My next PC:

Taciturn the Dwarf.

So old that he claims the word comes from his name.

(I think he might be a little grumpy.)

Tagline: It’s FUDGE. It’s the 1^st edition DMG. It’s a campaign. It’s not great, but it’s not bad. It is worth the money.

This review requires a bit of history to put it into its proper context.

Multiverser became the first game to become an official RPGNet Pariah, a status which actually originated on various Usenet groups. Basically, the game was released, the creator pitched it as the greatest thing since sliced bread (using basically all the same rhetoric you’d expect from a fantasy heartbreaker), and was then sandbagged by the internet.

Hilariously, one of the biggest complaints was that they were charging $50 for the core rulebooks. $50! (This was hilarious partly because this included two books totaling 710 pages, and even in 1999 $50 was hardly an outrageous or unusual price for that. In retrospect it’s even more hilarious, because within a couple years the entire industry was finally forced to accept that they had been undercharging for their products for at least a decade and $50 core rulebooks became relatively commonplace.)

In response to the sandbagging, Mark Young, the creator of the game, asked for reviewers. I volunteered. He sent me a digital copy of the rules. This is what I found…

Note 1: It is important to note right up front that the price of $50 represents not only the core Multiverser rulebook, but also a volume called The First Book of Worlds. This review only deals with the core rules. A future review will deal with The First Book of Worlds.

Note 2: Secondly, I want to explain how this review came about. It sprang from a series of debates regarding the Multiverser system which took place on the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.frp.misc. Following the debate several people, including myself, stepped forward to offer reviews of the system in order to prevent some solid facts regarding the system in a debate which had otherwise consisted largely of unfounded supposition versus extravagant claims. Valdron, Inc. provided me with an electronic review copy. Valdron, Inc. did not solicit this review; nor do I feel in anyway indebted to them – but you deserve to know from whence the review came.

The first thing I should say regarding this game is that it was extremely difficult to get a grasp on it in order to review it. With most games that I review its relatively simple to quickly catch onto what the system and setting are attempting to do and then proceed from there. With Multiverser I had an amazing amount of difficult doing this. I think this is because I had some extremely incorrect expectations coming into this game, and then had to completely change my POV before it began to make sense.

Here, then, is my conclusion:

Multiverser is a campaign game wrapped up in an extremely complicated system which is a fascinating mixture of FUDGE and the 1st Edition AD&D DMG. It is completely unlike anything I’ve seen before – and that either means its a game perched on the edge of breakthrough success, or instant obscurity. It’s not for everyone, but it just might be for you.

IT’S A CAMPAIGN, STUPID

The first, and biggest, breakthrough for me was the realization of exactly what this game was attempting to be. The title and various discussions concerning the system had completely mislead me into believing that Multiverser was a generic gaming engine in the spirit of GURPS, Hero, and others. It took me nearly fifty pages before I realized this wasn’t what their goal was at all – rather what was being presented was a very basic, very broad multi-genre campaign in the spirit of Sliders or GURPS Alternate Earths.

What distinguishes this particular campaign is the idea of scriff – possibly the most original and thought-provoking concept I personally found within the covers of the book. The basic idea is that all the PCs are imbued with a substance known as scriff. The concept of scriff makes Multiverser possibly the only RPG on the market where the PCs are expected to kick the bucket on a regular basis – because whenever they do so they reappear in an alternate universe. This mode of play obviously has certain drawbacks (for one thing no long-term development of setting or NPC interaction), but these are common limitations of the dimension-hopping genre.

Another interesting facet of this campaign is that Multiverser positively goes out of its way to encourage the GM to have the players split up – reawakening in separate universes – before finally reuniting together in a single universe after several side-trips. This, of course, makes for much more difficult campaigns to run – but Multiverser states right up front that this game is not for amateur GMs and that this concept, in particular, is much more difficult to run than a standard RPG environment where all the PCs stick together. In many ways I was reminded of the type of campaign described in the Amber Diceless Roleplaying System. There is, of course, no requirement that you play your games in this manner – although I would then suggest figuring out some reason why the players always seem to appear together and go places together. You will also need to define a much tighter plot since it will be necessary to kill off all the PCs in a fairly narrow section of time in order to have them all be in the same place at the same time.

A far more nebulous decision for the campaign comes in the form of having the players play themselves. Although I have known some campaigns based on this premise to work, these success stories are vastly outnumbered by horror stories – particularly of the variety wherein the GM doesn’t seem to think that Joe Average Player is as intelligent as Einstein. The decision to stress this as a campaign necessity, rather than simply an option, is even more puzzling considering that character creation is entirely descriptive – you assign whatever you feel to be appropriate without worrying about points, classes, levels, or other balancing mechanisms. This is so completely easy to ignore, however, that is little more than an irritating artifact.

FUDGE?

Reading my summary of the system probably left many of you with a serious question: “Wait a minute, its a complicated system which is like FUDGE? Is that even possible?”

Well, not quite. But the methodology is more than slightly similar: Provide a basic system which can be extrapolated, changed, and added to as the GM sees fit. Of course with a complicated system its a far more difficult to “fudge” things than in a simple system like FUDGE, but the Multiverser designers more than compensate for this by providing you with a wealth of options as well as a peek into the game theory which went into designing the system.

To give you an idea of the type of material included let me point towards Appendix 3: Basic Dicing Curves. This Appendix deals exhaustively with how the probability curves of dice work. This information is provided because the central resolution mechanic is designed in such a way that the GM is expected to modify the type of dice used to resolve an action, in order to obtain precisely the result they want.

Sound familiar? It should. FUDGE uses an identical methodology. Of course FUDGE’s system is so simple that it’s not necessary to explain probability distribution. I, personally, prefer FUDGE, but it is also easy for me to see how the Multiverser system could hold appeal – it has a precision which the extremely low granularity of FUDGE will never possess. This precision, of course, comes at the cost of complexity – and you should ask yourself which compromise you want to take.

FIRST EDITION AD&D?

Another question which probably sprung to your mind was, “The First Edition DMG? And you think this is favorable review?”

In short: Yes.

One of the things which came out in the discussion on rec.games.frp.misc was that the Multiverser designers considered the DMG1 to be one of the greatest gaming manuals ever produced. This naturally baffled quite a few people, myself included. It was only once I saw Multiverser that I understood why they had said that and why they believe that.

First, you won’t find much artwork in this book. The thing is 515 pages long and all but a dozen or so of those are packed full with words and nothing else. Those of you who have been bemoaning the rise in art-content in books to the detriment of practical gaming content would rejoice to see that the Multiverser creators have embraced this spirit as well. Information is what the gamer needs, the thinking goes, and information is what we’ll give him.

In fact, the only art in the book is a full-page piece at the top of each chapter. If you’ve seen the art in the 1st edition of AD&D you’ll know what to expect – plain ink drawings, with often humorous content (my personal favorites include the robotic hand dropping a set of dice into a three-fingered alien palm, and the two pilots sitting next to their crashed ship of fantastic technology attempting to light a fire by rubbing two sticks together).

Second, as I’ve said before, this book is packed with information. Sure we all laugh at Gygax’s Table of Courtesans, but some of the stuff in the DMG1 was invaluable for those who like having a separate, specific rule to cover everything. The Multiverser designers, again, took this to heart. Again, it’s not a style I personally enjoy – but it is a style I can easily appreciate the appeal of.

Multiverser of course does this without adopting Gygax’s atrocious and opaque prose style.

$50?!?!?!

The biggest concern, by far, concerning the Multiverser system is the price tag – you have to spend $50 to get the basic book.

$50?!?! Forget it, right?

Well, first realize that the basic book isn’t actually $50. Included in that total is the First Book of Worlds, which (as its title suggests) contains several different worlds which your players can travel to. The reason you can only buy these two books together is because the Multiverser team feels very strongly that everything you need to play a game should be found in one book – and although they couldn’t print everything in one book for various reasons, they thought they could at least include it under one price tag.

Personally I think they’re nuts. It’s a good philosophy, but frankly everything you need to play Multiverser IS in the core book and the First Book of Worlds strikes me as completely optional. They should separate the package and, thereby, lower the price to a level where gamers would feel much better about sending money to them in order to try their game system. This become even more true since you can’t get Multiverser in stores to my knowledge, only through mail order.

To be fair in judging the value of the core rulebook though, let’s judge it at a cost of $25 (split it evenly right down the middle between the two books). Is Multiverser worth $25?

The answer is, “Hell yeah!” If nothing else this system is exhaustive in the detail and options it provides – providing ammunition and material for other games you may choose to run. Of particular use, I’ve found, is the aforementioned Appendix 3 – which very nicely summarizes probability theory concerning dice and allows easy calculation of the probability spread in any system you might choose to run.

Compare the densely packed text of these 515 pages to the $30-$35 game books that are coming out now from other companies, and you can clearly see that if nothing else, you’re getting your money’s worth.

(I will be reviewing the First Book of Worlds at a later date when I have had time to more properly study it. Allow me to state again that $50 for this two book package is not at all a bad price when compared with the rest of the industry. For example if you look at Heavy Gear (one of my favorite systems) a comparable purchase there would be the core rulebook and the Life on Terra Nova sourcebook, a combined total of approximately $55.)

A FEW SUGGESTIONS

All that being said, Multiverser does possess a rather sizable flaw and it’s a flaw which is large enough to suggest that a second edition of this game would be well advised. My suggestions if such a thing were to ever come to pass:

1. As mentioned before, drop the “play yourself’ requirement from the rules. At most offer it as a suggested method of play, but also include other suggestions.

2. The book is in need of reorganization. Clearly delineate your various ideas into separate, distinct sections. This need is particularly poignant since the primary strength of the system, in my opinion, is the way in which you can mix-and-match elements.

3. Clarify your system mechanics. They are good mechanics and achieve what they are aiming for, but they also vaguely expressed in some places.

A further suggestion which might be immediately implemented, and has already been implied, is that you begin selling these books separately. There’s no real need to mandatorily sell them together, and I believe you are doing nothing but injuring your sale potentials by marketing the books in this fashion.

SUMMARY

The quick-and-dirty summary of this product?

The content is great, the lay-out and presentation need some work (although there’s nothing wrong with the information-heavy approach, clarification and distinction is particularly needed considering how much material is present). This system is not for those who dislike complicated systems – you will absolutely hate it. Those who do like more complicated systems will, however, find a plethora of ideas to use elsewhere even if they don’t like the system itself.

Style: 2
Substance: 4

Author: E.R. Jones and Mark Young
Company/Publisher: Valdron, Inc.
Cost: $25 ($50 for both books)
Page count: 551
ISBN: n/a
Originally Posted: 1998/09/25

At the time, this review seemed to have the effect of quashing Multiverser’s pariah status. I don’t think it won the game any particular fans, either, but people stopped treating it like a trampoline. (So it served a kind of inverse function to Darren MacLennan and Jason Sartin’s review of F.A.T.A.L., which righteously ensconced that game into a private hall of eternal infamy.)

Looking back, I’m somewhat bemused by my discussion of the 1st Edition DMG. At the time, it really was basically impossible to find anyone online who would profess any particular love for that book. It really is remarkable the degree to which (a) 3E rehabilitated D&D’s online reputation and (b) the OSR has rehabilitated that book in particular. My own opinion of the book has grown a little fonder in light of its assistance in stocking my OD&D hexcrawl, but is largely unchanged: A lot of useful stuff in there, but the idea of trying to actually run a game from that disorganized morass is completely abhorrent to me.

Multiverser still sits on my shelf today. Much like the 1st Edition DMG it is a treasure trove of nifty utility which I value but will never actually play. I can’t actually recommend it in good faith. But what I can recommend whole-heartedly is The First Book of Worlds. That review, however, will have to wait until another day…

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Tom Bissell says that “Superman games are legendarily bad” and asks the question:

What comprises interesting gameplay for a character that is essentially immortal?

What Bissell is inadvertently touching on here is the fact that — with the exception of puzzle games and sports simulators — virtually every video game in existence is fundamentally rooted in either D&D, Space Invaders, or both. And what both D&D and Spacer Invaders have in common (and thus virtually every video game ever made has in common) is that they define success as “killing the bad guy” and they define failure as “you die”.

(Technically, it would be more accurate to say Spacewar! instead of Space Invaders, but everybody knows what Space Invaders is and almost no one knows what Spacewar! is. And, of course, there are endless variations on the “kill” and “die” conditions. But I digress…)

So, yes, as long as you intrinsically define gameplay as “either you die or the bad guy dies”, designing a Superman game that doesn’t suck is going to be pretty much impossible. And, unfortunately, Superman doesn’t seem to easily lend himself to blended puzzle or sim gameplay. (For example, the original Prince of Persia: Sands of Time largely eliminated the kill-or-die mechanics, but it did so by introducing puzzle-style gameplay.)

Another option might be making the goals of the game exterior to Superman as a character. (In other words, you can still fail at your goals even if there’s never any real chance that your avatar in the game will die.) What probably won’t work well, however, would be simply pushing the kill-or-die mechanics onto secondary characters. (An entire game of escort quests featuring Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen? Kill me now.)

I’m not going to pretend to have the magical solution. But open question: What alternative forms of gameplay could a Superman game use that would be fun to play?

Tagline: Return of the Eight is pathetic. The first Greyhawk product since the line was canceled, it suffers from trying to fill the needs of two diametrically opposed extremes.

This is the first time I really ripped a product to shreds. As a reviewer, there really is something incredibly satisfying about flaying a terrible product. In fact, you can easily see that some reviewers get so addicted to the hit of ripping into stuff that this becomes all that they do.

Hopefully, I’ve managed to keep a more balanced head on my shoulders over the years. But I’m also clearly not one of those namby-pambies who think reviewers should adhere to the already dubious maxim that “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all”. If there is any profession where that maxim almost intrinsically does not apply, then it’s reviewing. I think you should be deeply suspicious of any reviewer who never has a bad thing to say.

Personally I looked forward with great anticipation to the return of the Greyhawk setting to the TSR line-up. When the line was canceled several years back I was among the protesters who thought this a bad idea. Greyhawk was your all-around “typical AD&D campaign world”, with good cause since it was one of the first. Its loss meant that you had very atypical settings (Ravenloft, Dark Sun, etc.), the super-powered Forgotten Realms, and the legend-oriented Dragonlance setting. Besides, there’s a lot of interesting stuff on Oerth – it may not have sold well in comparison to TSR’s other settings, but that might have had something to do with the fact that unlike the “three supplements a month” Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk was never adequately supported after Gygax’s departure from the company. Properly supported it would definitely, I thought (and continue to think), be a strong part of TSR’s line-up.

So when Peter Adkison and Wizards of the Coast announced that Greyhawk was to be brought back from the dead and properly supported I thought it was a great idea. When the product line was finally announced, I began looking forward eagerly to Return of the Eight, the first new Greyhawk product to be released since the line was canceled.

Having now read Return of the Eight I am bitterly disappointed, and have many unanswered questions, such as:

Why restart the Greyhawk setting with a module? Why use such terrible artwork? Why abandon all sensible lay-out? Why railroad the PCs? Why have caricatures for NPCs? Why abandon all logic in the final act? Why have an anticlimax? Why is there an elevator? But above all else…

What were they thinking?

WHAT YOU GET

Return of the Eight is a 64 page module written by Roger Moore. It begins in the city of Greyhawk a year after the end of the Greyhawk Wars. There’s a bunch of weird politics involved here, but you need a Greyhawk sourcebook which hasn’t been printed in half a decade in order to make sense of it all, so let’s cut to the chase: The Circle of Eight was a group of powerful wizards dedicated to fighting the good fight (these are the Good Guys). At the end of the Greyhawk Wars Ivid V (the Former Bad Guy) convinced one of the Eight (a bloke named Rary) to assassinate two other members of the Eight (Otiluke and Tenser). Simultaneously all of Tenser’s cloning material was destroyed, so he was really, really dead – there was no coming back this time. The really powerful wizard Mordenkainen even confirmed it through divination.

Which brings us to today when, naturally, Tenser is going to show up again. The Circle of Eight is attempting to reform itself and the PCs have the dubious pleasure of making acquaintances with one of them (a chick named Jallarzi). Now things get complicated again and you need that out-of-print sourcebook again. The demon Tuerny is involved in a plot with the witch Iggwilv and her son Iuz the Old (these are the Current Bad Guys). They corrupt Jallarzi and make it appear as if she has betrayed the Circle of Eight. Why they do this is never really explained, because the only thing it seems to accomplish is to lead the PCs and the Circle right to Tenser’s Castle – which is where these three hope to open a gate to one of Oerth’s moons and bring through their army within quick striking distance of the defenseless City of Greyhawk. Needless to say, the PCs go to Tenser’s Castle, go through the gate, and beat the bad guys.

Did I mention that for another unknown reason the Current Bad Guys activated Tenser’s cloning machinery on this moon of Oerth and cloned him, only to alter his clone into an extremely ugly, mute, blue-skinned midget? No? Well, I won’t. It’s too painful.

THE LAYOUT

The first odd thing that struck me about this product was the lay-out. The text is a nice, reasonably sized font and the margins aren’t too bad (the left, right, and bottom margins average less than an inch – but the top margin is about 3″ for no particular reason except that it allows them to interchange three repetitive sets of graphics over and over and over again).

But then it gets weird. If you’ve ever seen a GURPS manual you know exactly what this text in this module looks like – two columns, one narrow and the other wide. Except that in Return of the Eight that narrow column isn’t a sidebar – it’s just another column. Yes, that’s right – it’s two column text, but for no apparently good reason the columns are different widths. (What’s even more confusing is that after the first five pages the side on which the narrow column is located switches – I’m assuming this was just a lay-out error that nobody bothered to notice or fix.)

I initially thought someone had discovered that their word processing program could vary the widths of two-column text and thought, “Whoa! Cool!” and just hadn’t thought things through. What I learned later on was that all of the Greyhawk product line was to be laid out this way in order to give it a “distinctive look”.

This is even worse. There is nothing “distinctive” about this look – it looks just like a GURPS book. Except that in a GURPS book it actually serves a purpose!

(This plan has since been dropped because TSR’s customers pointed out that it was a really dumb layout technique. It will still infect the first few Greyhawk products, however.)

THE ART

The art in Return of the Eight is atrocious. The cover is not only downright ugly it is flat-out stupid – depicting the short, blue midget we will learn is actually Tenser inside grabbing onto the skirt of a buxom woman fighter (at least she isn’t wearing a chainmail bikini) and a male fighter with his shield and sword raised against this tiny, pathetic, blue midget. Meanwhile in the background about two feet away from the male fighter is a ten foot tall demon with four foot fangs. HELLO?! I don’t think the blue midget is the biggest problem you’re facing at this moment.

The interior art is no better. The poses are stiff and are helped little by the fact that the subject matter is so utterly boring and atrocious.

THE RAILROADING

The plot focuses on several key points:

1. The PCs must meet Jallarzi, her friend Marial, her pseudo-dragon Edwina, and another wizard named Warnes Starcoat all in the same evening in an amazingly contrived sequence.

2. One of the PCs must be hit on the head by Edwina falling out of the sky, which will lead to them discovering she was attacked, which will lead them to Jallarzi’s Tower.

3. The PCs must explore Jallarzi’s Tower.

4. The PCs must must go to Tenser’s Castle (not that anything they discovered in Jallarzi’s Tower will actually lead them to go there – they will be informed by Warnes that it is “obvious” they should go).

5. The PCs must must go through the gate to Oerth’s moon (not that they will have any clue why this is important).

6. The PCs must must defeat the Current Bad Guys and thwart their plans (not that there is any way for them to know who the Bad Guys are or what their plans were until after it’s all over).

As you may have gathered from all the “musts” above this is a fairly contrived plotline. It is made worse by the fact that Moore doesn’t even bother in many cases with pretexts to carry the PCs from one event to the next – they are either forced into the encounter (it just happens – for example, Edwina hits them on the head with no if’s, and’s, or but’s) or a handy NPC will say “go this way”.

Even odder to me is the transition between Act Two and Act Three – where the players leave Tenser’s Castle through a gate that takes them one of Oerth’s moons. Previously these PCs have been railroaded from one location and event to another, suddenly however there is no good explanation given for what happens. The gate in question is tucked in a back room of the keep and no particular importance is attached to it. In addition, Moore has gone out of his way to make it difficult to get through the gate – anyone entering the room is blown right back out again unless they really fight against it by the mysterious power of the gate. The problem here is that since the gate is not discussed as being important, no mention of dimension travel is made prior to this in the adventure, and the PCs are heartily discouraged from exploring that particular avenue. So why should they? My players said, “Right, Tenser the Mighty Magician doesn’t want us in there… let’s trust him.” After they had completely cleaned out Tenser’s Castle and were beyond irritation into downright frustration I eventually had to say, “Look, you’ve got to go through this gate so we can finish playtesting the adventure.” At which point we all commented how stupid it was to attach no importance to the gate and then make it nigh-to-impossible to get through, despite the fact that going through it is crucial to finishing the adventure.

It was initially pointed out to me that perhaps this was because the product line is being targeted towards “Old School” gamers who aren’t really interested in plots or character motivations, but just in dungeon-delving. I considered this awhile and then realized two things.

First, the “dungeons” (a Tower and a Keep) are pathetic for dungeon-delving – although there are several creature encounters that make no sense whatsoever. (How Tenser or Jallarzi live or lived in the places that are supposedly their homes is beyond me.)

Second, the plot revolves around highly complicated political intrigue that you need footnotes to figure out (particularly since the PCs will never be informed of what the hell is going on until it’s all over).

Perhaps it suffers from trying to be both — a story-oriented adventure, but with all the trappings of classic dungeon-delving. Whatever the case, it is among the worst examples of either I have ever seen.

THE MAPS

Now we come to another design flaw of the product – the location of the maps (as well as the occasional absence of maps).

First there is a map of the first floor of Jallarzi’s Tower inside the front cover, and a map of the second and third floors inside the back cover. These are very nicely done – detailed and highlighted in a style reminiscent of watercolors. On page 10 we have an exterior view of Jallarzi’s Tower, showing us what it looks like and how it all fits together – this little illustration tells us that the tower has six floors. We can only hope that the PCs never attempt to venture beyond the third floor because not only are no details of these floors provided, but no maps are either.

Moving onto Tenser’s Castle is where we begin to encounter serious problems. The castle and the approach to the castle are detailed in 8 maps scattered throughout the text describing various locations in the castle. This would be really handy… if whoever had placed the maps had done so with some relation to the text. Indeed, the order of the maps proceeds very naturally (1st through 7th floor, than the lower levels in order).

LOOK FOR THEM WHERE?

My other favorite trick with Return of the Eight is the manner in which they reference OOP products as if everyone had them. This feature of TSR’s modules (telling you where to find the complete write-ups for the monsters and NPCs they provide iterative stats for) is usually quite handy, allowing you to find out more information. I found it quite infuriating, however, when no useful information is given to me (requiring me to look it up if I am to use the creature or NPC in question) and the references point me towards:

Greyhawk Adventures. A 1st edition product that has been out of print for at least a decade.

The guide from the 1983 World of Greyhawk boxed set.

The Rogue’s Gallery. A 1980 product that no one has ever heard of.

Monster Manual II. A first edition product that has been out of print since 1989.

The oddest reference was to either The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga (1995) or “The Dancing Hut”, from Dragon issue #83 (March 1984). Not only is it an odd reference, but it’s completely outside of Greyhawk.

The worst reference? D&D Original Set Supplement III, Eldritch Wizardry. Although you could also look that one up in the first edition DMG as well.

There are other examples as well, but they usually aren’t so bad – pointing to products which were still produced just before Greyhawk went defunct, or which discussed the monster or NPC in enough detail that I did not actually need the reference. What puzzled me most was that the more likely it was that the reader would actually own the material in question, the more detail was given in the text. The more obscure the reference, the less information given.

LOOK UP AT THE SKY STUPID!

Act III, as already noted, takes place on one Oerth’s moons. The DM is cautioned multiple times and in great severity to not let the players in on this secret – do not tell them explicitly that they are no longer on Oerth, and only “let them slowly discover they are not” there.

My first reaction to this was: “If someone dropped me on a moon the first thing I’m going to notice is looking up into the sky and saying, ‘Hmmm… I wonder why there’s a big planet hanging up there instead of the moon I’m used to.’”

AN ELEVATOR?!

In Tenser’s castle there is an elevator. It is referred to as “The Great Lift”, but it is operated by pushing a button and it even has a chime. About the only thing that is missing is a set of bombs to take out the cables, and another set to take out the breaks if someone doesn’t pay a million dollar ransom.

Maybe the sequel to Return of the Eight will feature Teurny, Iggwilv, and Iuz planting a magical bomb on a chariot. If the chariot drops below 10 mph…

An elevator.

In a fantasy setting.

What were they thinking?

CONCLUSION

About the best thing you can say about Return of the Eight is that they were attempting to appeal to two very dichotomous groups of gamers – the role-oriented gamers and the hack-oriented gamers (and the latter should not be taken as an insult) – and they failed.

The worst thing you can say about Return of the Eight is…

What were they thinking?

This is an abysmal way to re-introduce the Greyhawk line (about the only thing I can figure out is that they though it would be “cool” to have product with the word “return” in the title to signal the “return of Greyhawk”). I have much higher hopes for future products in the line, but this is not a good start.

Stay away from this product. You’ll do nothing but waste $14 that could have been spent on something far more worth your while.

Style: 2
Substance: 1

Title: Greyhawk: Return of the Eight
Writers: Roger Moore
Publisher: TSR/Wizards of the Coast
Price: $13.95
Page Count: 64
ISBN: 0-7869-1247-2
Originally Published: 1998/07/29

I actually don’t mind a little science fantasy in my D&D fantasy. I’ve always been a fan of Tekumel and S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks currently appears in my OD&D hexcrawl campaign, for example. But I do tend to like it to possess a strong fantasy flavor (like Monte Cook’s chaositech, for example). And that elevator from Return of the Eight still sticks in my craw. I think the problem is that it’s such a wholehearted anachronism. I don’t have any problem with the idea of Tenser having a floating platform in the middle of his citadel — he is, after all, the creator of Tenser’s floating disc — but for it to literally be a modern elevator just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

In a comment on my very old review of Fading Suns, Potato asked me to provide a rundown of how I put together my system cheat sheets for RPGs: “It sounds like a good way to get a grasp of the rules when learning/trying out a new system.”

He’s absolutely right about that. And the cheat sheets themselves, of course, also make great references at the table for both you and the players.

BULLET POINTS

My goal is to make the system cheat sheet comprehensive. That means including all the rules. Often I see cheat sheets that just cover the basic stuff that’s used all the time. But that’s actually the stuff I’m least likely to need cheat sheets for because it’s quickly memorized through repetition.

Obviously, this requires that I both cut down the amount of space the rules take up and the amount of time it takes to read and understand those rules. The quickest way to accomplish this, in my experience, is through the use of concise bullet points.

For example, here’s a chunk of rules text from the second edition of Heavy Gear:

The Silhouette system uses everyday six-sided dice to add a random element to the game. These are sometimes referred to as “1d6” in the rules, “2d6” for two dice, 3d6 for three, and so on. The same die rolling convention is used for both the roleplaying and wargaming aspects of the rules, so this is not repeated in the respective rule sections.

When two or more dice are rolled simultaneously, their results are not added together. Instead, the highest result is considered to be the outcome of the die roll. If more than one “6” is rolled, each extra “6” adds one (1) to the total. If every die rolled turns up “1”, the die roll is a Fumble and counts as an overall result of zero and no modifiers may change this value. Unless specifically mentioned otherwise, all die rolls work this way.

The totals of die rolls are often influenced by modifiers. Modifiers are added to the total of a die roll. If negative modifiers lower the total below zero, the final result is always zero and cannot go any lower. Modifiers are not applied to Fumbles.

A Fumble is a mistake or mishap that cause the failure of the action attempted. It is not necessarily caused by an error or the incompetence of the character, and may well be the result of environmental factors. No matter what caused the Fumble, however, the total die roll is always zero.

In the tactical game, Fumbles produce clear results. This is hardly the case in the roleplaying rules due to the mind-boggling number of possible actions and outcomes. The effects of each separate roleplaying Fumble must thus be described by the Gamemaster. In general, the harder the task attempted, the greater the effect of the Fumble.

This is then followed by an equally lengthy section listing various examples. Using bullet points, all of this is simplified on my cheat sheet down to the major points:

• Roll Xd6: Result = highest die +/- modifiers. (Cannot be < 0.)
  • Additional Sixes: Each additional 6 = +1 to total.
  • Fumble: If all dice = 1, result = 0 (no modifiers).

Short and sweet. Using the same technique, I’m able to squeeze the next three pages of rules into a quarter page of my cheat sheet.

DON’T INCLUDE OPTION CHUNKS

The exception to my “include everything” methodology are what I used to refer to as the “character option chunks” in the system: Feats. Disadvantages. Spells. Powers. Weapons. That sort of thing. Any small packets of specialized mechanics that are only invoked if the character has selected that packet.

These days I think of it as invoking the “power card principle”. It’s not that having a quick reference for these rule chunks isn’t useful. It’s just that it’s more useful for those chunks to be included on individual character sheets, character-specific cheat sheets, or reference cards.

To boil that down: If everybody (or nearly everybody) uses a rule, it goes on the system cheat sheet. If not, put it on the character’s sheet or in the NPC’s stat block.

REMOVE CLARIFICATION AND ADVICE

Well-written rulebooks include a lot of clarification and advice. This is good: It helps you to both learn and implement the rules effectively.

But when you’re prepping your cheat sheets, you want to jettison all of that. For example, here’s a chunk of text from Technoir:

Adjectives are open to interpretation. They are part of a language we use in the game to collaboratively tell stories. Adjectives have  a couple of designations to help us agree on how they affect our characters.

Adjectives can be applied to a character directly — representing her physical or psychological state — or to an object belonging to a character — representing its physical condition or the state of its electronics and software.

Adjectives can be positive or negative. These determine how the adjective affects the dice you roll. This process is explained in the “Rolling Dice” section starting on page 92.

A positive adjective can help the character who has it. They allow you to add Push dice to your roll. They are written in the positive column of adjectives on the protagonist sheet or stat block.

A negative adjective usually hinders the character who has it. They force you to add Hurt dice to you roll. They are written in the negative column of adjectives on the protagonist sheet or stat block. Sometimes they may only apply to a part of the body — like a broken arm or a shattered kneecap. In these cases, write the body part in parenthesis next to the adjective. Sometimes they apply to an object the character has. In these cases, draw a line from the adjective to the object.

This is all good stuff. But on my cheat sheet, it boils down to:

• Hurt Dice = negative adjectives
• Push Dice = can be discharged for each adjective, object, or tag

Where to draw the line of inclusion/exclusion can occasionally get a little blurry. For example, in my Heavy Gear cheat sheets I didn’t include the table of Typical Thresholds (3 = Easy, 6 = Difficult, etc.) because I felt like it was a useful guideline that I didn’t necessarily need to reference during play. You might feel differently.

REORGANIZING

The last thing I do when putting together a system cheat sheet is to avail myself of the opportunity to reorganize the rules.

The truth is most RPG manuals suck when it comes to organization. Related rules will end up smeared across a half dozen different chapters, forcing you to flip madly back and forth while trying to adjudicate situations at the game table. This sucks, so take this opportunity to group material together in a way that makes sense when running the game. (And, as much as possible, try to keep all the relevant rules on a single page or two so that you can look at the totality of them simultaneously.)

Unfortunately, there are no hard-and-fast rules for this sort of thing. It’s more an art than a science, and it’s mostly a matter of common sense.

REVISE

After playing a session or two, revisit your cheat sheet: Was there stuff you missed? Stuff that could be phrased better? Stuff that should be cut? Stuff that should be moved around?

Do it. Print a new copy. Repeat until you’ve refined your cheat sheet into a lean, mean running machine.

EXAMPLES

As a couple of examples, click through for the RTF cheat sheets I put together for the first edition of Fading Suns (more than a decade ago) and Technoir (a couple weeks ago). For the latter, however, you might want to also grab the official (free) Player’s Guide, which I discovered actually does a really fantastic job of cheat sheeting the system.