Grim Tales

[Messageboard Golem]

Bad Axe Games' Grim Tales is the high adventure, low magic campaign sourcebook for fantastic roleplaying in your favorite pulp genres, from the dawn of Atlantis to the apocalyptic future of a dying planet. The Players' Section contains all the rules for character creation, including hundreds of feats, skills, talents, and equipment arranged by genre and/or time period. The Game Masters' Section is presented in true tool-kit fashion, allowing the GM to pick and choose from a wide variety of campaign trappings-- Spellcasting, Horror, Technology, Vehicles, Firearms, Cyberware, and more-- and to integrate them seamlessly into any campaign genre. The book also includes background material detailing the primary arch-villains of Grim Tales: a collection of evil overlords and their minions that can plague humanity (and challenge the PCs!) in any time period or genre.

This rulebook brings to fruition Bad Axe Games' founding principle to provide "games with grit," and includes multiple variants of each optional rule to allow gamemasters to fine-tune the realism and lethality of their game.

 

[Teflon Billy]

Ahhh…Grim Tales.

I was looking forward to this product a lot. “Low magic, high adventure” is how I would describe my attempts at DM’ing. I even liked the name; Grim Tales; it had the ring of exactly what I was trying to accomplish with my games. Grimness. Talespinning.

I couldn’t wait to delve into a ruleset from a publisher whose previous work I was inordinately fond of, and that sounded like it was poised to deliver.

I guess I wasn’t reading closely enough in the pre-release hype, because Grim Tales was not at all what I was expecting, and though this sounds like a perfect recipe for disappointment, in reality nothing could be further from the truth. Call it a lateral move. Grim tales impressed me a lot.

I was hoping for a D20 treatment of something akin to Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser or Conan; a game where the PC’s aren’t basically pseudo-medieval Superheroes as they approach mid-to-high level, but rather have to fight tooth and nail for virtually their entire careers. Instead what I got was a D20 treatment of another perennial favorite of mine…GURPS.

For at it’s heart Grim Tales is what D20 has needed for ages: a campaign toolkit (and it’s actually described as such right on the cover. I really do need to read more closely). Is it generic? Yes and no. Like GURPS before it Grim Tales bills itself as a semi-generic system designed to (and I quote from GT’s introduction) “allow experienced GM’s to run exciting, low-magic, campaigns for any genre”. And like GURPS before it, its real value and utility comes from (and I quote from the same introduction) allowing “the GM to get ‘under the hood’ of his campaign and tweak the rules to his liking”.

This is a product that people have been asking for ages: D20 broken down into its basic components, to be assembled as the GM sees fit.

At first glance a lot of the ruleset for character generation is lifted from D20 Modern, (which is perfect for generic D20 as the classes are flavorless, based entirely on their chosen base statistic) as is the economic system (which I am not crazy about). Many of the Feats and Skills presented are taken from a variety of sources and are tweaked to the needs of Grim Tales.

If this was the product in its entirety, I would have been impressed and given it a solid 3/5—but it would have been ano magic campaign toolkit in that case. Not low magic as it is billed.

Luckily the authors have whipped up what I feel comfortable calling the best system for modeling playable low magic I have yet seen for D20. Without giving too much away, Mr. Durbin’s system addresses most of the problems you see mentioned whenever a discussion of D&D’s poor handling of low magic is in full bloom: spell availability, lack of “mystique”, no repercussions for spell use. It’s phenomenally done not just because it addresses these problem, but addresses them and leaves a playable system behind.

Too often “Low Magic” fixes for D20 result in Magic Using characters that no one would wish to play (My own house rules, alas, pretty obviously fall into this category when compared to Grim Tales.

There is a large section devoted to “Horror and Insanity” which seems a nice nod to Horror games and Cthulu in particular, A nicely done section on Vehicles, rules for Firearms, Creature Creation, in fact the more I read it, the more I am reminded of a D20 treatment of GURPS. As written—with a bit of GM Elbow Grease—I feel relatively certain that Grim Tales could adequately model most of the hobby’s favorite genres.

But if future sourcebooks for Grim Tales match the quality and variety of the GURPS sourcebooks, we might just have the de facto “New D20 Core Rules” on our hands.

 

[Turanil]

GRIM TALES "High Adventure, Low Magic" REVIEW

Grim Tales is a d20 supplement by Badaxe Games. It is a hard-cover rulebook of 210 pages, entirely black and white except for the cover. The backcover states:
"Grim Tales is the high adventure, low magic campaign sourcebook for fantastic roleplaying in your favorite pulp genres, from the dawn of Atlantis to the apocalyptic future of a dying planet. Players will enjoy nearly limitless combinations of classes, feats, skills, and talents to create their characters, while GMs can pick and choose from a wide variety of design mechanics, variant rules, and campaign trappings to create exactly the setting they want to challenge and entertain their players.
Standard rules include: basic classes, skills, feats, talents, equipment, combat, and hazards.
Optional rules include: spells and magic, horror, firearms, vehicles, cybertechnology, creature creation, and encounter design.
Grim Tales is a complete toolkit, allowing you to create exactly the game you want to play. It is designed to be completely compatible with your existing library of d20 products, allowing you to use feats, skills, equipment, spells, monsters, and even entire settings from any source."

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GRIM TALES AT FIRST GLANCE

The cover illustration did remind me of Frank Frazetta, and seems to suggest that Grim Tales would make a perfect alternative or addition to the Conan d20 game. Then, flipping through the pages, the first thing that stroke me, is that the layout is extremely clear and thus fairly easy to peruse. Although the book is much less pleasant to look at than d20 modern, it's easier to read. All pages are printed on the same background representing a crumpled sheet of paper. Though it is probably supposed to convey a grim mood, I would have preferred it more discreet. Then, art is relatively scarce, and ranges from bad to good, with most of it being average. Since small publishers cannot afford great artists and full color printing, I really cannot blame Grim Tales for that. On the other hand, this often mediocre black and white art did remind me of the "good old days" of AD&D 1e books (not that I regret them though!), so overall I am pleased with this art, but it's me! Otherwise, it clearly appears that Grim Tales is only about rules. There is no maps, no setting, no definition of the genres it could be played with, and not even equipment description. For all of this, you will have to use other books (or create by yourself).

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EXPLORING GRIM TALES' CONTENTS

I have yet to play-test Grim Tales, but since it is heavily based on d20 Modern and SRD 3.5, there shouldn’t be any bad surprise here. The following is thus more of a description of what you will find in the book, and my subjective view about it.

1) Characters:
This chapter is about Action points (more uses of action points, compared to d20 modern), Allegiance (very short paragraph, so you will have to read through d20 modern to know more about that), Backgrounds, Reputation, and Classes. The character classes are the six d20 modern basic classes (Strong hero, Fast hero, Tough hero, Smart hero, Dedicated hero, and Charismatic hero) that have been expanded from 10 to 20 levels. The other difference with these classes, is the talents (more of them), feats (drawing from 3e, d20 modern, and other sources), and background. Different but similar from (and replacing) d20 modern Starting Occupations, the background determines the skills known to a character. In fact it happens that the six classes have no class skills. Instead a character gets a number of "core skills" (i.e.: equivalent of class skills) at character creation, which thereafter seem to remain the same during his entire career, whatever new class he may multiclass in.
Otherwise, Grim Tales does not propose advanced / prestige classes. Its valid point is that one has enough talents and feats to choose from to create any type of character he wishes. In fact, I am grateful that Grim Tales doesn't include still another set of advanced / prestige classes. Despite I like them, I think there is enough of them in d20 modern and a bunch of other supplements out there, to be spared of more. Plus IMO advanced / prestige classes should be tailored to a specific campaign genre (and even setting), so it would be difficult to make meaningful advanced / prestige classes in the generic rulebook that is Grim Tales.

2) Skills:
This chapter presents those skills which could be found in any genre, from archaic fantasy to modern worlds. As such, it's basically the D&D 3.5e skills, rather than the d20 modern ones. Therefore, if you wanted Computer Use and like skills, you will have to refer to d20 modern or another supplement. Yet these skills are not just a copy-paste from the SRD, as they introduce the concept of critical failure or critical success. Basically, if you roll a natural 20 for a skill check, you may then spend an Action Point to get a "critical success" which specific effects are given in the skill's description. Then, if you roll a natural 1 for a skill check, the DM decides if it is a critical failure (which specific effects are also given in the skill's description ) or not, but if it is, it gets you an Action Point. Otherwise, as outlined above, Grim Tales classes do not give access to a given selection of skills (i.e.: "class skills"). Instead, a character gets 9 to 11 core skills at character creation, and these skills seem to never changes thereafter; so you cannot take a new class to gain access to different skills. So, a character gets the 3 to 5 skills from his chosen background (academic, criminal, investigator, etc., for a total of 18 different backgrounds), plus 1 specific Craft, 1 specific Knowledge, and 1 specific Profession, and finally 3 skills of the character's choosing.

3) Feats:
There is 80 general feats, plus about 20 metamagic feats, 15 firearms feats, and 10 vehicles feats. It seems that some of the firearms and vehicle feats do not come from d20 modern but rather Spycraft or other similar sources. There are people on the Internet to complain that some d20 modern feats "suck". This must be an addressing of their concerns, but myself I am unable to say anything for that matter.

4) Talents:
In addition to the d20 modern talents, many new talents have been added. They are for the most part a conversion of D&D classes abilities (of monks, rogues, paladins, etc.) into talents to use with the six basic classes.

5) Economy & Equipment:
This short chapter doesn't describe any specific equipment at all, be it for medieval or modern settings (so, for that you will have to refer to other books). Rather it expands the d20 modern rules on Wealth Bonus and Purchase DC costs, with "supply and demand" rules. Then, there are guidelines for creating new melee weapons and armors if you wanted to.

6) Combat:
There are 28 pages detailing the procedures of combat, including a few new options and variants. This chapter draws more on D&D than d20 modern (despite the two are very similar); for example, Grim Tales uses D&D non-lethal / subdual damage rather than that of d20 modern which is somewhat ludicrous. I would probably have to look more closely at this chapter, but I think that overall it doesn't add this much to what already exists in the core rules (but the fact is, I cannot compare with 3.5, since I only have the 3.0 books).

7) Hazardous Environments:
This chapter presents more material than what is found in d20 modern, adding new stuff such as concerning cold, high altitude, or Fallout for example, which deals with radiation. Yet, the suggestion that radiation could provoke mutations (especially in a dark-magic fantasy world IMO) is rather succinct (I would have liked to see some examples of mutations). On the other hand, what concerned the dangers of electricity disappeared. Overall, this chapter is an improvement over what proposes d20 modern and D&D 3.0 (but I cannot tell about 3.5).

8) Spells & Magic:
This chapter is the main innovation of Grim Tales. It proposes a method of spellcasting that radically departs from the archetypal D&D "Prepare-Fire-and-Forget" magic-user. It is even not a spell-point system. Instead, in Grim Tales anyone, whatever may be his/her character class, may cast a spell, and whenever he/she wants: no spell slot, no spell-point, no wizard or similar class. However, the new method's intent is not to create the latest munchkin game world, but rather a low-magic one. As such, casting a spell is difficult (requires a d20 check), and draws on your life force (either constitution or strength). It takes many feats and talents to eventually become a mage who can cast spells safely (at least low level spells). This system should prove excellent for those who have become tired of campaigns where (as the author states) "a wizard may cast a cantrip just to heat his cup of tea". Grim Tales spellcasting does much to bring back a sense of danger and wonder (due to rarity and difficulty of use) about magic. Otherwise note that this system doesn't rely on new spells, but just normal d20 spells so you may use any spell you like from the books you have (Grim Tales does not provide new spells).

9) Firearms:
This 8 pages chapter doesn't give any gun or firearm statistic (you will have to use another book for that), but provides rules and guidelines for creating your own homebrew firearms.

10) Horror & Insanity:
This 11 pages chapter deals with horror and insanity, using a new system different (and more complex) from that of Call of Cthulhu d20 / Unearthed Arcana. The latter is pretty simple, where you have a pool of insanity points and may loose them when encountering odious things and creatures (much as hit-points that would however be more difficult to recover). Grim Tales on the other hand, provides a method that doesn't rely on sanity points, but a more complex procedure of horror checks. Those who badly fail an horror check may get an Insanity (a psychological disorder affecting his behavior thereafter). Note however, that not all of these insanity disorders will hinder the character affected by them. A mild General Anxiety Disorder for example, actually grants a +2 bonus to initiative, Spot, and Listen checks… (well, these are exceptions, lets precise that the majority of insanity disorders are hindering). Otherwise, there are some options enabling a GM to use a more or less drastic insanity rule as he sees fit for his campaign.

11) Vehicles:
This 9 pages chapter gives no vehicles' statistics, but rules for chases and combat vehicle. I cannot say anything about this chapter, nor compare it to that of d20 modern. I did read it, yet have no idea if it is easy to use, and makes for nice chases and vehicles combat…

12) Fantastic Technology:
This short chapter deals with cyberware (i.e.: technological enhancements implemented into a living creature, including a PC). There is examples of such cyberware, plus guidelines to create new. The rules seem to balance well enough the advantages provided by cyberware with the risks, costs, and limitations involved. I have no idea how it actually would work during the game, but as a GM (read grim master instead of game master ;-)) I would be willing to make NPCs with cyberware, but probably not as a player.

13) Creature Creation:
This 16 pages chapter gives suggestions and guidelines to create new monsters, but especially to calculate their CR. Not having the 3.5 edition, I cannot tell if it comes from it, but I would say this is the most complete work on the subject I ever saw. Yet, I don’t know how many GMs will have the courage (there are really many tables and multiply factors) to determine the CR of their homebrew monsters, or see if the CR of the MM’s creatures match that obtained in using this method.

14) Gamemastering:
These pages explain how efficiently challenge a PC party in using creatures' CR. Until then, I would make the sum of the PCs' levels, add a little for their magical items, then compare that to the sum of the opponents' CR. To say the truth, it rarely gave the expected result (i.e.: a balanced encounter), and reading about this chapter I begin to understand why. There is four pages of charts and tables explaining how to use the CR for determining balanced and challenging encounters. Next time I run a session, I will see how that works…

15) Appendix - Campaign Models:
This chapter presents some plot hooks and adventure ideas. There is the Undead, Dragon Lords, and Lethid campaign suggestions. For each of them you find a few plot hooks plus a big villain stats for each of the three main genres: fantasy, modern horror, and post apocalyptic future.

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MY CONCLUSION
I don't find any fault with Grim Tales; it is one of the best d20 products I purchased those last months. Now, lets guess if you would really enjoy it; lets say that:

- You are interested in d20 modern rules, but not the setting (our own contemporary world). In this case I would heavily suggest to pick up Grim Tales instead. Not only it could be used in a variety of settings (see below), but compared to d20 modern it provides improved rules (many coming from the 3.5 SRD).

- You don't care about d20 modern, but you are searching for a d20 game that would be radically different from D&D. In this case, you should find that Grim Tales is a good purchase. It is very different, yet using almost the same game mechanics (skills, feats, and spells, even if not the spellcasting method) (1).

- You already use d20 modern, but would like some improvements and a different method of spellcasting. I would say that Grim Tales will give you the best of the 3.5 SRD in conjunction with d20 modern, plus rules from other games, and will above all enable you to forget about the traditional D&D spellcasting system (2) (that you may consider has no place in a d20 modern game). As such, Grim Tales could make an interesting purchase.

- You already use d20 modern and love it, and was wondering if Grim Tales could be a good addition. I would say that Grim Tales is somewhat redundant with d20 modern. With Grim Tales you would find a sort of "edition 1.5" of d20 modern, though it probably was not the original purpose of the author when doing it. In this case you may at least carefully consider if buying Grim Tales is necessary.

Notes:

• (1): However, you need in this case being familiar with the fact that Grim Tales, like d20 modern, use humans as the default PC race. That is: all PCs begin with two bonus feats at first level, and all classes have an uneven number of skill points per level (i.e.: 3, 5, 7, or 9). Thus, if you were to play a dwarf, elf, or what not, you would have to subtract 1 bonus feat and 1 skill point per level to all character classes. This is a thing I really don't like with d20 modern, but I cannot blame Grim Tales to have kept this way of handling character creation.
• (2): Psionics (FX Psi or Expanded Psionic Handbook) will likewise not fit in a Grim Tales campaign, as they are too similar to D&D spellcasting. On the other hand, I think that Green Ronin's Psychic's Handbook would fit rather well for psionic abilities in a Grim Tales campaign. My suggestion in this case, is to keep the Psychic's Handbook rules exactly as they are, and restrict psychic skills and feats to the Psychic class as is. Giving psychic skills and feats to a Smart hero who gets a talent or feat at each level would quickly unbalance the game IMO.

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WHAT TO DO WITH GRIM TALES?
As already mentioned, Grim Tales is only about rules, and provides absolutely no setting. Thus, here is a list of game worlds / genres, for which I believe Grim Tales would be perfectly appropriate:

- Moorcock's Elric or Runestaff series. Now that I have read Grim Tales, I regret having sold my old Hawkmoon game, because with Grim Tales rules it would have made for a fabulous campaign. I also think that in adapting D&D to the world of Elric, Dragon Lords of Melnibone (by Chaosium) was a failure. Instead, using Grim Tales for that world is certainly the way to go. Now I can find some use out of my copy of DLoM!

- Robert Howard's Conan. Of course, the recent Conan d20 game that many people have said to be a real success, is probably a better option, especially since it also includes a setting. Nonetheless, for those interested in doing a Conan campaign using Grim Tales, you could get many world info for free on the Hyborian Age website (a free adaptation of Conan to the d20 system).

- Fritz Leiber's Lankmar Series. I think that Grim Tales would be more appropriate for a Lankmar setting than typical D&D. For those who remember the AD&D 2e Lankmar setting, all magic had been much altered and weakened in order to better reflect Fritz Leiber's world. Yet, I think that AD&D was still inappropriate to it; but where D&D 3e would fail for this setting, Grim Tales would succeed fairly well.

- Tolkien's Lord of the Ring. It has been argued over and over on the Internet gaming community that Middle Earth was a low magic world. At least, despite Gandalf or Galadriel are the most powerful mages of their world, they don't fly, teleport, or cast fireballs, which is a staple of D&D. Then, such classes as druids, clerics, monks, or paladins, hardly fit that world. On the other hand, if you suppress all spellcasting classes, there is not much left to play in a LotR setting. As such, and if you agree to the idea that Middle Earth should be a low magic world where the PCs don't cast spells and own very few magic items, Grim Tales is probably the right solution.

- Call of Cthulhu. For those who would like to play a more powerful / heroic / pulp Call of Cthulhu d20, I think that Grim Tales is a good set of rules, especially if you wanted to play it in a fantasy or medieval era, or in the thirties. However, for a modern CoC d20, d20 modern would suffice. And of course, for a normal "scary and hopeless" traditional type of CoC, you should better use the proper game.

- Western & Gunslingers. I know there already is specific d20 games for this genre, but Grim Tales would certainly fit very well if you add an intent to try for that.

- Post-Apocalyptic Future. I am not used to that genre but Mad Max for example, comes to mind. My own idea would be of using Grim Tales to recreate Stephen King's The Dark Tower's peculiar world (a sort of old-west kind of dying world with elements of sorcery, mutants, and remnants of advanced technology, plus inter-dimensional gates).

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PS: Since it took me time to write this review, and nobody commissioned me, I would be glad to get your feedback about it (so I may know if I do other reviews in the future…). Thus, don't hesitate to tell me below, if this review was useful to you, plus of course any other comment you may add about the review, or more important, about the game reviewed.
Thanks!

 

[Psion]

Grim Tales

Grim Tales is a resource for running low magic games in the d20 System. The book draws from both the modern and fantasy rules sets and can use either ruleset as a baseline for such a campaign, and includes support for a variety of eras. The book is written by Benjamin Durbin under his Bad Axe Games banner, and includes input by many ENWorld regulars, in particular Craig "Upper Krust" Cochrane, perhaps best known for his variant CR/EL rules (which appear here.)

A First Look

Grim Tales is a 216 page hardbound book priced at $34.95 US.

The cover of the book features a somewhat Frazetta-like pictures by Ken Kelly, depicting a bare- chested musclebound man breaking out of some bond, surrounded by degenerate humanoid creatures and with a skeletal creature in the backdrop.

The interior is black-and-white, featuring the talents of Scott Drourin, Andrew Hale, Jeremy Mohler, John O'Connor, Scott Purdy, and Jim Zubkavich. Scott Purdy has long been one of my favorite ink artists in d20 products and continues to be a boon to books that feature his work; his creepy feel is perfectly appropriate to the grim and gritty feel of this book. Jeremy Mohler also has a number of nice ink drawings. And longtime Bad Axe fans should appreciate the return of the distinctive Andrew Hale.

A Deeper Look

Grim Tales does not present a singular setting. Rather, it rebuilds the d20 system from the ground up in an attempt to make it more suitable for a grittier gaming style in which magic is much more a mystery, or even hazardous, as opposed to the tool it is treated as in many d20 system games. It also goes for a bit of a grittier feel than the norm for d20 system, while retaining a certain amount of heroic or pulp genre feel.

Grim Tales is organized into sections regarding character generation, equipment, combat variants, environment, magic, firearms, horror and insanity, vehicles, cyberware, creature design, gamemastering, and an appendix with sample campaigns. Throughout the book, many variant rules are presented with "threat levels" defined with one, two, or three skulls. These threat levels describe how lethal the rules are towards PCs. One skull is fairly PC friendly, while three skull variants of rules have a stronger tendency to kill PCs.

The most notable adaptation of character generation rules is the core classes. In essence, Grim Tales takes the 6 ability score based heroic classes of D20 Modern and adapts them as 20 level classes. To support these classes, the book includes most of the existing D20 Modern talents (some redundant ones reduced to singular talents that may be taken repeatedly) and introduces a number of new talents, many of them drawn from D&D class abilities (for example, flurry of blows is a talent). One problem here is that some talents lack errata that exists for the modern rules. For example, as printed, there is no reason you would want to take the ignore hardness talent as opposed to the melee smash talent.

The classes also lack the pre-defined skill list that most classes use. The player basically defines their own class skill list (called "core skills") by chosing 3 or 4 skills from a background (similar to a D20 Modern starting occupation), three "career skills" (one craft, one profession, and one knowledge), and three skills of the players choice.

Between the more flexible core class arrangement and skill arrangement, this makes character design quite a bit more flexible than the norm for D20 System games. This allows the rules to cover different eras more easily and prevents a flurry of new archetype classes as seen to gruesome extent in books like FFG's Darkness & Dread.

The skills mostly follow the same vein as the source books, but are stripped down and made more generic, another accommodation to the multi-era aspect of the rules. There are more "category" skills in Grim Tales than in D&D or D20 Modern, and the categories are less tightly defined. The intent here is to create as little variation as possible between eras, allowing you to change the skill set to be appropriate to the era by the categories chosen for such skills (knowledge, profession, etc.)

Also like D20 Modern, Grim Tales uses action points to provide characters with momentary heroic boosts. However, there are some tweaks to the action point rules as presented here borrows a bit from the action dice rules in Spycraft, for example, using a varying die size instead of a "best of multiple dice" scheme, and one of the variants resets every session like Spycraft. Other tweaks help compensate for the lack of magic in the game, allowing characters to penetrate the DR of supernatural creatures.

Combat variants include the massive damage tweak used in D20 Modern and D20 Call of Cthulhu. As an example of the skull convention, the variants used are the "10 point massive damage" rule as the three skull variant and the "massive damage = CON" rule as the two skull variant. The one skull variant allows characters to add their armor modifier to their massive damage target number. Other variants include allowing armor to convert lethal damage to nonlethal damage, quick resolution for nameless NPCs.

However, the book repeats quite a bit of material in the combat chapter and environment chapter. In many causes, the repeated material is highly appropriate for the sort of game that Grim Tales is geared for, it is repeated material nonetheless, and has the additional disadvantage for experienced players that it makes it difficult to sift out the actual changes.

As one of the main emphases of Grim Tales is low magic campaigning, it is unsurprising that one of the biggest modifications is to the magic rules. There are no spellcasting classes per se. The ability to cast spells is a talent tree; each spellcasting level take a talent. All characters can cast spells, but spells do one dice of ability damage to the caster per level of the spell. Characters without the appropriate damage apply the damage to CON, those with it apply it to strength and can reduce it if their casting stat is high enough. As you can see, this make spellcasting a daunting proposition.

The firearms rules do not try to provide an exhaustive list of weapons. Rather, it provides general guidelines to allow the GM to create specifications for weapons according to size and caliber.

Another large section of new material is the horror and madness rules. These rules are one of the many rules in the book that vary according to the GM's choice of threat level. When the players encounter a horrifying creature, the player make d20 rolls (which is a will save, wisdom check, or unmodified roll, depending on the selected threat level, modified by the EL of the creature compared to the party.) The GM rolls 2d6, with several possible modifiers such as creature type and era (some creatures are more horrifying or out-of-place in certain eras), creature charisma, and the party's experience with the creature. If the GM's horror threshold matches or exceeds the PCs charisma, they suffer a penalty based on the result of their check, which can vary from long or short term insanity, merely being frightened or panicked, or having no effect.

The insanity rules feature a metagame rule wherein the players choose whether they wish to fight or run when confronted with such a roll. If they choose to run, they are considered to have failed the check, but only suffer a frighten result. If they choose to fight, they make the check as normal, and take their chances. This provides a small encouragement to players to run voluntarily when they face horrifying entities.

The insanity chapter also includes a variety of mental disorders in game terms. This could be a good resource for d20 System games in general, which in its existing form really does a poor job of emulating insanity.

The vehicle rules draws a lot from the widely acclaimed Spycraft chase rules. Like those rules, the vehicle rules in a chase or dogfight situation provide a variety of maneuver that drivers can choose from, and the results are adjudicated by opposed drive checks. The main changes from the Spycraft rules is an addition of a dogfight category, elimination of a sharp distinction between predator and prey maneuvers, and makes separation categories more general (which makes it more appropriate for different era.)

A brief chapter entitled Fantastic Technology introduces d20 rules for cyberware, something that was not part of WotC's rulesets to date, but appropriate to some sorts of campaigns that might be run with Grim Tales. The cyberware provide abilities and benefits similar to magic item. The cyberware is limited by the character's constitution and impact charisma roll, and have the potential to drive the character into a coma or murderous cyber-psychosis if their charisma is driven too low.

Chapter 13 (Creature Creation) and parts of chapter 14 (Gamemastering) are derived in part from ENWorld's "Upper Krust's" variant CR and EL rules. These rules provide a very precise accounting of the capabilities of creatures. I have always felt that these rules tried to seek a level of accuracy that fell beneath the "noise fence" of the wild nature of RPGs. That said, they play an important role in Grim Tales since the assumptions about creature and character capabilities are rather different than core d20, and they can help compensate for gross differences such as lack of magic items.

A character sheet is provided, and an appendix provides an example campaign for each of the three major eras covered by Grim Tales: Archaic, Modern, and Apocolyptic. These campaign samples include plot ideas, sample villains and creatures, including the lethid - a creature with a name somewhat reminiscent of the "illithid", now lost to OGC, but a step toward's Heinlein's "puppet masters".

Conclusion

Grim Tales is one of the most exciting new d20 products this year. It makes extensive use of open game content to realize a given game concept or feel. Compared to similar concept products (like Darkness & Dread), the flexibility of the approach provides for more character possibilities in less space. Even if you aren't running a straight up Grim Tales inspired game, aspects like the new talents, vehicle rules, cyberware, and insanity rules can make good supplements for other games.

There are a few minor places that need errata, and there is a lot of recycled material in the book that anyone who owns a DMG already has. The book could have afforded to omit those sections, and used that space for more extensive sample campaigns or reduced the size of the book.

Overall Grade: B+

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[JoeGKushner]

Grim Tales by Bad Axe Games promises on the cover, “High Adventure and Low Magic”. At 212 black and white pages, it’s not the longest book at $34.95 I’ve seen, but it’s not the most expensive either.

When I read through it, I wonder, is this book needed? Couldn’t we just have a list of some of the options here that are used to capture high adventure and low magic as opposed to a hard cover book? Why do I say that?

Well, upon first reading, it seems like I’m reading a bastardized version of d20 Modern with variants thrown in from half the d20 books in my library, which means that I have to read everything and examine everything because it’s not what it seems. Pretty painful when you realize it and have to start taking notes and defiantly not for the faint of heart who may look at these version of d20 Modern’s core classes and think they understand everything off the bat.

What’s different then? It has the standard d20 Modern core or basic classes. The various classes based on a particular stat like Fast Hero or Strong Hero, but it writes them up as 20 level classes. It drops the d20 Modern Occupation, which provides a bonus Feat and additional permanent class skills, but provides you with backgrounds. These backgrounds provide you with three-five skills you can select as your class skills.

Action Points aren’t the same. Standard Action Points, both those in Unearthed Arcana and D20 Modern, are pretty simple in that they allow an extra d6 to be added to a variety of d20 rolls. They have other abilities, like augmenting feats or simulating feats but their main benefit is bonus d6. Here, you have to spend an action point to confirm a critical hit. There are also a lot of variants here like action die based on level, or exploding action dice, where you get to roll the die again when your roll the maximum. Something that should be familiar to most Warhammer FRPG players.

Another difference is that the talents aren’t detailed with the classes. Like feats, they’ve all been collection in another section of the book. Makes higher level character creation a bit annoying but once you’ve read the book a few times, not a big deal.

Skills are a little different too. The character gets to select three skills, in addition to your background skills, and your career skills. The career skills are one Craft, one Knowledge and one Profession, skill to represent you’re living skills. In skills selections, they use Heal instead of Treat Injury, and they’re missing the Demolitions and Repair skills from the skill table. It also has the good old Use Rope skill, missing in d20 Modern. A fairly good mix but by no means all inclusive. In some ways I’m a little disappointed that the author didn’t go the route of Arcana Unearthed by streamlining skills like Hide and Move Silently or even go further like some of the Fantasy Flight Games have done.

In terms of similarities, it also has defense and reputation, and the game mechanics, like BAB and saving throws, look similar to those found in d20 Modern. The one thing they kept which I understand, but don’t like, is the base assumption that characters will start off as being human, and that means they have the bonus feat and extra skill points included in their core. For example, the Tough Hero has 3 skill points per level and starts with two feats in addition to his bonus starting feats.

So in looking at character creation, it should be pretty familiar to most players of D&D or d20 Modern with slight tweaks here and there. The dismissal of Prestige Classes may shock some, but the classes are flexible, more flexible than their d20Modern counterparts as they just keep going up in levels with bonus feats and talent trees. When looking at Feats, we’ve got material from a few sources.

Some fantasy abilities, like Smite Evil from the Paladin have been turned into Talents. At first I couldn’t figure out what you’d do with something like that in a standard d20 campaign, but then it was explained to me that Smite Evil would probably be pretty handy for having a Buffy style d20 Modern campaign no? And I agree with that. However, in that vein, having the talents marked or broken up into different levels or with some better ideas of what genre they’d be appropriate for or how to use them in any genre, would’ve been ideal. One thing missing from this section, is how to change special abilities into talents. If some formula or basic details had been provided to show the GM how to take any class and break it down, the utility of this section would shoot up a notch.

Outside of abilities, we still have to equip characters. We’ve got purchase DC and sale values included so you can go with either option. I’ve never liked the d20 Modern system for handling such thing so I’m glad that they’ve gone with a listed value as well. However, they’ve decided to go with the silver piece standard. It makes sense in terms of keeping true to the fiction where gold is rare and platinum is unheard of.

More impressive is the section on weapon design. It’s a system that shows you how to create weapons and classify them. It provides examples of typical melee and ranged weapons as well as different options. For example you can tweak damage, threat range, multiplier and even size. There are numerous abilities that can be added here and there in exchange for something else. For example, if you want to have a special ability like disarm, you decrease the damage dice. If you increase the size of the weapon, you increase the dice damage by two steps. It’s an interesting take on things and I’m sure players will be tweaking it out to their heart’s content. I can almost see something like “Pimp my Sword” coming out of all this.

The problem, as I mentioned before, is that so much is the same that it almost seems nothing is different. Take combat. It’s almost the same as standard combat in d20 Modern. Almost but see here, even though you’re disabled when you hit 0 hit points, you can keep functioning at the disabled rank until your negative hit points go past your Constitution modifier. Got an 18 con? You can keep going from 0 to –4 hit points. In a similar vein, you don’t die until you go your negative in Con. That 18 con will keep you alive until –18.

Some options though, are easier to spot due to the skulls. These skulls range from one to three skulls and indicate lethality factors. For example, when using death from massive damage, one skull, the recommended standard in this case, allows you to take damage equal to your con score plus armor, shield and natural armor bonus. On the opposite end, three skulls is a damage threshold of 10.

Now most of the book is material I’ve seen before in one form or another. The section on spells and magic though, introduces a new spellcasting system. So how is the author going to keep the game low magic? New spell lists? Expensive spell components? Nope. Instead, it’s a new way to cast spells. You have to first learn the spell. That’s a bit problematic since the Spellcraft skill requires you to take a talent in order to have it as a class skill. Once you have it though, it’s not too bad as learning is 15 + spell level and depending on your feel, arcane or divine, you gain bonuses to learn your school spells.

It’s in the casting that the bad news comes in. See, you make a caster check, which is 10 + spell level. You then take spell burn damage. Each level of the spell equals 1d6 of Constitution or if you’re an adept, Strength damage. Thankfully, you get Spell Burn Resistance based on your primary spellcasting attribute modifier in addition to any bonuses from talents. Now that’s pretty good. By 8th level, you could have, if using a point buy system, a 20 in your primary stat. Chances of taking lots of damage is pretty low. I’d probably overcome that with an exploding spell burn die cause I don’t see the limitation otherwise.

The author though, decides that all 1’s automatically get through. The first time I’ve seen it be a bad thing to roll the minimum. Another option is to increase the spell burn die to say, d8, d10 or even higher. I think I prefer the exploding variant.

Another new option is Horror and Insanity. The GM calls for a horror check. Each player rolls his horror check and compares it against a horror check roll table. The GM then rolls the Horror Threshold level and compares that to the encounter level and if the Horror Threshold is equal to or greater than the PC’s Charisma, then there’s trouble. The book includes numerous types of insanities, including short and long term, and breaks them up into various categories. Characters can have three levels, mild, moderate, and severe. In some cases, being severe kicks you up to a different insanity. General Anxiety Disorder for example, becomes Panic Disorder.

Another big section is vehicles. The utility here is in the vehicle combat section. It’s broken down a few ways to spread the material out. First you have to determine speed advantage, then terrain, and then range. The combat sequence itself relies on determining initiative, speed, maneuver, and the GM checking for obstacles. In looking at maneuvers, we have stand off, ram, pace, gun it, and others. Each one with a Y or N in the Maneuverability and Speed Advantage Table. Some having limits at which range they can be performed at, and others at needing a Reaction Roll. It looks like a fun little system and could be perfect for chariot races or aerial dogfights with WWII planes.

The section on cyberware, which can be any fantastic technology like mind flayer grafts, is interesting but probably something I’d skip. Chances are if I’m running a campaign in such a setting, it’ll have its own version of cyberware. The material here though, is good for those who are running everything off this book. Cyberware have a physical risk in that you can die from massive damage when undergoing surgery, or you may not mentally accept the new freakish status you’ve bestowed upon yourself with the grafts. This gets worse the more cyberware you use as you can continue to lose charisma, making the check harder to make each time. It’s a small sampling of items, ranging from exterior skin to internal plates but gets the ball rolling.

I’m more interested in the section on creature creation. Let’s face it, Wizards of the Coast did a half-assed job providing detailed explanations as to how you can create and properly list a challenge rating for a monster. This section covers numerous factors ranging from size and type, to special abilities and weaknesses.

On the other hand, the only thing I really didn’t like mechanically, was the section on Encounter Level. It provides a nice breakdown of CR to EL conversion, which can be adjusted by the number of combatants. The problem is that in terms of doling out experience points, you receive experience points based on your class level. This goes against the grain of lower level characters catching up to the higher level ones quicker. On the other hand, it provides brief methods for granting XP for making skill checks and story awards. I’d be a little worried about the vague warning though as the skill check must “carries serious consequences” as I’ll have rogues and monks telling me that if they don’t make their tumbling check, an attack of opportunity is a serious consequence.

The appendix includes a few different campaign models. It takes a creature or theme and shows how it could be used in the three different eras, archaic, modern, and apocalyptic. It’s hit or miss for me. The section on the undead and the dragon lords did nothing for me, but I did bookmark the dragon section, as these suckers are truly the stuff of epic battles, clocking in at a CR of 70. The Lethid Campaign however, that got my attention. These suckers have some relation to the Possessor’s from Philip Reed’s Roninarts book but take it a step further to more clearly put the implications of outer world and elderly tainted evil about them.

The art ranges from fair to great. I’ve always enjoyed Scott Purdy’s style. Jeremy Mohler also adds some great pieces. Some of the art though, is just mediocre and takes up space. Take the art by the character classes for example. There are three illustrations, one for each era. They’re not bad, but they’re certainly not the best in the book. I find that the layout is lacking. The tables are just ugly. Not every table nor every piece of art needs to be boxed and not every piece of type in a table needs to be centered. Not every piece here suffers that, but most do. I hate to say it, but the tables look like they were done in Excel and just ported over. The crushed page look also doesn’t aid readability and doesn’t look good.

The biggest problem I have with the book, is where is the campaign advice? The appendix, while a useful tool, can’t compare with the utility that a chapter on running a high adventure, low magic campaign would’ve. What are the long-term repercussions of not having rapid healing available? Since we have Spell Burn, should we have psion burn? Should non-magical augmentations be allowed to spruce up characters via new masterwork components such as those found in Bad Axe Games Heroes of High Favor Dwarves?

Let’s take the smallest thing like a list of recommended reading. Now I’m 33 (or will be this September!) but grew up reading Robert E. Howard, among others, so I’m pretty familiar with Conan, Kull, Grey Mouser, Bran Mak Morn, Kane, Dray Prescot and dozens of other pulp heroes. However, the average 17-20 year old might not be. What’s more, with the wide plethora of high magic fantasy out there ranging from Robert Jordan and the various licensed properties of WoTC, including Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and the Magic cardgame itself, the standard, where fiction heroes struggle in a low magic world, are no longer entirely true.

Where are the campaign creation tools? Where is the collection of these optional and variant rules that a GM can quickly look over and hand out to his players? It’d be a good thing to know that you’re dead at your negative constitution score as opposed to –10 and that it’s using the d20 Modern version of stabilization as opposed to the dreaded % of D&D. Something like the handouts WoTC had for the 3.5 updates to their numerous titles or the half page campaign designer here that collects only the skull ratings and none of the variants mentioned in the book.

For me, this book came too late. One of the games or eras that people will probably want to recreate with this is Conan and Conan has it’s own rule set. Some of the optional rules have ‘official’ variants now. I also don’t get what the Core Mechanic task resolution is as it looks like the d20 resolution. Roll a d20 and add modifiers and compare it to a target number. Yup, that’s d20 alright. It repeats too much information form the core rules without providing a cheat sheet that lets you quickly see what’s different. Hopefully, we’ll see the company spin off the optional rules, like the Spell Burn and Insanity, into separate PDFs for those interested in adding those elements to their own campaign.

Having said that, I can easily see an experienced GM using these tweaks and designs to forge his own unique vision of the d20 system.

 

[GameWyrd]

There is a difference between high fantasy and cheese fantasy. It can be a fine line and it takes a surprising amount of skill, sometimes, for a DM to keep the campaign on the side of the diving line that they want the campaign to be on.

High fantasy campaigns typically feature a plethora of intelligent races, many more different types of monsters, spells galore, magic items and characters either start high powered or quickly become high powered. Dungeons and Dragons is a high fantasy game.

Cheese fantasy should not be seen as an insulting phrase any more than "cheese metal" is an insult to my moshing friends who freely list "cheese" alongside "doom", "thrash", "heavy" and "grind" as some of the types of metal they like. Cheese fantasy begins as high fantasy with even more fantasy and magic thrown in. There are more types of monsters than you can count, magic is common and incredibly powerful, the party carries a number of ancient holy relics, demon lords need to be slapped down every now and then and it would not be a surprise if another 23rd level sorcerer/monk joined the party. Cheese fantasy can be something of a spoof. Cheese fantasy is also (more so than high fantasy) concentrated on the success of a group of heroes, they're the campaign world in their own right and anything else is just scenery. Cheese fantasy is actually a good and common way to run a fantasy roleplaying game, it's easy, fun and satisfying.

I just happen to prefer my cheese fantasy is tiny does now and then. I much prefer grim fantasy - or low fantasy. This is the opposite of cheese.

In low fantasy magic is much less common. Adventures are usually at a much lower level, there's rarely such a thing as an "easy fight" and a weapon with even the smallest bonus (more likely due to good craftsmanship than the arcane) are an incredible asset. In a low fantasy setting there won't be a different monster to fight for each encounter. Characters are more likely to be struggling to survive than defending a city they'd never heard of before from a legion of undead horrors that they had never heard of before. Low fantasy can be incredibly hard to run.

Low fantasy is especially hard to run in a d20 environment. This isn't d20's fault; it was designed to be a high fantasy system. Actually, I'm talking about D&D d20 here, the two aren't synonymous as Mutants & Masterminds shows. Dungeons and Dragons d20 utilities a Challenge Rating system where the designers include an assumed amount of magical gear into the CR equation. A monster is challenge rating 10 because, the designers decided, at 10th level a party of four adventures would have X amount of magical items. Those magical items would make it a fair fight against the monster. It's tricky if you start taking the magic items out of the game world when you can't take those assumptions out of the system. It's tricky if you start taking out magic classes too. The humble "scout-warrior" isn't so humble in D&D as the Ranger develops spells of his own, as does the Bard. There isn't an easy class turn into "low fantasy" in the book; even the Fighter and Barbarian have magic-like feats and abilities at times.

Bring on Bad Axe Games' Grim Tales. Grim Tales describes itself as high adventure, low magic. It's absolutely right. Grim Tales is d20 - it is d20 Modern based. Grim Tales can be used as a rule set for fantasy games.

Let's not stick with "low fantasy" as a genre for Grim Tales. Grim Tales isn't fantasy as such, it isn't a setting in its own right, it's a sourcebook of rules that will help you take the "high adventure, low magic" feel to which ever setting you want. As we tour through Grim Tales' version of the d20 modern core classes; the Strong Hero, the Dedicated Hero, the Charismatic Hero, etc, the book points out suitable examples of such in a fantasy setting, a modern setting and post-apocalyptic one. The Strong Hero works as a fighter, a steel worker or heavy weapons specialist.

You either need D20 Modern or the core Dungeons and Dragons books to use Grim Tales. Grim Tales is a similar quality of book. It's a hefty hardback of about 216 pages. It's not colour but the illustrations are good (the cover, in colour, is great) and the text site, text density and amount of white space is just spot on.

The book begins by going through the classes - attribute focused classes ala d20 Modern - and skills. I'm not normally a fan of re-hashing through old skills; I'd forgive Grim Tales since it might be being used by people with the core Dungeons and Dragons rules and without access to D20 Modern (or visa versa). A rules round up would be required. In actual fact there's more than just a re-hash of the old here. There's a lot of help with each skill, lots of tricky rule "what if?" situations and synergy examples covered. The climb skill, for example, has notes to cover accelerated climbing (going faster but with more risk), making your own handholds and footholds, catching yourself if you fall or catching someone else as you're climbing. The latter is one that not even d20 modern's chunky rulebook covers. In addition Grim Tales has examples of critical successes (20) and critical failures (1). If the GM activates a critical failure against a character (pretty nasty if you're climbing up high) this gives the PC back an Action Point.

I like how Grim Tales handle Action Points. They can be spent in a number of ways - nothing hugely significant, just helpful small bonuses here and there (confirming a critical hit, for example) which fit the grim/low setting and yet boost the high adventure promise. I especially like how Action Points can be regained. The GM can pick what's most suited to the game. Regaining Action Points could be virtually impossible in a gritty game. This would be measured three skulls on the Grim Tales' scale. It could just be a matter of having a replenishing stock of X Action Points at the start of every session - measured one skull on the Grim Tales' scale. The scale of one to three skulls pops up throughout the book and is a measure of how tough the GM is being on the players. The three skull options are tough.

There are talents and feats in the book. There are magical orientated feats - and, in fact, if you want to dabble in magic this is the only way to go. Just as importantly, perhaps more so, there are firearm and vehicle feats too. Car chases can be an important but tricky feature in any "low magic, high adventure" scenario. It need not be cars either - could be chariots or Mad Max style post-apocalyptic bike gang wars.

Economy and Equipment is important in Grim Tales. Generally it's the equipment section which people need to look at first but here the economy rules are vital. Dungeons and Dragons counts treasure down to the last copper piece. In fact the only motivation for taking on dragons and exploring dungeons is often to get more treasure. In d20 Modern there's an abstracted wealth system. This saves headaches when a player decides to invest ?10,000 in an ISA, ?50,000 in a FTSE tracker stock and have both set up to pay into account from which their variable rate mortgage is drawn from. How much money does he have at the start of the next scenario? Grim Tales gives us the choice of which two systems to use. Grim Tales introduces the currency unit as a helpfully universal cash system. It's worth about a silver piece or one dollar. As a rule of thumb a simple weapon (sword, pistol, etc) is worth about 200 of them and at starting level a character should have about 2,000. If you're going with a wealth system then you don't even need to count.

Even the combat system can be adapted to suit. You can play around with how serious massive damage is going to be in the game - making it less likely to occur to the players (a one skull option) or quite likely (the dread three skull). I like the "mook" option - lets have the cannon fodder minions automatically fail their massive damage roll. If you hit them hard enough, they go down and don't get back up again and that's just what you want if you're going for the pulp adventure feel.

There's a whole chapter on hazards. Starvation and Thirst aren't likely to be much of an issue in a game where the PCs are cops from Scotland Yard but are likely to be hugely important if they are the only watchmen left in the mutant infested, ruined and still slightly radioactive remains of York. If we're playing an Edwardian England spy game then Grim Tales' rules on insanity and horror might not get used very often but if we're playing an Elizabethan England occult game then they might get used all the time! The great strength of Grim Tales is that the single book has all these rules. There are rules for cyborgs and cybernetics for those who want them too.

There is magic in Grim Tales. The blurb does stress "low magic" rather than "no magic" but it can be very costly. There's no magic class so any successful spellcaster will have dedicated a lot of feats to the pursuit. Complexities like spell burn will either ensure that magic can't be cast too often (one skull) or have the mage risk painful death after casting just one spell (three skulls). This is a crucial success. I love having the mysterious, supernatural and arcane in gritty fantasy games - but always at the very back of the game, as a sinister, powerful and deadly force. It would be perfectly fair to have a grim setting where the undead were a terrible plague. This is exactly what I get from Grim Tales.

Grim Tales is all about empowering the GM with options. If you want to run a game a little differently - with low magic and tough fights, then Grim Tales steps up to help you. You can custom design everything from your own selection of weapons to your own monsters (with Challenge Ratings balanced according to your settings, not the well-meaning but frustrating assumptions of the game designers). In the Gamemastering chapter there's help on handing out experience (typically characters shouldn't race up the ranks) through to balancing Encounter Levels in scenarios. Should you need any help in getting going with grim and gritty adventures the appendix as a useful collection of suggestions for inspiration and use.

* This Grim Tales review was first published at GameWyrd