave and The Fortunate. The Brave is the underdog character, someone who can overcome the odds in the face of adversity. The Fortunate is like a noble, someone with privileges that other characters won’t, and can’t, have.
If you’re familiar with Sword & Wizardry Whitebox, you’ll know that it is a clone of the three original D&D booklets created from the open content of the D20 SRD. Whitehack then “hacks” a more modern sensibility into those rules. If you’re looking for a game with the simplicity of the old school (and that can use a lot of older modules and adventures with little effort) but that is reworked with a more modern sensibility, then Whitehack might be the game that you’re looking for. I think that it is a cleanly designed system that is robust, and manages to bring across that robustness in a simple manner. If those are the things that you would look for in a game, then I suggest that you check out Whitehack as well.
Beyond The Wall And Other Adventures is short, but it is still probably the most “traditional” of the games in this piece. It is also the one that I would probably have to change the most to play it.
The base character classes: the Warrior, Mage and Rogue all follow the expectations from a game derived from the D20 SRD. I wouldn’t call Beyond The Wall as much of an old school game as it is a simplification of the D&D 3e rules. There are no feats, and skills are streamlined, but there is still more of new D&D than old in these rules. Characters have a lot more hit points than in older versions of the rules. This is, of course, a selling point for me. I like characters that aren’t fragile.
My main issue with the game is the lack of consistent dice rolling. Some rolls are "roll high," others are "roll low." I am of the school (unless I am playing Rifts) that I like a unified roll system, where all the rolls work in the same manner. It is easy to fix this, though, if you prefer a unified system.
The way that Beyond The Wall is similar to older editions is that magic is more limited than in more recent editions of D&D. I like worlds that are rich in magic, like Into The Odd, and games that reflect that. When I say “rich in magic,” I don’t mean pages and pages of spells and spell-like effects. The important thing is to not make magic mundane, while making it easy to access. This is a tight rope that a lot of designers walk in their games, and it isn’t easy to keep from falling over on to one side or the other. I think that Beyond The Wall manages to walk that tightrope.
Like the other fantasy games in this review, Beyond The Wall is a robust game that accomplishes what it wants to do without wasting a lot of time or page count. This game is best suited for those who want a lighter gaming experience, but aren’t ready to commit to games as light as Into The Odd or Whitehack, but if you’re looking to explore the lighter side of fantasy gaming it is a good place to start.
We’re in a golden age for gaming these days. Between the big companies making the big box games, the small press companies doing the boutique games and the self-publishers making their hobby efforts, there are so many games out there for role-players, regardless of their interests and play styles.
As I have mentioned, our group tends towards shorter campaigns with story arcs, so I am often on the outlook for new games for us to play. Rather than fitting what I want to do in a campaign into an existing game, I prefer to find the rules that fit the campaign that I want to run. Today I am going to talk about three games that I have been looking at lately. The first two Into The Odd and Beyond The Wall And Other Adventures are both games that I picked up via various bundles at the Bundle of Holding website. Whitehack 2nd edition was a gift from a fan of my blog who thought that I would like it (spoiler alert: I did).
Let’s talk about Into the Odd first, written by Chris McDowall and published by Paolo Greco’s Lost Pages. I’m starting with Into The Odd because it is the shortest game. Including the cover, the PDF is only 48 pages, but they are 48 pages that are packed with a punch that many longer, crunchier RPGs don’t have. In those 48 pages you get a complete character creation system, task resolution and GMing tips. Also, as is popular in the DIY D&D movement, you get a number of charts and tables that can be used to flesh out a game’s setting, NPCs and monsters. This is how McDowall manages to pack so much into so few pages.
Don’t be confused that this is an attempt at a retroclones, or a simplified D&D. Into The Odd has its own system, and while the inspirations from D&D are there in some of the underlying resolution mechanics this isn’t another rehash of rules under the OGL. Here’s the thing that will probably blow the minds of many reading this: you don’t roll for attacks in Into The Odd. Attacks are assumed to succeed, and the randomness comes in when you are determining damage for your attack. Oh, no, not “autosuccesses” again! Do I think that this is good for all games? No, but the idea is a fun one to explore, and makes me want to try the game out.
Like in my piece about Gumshoe, the idea of the autosuccess is to speed up a part of the game that the designer felt was lagging, in this case combat. Into The Odd assumes a level of competency that means that the characters are badasses who often succeed at what they are doing.
I came to Into The Odd for the weird fantasy, and stayed for the interesting mechanics. For many games, “weird fantasy” is defined as a mix of fantasy and horror. Into The Odd is a weird game, from the art to the implied setting of the game. One of the places that the weirdness comes out in Into The Odd is the Arcana. Arcana in this game is somewhere between spells in a standard fantasy game and Cyphers from Cypher System games. Purely “defensive” Arcana can also change up how combat will work at times.
Like in an OD&D game, Arcana are a mix of weird items, scrolls and artifacts that have ended up in the path of the characters. Like in games like Numenera and The Strange, these things are sometimes the debris from strange places, and the Arcana can also hint at the larger world outside of the character’s adventures.
Not everyone is going to get into Into The Odd’s approach to mechanics, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But for people who want a pick-up game to fill in those nights when a regular game doesn’t happen, or for those who like games that get out of the way of role-playing opportunities, you should check out Into The Odd.
There’s also Odditional Material, a supplement of fanmade material in PDF form.
Whitehack is an OGL game, based off of Matt Finch’s Swords & Wizardry Whitebox rules. Designed by Christian Mehrstam, is another slim tome at 64 pages. Whitehack is different from the other two games in this review in that it is only available in print form from Lulu.com. Combat works like in traditional games, as do many of the mechanics.
Instead of the traditional classes, Whitehack instead uses three generic classes that you can then customize: The Strong, The Deft and The Wise. These classes work around classic fantasy archetypes and can be used to generate equivalents to most of the characters that people might want to play. Magic is player-generated and called “Miracles.” There are no spell lists to read over or memorize, which means that magic in a game of Whitehack is not only a personalized thing for spellcasting characters but it also means that magic will be unique to the setting that you play in as a group. This goes a long way towards creating a more wonderous feel in your games.
If you want something closer to more traditional approaches to magic, the rules do talk about that, but I think doing that takes away some of the purpose of the game.
One of the interesting innovations in Whitehack is what Mehrstam calls Rare Character Classes. These are classes that are unlocked through play, and give more variety to the character options in the game. When a character dies, when the player makes a new character they have a couple of choices in that they can start again with a “base” class or pick one of the rare ones. The rare classes are The Brave and The Fortunate. The Brave is the underdog character, someone who can overcome the odds in the face of adversity. The Fortunate is like a noble, someone with privileges that other characters won’t, and can’t, have.
If you’re familiar with Sword & Wizardry Whitebox, you’ll know that it is a clone of the three original D&D booklets created from the open content of the D20 SRD. Whitehack then “hacks” a more modern sensibility into those rules. If you’re looking for a game with the simplicity of the old school (and that can use a lot of older modules and adventures with little effort) but that is reworked with a more modern sensibility, then Whitehack might be the game that you’re looking for. I think that it is a cleanly designed system that is robust, and manages to bring across that robustness in a simple manner. If those are the things that you would look for in a game, then I suggest that you check out Whitehack as well.
Beyond The Wall And Other Adventures is short, but it is still probably the most “traditional” of the games in this piece. It is also the one that I would probably have to change the most to play it.
The base character classes: the Warrior, Mage and Rogue all follow the expectations from a game derived from the D20 SRD. I wouldn’t call Beyond The Wall as much of an old school game as it is a simplification of the D&D 3e rules. There are no feats, and skills are streamlined, but there is still more of new D&D than old in these rules. Characters have a lot more hit points than in older versions of the rules. This is, of course, a selling point for me. I like characters that aren’t fragile.
My main issue with the game is the lack of consistent dice rolling. Some rolls are "roll high," others are "roll low." I am of the school (unless I am playing Rifts) that I like a unified roll system, where all the rolls work in the same manner. It is easy to fix this, though, if you prefer a unified system.
The way that Beyond The Wall is similar to older editions is that magic is more limited than in more recent editions of D&D. I like worlds that are rich in magic, like Into The Odd, and games that reflect that. When I say “rich in magic,” I don’t mean pages and pages of spells and spell-like effects. The important thing is to not make magic mundane, while making it easy to access. This is a tight rope that a lot of designers walk in their games, and it isn’t easy to keep from falling over on to one side or the other. I think that Beyond The Wall manages to walk that tightrope.
Like the other fantasy games in this review, Beyond The Wall is a robust game that accomplishes what it wants to do without wasting a lot of time or page count. This game is best suited for those who want a lighter gaming experience, but aren’t ready to commit to games as light as Into The Odd or Whitehack, but if you’re looking to explore the lighter side of fantasy gaming it is a good place to start.
We’re in a golden age for gaming these days. Between the big companies making the big box games, the small press companies doing the boutique games and the self-publishers making their hobby efforts, there are so many games out there for role-players, regardless of their interests and play styles.
