Running a Tolkien Game that Does Not Exist

The Lord of the Rings Adventure Game is one of my favorite licensed Tolkien games. It was released in 1991, and was largely the work of long-time ICE designer Jessica Ney (credited variously as Jessica Ney and J. M. Ney in different parts of the credits). It is a "starter RPG," designed to ease new and younger players into the hobby. To this end, they stripped the game down to a super simple, super streamlined system. The eventual goal was to get these new players to eventually graduate to the "advanced" MERP products, of which there was now a significant backlog. 

A lot of modern OSR folks prefer Basic to Expert because, well, you can do more with the simpler version. Similarly, I prefer Lord of the Rings Adventure Game (curiously shortened to "LOR" in the book). There are so many rules in LOR that feel like cutting-edge OSR innovations: slot-based inventory, HP-powered spellcasting, starting equipment packages. It has an early iteration of D&D4E's skill challenges (called "action sequences" in the book). The rules were even called "Guidelines," as the author demurred from putting too much emphasis on their own intention and wanting each GM to make their own rulings (guidings not guidelines, anyone?).

LOR was supposed to be released as sort of an "adventure path" of five books, two adventures per book. However, only three made it to print.

• (1991) Lord of the Rings Adventure Game, Dawn Comes Early (Boxed Set)
• (1991) Darker than the Darkness
• (1993) Over the Misty Mountains Cold

Two more sequel books were promised to be available (Before the Goblins in 1993 and Greatest of the Forests in 1994), but never reached publication. Why? Well, at the same time period, ICE was also publishing a series of choose your own adventure books called Middle-earth Quest. Tolkien Estate claimed this violated their license, since they were only allowed to publish games based on the license, not books. The fourth Middle-earth Quest book was actually recalled and destroyed en masse. Are CYOA books games or books? Regardless of the epistemological answer, ICE went bankrupt with the suit, and the LOR series was scrapped.

Let me be clear: The LOR adventures are not good. They are pure railroads. Every roll behind the screen is made to be fudged. Designed for parents to run for their children, there are no consequences. Every failed roll by the players culminates in a rescue by a named NPC like Gandalf with a finger wag telling them to get back onto the railroad.

But the writing! The writing is good! You just need to deconstruct the railroad and repurpose it into an antique iron sculpture. All the guts are worth reusing. Decouple it from the idea of faux rolls and intended outcomes, let it be an open-ended sandbox, and I think the game is absolutely worth playing.

Anyway, this weekend, I'm running a game based on my Wilderland series and the Lord of the Rings Adventure Game. It's sort of a retroclone and reinterpretation of a flawed text, in true OSR tradition. I'm calling it "LORE." 

Here is a picture of me prepping the game.

And here are the character sheets I'm handing to my players. You can download them all here, if you were interested in doing so. (The background color is on a non-printing layer, so don't worry about your ink.)

I hope my little experiment will be fun! 

Mechanics Microblogging: Lore Bids, Resolve, and Disassociated Mechanics in HIS MAJESTY THE WORM

With the dissolution of so many things I once enjoyed (Twitter, America, etc.), I'm going to try and start doing more microblogging. Too many of my previous thoughts were placed into tweets and became too ephemeral. 

Glossary

Some quick definitions of terms:

Lore Bids: In His Majesty the Worm, you can ask a question of the GM and receive as much information as the GM can tell you about a subject related to one of your motifs. This is called "bidding lore." You can bid lore 4 times per Crawl Phase.

Disassociated Mechanic: A dissociated mechanic is one which is disconnected from the game world. A player character knows that they have six pitons in their backpack. They do not know that they have 12 HP or 4 lore bids left. In a word, non-diegetic. 

What are the goals behind using disassociated mechanics like Lore?

In old-school D&D, you have to rest every sixth turn (that is, for 10 minutes out of every hour of dungeon exploration). If you fail to do so, PCs get a –1 penalty to attack and damage rolls. This is one of the ways that time pressure is put onto PCs, and one of the limited resources that incentivizes the "deeper into the dungeon for loot or retreat" loop.

This loop is something I was interested in evoking in His Majesty the Worm. And as someone who does a fair bit of hiking, it makes sense to me. Dungeon crawling would be scary, exhausting, stressful. It would fatigue both body and mind. How do you translate that feeling into the game design?

Here's my pitch: Players will feel that they are becoming weak and tired when their characters begin to lose resources. But "loss of access to powers" feels different than "takes penalties." I think penalties are less fun. There's something in our ape brain that interprets "You start your day with a +1 bonus!" vs "You must rest or take a -1 penalty" differently.

Also, beyond the simple grind of "rest 1 turn in 6" from old-school D&D, I think that giving players a choice when they use their physical abilities (Resolve) and mental abilities (Lore) feels better. Making choices is what is fun about games.

Why 4?

Well, 4 is sorta the magic number in His Majesty the Worm, isn't it? 

But more than that, I think that 4 is a nice round number that lets players translate the disassociated mechanic into something they could talk about in character because you might feel 25/50/100% exhausted. 

I think this is a lot cleaner than the way we talk about HP. 5 damage means something very different to a magic-user with 4HP vs a fighter with 36 HP. Is 5 HP a heavy wound or not? If a cleric asks how much healing you need, would you say out loud in character: "Well, if I was to gauge my life on an arbitrary scale from 1-36, I would say about 12 points of life would feel good to me right now."

If I can run 4 miles, I know that I've hit 25% of my limit after the first mile. 

If I spend 3 lore bids, I know that I'm getting fuzzy brained and can't think straight. I can use those sorts of words to describe the disassociated mechanics in an associated way. It's like using the word "bloodied" in 4E. It makes sense at a certain level.

Questing Beast reviews HIS MAJESTY THE WORM

I expect the Venn diagram of "people who have already seen the notification that Questing Beast has a new video" and "people who read my blog" is a perfect circle, but was very excited this week that Ben gave His Majesty the Worm a review. 

(Ben, if you're reading this, thanks!)

My only regret is that he didn't spend longer talking about the questing beast monster in the book.

The Lady and the Unicorn (Steal this Puzzle)

At the Cluny museum, there's a gallery that displays a sequence of six tapestries called The Lady and the Unicorn.

You can see them all here.

To quote Wikipedia: "Five of the tapestries are commonly interpreted as depicting the five senses – taste, hearing, sight, smell, and touch. The sixth displays the words "À mon seul désir". The (sixth) tapestry's intended meaning is obscure."

Here is a puzzle inspired by these tapestries. 

A Sequence of Illustrations and Empty Pedestals 

A gallery. The floor is a mosaic of a noble woman with a speech bubble saying: "Bring me what I desire." 

On the walls there are five tapestries, each depicting a woman and a unicorn in various poses. In front of each tapestry is an empty pedestal.

The tapestries are:

• A noble lady petting a unicorn, one hand on its curling horn, another stroking its mane. (Touch)
• A noble lady eating sweetmeats. A unicorn grazes nearby. (Taste)
• A noble lady making a garland of flowers, a unicorn nuzzles in curiously. (Smell)
• A noble lady playing an organ, a unicorn rampant. (Hearing)
• A noble lady gazes into a mirror, a unicorn kneels and lays its head in her lap. (Sight)

The gimmick

Each tapestry depicts one of the five senses. The puzzle is solved by placing something of high quality that can be enjoyed by that sense. For example, a bouquet of flowers or a bottle of perfume would "unlock" the smell pedestal; a work of art or a piece of jewelry would "unlock" the sight pedestal, etc.

There's not a single answer for any pedestal, but the item should be considered a "nice gift." 

If all five pedestals have appropriate offerings on them, a secret panel opens in the wall. In it is a unicorn horn lance. 

Look at this thing. You just KNOW it's magical.

Puzzles and riddles can be frustrating at the game table if they are blockers to progress. But if they offer rewards, like treasures or shortcuts, puzzles become optional, opt-in fun.