"Auld Lang Syne" or "What's in a Name?"

 "Olde School Wizardry" has been called by that title since we started playing more than eight years ago. 

However, when we began thinking about sharing our rules for cooperative casting and fully customized spells (range, duration, and effect) with the broader community, I had some doubts. 

By that point, I had become aware of a now-familiar movement in tabletop roleplaying games called the "OSR" (for "old school Renaissance" or "old school revival"). I appreciated the values and techniques of this philosophy, and Old School Wizardry certainly aligns with them, but the game isn't a full emulation of earlier rules sets, instead borrowing ideas from D&D, Marvel Superheroes, King Arthur Pendragon, and completely original ideas of our own.

What's more, OSR games and approaches have just as many critics as fans. Merely by having the words "olde" and "school" in the title of our game, would I be shutting some people out or turning them off before they had time to take a closer look at something very unique and special?

For a while, I flirted with calling it "The Nine Ancient Runes of Magic" for the nine different magical actions that wizards can take to initiate spells (Destroy, Enchant, Ward, etc.), but I was still attached to the original title for several very good reasons:

OLDE School Wizardry... 

...the primary theme of the game's implied setting is that those in power tend to prioritize maintaining control over doing the right thing. Since the PCs are hungry, scrappy neophytes, they are immediately in conflict with the arcane powers that be for access to spells, books, artifacts, and money. 

... also baked into the setting is the idea that wizards are usually petty, insecure, and arrogant. Just because the PCs are good at something doesn't mean they'll be picked for the job by prideful superiors ... they'll have to flatter and bargain. "Olde", with an "E", is pretentious and silly ... just like wizards. 

... the game is influenced by Tom Moldvay's 1981 Basic Dungeons & Dragons. There are six stats, rolled in order, using 3d6. D20s are used for physical combat and spell mishaps, but not for the far more central spell casting system. A game that's four decades old *is* a bit venerable. 

... all player characters are human, but there are other species in the wide world. One of these is the Auld--blessedly rare--they are as bewitchingly beautiful as they are cruel. The word "Auld" (old), though long familiar, pressed itself into my imagination after reading "Auld Lang Syne: The Story of Robert Burns" a children's book by Findon and Nasmith. Nasmith's ghostly images, spectral yet appealing, captured the feel of these otherworldly strangers. 

Olde SCHOOL Wizardry...

... Of the 300+ pages of campaign material offered to the GM to take or leave as she wishes, a healthy section describes the structure and doings of The Collegium Mysterium, that most ancient school for wizards. PCs can choose which student house they are affiliated with and the GM will find plenty of plot hooks here as the young wizards try to pay off debts, return favors, or work with fellow alumni. 

... as a public school teacher, I've been in institutions of learning, as a student or instructor, for over 30 years. My sense of how organizations do (or don't) work and how groups of well-educated humans behave when they take on problems has informed game mechanics for both dueling and determining a wizard's relative prestige as he competes peers for scant resources. 

Olde School WIZARDRY ...

King Arthur Pendragon is one of the best RPGs ever printed. It's not because of the game's organization or choice of setting, but because it accomplishes what it sets out to do so very well: namely, to emulate at the table one very specific literary genre. Like a Zen archer, it does one task with staggering precision. That approach inspired me to make Olde School Wizardry be about one thing: inexperienced wizards battling the odds. To that end, rules and systems for things like hand-to-hand combat or climbing ropes are brief (almost perfunctory). On the other hand, within the 60 pages of basic rules, systems for composing arcane texts, seizing control of another wizard's spell, or working as a team to craft a potent Enchantment are far more developed. 

So, as my friend and play tester Russ Wrightson pointed out, putting these factors together really leaves no room for Olde School Wizardry to have any other title!

Olde School Wizardry -- Musings in the Monastery

 Our Olde School Wizardry Kickstarter has marched onward, reaching over 150 backers.  That's tremendously exciting for Josh and I--the idea that people we've never met in person will find joy and camaraderie through something we've helped create is an amazing feeling.

This week, YouTube content creator and RPG expert Mildra the Monk was kind enough to interview me about Olde School Wizardry: The NIne Ancient Runes of Magic on his channel.

It's the first time that I've ever talked in real-time to someone beyond my immediate circle of family and friends about the game, and I think listeners can get a feel for the heartbeat of the game.

Have a listen if you like and leave Mildra a comment if you feel inclined.

[note: contains swearing]

Mildra and Jarrett talk Olde School Wizardry

.

Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas!

Olde School Wizardry: Milestones

 My friend J, who was a U.S. Navy veteran and master craftsman, was also a gamer. In fact he introduced me to the boardgame Wiz-War, one of the major influences on Olde School Wizardry.

When J died unexpectedly in 2008, his friends decided to honor his memory by gathering for an annual weekend of games, food, and friendship so that we could remember him, swap stories, laugh, and stay in touch with each other. 

At one of these gatherings, Russ Wrightson, another man remarkable for his generosity, intelligence, and patience, stood in the driveway at about 2 A.M. while I pitched the idea of playing a RPG that focused solely on the antics of incompetent, adept wizards. Amid all the fancy Euro board games and gorgeously painted miniatures, would anybody even be interested in some old school pencil and paper role playing?

Life, a new career as a teacher, and two little kids at home had really crowded table top gaming out of my life to the point that it was only for special occasions or rare gatherings. I felt the absence keenly, but would other people be willing to commit the time?

Russ's advice: "Go for it." If I made the effort to prep a campaign, he'd be in.

Last night we met for our 200th session of Olde School Wizardry: The Nine Ancient Runes of Magic.

That's a considerable milestone ... consider that we play about 25 times per year for an average of four hours ... through job changes, moves, deaths, and new relationships, this game has remained a way to love, laugh, tell jokes, think through puzzles, and stay connected to each other. 

This week Olde School Wizardry went live on Kickstarter, funded, and has received backing from over 70 supporters ...  60% of whom are people with whom Josh and I don't yet share any connection beyond a love of gaming.

It's my hope, as this project moves out into the wider world, that it will draw other folks together and help them laugh, tell corny jokes, and stay connected to one another.  

Off Like a Shot!

The Kickstarter for Olde School Wizardry: The Nine Ancient Runes of Magic, my very own table top fantasy RPG, is now live!

And what a first day we had, too.  We tripled our goal within the first 12 hours and, last I checked, we had only 5 of the book's original art pieces left for our upper tier backers.

I feel a bit like this guy at the moment, as old friends from high school, college, and points beyond come out of the cold, sleety night to give their well-wishes and express support for this quirky passion of mine.

It's all very humbling, and I hope that Olde School Wizardry is able to spark some joy and community for other people the way that it has for me over the last eight years.

You can follow our progress or preorder your own copy of the game here:

Olde School Wizardry

The Evolution of a Fantasy Heart Breaker

With my first hardbound copy of Olde School Wizardry finally in hand, a Kick Starter offering pre-sales later this month, and print-on-demand coming in January, I was inspired to look back at some earlier incarnations of the book.

Olde School Wizardry has always been the game that we played ... not a rules set at first, but a collection of rulings arrived at by congenial consensus through the course of play.  The mechanics evolved ad hoc, right along with the story lines.  

While there are notes going back perhaps a year earlier, here is one of my first efforts to compile them for reference with some vague idea of sharing them beyond our own gaming table.

The "Nine Ancient Runes of Magic" had already taken shape by this point.  Most of the mechanics also fit nicely into about 20 pages.  The game mechanics, now with art on nearly every page, still only occupy only the first 60 pages of the book; the remaining 312 or so being devoted to scenarios, monsters, and charts to springboard stories. 

 Pictured above is part of the glorious mess that becomes Magical Formula ... the aspect of the game that allows wizards to tailor each spell in terms of range, effect, and duration.  This replaces the conventional or "Vancian" approach to spell casting where casters learn entire magical spells as fixed blocks of effects.

Within a year, things had grown enough that a Table of Contents was in order!

Oddly, it was when Josh grabbed a Gustave Dore image to create a front cover mock-up that the idea of seeing Olde School Wizardry all the way through to some sort of publication finally clicked.  It wasn't the right image ...    

... but I knew what the right image was ... a public domain illustration by Gustave Dore, created for Ariosto's 16th century epic poem Orlando Furioso.  

I had seen it in only one place: the July 1987 issue of Dragon Magazine where Art Director Roger Raupp oversaw its use to illustrate an article by James A. Yates, "The Mystic College".  

I couldn't remember anything about the article except that I thought there was perhaps a map of a pyramid ... which I disliked ... and this brilliant image of tottering men, dwarfed by the very institution that they helped create.  I could hear them wheezing and gabbing and arguing incessantly over minutiae ... and that sense cemented in my brain what a college of wizards must be like.

And so the Collegium Mysterium and its absurd customs, rival houses, rites of initiation, and other idiosyncrasies wax large in the book's campaign source material.

While we were still hammering out art and layout, I managed to get a couple spiral bound copies printed for use at the table and in games club with some of my middle school students.  I love the practicality of spiral bound books at the game table ... but man are they ugly on the shelf!

It wasn't until I felt the heft of our own hardbound copy that I was fully sold on the chunky hardbound format.  

Anyway, that's a quick glance backwards at the eight years or so that describe the evolution of Olde School Wizardry from collected notes to nerdy magnum opus!

Finding a Match

I think there are 200 of you out there somewhere.

Josh thinks there are more. 

He may be right, but I think that there are perhaps 200 people on this particular planet for whom Olde School Wizardry will strike just the right notes and who will find it first droll, then a source of quiet delight, and finally something that triggers a bubbling of creative rambunctiousness.

I don't know.  Olde School Wizardry is a role playing game that uses the GM's fevered (and caffeine fueled) brain as the engine for running the system, not an exhaustive (and exhausting, and ultimately futile) attempt to codify everything a character might attempt to do.  

I think that will narrow the appeal quite a bit.  

There are no "builds".  There is an utter lack of "optimization"--in fact the old fashioned ("olde fangled?") insistence on random rolls during character generation actively keeps that from being an option!

There's a certain glee that some folks find in exploring ineptitude rather than in power fantasy ... and characters in Olde School Wizardry are inept by design.

I think that will appeal to fans of Paranoia far more than fans of Pathfinder.

Also, to run this game well, the GM needs to be able to decide things quickly and with confidence.  That's not to say that she needs to be rigid or dictatorial ... outcomes can certainly be negotiated ... but when a player character Conjures "a defensive goose", she'll need to work out on the spot whether the goose conveys magical or mundane protection, if the goose will protect the caster or a certain area, and whether the goose takes action to defend itself or is merely on its guard against perceived slights.

She'll need to make these decisions without recourse to the rule book, nor can players hope to appeal to the text to arbitrate should their hopes not be met.  

That "rules light, rulings heavy" approach will further narrow the appeal.  If you don't trust your GM, her emotional maturity, and her ability to balance the thrill of victory and the potential for dismal failure, it's probably not going to work out.

So, my goal isn't broad appeal; it's to reach the right people for whom this goofy game will spark some joy.

It's for folks who love the shenanigans and pratfalls of the late Jim Holloway's art more than the polished flex of Jeff Easley's work.

It's for the crowd that got more excited by West End Games title Ghostbusters: A Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game than for their excellent Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game.

It's for people who love the amateur art and production of the Holmes Basic Set and The Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor more than the polish or beauty of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Legend of Five Rings.

I don't know how many of you fit that description.  Maybe 200?  Maybe more?  I honestly don't know.  The creative market is delightfully crowded and self-publishing lets more crackpots like me get their ideas out into the wide world, but I'm not in a hurry, and these things have a way of working out.

 

The Art of Olde School Wizardry VII

Only ... I said about birds before, didn't I?

The Art of Olde School Wizardry VI

Magically spirited away to that dread megadungeon "The Excruciatingly Nasty Vault of Zifthp" right in the midst of the evening meal, the wizards will need to find the focus of the spell that drew them here and cancel its Temporal Formula if they are to return in time for dessert.

But what is this?  A barred cell and the plaintive cries of its occupant?  Will the novice spellcasters turn aside to investigate?

Rambling Conversation About D&D Cover Art

I was talking with a chum about D&D cover art and we were looking over our copies of the very fine Art & Arcana, a long overdue review of the history of D&D art, when he asked me about my preferences.
  

Q: [speaking of the three core hardbacks: Dungeon Masters Guide, Players Handbook, and Monster Manual] "Which is your favorite of each book?"

Here's my side of the ramble that followed ...


3e was odd.  The abstract and stylized trade dress signaled a bold departure from the prior 26 years.

         

But I think it would have worked if they could have been embossed or something--had the heft and actual texture to match the pretense.  

But you can see how an AD&D guy who came up on that coloring book look to the original Monster Manual would be left cold.  I mean, the images by Dave Trampier were so simple yet evocative ... almost art nouveaux ... that many people *did* treat them like coloring pages.




The best Dungeon Masters Guide cover is the 1e AD&D one ... not the Sutherland original ... which is busy, stiff, awkward, and charming ...




... but the reprint with the Jeff Easley painting.  The figure in green is the focus.  The doors are almost like the gates of a DM's screen.  He has the key around his neck and permits or forbids the exodus of the teeming, nameless horrors behind him.



The best Players Handbook is of course the classic Dave Trampier demon idol with the party mopping up dead lizardmen.  Nothing fresh about that opinion and in fact I think people would come looking for me if I made any other claim.  



It looks the most like the actual game feels out of every cover produced to date.  Everything about it is right: the party size and composition, the conversations taking place (D&D is about talking, after all), the violence, the motives of the adventurers, the scale of the dungeon and the focus on it as a discreet and unique environment ... it's all there.  

Small wonder that this one painting has received so many nods and homages in painting and other media.

           



Best Monster Manual ? ... that's tough ... they are all kind of misses in a way.

Do you do a menagerie?  



How do you do that realistically so that it doesn't look like a dinosaur book for seven-year-olds?  Or is realism even the goal?

 

So if a menagerie approach is out, which one or two monsters are you going to pick that stand for the entire 45 year corpus of creatures?

Red dragon?



Bit on-the-nose, but okay.  But Easley's AD&D updated cover is ... odd.  He's generally not great at horses (though these are better than average for him).




Frankly I think his approach to dragons is off.  They have almost human skeletons in his art ... with these weight lifter necks.  He struggles with a quadruped foreleg.  By AD&D 2e his dragons have wrists, hands, and even opposable thumbs.



So I'll assert that the best Monster Manual cover hasn't been painted yet!

Or rather, that it was, but was used on some other product.

Take the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide:

 

It has a hapless explorer pulling himself (and his surviving chum) up out of a cleft while being swarmed by kobolds, a snake, and even a spider for good measure.  It's much more reflective of actual play than, for example, Easley's AD&D 1e Players Handbook. 



 I think it's important that the monsters are getting the upper hand!

Anyway, that's my take: 
Best single cover = Trampier's 1e AD&D Player's Handbook.
Best trio of covers include two by Jeff Easley.
Sadly, the three together are pretty incongruous, but I guess you can't have it all :)