My Game System History, Part 1

[jordangreywolf]

I've been GMing for a long time.

D&D, by Osmosis and Reverse Engineering
My first exposure to roleplaying games would be back circa the early 1980s. "Dungeons and Dragons" was the big name, but it wasn't long before word got around that it was demonic and evil and made kids do strange things. (Thank you, Tom Hanks and "Monsters and Mazes.") I enjoyed reading Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine when I could borrow a copy from a friend, but most of my experience with "roleplaying games" (ha!) was with early 8-bit computer text adventure games, and that heavily influenced my notion of how such things should be run. (I.e., very deterministic, with a set of puzzles with very particular ways of being solved, and if you couldn't guess at what the GM wanted you to do, tough luck.)

At a sidewalk sale at a craft store while we were up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin for an annual EAA Fly-In event (the predecessor to "AirVenture"), I managed to acquire two decks of illustrated Monster Cards, a bag of hard-edged dice (it included a crayon to rub into the recessed numbers), a D&D GM screen, a single module (incomplete), and a Boot Hill GM screen. I ended up reverse-engineering from that collection of bits, throwing in some Infocom-inspired puzzles and anachronisms, and in high school during "study hall," I ended up running some game sessions that were rather chaotic to say the least. (One odd phenomenon that developed: bribing the GM with pieces of candy to get to reroll the dice. I didn't even like the candy, but it DID make for an interesting mechanism that was almost foreshadowing of a feature of some of my favorite RPG systems much later on: "Feat Points," "Hero Points," or "Bennies" to give players a little bit of dramatic control over the randomness of the dice.)

At some point, I acquired a book of "Oriental Adventures" and a module for the same setting, but I never had everything I needed to run a proper game. Mostly I wasted a lot of time reading the rules, making "dungeons" on graph paper, writing up characters who would never see a single adventure, and just IMAGINING a lot.


SwordTag
In late high school and early college, my primary experience with roleplay was with two sources. One was online (play-by-post on computer bulletin boards), and the other was live action ("SwordTag," a live-action game with foam swords and beanbags and an emphasis on actual player ability vs. any sort of die-rolling or random-number-pulling, unlike "NERO" and its ilk).

SwordTag taught me a certain amount of humility I needed to be a better GM. I spent a lot of time playing monsters, rolling over and playing dead, and crafting little junk items that would end up being player treasure. Ultimately, it was a production, a stage show, to entertain a group of "adventurers" as they walked around some remote park in early spring or late autumn, when things were cool enough that we could bear all this running around in silly Halloween costumes and dodging foam-tipped arrows and whacking each other with foam-headed, upholstered battleaxes and swords and maces and such.


BBS Play-By-Post (in the Ancient Days of 8-Bit Home Computers)
BBS Play-By-Post Games were always short-lived. There'd be people coming up with ideas for games, I'd sign up, and then Life would happen -- the family would go on vacation during the summer (and by the time I got back, I found out my character had been spending the whole time drooling in a gutter and got eaten by a passing monster), or else we'd get through one day of turns and then the GM would suddenly be unresponsive and we'd never hear from him again.

It seemed like it ought to have a lot of potential, but the noise-to-signal ratio was pretty bad. And, just to emphasize how far back in the stone ages this was, this was when I was using a VIC-20, then a Commodore 64, with modem speeds of something like 300 to 450 bps (in theory), tying up the family phone line whenever I wanted to connect to a BBS.

My "big dream" back then was to some day be able to pay for my own dedicated phone line and start my own BBS, called "The Red Dragon Inn," devoted to nothing but running play-by-post games. It ... didn't get anywhere.


Campus Gamers & Reading More Than Playing
At some point, I discovered "gamers" on campus. I stayed out of Dungeons & Dragons games, as there was still a certain stigma about it at my church -- but I also came to realize that there were certain more rational reasons why it seemed to encourage some very bad behaviors. (This mostly revolved around the phenomenon that the only way you advanced was by killing things and getting treasure. I even observed such shenanigans in SwordTag, when I'd put a lot of work into some special encounter with a friendly dragon, and then the PCs would say, "Hey, let's kill him for the XP!" NOT HEROIC, guys!)

One GM in particular, whom I shall refer to as "GOS" ("God of Squirrels" -- a weird in-joke with several bizarre explanations) was the president of a gamer group that underwent several name changes (largely because of acronym conflicts with other student organizations on campus), and he also hosted a number of RPG sessions, mostly focused upon the Champions / Hero System RPG. (I think it was "4th edition," but I wouldn't swear by it.) Initially, I just sort of hung around the Student Center, doing doodles, sometimes doing portraits of peoples' characters, reading game books in the game club library, and listening to people talk about their too-cool characters in their too-cool campaigns. Or, I'd go to one of the one or two local stores carrying game supplies (a craft store near campus that happened to carry some game supplies as well, and a comic store that did the same) and listen to store staff trying to sell me on the wonders of this boxed-set game or that hardcover book.

Around that time, I got a chance to READ up on a bunch of game systems, and occasionally to even jump in on some fraction of a session, but these things were very short-lived. R. Talsorian Games' "Cyberpunk" was a big inspiration for me (one of those I'd been persuaded to actually BUY ... yet never actually got to play); I got the first edition in the black box with the white line art, and the grey-scale printed elements, with its rather lethal "Friday Night Firefight" system, and iconic archetypes. I was fascinated with the idea of playing some merc who pumps a lot of his income into keeping subscribed to a medical evac service (where a flying ambulance -- powered essentially by Harrier jump-jet type nozzles -- would blast its way into any zone once your vitals dropped below a certain point, and fly you out) ... or, perhaps even more fascinating, playing a campaign centered around being one of the members of that crazy flying ambulance team. Or, the Cop with his authority, or the Corporate Suit with his megacorp connections, or the Street Rocker with his fan base and his ability to whip up an angry mob with an impromptu performance, and so forth.

Paranoia was fascinating. I never PLAYED it, but I'd hear people talking on and on about what the games were like -- a crazy night of backstabbery, made all the more ludicrous because your character would die in some ridiculous way, only to be promptly replaced by a clone, and even though the game system supposedly had possibilities for advancement through several color-coded ranks, it sounded as if the typical game session would see multiple players go through an entire "family" of six clones in quick succession.

Call of Cthulhu was fascinating for similar reasons, though with a different tone. This was horror, after all, and it sounded as if it wasn't a proper adventure until at least half the party was insane or gobbled up by some extradimensional horror (or both!) by the end, and half the time the sole survivor would be the gutless coward who'd hop into the car and go squealing off into the night, while leaving his hapless (DOOMED!) comrades behind as the shadows closed around them.

In other words, whereas I had been so focused on trying to come up with the coolest character concept of some guy who has no weaknesses, who would be sure to "win" any given adventure, I was introduced to all these gamer "war stories" where the most interesting thing was in recounting the horrible and/or hilarious ways in which one's own character met a violent end.

I also heard about "Vampire: the Masquerade," and read through the book; I was fascinated with the concept of "The Masquerade," and then later the basics behind the concept of "Paradox" in the related "Mage: the Ascension." (I wasn't so keen on "Werewolf: the Apocalypse." Too much "Captain Planet with Fur and Fangs." Well, that, and werewolf propagation was a bit squicky -- like, TMI, dude. Didn't need to know that.) However, despite all the possibilities that seemed to be held in the setting, when I'd sit in on a game, it would basically devolve into a bunch of overpowered anarchists slaughtering police officers, killing random bystanders, and devolving into a bizarre one-upmanship over who was the BADDEST. Like ... ahem, oh, look at the time! Guess I'd best be heading home -- you folks have fun now, hear?

"Shadowrun" wasn't much better. It seemed to attract a similar crowd. The setting looked fascinating, but its main representative to me was a creepy guy who'd spend all his time recounting the creative ways in which his character would torture some corporate type that his gang had captured. It might have been a lovely game, but I wasn't comfortable being within arm's reach of any of the players.


Hero System, Champions, and Palladium
One of the games hyped at the craft store was Champions -- and I believe it was at 4th edition around then, with a big hardcover and full-color action scene on the cover. It was pretty. It was expensive (I was working -- mostly during the summer -- and paying my way through college, while my folks gave me "room and board" in the basement, so every expenditure counted). But, most excitingly, you could play pretty much AAAAAAnything.

Ditto for Palladium and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Robotech" and a bunch of other stuff. By some stretch of the imagination, it was all "compatible," which could lead to some pretty crazy game possibilities. I ended up drawing a bunch of TMNT fan art, and "GOS" ended up seeing my animal-people and introducing me to a warped comic called "Xanadu," which had an ad for something called "Albedo," and one thing led to another, and I ended up discovering MUCKs and "furry fandom." On the one hand, I met some very dear friends, and I even found Gwendel courtesy of those connections. On the other ... things got WEEEIIIRD. Scary-weird. But that's a topic for another time.

GOS also ran some Hero System/Champions games, and suddenly my old hodge-podge games of "dungeons and derringers" (Boot Hill + Zork + D&D snippets) didn't seem quite so bizarre anymore.

Sadly, some of the adventures never found resolution: there was too much turnover in players, and sometimes we'd cease to have "quorum" to continue in a game where there was too much story-element entangled in every PC for us to be able to continue without every single one of them in attendance. GOS would basically try to poll players for whatever they were interested in, and he'd weave together some exotic setting (usually modern-day or near-future) in which all those elements would fit in.

There was a bizarre adventure that had dark superheroes with some plot involving a gateway into Hell that was one part Hellraiser, one part Dante's Inferno, with a dash of Call of Cthulhu. Alas, it abruptly ended before I could see where in the world it was going.

GOS ran another "superhero" campaign, and by this point, I was really caught up in "anthropomorphic animal" madness such that it seemed I simply couldn't bear to play a mere human, elf, dwarf, cyborg, etc., without there being some sort of animal feature involved. I ended up playing an immortal unicorn (who could turn invisible to "normal mortals," with healing, teleportation, ability to see through walls, AND an ability to generate sunlight -- a bit of a grab-bag of powers). The other heroes were a Punisher type named "Killer," and another named "Slayer."

I learned the oddity of hand-waving economy in a game, when the GM basically generously suggested that we each had enough income to have an apartment, some means of transportation, and basic living expenses covered. "Killer"'s player wanted to know EXACTLY HOW MUCH that came out to, because he was going to live in some rat-infested dive of a cheap dump and live on CAT FOOD so that he could spend every last spare penny on big guns and bullets. "Slayer" was only slightly less anti-social. It was the sort of campaign where ... well, let's see, they'd be beating up witnesses who failed to give useful clues, and I'd be patching them up ... or they'd end up getting into a fight with the police, and I'd be hiding and trying to keep all the cops alive ... or we'd supposedly be on a mission to stop some ritual and some sacrifice, but "Slayer" decides to head straight there, and of course it's a case where as soon as one PC sets foot on the place, all events immediately fall into motion, and the other players are helpless in limbo as Slayer just sits there and WATCHES as the victim is killed because, hey, there's no way he's going to take on all those cultists by himself, huh?

Another campaign, and I'm playing some dog-man FBI-super-agent, and the other guys are ... not Killer and Slayer, but just about, again, and of course one has "Hunted by FBI" as a disad, and I'm going to the GM and saying, "I'm not in this for PVP -- I'm going to write up another character," and the GM is going, "No no no! Everyone should play what they WANT to! I'll make it work!" And it was a royal mess. I abused the Follower rules and power frameworks horribly. When one of my Followers got ambushed by some bad guy and gutted, I actually started crying at the table. And here I was, 20-something years old. Good grief, but I had a lot of growing up to do.

Or, on the flip side, you could say that while I'm spending all this time grousing about the actions of my fellow PCs, somehow the GM managed to weave together an elaborate enough story that it made me care about all these characters (even "Followers," who the GM treated as NPCs, and not merely as puppets under my control).

Eventually, I tried my own hand at running a game. I tried running an Indiana-Jones-style campaign, and I dare say it was one of the most involved and planned-out campaigns I've ever done. I read up on a book by Tolkien on translations of a Middle English telling of the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and used that as part of the basis for an adventure with the Spear of Destiny and the Green Baldric as the MacGuffins of choice. I raged over one player in the group who claimed to be a "history major" and used this "authority" to make all sorts of crazy claims about things his character should be able to do in that time period, or to argue against various scenarios. (Lesson learned: Never GM in an adventure that hinges upon some area of knowledge your player can claim superiority over you in. This is one reason I avoid hard sci-fi like the plague. Too many engineers and teachers and chemists in my play groups.)

The funny thing is, I don't remember much about how it ended. (Did it?) My strongest memories are of the earliest sessions (and especially of the various things that went badly). A lot of what happened, happened in spite of the game system itself; character design involved a lot of number crunching, the SPD phases were a royal pain, and there was a lot that was terribly clunky.

But I really benefited from GOS offering me honest critique after it all. I had gotten too wrapped up and focused on particular player antics that bothered me. (Our "history major" had a remarkable and statistically-improbable knack for "lucky" die rolls on demand, and I actually caught him pinky-flipping dice that had come up some other number on multiple occasions.) So many of those things just didn't really matter. What really mattered was the story that we were telling together, and the interesting character interactions. So much of the fun was really driven by the way the PCs interacted with each other, and I wish I had more fully realized that at the time.

Alas, our marathon games at GOS's place eventually came to an end. Everyone in this group had started college before I did, and they were therefore closer to graduation. The game circle took some hits, as its core group pretty much graduated together.

For a time, someone tried running Palladium TMNT, but that was a travesty. Play balance? Bah. And the GM really would rather have been running D&D. My character's one schtick was having "Mind Block," which made him totally immune to mental illusions and mind control and such ... and the GM would use module adventures that focused on enemies such as the Terror Bears (all psychic powers, all the time!) and we'd basically find out that an entire encounter was just one big mental illusion ("But ... MIND BLOCK!" "Well, too late now. You should have said something earlier." "But I didn't KNOW it was an illusion! And that's my ONLY POWER ON MY SHEET!" "Tsk."). In addition to Mind Block, my character was a mechanic who could ride a motorcycle, and could fire a revolver. Meanwhile, I think the rest of the group consisted of a time-traveling multi-dimensional alien with the equivalent of 4 college degrees, another was a samurai who was also a master at super-karate, yet another was some sort of magic powerhouse, and what happens?

Session #2: We all get transported to a generic fantasy universe where technology does not work. Not even my wind-up wristwatch, or my pack of matches, let alone my six-shooter. (Good grief, GM! Did you think a six-shooter was going to conquer the world of Not-D&D? I've only got a limited number of bullets!) It also didn't help that we kept being bailed out by a Mary Sue super-NPC who'd sneer at how useless we were.

There was no Session #3.


MUCKs and MUSHes
At some point, I discovered the early internet and online MUCKs and MUSHes.

Early MUCK roleplay was about as sophisticated as grade-schoolers running around on the grass during recess, pointing their fingers at each other and going, "Bang! You're Dead!" "NUH UH! You missed me!" Except we're somehow college-aged, we're sitting at VAX/VMT terminals TYPING our actions at each other, and there's a whole lot more bad language and foul imagery and graphic violence involved, and a distinct mushiness when it comes to the distinction between player and character and what's roleplay and reality.

Somehow, I got invited onto something called "NarniaMUSH." It was pretty bizarre as well, but I at least got introduced to a certain amount of etiquette in this free-form so-called "roleplay." For one thing, combat is pointless. The only really interesting stuff to be found is when you've got some characters with interesting backstories and personalities and interactions, and you TALK with each other, and learn about each other, and the "reward" for all your trouble is unraveling some sort of mystery in the process.

From there, I downgraded to something called "GenesisMUCK." I still hadn't quite matured when it came to games, and I didn't adapt well to the god-level power-gaming. I ran a curious little pocket adventure that I dub "Madame Xanadu and the Box of Panda-Ra," which was full of weird little puzzles and premises; the adventure took place in a pocket dimension within a magical box -- something that nobody was FORCED to go into, and which wasn't terribly difficult to get back out of -- such that I had an excuse for characters of grossly varied power levels to have an equal chance to interact with the environment and its mysteries.

Sadly, it's far enough back that I've forgotten most of the details, but it was successful enough that I recycled elements of the adventure a few times over the years for online roleplay.

Eventually, I wasted a lot of time on something called "SinaiMUCK." At times, it was just a bunch of free-form roleplay, but there was usually a "GM" involved in anything with a "plot" of any consequence. I got overly wrapped up in the "drama" involved in creative clashes (this was a "shared universe," after all). Early on, a lot of my creative spark came from reacting to things created and imagined by other "GMs." But the more I got my way, the more other people moved on. (Or the other way around; it's hard to say in retrospect.) Eventually, it got to be a pretty small group, and newcomers had a hard time fitting in and staying around.

It found a little bit of new life once we started moving beyond slavishly trying to fit all adventures into this primary "shared universe," and we'd use the virtual rooms dubbed "holodecks" to try running shorter-span adventures set in other continuities entirely, without the burden of making it all somehow tie together. Among my favorites would be my attempt at an online adaptation of the "Mutant Chronicles" universe with "Luna Blues" (featuring a bunch of police officers in a retro-futuristic techno-fantasy pulp-cyber-noir setting ON THE MOON), the "Mirari" campaign (kids and an imaginary play-world-turned-real, and the implications thereof), Rowyn's "Just Trust Me" campaign (horror heavily hinged upon not giving the players the whole story behind what was going on), the "Game of October" (a very ambitious, PVP-ish game with high promise, but troubled by various of the "players" dropping out), and TuftEars....

Dear me, I can't even remember the name of the setting. My memory is THAT BAD. But it was yet another foray into "virtual reality MMO somehow becomes real." Tuftears came up with the setting, but I was tasked with GMing it. Alas, I flew WAY off course from the original concept, but I think it still made for a worthwhile exploration. I find myself wishing I could see what it would have been like if it had all been done closer to what Tuftears's original concept was, rather than mine, which veered more into a sort of quasi-horror at times.

Along the way, we delved into "Wonderland No More" -- which was another setting where I couldn't help veering into some horror elements.

But alas, roleplay via computer is a very, VERY slow process. I've gotten to the point where I feel as if I'm losing my mind, sitting at the ready at the computer, waiting for another paragraph to come in from a player ... checking to make sure everyone has had a chance at a "turn" before the bad guys act next ... fretting that I'm making everyone wait too long as I type in the next descriptive paragraph ... and, oh yes, trying to get a "quorum" of players for the next session.

A game scenario that would take up a 4-hour game slot at a gaming convention with 4-6 players ends up taking 4 days of 4-8 hour sessions when done online, via text, with 2-4 online players. I wish I could speed things up somehow. There are certain advantages in being able to have all the narrative in text, so if anyone misses a detail, you can always scroll back up. Or, I have online maps with sprites instead of having to dig out a box of terrain and minis (or paper stand-ups that'll blow around under the ceiling fan or fall over if someone breathes in the wrong direction). Or, the fact that I can have players clear across the country online, whereas in a tabletop game we're very limited by geography.

Or, the simple fact that Tuftears and Rowyn are really awesome people, and I'm often sad that I don't interact with them much anymore. (Le sigh.) But another problem other than my patience is just that I feel like my brain isn't quite as sharp as it used to be. Perhaps I've learned from a few of my old mistakes, but I'm no longer as quick on the draw. I have trouble turning on the "imagination spigot" on demand. I hardly even doodle anymore. The motivation counts for a lot.

There's always the possibility it'll change, but for now that chapter seems to be effectively closed for me.


Warhammer and Advanced HeroQuest
Overlapping this time, the local comic store heavily promoted Warhammer Fantasy Battle. I managed to get a bunch of miniatures that they accepted as proxies by getting figures from Milton Bradley's Battle Masters and HeroQuest (created in partnership with Games Workshop), though not without a little grumbling. I had the distinction of losing every single battle, and in more than half my games getting "skunked" (as in, I could not manage to damage even a single enemy troop). Part of that was my sheer incompetence as a wargamer.

Part of that was on account of a bozo game store moderator who was a buddy with the guy I was playing against. I mean, hey, the other guy was spending more money than I was in the store, and his miniatures were painted nicer. Why shouldn't be get a break? But some of the rulings were ludicrous. No, just because you used a proxy model that happens to have claws that reach over my figures into the second or third rank shouldn't mean that he's able to kill more models in a round. IN WHAT WAY CAN THAT POSSIBLY MAKE SENSE FOR A WAR GAME?

Ahem. Still a little bitter about that? Yeah, I perplex myself sometimes.

Anyway, despite all that, I still got an appreciation for a game system in which you could have scores of models on the table, and roll handfuls of dice to represent multiple attacks, pull out the dice that didn't "hit," then roll those dice again to handle the armor checks, and the remaining dice will tell you how many combatants are out of the action. With the exception of "heroes," most models were either up or down -- in or out. Not tons of little hit point markers next to every mini on the table to see how whittled-down it was.

Eventually, I picked up a game of Advanced HeroQuest -- initially just so I could get a cheap supply of Skaven -- and then I was fascinated by the puzzle-locking corridor pieces, and then by the "threshold" mechanics for combat. It was billed as a board game, but it really had all the elements needed for an RPG. All you had to do was to have someone commit to be the GM, and rather than rolling on a random chart whenever you drink a potion or open a chest, have the GM actually make those decisions ahead of time and come up with a dungeon map and some sort of story. Unlike previous systems I'd played, combat was pretty fast and furious. I could have several goblins around a single hero, and roll dice for their attacks all at once. There might be lots of misses, so we'd toss those dice out and only focus on what hit.

For beginners, it was pretty lethal, but "Hero Points" greatly improved PC survivability. Eventually, that proved to be the breaking point of the game, where once you'd played enough sessions, your PC would have a pool of Hero Points that would make him virtually invincible ... but once he RAN OUT, then it's time to head for the exit. (Also, power progression got out of hand for certain classes over others.) But despite the game's many flaws, it was very playable, and I actually gathered together some younger players from my church (including the guy who would eventually become my brother-in-law), and ran some fun (and sometimes funny) games.


WEG Star Wars
After I left college, I spent some time on my own for the first time in Asheville, North Carolina. My memories of that time have been thoroughly polished by nostalgia. My online experiences (GenesisMUCK, NarniaMUSH) around then were heavy with angst, and I was guilty of a whole lot of immature behavior, having a real lack of perspective on things. Locally, I didn't do much with RPGs, but rather ran several games of Warzone (a miniatures wargame set in the universe of the Mutant Chronicles) with some co-workers and various gamers we'd run into at the local stores. I still had a few things to learn about being a good game host, so the turnover was a bit rough. I still had some learning to do.

Eventually, my job situation changed (my employer decided to outsource its entire IT department, thus eliminating my position and those of my co-workers), and I had to go on the move for jobs. Some friends down in Florida helped me with some leads, and eventually I moved down there to follow work. I went to a local convention, and ran some games of Warzone, and some pickup games of Advanced HeroQuest. But locally, some friends got together and we ran some campaigns of Star Wars (the old West End Games system), changing the GM role around. Our adventures were primarily set in the "Expanded Universe" and "New Republic" era, as this was around the time that Timothy Zahn renewed interest in the Star Wars franchise with his "Thrawn Trilogy," and soon the Expanded Universe was exploding with the X-Wing books, and those dreadful Jedi Academy books.

Memorable points include my playing of a Rodian merc with a knack for painting everything bright fiery red (I was inspired in part by Warhammer 40K Orks and their "go fasta red" mindset), and "playing" my role by using a sock puppet and speaking in made-up Huttese, holding up "translation cards" to show other players what I was "actually" saying. Said PC schtick got old real quick, though, and my PC ended up getting killed rather anticlimactically due to a damage from a dianoga to the leg.

(Weird factor about WEG hit locations: they mattered only in that if you got hit in the head or torso, you might be wearing armor there. It wasn't that you'd suffer any MORE or LESS damage based on hit location, so actually the foot was the most lethal place my character could have been hit, rules-wise.)

I also played a mute Boba-Fett-wannabe. That one ... could have used some work. I don't think I have the stamina for playing truly serious characters like that. But it was still memorable, and one of my least-worst goes at actually being a player, I think (although I still committed a few "player sins" that made life difficult for the GM).

The "Wild Die" was an interesting factor, as were Force Points. Playing in an established franchise universe where some players could claim more knowledge than the GM (because they read more books) was a real pitfall. Nonetheless, it had its memorable moments, and was mostly worth the effort.

(... to be continued ...)