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I have always liked reading fantasy, from a young age. Maybe it started when I got the Dutch edition of Tanith Lee’s The Dragon Hoard? (Which is hilarious, by the way. If you have a young child in your life, this makes for a great book to read together.) I read a lot of the SF and Fantasy in the local library, especially as a teenager.

My parents put me in the “homework club” at secondary school. My grades were not good, because I was too lazy to really do any homework at home. The homework club convened every day (except the Friday I think) after school hours, and you’d sit there for two hours to do your homework. You were not allowed to leave before the end time, but if you had nothing left to study, you could read a book. I’m sure the intention was for the students to read books for their literature lists, but in the end we could just read whatever we wanted.

One of the boys at the homework club was reading something that was obviously fantasy, because it was titled “Dragonlance”. I think it was “War of the Twins”? Of course I was interested and I asked him about it afterwards. He described tabletop roleplaying games to me (which I thought was very strange and abstract) and how the books were like a description of what happened in the game. (Modern RPGs call this “the fiction”, which, in the case of Dragonlance, it literally is.) We got to talking about fantasy books and became friends in the easy way that boys can decide someone is a friend if they share an interest. Some time later, just before the autumn break, he told me that he was going to host a group to play these mysterious games at his house and that I should come too.

So I went there on the first day of the break (I think it took me two hours by bicycle to get there, he lived in a village at the other end of the city!) and I played my first tabletop RPG. So basically the Dragonlance books are responsible for getting me into RPGs — which they were designed to do, to get more people interested in Dungeons & Dragons. Except that we didn’t play D&D but Rolemaster, and it would take me another six years to play D&D in earnest. And I never read those Dragonlance books either, because I moved completely outside of the D&D “ecosystem”.

So when I came across the Collector’s Edition of the Dragonlance Chronicles, which are the first three novels to be released in the setting, I thought it would be interesting to finally read them. And it’s indeed interesting — but it’s not good fantasy. Be aware that the following will contain spoilers.

As I understand it, the books were written to sell more D&D by showing what kind of adventures you could have when playing D&D. And it is indeed a rather faithful recreation of the fiction that is created by playing D&D, if you squint you can see the rules systems operate just under the surface. That in itself is not bad, but it is also a faithful recreation of the kinds of adventures you’d have in an “epic” campaign played out by teenaged boys. It really has it all. The “you all meet in a bar…” beginning. The janky inconsistencies in background events because nobody remembered clearly what happened last session. The plot immunity, because as a GM you don’t want to kill off your PCs too easily so you have to insulate them from the worst combat results. There are all-powerful “GM NPCs” where a GM just wanted to play a cool guy (or gal) and basically used this NPC to overshadow the PCs.

The first novel, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, was written in 1984, well into the second feminist wave. But the way women are written and their relationships with the male characters is… not good. The romance (if you can even call it a romance) between Riverwind and Silvermoon make me wonder if the writers ever met two people who were in love. And for some reason they find it very important to let the reader know that all of the women are virgins. There may be a bit of fooling around, but obviously there is no sex before marriage! The single exception is Kitiara, who, to nobody’s surprise, turns up as an “evil” enemy commander. Much is made of how she takes men to her bed, and it takes only one night to turn a “good” character to her evil side. The message is obviously that sex does bad things to people!

There’s some sexual violence casually mentioned too. Some of it is in the past and not really dwelt upon (Tanis’ origin story), some of it is passed off as “just the way things are” (Tika having to deal with drunks pawing at her) and one bona fide attempt at rape that thankfully doesn’t get anywhere (when Laurana gets kidnapped). Yes, the 80’s was a different time etc, but it sure left a bad taste in my mouth.

D&D has a bad case of biological essentialism: all kender are child-like in demeanor, all dwarves are grumpy, etc. That is reflected in these books as well: Tanis is a half-elf, which means he is some kind of diplomat because he straddles two “races”, making him the leader of the group of course. And we only really see a single dwarf, and he’s grumpy… On one hand you know what to expect, on the other hand it makes the non-human characters a bit predictable and as the story progresses a bit tiresome.

The characters are supposed to be good friends, but they spend an awful lot of time full of mistrust of each other, very angry or outright fighting. Maybe this is also modeled on how teenage boys form friend groups? Raistlin deserves a special mention — we’ve all played in a campaign with an asshole who played an asshole character under the guise of “that’s what my character would do!”

The trilogy compares itself to the Lord of the Rings: the back flap even has a quote from Dragon Magazine, which names it “…a trilogy that should at last satisfy the old demands for ‘something to read after the Ring books.'” They don’t name the books by name, perhaps because TSR (the publisher of both D&D and these novels) had been sued by the Tolkien estate 7 years earlier for using names from Tolkien’s works and they tread more carefully after that. And of course Dragon Magazine is full of praise for the trilogy, because that was published by TSR too!

But that’s where any comparison has to end. Tolkien’s works are epic in the classic sense: there is a rich world with a rich history, some of which we get a short peek at. Things are going on just out of sight and the characters make a plan on how to achieve their goals in the middle of that. In these novels, by contrast, everything is just a set piece that is there, waiting idly for the characters to arrive. At no point did I have the feeling that there was a world off-screen (if you can call it that for a book) that was believable and in motion. It’s all so… pedestrian.

The scale certainly is meant to be epic: a world-spanning war with the evil side using dragons! And the first dragon we meet is terrifying! But soon, they’re relegated to being merely flying mounts with teeth and an attitude, and the whole thing feels cheapened. It’s like “oh, yeah, the dragons are also around somewhere…” and I feel that if you call your novel cycle “Dragonlance” there should be more dragons and more lances in it than this cycle has. We only see a dragonrider using a lance against another dragon, and it’s turned into some kind of slapstick with a kender and a dwarf crawling all over their dragon mount…

And yes, there are “funny” moments in there as well, whole scenes turned into some kind of slapstick. That certainly doesn’t help with setting an “epic” mood! Another gripe is how whole episodes are just skipped. “Oh, when we re-join our heroes they went to the ice wall and retrieve a piece of a dragonlance from a dragonrider encased in ice, and are now on their way back.” I mean, how is that not a big part of the story!?

Is it all bad? I mean, it’s not good, but I did read the whole thing and gave it 2 stars. Because it is interesting. You want to know what happens next, how the story develops, what new set piece is next. I did not read the whole thing through in one go — I had to read a little ‘palate cleanser’ in between the second and third book because it was getting to be a bit much. But if you frame it as pulpy fantasy aimed at teenaged boys, then it’s enough to keep your attention. That being said, I will not seek out any of the other books in the Dragonlance setting. Once was enough for me.

The first RPG session I ever played was a scenario from a module set in Middle-Earth, using the Rolemaster system. I kept playing Rolemaster for a long, long time, and through that avenue also kept semi up-to-date with the Middle-Earth Role Playing releases. But Iron Crown Enterprises lost the license, and then the movies came out and there was a very uninspired Lord of the Rings RPG put out that never really went anywhere.

So when The One Ring was released, I was very interested. And, as I have written elsewhere, I feel that this is the first RPG that properly captures the themes and ‘feel’ of the books. I have collected the whole print run of the first edition. Just when there were (very exciting!) hints about a Moria supplement, Cubicle 7, the publisher, announced that they were parting ways with the license holder (Serious Games) and would stop publishing The One Ring. We don’t know what caused this rift, but I am guessing that C7’s other lines (Warhammer, Doctor Who, etc) took too much attention away from The One Ring.

But soon after, it was announced that The Free League would publish the second edition of The One Ring. That was, I thought, good news. The Free League has a reputation of producing high quality books — I have all of their books for their Tales from the Loop game, and they’re gorgeous. So when the kickstarter for the second edition dropped, I made sure to get all the books. But meanwhile my campaign for The One Ring with my former colleagues is still going strong, so I never really got around to diving into the changes.

A couple of weeks ago, the kickstarter campaign for the Moria supplement was announced — so I guess there was work done on Moria after all. Of course, I backed that campaign so fast my credit card never knew what hit it. But looking through the stretch goals, I saw a term used that I was not familiar with. It seemed like a game term, but I knew for sure that the first edition didn’t have anything called a Landmark.

Now I was curious. I started reading through the second edition rulebook, the various “booklets” and the adventure anthology Ruins of the Lost Realm. I really like the rules changes, but I’m not so sure about the way adventures are presented.

The first edition (even the single-volume revised first edition) was amazingly badly organised. Certain procedures were spread out across three different sections, causing frantic leafing through the rulebook to answer a relatively simple rules question. That is all much, much better in the second edition! It is also very nice to see rules that were presented as optional in expansions for the first edition, such as the treasure rules and the rules for the Eye Awareness, made an integral part of the game. It’s a nice reset into a new baseline.

In the first edition, the difficulty of a test was determined by the target number. Default TN is 14, but it could be lowered or increased for easier or more difficult tasks. The stats did not really factor in, except when a point of Hope was spent. This is much different in the second edition: the default target number is 20 minus the stat. Difficulty is factored in by rolling two feat dice and taking the best or worst of the two rolls, or by adding or removing success dice. In combat, the ‘stance’ (the way you fight) determined the target number. Now, the stance determines whether you get advantage or disadvantage on the roll.

This streamlines the dice rolling a lot, since there are fewer variables to contend with. I like that a lot.

The default setting is Eriador, so everything west of the Misty Mountains. That means there is some overlap with some of the first edition expansions (mainly Bree and Rivendell) but it puts its own spin on things. But it also means you can use some of the material from the first edition to flesh out the setting of the second edition. A booklet also details how to create characters from the available cultures in the first edition, which is a nice touch.

I also like that a Ranger is now a viable starting character type.

The scenarios in the first edition were very structured: a series of scenes that string together into a story. It is a bit rail-roady: the course of action is clear and the NPCs steer the Fellowship into the direction of the next scene. It’s not a big problem (unless you have a very uncooperative group) but it’s not really as free as could be. In the second edition, adventure locations are detailed and there is a situation that is the cause for the Fellowship to visit the location. It’s much more ‘open’, which means it’s more work for the GM to manage running the scenario, but it’s much more flexible to fit it in a campaign.

In the first edition, Fellowships could get a Patron who could help them and send them on errands (leading to the adventures) but in the second edition a Fellowship starts out with a Patron, which shapes the whole campaign. I like that, because it gives flavour and impulse to the game, rather than the group being some kind of generic group of heroes that just do stuff because they’re heroes.

But the game has become less Middle-Earthy to me because of the scenarios. There are now more magical artefacts strewn about, there are Black Numenoreans who have been trained in ‘sorcery’ by Sauron, an adventure location even details how the Fellowship might gain access to a Palantir! The first edition was so low-powered and low-magic that I can’t imagine that there would ever be a scenario where the Fellowship was able to gaze onto a priceless artefact like a Palantir.

It reminds me of the MERP scenarios: as these were geared towards people running them with Rolemaster, which itself started out as a set of variant rules for D&D, these were much more D&D-like in their aesthetics. There were magic items everywhere, you could get magical weapons or items that gave a bonus on certain skills at the drop of a hat. These scenarios are not as ‘bad’ as that, but if you want to discover the treasure hoard of the last king of Arnor, then Ruins of the Lost Kingdom has you covered.

(The ‘open’ way of writing scenarios reminded me of Rolemaster as well. I find it interesting — in Tales from the Loop, Rolemaster is specifically called out as an RPG that Swedish kids played in the 1980s, and I wonder if we see the influence of the Free League at work in the way adventures are structured. It might not even be a conscious decision, but if you played Rolemaster back then, you must have used MERP scenarios, and it might be that for the Swedish editors, this is what a Middle-Earth scenario ‘looks’ like.)

I think these scenarios will be more accessible to D&D players. While it’s always good to broaden the appeal of a good RPG, and to entice D&D players to play something else than D&D, I’m not sure I applaud this direction. As with the first edition, there are also books to use the Middle-Earth setting with D&D, so some cross-contamination is to be expected. But if the numbers of the recent Kickstarter are to believed, then the vast majority of players use the ‘home’ system, and not D&D.

I love the streamlined rules, and I do think you can have some awesome campaigns with the provided scenarios. And maybe the first edition was too low-powered: it’s hard to feel like a hero if you’e always crawling through the mud, after all. It just seems like a little less authentic Middle-Earth to me.

I had been running an online RPG group, using Blades in the Dark. It’s been a lot of fun when it worked well, but it hasn’t been working well consistently enough, and some weeks ago I decided to end the campaign. It’s been an interesting journey, and I wanted to write down a few things about what worked and what didn’t as some kind of “post-mortem”.

I’m not going to explain the whole concept of Blades in the Dark (“BitD” from now on), but the idea is that you play a crime gang in a Victorian-like era, where magic exists. Oh, and the sun has gone out and there is a barrier around the city to keep all the demons out. Oh, and the barrier is powered by the blood of deep-sea demons that are hunted. If you have played Dishonored, then it will be vaguely familiar to you (and it is, in fact, one of the inspirations mentioned.)

The play-cycle revolves around the Score: a daring heist the gang tries to pull off to further their influence over the underworld of the city.

The Mole Matrix was a crew of Shadows: spies and burglars who operate subtle and unseen. We’ve had some nice scenarios: shadowing a suspect, rescuing someone held by a cult, identifying the cargo from an illicit transaction, things like that. But ultimately, a crew of Shadows need to plan their heists carefully, and that is where things broke down.

The setting is not defined clearly, and many things that are presented as an important part of the game (such as how the ‘Ghost Field’ really works, or how the blood of leviathans is harvested and processed, or what spark-craft can and can’t do, or the structure of noble society — that’s never explained. And while that means GMs have a lot of leeway to define their game, which is nice, it also means that GMs have to define these things if they’re important to the game.

In our case, that meant we had sessions full of “info-dumping”: things that the characters would know, but the players had no other way to find these things out by asking me questions. We got too bogged down in details, and the game got boring.

Now, BitD has a mechanic where you can retro-actively state that you have taken some kind of precaution because you are a professional scoundrel, but this is more for things like “I made sure to unlock this door when I was scouting earlier”, not to retro-actively make up some fact about the world such as details about how the Leviathan blood is unloaded from the ships and transported to the refinery.

We had quite a few long meta-discussions about the game, about what we wanted to get out of it, and what prevented us from getting that. In the end, I made the call to end the campaign.

Perhaps one day I will return to BitD, but not in a campaign with Shadows. Some other crew playbooks are much easier to run, as they do not require plans that are so carefully laid out (and thus need less background info-dumping).

I have finished^(*) Octopath Traveler, which is just as well, because I had gotten kind of obsessed with it. Every battle is a puzzle, and especially the boss battles (of which there are 32 in the character chapters and some additional ones in dungeons) require the right combination of abilities, equipment and tactics. Of course, there are battles against random monsters on the overland map and in dungeons, but once you have cracked their puzzle (so to speak) they don’t really offer a challenge anymore. And since I am bad at playing games, I had to walk back and forth a bit to gather the right characters and equipment for some boss battles, so in the end I was a bit overlevelled.

(*): I have completed all the chapters of all eight characters. I did not finish (or even enter!) some of the dungeons, nor did I take up the special end-game dungeon (to which some of the chapters make a masterful allusion!) but for now I will declare the game done.

Of course, being me, I considered how a game like Octopath Traveler would work out as a tabletop RPG. There is an official TRPG out, but that is in Japanese. One could easily add the Boost mechanic to a combat-heavy game like D&D. Personally, if I was interested in that, I would also fiddle with the rules for damage resistances and vulnerabilities to add the shields mechanic.

And for sure, the main part of the game is the combat, like in so many computer RPGs. But what made me care about the outcome, are the character stories and the NPCs they meet and the overall story arc of this group of characters. And I was thinking: what would it take to replicate that same ‘feel’ in a tabletop RPG? It could be a real cool Ryuutama campaign with some mature players who all signed up for being the star of the show for one episode, and then be a supporting character for all the other characters’ episodes. A pre-planned campaign wouldn’t work — it never does, because it takes away agency from the players — but you could prepare the next chapter based on the actions of the group and their preferences. What you could plan ahead is the continent/area where the stories would play out, but which parts of which stories would be placed where, would be up to the flow of the game. I was also struck by how some of the character jobs directly map onto the jobs available in Ryuutama: nobles, healers, merchants…

Instead of that, I have assembled a group to play Blades in the Dark with. A few years back, I was part of a BitD campaign that lasted quite a long time. I spoke a friend who had fallen off my radar for a bit. He is the GM of a campaign me and Klik both play in, but we haven’t played for about six months now. This is due to how busy he is, but he does have the bandwidth to play in a game. BitD is an interesting setting — when I described it to him, he immediately pointed to the Arcane series on Netflix, which is what reminded me strongly of Blades too. And it has a lot of player input and improv, so it doesn’t really require a lot of prep for the GM. I’m confident in my ability to wing it. I have assembled an interesting mix of players, and we’re having our ‘session zero’ next week. I’m looking forward to it.