Trollish Delver

Image: Warhammer/Games Workshop

Armies: Units have a Quality: normal, superior, or elite. Both armies should have the same number of any of the above units. Usually 2-3 normal, 2 superior and 1 elite. Unit size can be 10 normal, 3-5 superior, 1 elite.

Table: 3x3, 4x4 or 4x6.

Rounds: Player 1 moves a unit and takes action, then Player 2 does the same. Continue until all done. Start new round and roll initiative.

Deployment: Within 6” of the table edge at opposite sides.

Terrain: Place a load of terrain. This blocks line of sight.

Initiative: Players roll a d6. Highest goes first.

Turns: On a turn move and attack, or move twice.

Move: 6” normal or 10” fast. Difficult terrain halves move expect for flying units. Half speed to move away from melee base contact.

Coherence: Models in a unit must remain within 3” of one another.

Melee attack: Roll a d6 in base contact. To hit you need:

• Normal: 5+
• Superior: 4+
• Elite: 3+

Save: For each hit, opponent rolls a d6. Roll as per the above based on the unit hit.

Wound: A model failing a save takes a wound. Normal units can take 1 wound, superior 2, and elite 3. A single model takes all wounds first, with excess spilling over to the next model. Wounds are removed between turns.

Death: At 0 wounds, remove the model.

Ranged attack: Shoot up to 12” with moving or 24” without moving. Need line of sight on target in range. Use the melee rules. -1 shooting at a model in melee or in cover.

Number of attacks: Normal 1, Superior 2, Elite 3

Morale: Any unit at less than half models, rounded down, immediately rolls a d6 against unit Quality. If they fail, the unit is removed from play.

Winner: Probably last one standing, or first to secure the most objectives in 5 rounds (have a model in base contact with objective by the end of the fifth round).

Disagreements: Each player rolls a d6. Highest wins the argument.

Unless the game is specifically made for solo I do often have a hard time bringing a traddy game into solo mode. So here’s something I cooked up to meet my solo needs when I want a more traditional game, sort of, with none of that fancy book-reading. It’s basically an Engle Matrix game and easy enough to play on your phone.

1. Establish a clear problem. Skeletor has an orb of control and has captured Man-at-Arms. Geraldine’s cafe is out of tea.

2. Note the cast. Write down the players involved in the scenario. Pop a motivation for each. Other characters may pop up as you play.

3. Choose a character or group (e.g. Skeletor, the A-Team, France). Decribe an action they take based on the problem and their motivation.

4. Roll a d6 to see if that happens. 1: No, and. 2: No. 3: No, but. 4: Yes, but. 5: Yes. 6: Yes, and.

5. Choose the same or a different character and repeat until the narrative is resolved.

From the mindgrapes of the OSR thought-leaders came the idea of two forms of combat in TTRPGs: combat as war and combat as sport.

Those in the online TTRPG sphere will be eminently familiar with this dichotomy, but for others: combat as war refers to how fights “should” happen in old school D&D games. The argument is that OSR characters, at least in the lower levels, are pretty fragile so players should go into combat with the best possible advantage. Setting traps, funnelling enemies down certain paths, and ultimately not going for a fight unless you’re confident you can win.

Conversely there’s combat as sport, where there’s more balance between conflicting sides due to mechanical weighting and tactical options possessed by each character. Think modern trad games like Pathfinder or 5e. Combat as sport is supposed to prevent a relatively fair fight. Sure, the GM can adjust the encounter difficulty but characters are supposed to have the tools to deal with those.

I don’t believe it’s that simple, though. Or, at least war and sport is a false binary.

The Third Combat

I’d wager that most of your trad and even OSR games use a blend of both combat types.

For one, old school dungeon games, usually based on BX, do have balancing mechanics, like hit dice and dungeon levels.

While BX also says that any level monster can technically be discovered anywhere in a dungeon, the above shows balance is a factor in the game’s design.

At the same time, games like Pathfinder reward preparation as war and execution as sport.

Mechanics like skill challenges, victory points, and similar rules allow for simple and abstract preparation for combat. Poisoning a water supply, caving in exits, setting traps – these are often handled with skill rolls. Doing really well may give advantages: fewer enemies to face, foes already wounded, monsters whose abilities are negated. Player actions before combat can swing the fight in their direction (or scupper them).

I’d encourage GMs to consider this hybrid combat rather than one or the other. I’m also a big proponent of being transparent with options as not to have players spending hours in the throes of indecision. Explaining how players can prepare for a fight, giving them explicit options (without negating other fun choices the players may make) and their consequences.

With AI being the potential downfall of creativity, now more than ever we need to be making shit that AI just could never. All AI will ever give you is middle-of-the-road milquetoast rot. “Designers” out there are generating images and text of modules and calling it a day. And the more that happens, the more LLMs train on that data and you have a cycle of shite.

Weirdo jank is the way forward. AI can’t do weirdo jank. It has to make everything ‘just so’. “Oh but I want to play serious games where there’s mechanical stability and balance” – do you though? Or do you want to throw some dice and have a laugh coming up with nonsense with your friends? Ok, maybe you do want serious, and that’s ok, but I dunno – I think we need to start getting really strange with it. Cut your restraints. Go against convention. Don’t listen to the likes of Reddit who have 1000 reasons you shouldn’t do something. They’re mostly children. Stop talking yourself out of weird jank and embrace it.

Corpos hate you and they want everyone to be little automatons without a mind of their own. Roleplaying games can save us from that. Horrible little artpunk nonsense games that stop use from scrolling or buying a thing from an ad (likely AI generated). AI companies hate you because they want everyone to be smooth-brained idiots sloshing around in the slop bucket, drinking from the slop bucket. Original ideas are in danger.

“Oh but I’m not a game designer” – yes you are. If you have an idea, put it out there. Draw it in crayon and scan it. You don’t need to know stats and maths. It’s JANK. Let the act of creativity be one of rebellion against the robots and the suits.

Commission artists, if you can. If you can’t, hack up stock photos. Use old book illustrations. Draw some shit yourself – whatever you do will be leagues better than what the robots spill out of their rancid shafts. Limitation breeds creativity, and that’s the opposite of AI which seeks unlimited data, which just becomes a shit blancmange.

Make your nasty little jank game on a bit of tissue. Play it with strangers. They’ll probably have a lot of fun and you might make some friends. AI is not a friend.

Bathe the world in creative detritus and laugh.

Get my own jank on Patreon.

In a relatively short time TTRPGs have evolved and blossomed from a dungeon and wilderness procedural coin-nicking game to, well, almost anything really. So I was thinking: what would happen if, rather than evolving, every TTRPG was just a variation of OD&D? I’ve conjured some answers from my sick mind for three of the biggies.

Vampire: The Masquerade

Storyteller system? Blech. This wouldn’t be about the melodramatics that goes with being a hot vampire. No, this is a game of territorial warfare, with the city as a megadungeon. Various clans would be represented as classes: Brujah for fighter, Tremere for wizard, and maybe Nosferatu as a thief type thing.

Rather than torches burning down you’d have blood points. Gotta keep feeding otherwise you save vs frenzy. But feeding on the gen pop increases the chance of being discovered. Save vs masquerade.

It’s blood for xp and influence instead of gold. The more influence, the more territory you can get.

Cyberpunk Red

Like Vampire Night City is a megadungeon or hexcrawl. This is gritty corpo espionage, baby! Rather than wandering monsters you’d have patrol alerts based on how you’re approaching the heist. Going in guns blazing is upping those patrol chances considerably.

Obviously the netrunner would be a wizard type, with programs instead of spells. The solo would be a fighter and techie the thief.

Torches would be swapped for battery power and signal range, the latter to keep the techie in the dungeon crawl.

No minigame for netrunning. Just a save vs brain getting fried up. And rather than rolling abilities success is based on your upgrades and tech.

Call of Cthulhu

So now we have an investigation crawl where sanity is impacted by the place you’re investigating and the wandering monsters. Roll vs sanity of reduce it like HP.

Classes are soldier (fighter), occultist (wizard), and investigator (thief). Only an occultist can read from magic tomes without losing sanity, or perhaps losing less.

Rather than looking for clues and solving a mystery this would be more about finding ancient secrets and getting them to a safe place (e.g. Miskatonic). The more mythos relics gained the more xp.

Torches would simply be flashlights and eldritch terrors would be like ten times as strong as a red dragon.

I’m very pleased to release a big update for Heartseeker, my very tiny old school adventure game.

Heartseeker is now five years old and I figured it was time for a refresh. Rather than overhauling it as a new edition I’ve added the following updates:

• All new cover and logo
• Fresh new layout
• Bloodlines now have a choice of abilities – a bump in stat or something else. I’ve removed a couple of bloodlines (orc and kobold).
• Slight changes to ability bonuses.
• More spells!
• Big list of gear
• Random encounter tables
• More monsters! Monsters have a single universal save

Ultimately you have everything you need for an old school campaign that’s easily compatible with other OSR games.

War Axe is my upcoming fantasy skirmish wargame. Note that it’s now a skirmish game. I’ve reduced the model count to 5-10 per side.

War Axe is a single-stat game, using Battle for all rolls including fighting, wounds and morale. It started with 3 stats but I changed the dice system which meant I no longer needed armour and wounds. As a unit takes wounds its Battle also reduces, making it less effective so players should think about how best to use wounded models.

It’s also an anti-lore game (wild for me considering I love lore). There are four main factions but their background, vibe and faction abilities are rolled randomly. One player’s Goblin Court may be out to destroy civilisation while another may believe the world needs an etiquette lesson. Your Empire of Lamarque may be a burgeoning force while mine may be diminishing and rotting.

Many faction abilities are affected by the Winds of War mechanic central to the game. Any time a unit takes a wound that player gains a point of favour. If one has more favour than the other the winds currently favour them. This can trigger additional benefits like more dice or new abilities for every unit. In addition, a point of fortune can be spent to reroll dice. Do you spend to reroll, knowing that a wound could turn the winds against you?

Of course, units have their own abilities. The points system is simple and allows you to easily craft your own units and even factions, with rules for doing so outlined in the book. For instance, if I wanted an undead dragon I might spend 5 points to give it Battle 5, 2 points for the Flying ability and 2 points for Immortal. Overall my dragon costs 9pts. I could give it a ranged attack and bring it to 11pts to make a formidable unit.