My very first issue of Dragon magazine was #63. It was full of goodness, but the thing I obsessed most over was a full-page advertisement for an RPG mysteriously called KABAL. It featured a photograph of some Grenadier miniatures on what we would now call dungeon tiles. The three books and gamer aids portrayed in the ad were printed on parchment, something I found irresistible. The text promised the dangling carrot of "realism."
"Realism" seemed to be the watchword for RPGs competing against TSR's behemoth. There was a school of thought that hit locations and a death spiral were indications of a more mature game. A skill system, where experience is applied only to the skill used, was pure sugar on top. KABAL assured all of that stuff. It also promised to be "much faster and much better than any other game you've played." Deal me in.
The game came in a small box containing three booklets and a series of reference sheets. The pages are made of vegetable parchment, with covers of a thicker material. The interior text is mostly in a sky-blue cursive font, a curious choice more than likely the result of the game’s designer owning a fancy typewriter. The artwork, though sparse, is a step above much of KABAL’s contemporaries.
KABAL stands for Knights and Barbarians and Legerdemain. The game is loosely class-based , with each class having their own group of unique skills. The classes are fighter, marksman, magik user, and thief. Every character is assumed to be a combination fighter/thief/marksman. Some will qualify as a magik user if their psychic ability characteristic is high enough. You can also play a shaolin priest, which seems to be the game's version of ninjas which are, as every 1980s gamer knew, superior in every way to any other class. A friend of mine once said "ninjas could kick Aragorn’s ass."
KABAL uses a standard array of characteristics (strength, dexterity, endurance, and so on), but ranks them on a scale of 6-120! This is achieved by rolling 6d20 for each one. Every characteristic also has a “factor” equivalent to its square root. This is just the start of a series of overly complicated rules. For example, a single combat attack takes between two to four rolls. You also need to make a handful of calculations with each new enemy you face and strike. Calculations involving square roots, cubes, decimals, multiplication, and division are scattered throughout and performed on the fly.
The game includes 300 spells, random dungeon generation, close to 100 skills, and over 100 monsters, of which the moose(!) is among the deadliest. Seriously, if you encounter a moose, you’re going to die in a bloody antler-frenzy. KABAL is a poster child for the naive game design we often saw in the wake of D&D’s exploding popularity. It is virtually unplayable but, in a sort of "so bad it’s good" way, KABAL is a delight.
