Playing and reading and creating some challenge-oriented games, part 1

Writing this to keep track of games, for my own sake. It may be of use to people in my play communities, in case they want to play some games with me, or just hear about new games.

Challenge-oriented maybe sounds better than "gamist" or (ugh) "step on up", but it means the same thing. A game where your skill is on the line. Where the point is victory.

Something like an early edition of Dungeons & Dragons (1974) by various

My strong preference is for the original publication, 1974, the "little brown books". I have played a lot of Moldvay Basic (1980)/Cook and Marsh Expert (1981) under the title "Old School Essentials". I'd like to try out Holmes Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (1977) as written.

These are the majority of games I play; just read the blog!

Tunnels & Trolls (1975) by Ken St. Andre

I read it once. Keep meaning to play it, but really, who cares about dungeon crawling? I am not sure what is supposed to be so good about it, except that it's better as a rules text than early D&D. Like that's hard! TSR really should have shelled out for a competent copy-editor instead of letting the Blooms spend $1 million dredging up shipwrecks. (That's a real thing.)

I've been recommended the 5th edition (1979). The 5.5th edition (2005) onward add spite damage, which I like the sound of (I added it to my own combat overhaul!) but I think people were using spite damage as a  house rule for a long time before that. I'd probably play 5th and add spite.

The Great Ork Gods (2004) by Jack Aidley

Free, yippee!

Wrote a play report. Players and characters are directly competing, with the exception of a neutral referee who plays side characters and awards extra Oog. Most of the "strategy" will come from hosing high Oog players with Spite on crucial rolls, and deciding when to ally and when to betray other orks to achieve objectives.

As a system, it's barely there. The "you play the gods" conceit is fun but unnecessary; the Spite economy could run differently.

One thing I like: since the players and their characters have interests in common, you can hit somebody with Spite as payback for an in-fiction betrayal. Or you can in-fiction act against someone for their formal actions (getting Oog, spending Spite against you).

What I didn't like: characters do not "keep state" except as regards their Oog, goblins, and the difficulty of each task. Tasks are distributed extremely unevenly between gods. Multiple deaths and failures in a row grind the game to a halt.

A Thousand and One Nights (2006) by Meguey Baker

Link. I own a pdf somewhere but I can't find it.

A literal story-telling game, as in, a game where the characters are telling stories. Read it once, tbh I can't remember how it works but I remember being impressed. Strong color. Made me want to play it.

Agon (2006) by John Harper

No idea if this is any good. I've heard bad things about Blades in the Dark, which is by the same guy, so who knows.

I'll be playing the 2nd edition (2020) because that's what's on itch.io.

Beast Hunters (2007) by CW Griffen and Riis Griffen

I'll be playing the Bloodcarved Edition (2019) because that's the PDF I have. If you buy a copy, make sure you do it on itch.io, it costs way less. I fully intend to play this, and since it only requires 2 players, it shouldn't be hard.

I plan to revamp the setting a bit. As written the Beast Hunters are noble savages whose battle prowess makes them impervious to foreign rule. I'd say instead that they occupy marginal land, and their form of life is incompatible with an organized state's ways of knowing. Thus they are difficult to colonize and frankly not worth the effort. Think Guinea Highlands rather than a romanticized depiction of the Mongols and American Indians.

The main point of interest here is the Limit rule. The Hunter can only be defeated by an enemy/obstacle whose power is less than or equal to twice their limit... but there's nothing stopping the Challenger (the GM figure) from populating the world with tons of enemies and obstacles of all different power. The Hunter can't be personally defeated by anything with a power more than twice their limit... but their tribe and allies can certainly suffer consequences!

Note that the rules text wants me to play differently. It wants me to improvise obstacles and enemies based on the Hunter's limit. I'll probably try that out once or twice. But since the game offers very little actual guidance for scenario formation, I don't feel bad drifting its rules a bit.

Conflict resolution and character building are nothing special, or maybe even bad. It looks like the formal rules (dice, numbers, sheets) and the fiction interact at three points: at the beginning of a challenge, when we create the enemy; during the challenge, when the Hunter or Challenger maneuvers, and the Challenger rates the effectiveness or cleverness of the Hunter's maneuver; and at the end of the challenge, when the issue is resolved. I won't know for certain until I get to actually play the game.

Blood Red Sands (2013) by Ralph Mazza

The PDF isn't for sale anywhere so you have to buy a hardcopy used or get creative.

Fucking hell, has anybody other than the author actually played this game? Has anybody learned to play it just by reading it? I have my doubts. 200+ pages of rules and this puppy is dense. I would have to study this to actually play it. Oh, and it wants you to commit to 10 sessions, minimum!

This game is interesting because of the different strategic cycles going on, constantly, within it.

Five players. 1 hero, 4 factions, per session. You rotate who plays what, making new heroes and factions as needed, but one person is never going to play a hero. You eliminate heroes as you go along, until there's only one left, and then they go on a final adventure.

You want victory points. If you don't have enough victory points, you don't get to play as a hero, or your hero gets eliminated. You get victory points by winning formal challenges. If you're a non-hero player, you can win more points by achieving objectives. The hero player can end the scenario at any point, maybe losing some possible points to keep somebody else from gaining more points. Anybody can forgo their potential points to try to keep somebody else from getting points. (That latter is not a formal move, that would be some kind of in-fiction maneuver that blocks the other player's faction.)

You collaboratively make new factions for the next session, and distribute them based on who has the most points, and who got hosed the worst in the last session (different values, surprisingly). Depending on your score and status, you might want a clear lead faction, or you might want everybody equal, or you might even want a clear worst faction. These factions will have in-fiction alliances which you cannot fully control.

Within a scene you'll have conflicts. The person currently narrating gets their way unless somebody steps up to stop them. You can try to bribe them, or try to gamble to beat them, or turn to the frankly byzantine conflict resolution procedure to stop them. The options are cleverly intertwined so there's not usually an obvious answer. If you make a large bribe, you give up a lot of your limited resources. If you make a small bribe, they might force you to gamble, and your small bribe gives you a low chance of winning. Or or or... You could never play this game without the book open on the table, preferably multiple copies, so you could reference the rules at every turn.

Anyway, in sum, there's all these intersecting wheels and economies. I expect that the gameplay is either impossible or very rich, provided the fiction doesn't get crowed out by the formalisms.

Will I ever play this? Who knows. I'd need 4 co-players who were all willing to devote 50+ hours to the game.