Playtesters Wanted: Hazardous Fantasy, Safe Return Doubtful (Patreon)

For a long while now I've been developing a fantasy adventure game. It started as kind of a lark. I wanted a version of AD&D—the ancient original, all but unplayable yet played by millions—that leaned into the elements that most grabbed my imagination. At first, I had a heck of a time figuring out what exactly those were. I decided it had to do with a focus on myth and history that came out in isolated mentions and asides. This was before D&D became a genre in itself, remember. So the cleric was  analogous to a knight in a religious order. The druid had to confront and overcome a prior druid in order to gain authority, lifted straight from Frazier—dubious anthropology but fascinating fantasy. Assassins and thieves worked in guilds like merchants, not mere gangs, drawn from Lieber's Lankhmar. 

Then there's the notion that advancement comes from treasure, 1 XP per 1 GP. What might that look mean in the fictional world? What happens when power and wealth are inextricable in play? And combat rounds originally were supposed to be a full minute long. That's not an exchange of blows, it's a whole scene. What happens when you approach combat in that way? What kind of game are we actually talking about?

"In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary." —James Frazier, The Golden Bough

Naturally, exploring those ideas and making them playable meant reworking the game entirely to suit my own style and preferences. What emerged is a game that seems to be pretty easily compatible/convertible with most of D&D, particularly the old stuff, while playing almost nothing like it. It uses just six-sided dice. It's dangerous, and adventurers are pretty likely to suffer long-term injuries if they go around letting people stab them, but it focuses on challenges and risks of wounds and long recovery rather than flipping a switch between Alive and Dead. 

It makes negotiation and diplomacy integral. It makes travel suspenseful. It uses the spells of old AD&D (they're all posted online), requiring a little conversion until I can be bothered to rewrite them all, but it ditches spell slots and spell points in favor of time spent in preparation. It encourages magicians to play magic not as a power but as a back-and-forth with the gods, demons, and spirits that have power.

I would love to hear feedback from gamers who give it a shot. 

I'm not publishing the whole thing on Patreon. Not even the title, you might notice. I want to keep it closer than that for now. It may never go farther than me occasionally playing it with friends.

If you and some friends are interested, EMAIL ME at shane@arcdream.com.

Before you email me, though, pinky-promise me two things. 

• You'll keep this just between us. 
• If you read it and like it, you'll actually play it and tell me how it goes.

Here's an excerpt that may help you decide. 

WHAT TO EXPECT

Fortune and glory. Ambition and betrayal. Deceit and death. Adventurers seek the dangers of the wild, the ruined, the haunted. There lay treasures the bold can claim.

Adventurers bring precious relics and gold—gold!—back home. The people around them prosper. Year by year, triumph by triumph, the adventurers gain new resources, more followers, and greater properties, influence, and standing. They grow in strength and power. They win bitter enemies and mighty friends. All from beautiful gold.

This game embraces the adventurous goals of some of the earliest roleplaying games. It adapts original D&D and AD&D’s First Edition and reworks them from first principles to play quickly and easily. Classes and the setting are built with each other in mind and to reflect the historical and supernatural elements of the game.

And yet the setting is painted with only broad strokes. Players and DM work together to name and describe the adventurers’ homes, liege lords or ladies, followers, families, and contacts. The communities and clans, baronies and counties around them. The faiths that they follow and histories they keep. This world is yours.

Countless Dangers

Most adventures feature violence and the risks of exploration. Combat is sudden and fast, as frightful as it may be heroic. Numbers, surprise, and timing are everything. A battle is likely to be over in minutes. Combat means a series of clashes and skirmishes rather than second-by-second action. And yet combat has a structure to encourage and reward tactics.

Second Chances

Players, beware! This game does not much concern itself with making sure violent encounters are winnable. Adventurers might as easily meet an impossible opponent as a fair fight. It’s up to them to learn about opponents before taking them on, and to withdraw or negotiate instead if necessary.

That said, the rules have few “instant death” events. Escape is usually feasible. Dire misfortune may leave an adventurer dying with at least a chance to be saved. That principle ought to guide the GM. It’s usually far more interesting and suspenseful for an adventurer to be on the brink of death, or incapacitated, or captured, than for an adventurer to simply die.

Having said all that, there are moments where an adventurer’s sudden death is warranted. Make it a source of profound drama as all characters react to the shock.

Captivity

Far more frequent than death are retreat or surrender. After all, the adventurers’ enemies have no wish to die. Most drop their weapons if they suspect an alternative to death. And most opponents see such well-equipped adversaries as the adventurers as more valuable alive than dead. They might be subject to rich ransoms! Honest offers to surrender and accept surrender are a part of raids and war. Only rarely do hatreds burn so hot as to reduce a fight to certain death on one side or the other. Some of the most famous heroes and kings of history suffered capture to avoid death.

The tricky part is that most players find the idea of surrender and capture absolutely abhorrent. Most find losing agency permanently in a character’s death preferable to losing temporarily in capture. It is crucial for the GM to use NPCs, both friends and foes, to model the reasonableness of surrender until players accept it as a risk of battle.

Everything at Risk

Life and limb are hardly the only things adventurers put at risk in their pursuit of glory. Their wealth, reputations, titles, and followers all are fair game for enemies and rivals. But since even outmatched adventurers have every chance to survive defeat, the GM need not carefully balance encounters to ensure a fair chance of victory. Players’ choices matter far more than any given foe’s power or Hit Dice.