Embarking on Dangerous Journeys

Today I want to spend some time exploring a game made by the father of role-playing games, Gary Gygax. The game is of course Dangerous Journeys.

For those of you who don't know, the history of the game is perhaps just as interesting as its mechanics.

In The Beginning...

You see, in the mid to late 1970's a man by the name of Gary Gygax helped co-create the world's first RPG, Dungeons & Dragons. He helped design the mechanics, write the rulebook, advertise and manage sales. He was the CEO of the company that published the product, TSR.

But then something interesting happened in the mid 1980s. Gary Gygax was ousted from his CEO position and forced to leave TSR forever. Here's a man who spent a decade nurturing a product that was near and dear to him, and now it was no longer his. Worse yet, the company he helped found; voted him off the board effectively making TSR a competitor. Mr. Gygax was exiled and forced to say goodbye to D&D for good.

Can you imagine the heart break he must have felt? After pouring your heart and soul into something like that, and now it belonged to someone else.

The Second Age

But, Gygax being a gamer by heart, did what any intrepid adventurer would do. He picked himself up, mended his wounds, and marched on.

To me, this is where the story of Gygax gets interesting. People tend to only focus on Gygax's first creation, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition (or derivatives such as Basic Dungeons & Dragons). But what kind of game would the new Gygax 2.0 create? With a new team, and nearly 15 years of experience in the industry, he had the opportunity to start completely anew.

Haunted By The Past

Except, no matter how willing Gygax was to moving on, it seemed the past was not willing to let go of him. TSR, now under new management, was determined to defend their golden goose through copyright protection. Partially because of this, Gygax had to go to great lengths to distance his new game from that of D&D. He came up with new terms (such as "Heroic Personae" instead of "Character") to insure it was a bona-fide standalone game.

Yet, alas, Gygax did not prevail. When TSR sued the company that published his new game (Dangerous Journeys), the company eventually gave in and transferred the rights to TSR, where it was promptly mothballed.

Today I want to talk about this hidden gem that was tragically killed off all too soon.

The Game

Game Basics

But now that we've talked about history, let's get into the game itself. The name of it was "Dangerous Journeys". The concept was a stark departure from that of D&D. In Dungeons & Dragons, the game focuses solely on a fantasy genre with class-based character creation (fighters, wizards, thieves, etc.). DJ, on the other hand, was supposed to be a class-less, universal system that could fit many genres (had it been allowed to continue).

Under the Dangerous Journeys umbrella was the "Mythus" fantasy roleplaying setting/game. A hybrid fantasy world, mixed with fantasy-specific mechanics.

As someone who cut their teeth on GURPS, to me all of this sounds pretty awesome! A universal system, made by Mr. Gygax? Wow! The man sure had changed since the 1970s.

How Does It Work?

Vocabulary

Well, first off, as I stated earlier; there are a lot of propriety terms. These terms are, in my opinion, un-needed in modern times, and end up detracting from the overall experience due to the confusion they cause to the reader. For example, "Personaes", or "Heroic Personaes" (HP for short) refer to what most players understand as "Characters". The fact that the acronym "HP", which commonly stands for "Hit Points" or "Health Points" is used to describe characters, is in my opinion inappropriate.

Other examples include the "Socio-Economic Class" (SEC), TRAITS, Vocation, and, oh yes, the "Knowledge/Skill" (K/S) and STEEP points. It's all very heavy jargon for a game, in my opinion. So, to spare you dear reader from a head ache, I'm going to translate these terms to more acceptable vocabulary.

Character Creation

Enough talk, let's get into creating a character! Character creation is divided into "Basic" and "Advanced" forms. Which is nice if you're a fan of "Basic Dungeons & Dragons" and "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons". Except here the two forms are in one book. Nice!

Step 1 involves determining where your character belongs in the world. More specifically, their social class. Are they a peasant? Perhaps a "freeman", or even an aristocrat. You determine this by rolling 1D6+1 (the +1 seem unnecessary. I'm sure there's a more eloquent way to have handled that, but I digress).

Make your roll and refer to the list below:

This step is somewhat important because the level you rolled (see the image above) will determine what type of class you can play later on in the creation process.

Step 2 covers the character's basic attributes, known here at "TRAITS" (with all caps, apparently). This is a percentile-based game where there are only three main stats: Mental, Physical and Spiritual. These traits are filled out by dividing 120 points between the three attributes. You decide how many points each stat has, but no stat can have less than 21 points nor more than 60 (to start).

The game goes on to state that a score of 60 is the human-maximum when it comes to abilities, whereas a 21 is a "very low average".

As with previous Gygax games, it seems Gary wanted your "Heroic Personae" (character) to be somewhat extraordinary; a cut above the crowd. For this reason, the 120 points can be equally divided into three groups of 40 (which is listed as "above average"). The advanced version of the game starts characters with twice as many points (252 pts), reiterating this "super human" focus.

Step 3 Next, we're off to choose our class...sort of. In Mythus classes are called "Vocations" and act more like a bundle of skill-sets that a character specializes in. The basic version of the game offers seven vocations, with the advanced version (found at the back of the book) offering as many as 45. The seven starting classes are: Alchemist, Astrologer, Cavalier, Mercenary/Solider, Mountebank, Thief and Wisewoman/Wiseman.

Clearly Gygax had designed an easy framework by using skill bundles that merely required the re-organization of which skills a class started with, rather than fine-tuning each "vocation" to stand out from the crowd.

The image above showcases the basic classes to choose from, along with what basic attribute they focus on, and the minimum social class you must have rolled during step 1 to be eligible to take this class. For example, a Cavalier requires your character be a "freeman, gentleman" or higher, and will focus mostly on physical skills.

Step 4 Next we'll chose our skills, known in Mythus as "Knowledge/Skill" or "K/S". Mythus makes a distinction between K/S and another term, known as "STEEP", which essentially are "skill points". Skills (e.g. lock pick, sneak, swim, etc.) are given skill points (STEEP) which represent how well your character can perform in a certain field of study. Again, a score of 20 or below is considered poor while a score of 60 or above is impressive.

As I mentioned earlier, classes in Mythus aren't necessarily fine-tuned snowflakes, each with unique characteristics. Instead, they pretty much only represent a bundle of skills. This makes sense for the type of game it is, since Gygax deliberately chose three broad abilities to define a character, and he wanted the game to be both percentile-based and universal.

The "Skill List"

So how do skills work? Well, first let's take a look at the alchemist class as an example.

What we find is that the class has a list of skills (as mentioned before), along with what basic attribute (physical, mental or spiritual) the skills are based off. In the far-right column we also see the starting skill points (STEEP) that the character gets for each skill. These skill points are added to one-half (1/2) of the character's basic attribute. For example, an alchemist with a mental score of 30 would add one-half of that (15) to their mathematics score of 20 (for a total of 35).

Why one-half of the basic score? I have no clue. I suppose Gygax didn't want the numbers to climb to 100 too fast. However, I feel like the same goal could be achieved by simply reducing the number of starting skill points; or starting with less points for the basic attributes.

Additionally, there are three "universal" skills all players get: native tongue, perception and riding.

We're not done with skills just yet. Gygax decided to allow the players to customize their character further by choosing "bonus skills". The way bonus skills work depends on which of your basic attributes (physical, mental, spiritual) has the highest score, which has the lowest and which is in the middle. You choose a number of bonus skills equal to 3, 2 or 1 (for your highest, second-highest and lowest basic attribute, respectively). For example, if your character's spiritual score was the highest of the three, you choose three bonus spiritual skills (e.g. magnetism, metaphysics and street-wise). You'd do the same for your two other basic attributes (with one progressively less skill for each).

You might be asking how many skill points each of these bonus skills starts with, and the answer is 10 points.

Step 5 which is, oddly enough, called "Step 6" in the rulebook (it seems step 5 is missing), involves determining the starting money for your PC. However, it's not a simple matter of rolling 3D6 to determine how many coins are in your pocket. In Mythus, you have "Net Worth", "Bank Accounts", "Cash on Hand" and "Disposable Monthly Income". The currency is called the "Base Unit Coin (BUC)". How's that for generic?

To start, you determine your PC's social economic class (found in step 1) then roll a certain number of dice for each money category (as shown in the table below) based off their social class level:

Step 6 The final step involves finding some miscellaneous information about your character. Specifically, their physical attractiveness.




Roll a 1D20 and pray you roll above a 7.

For the basic version of the game, that concludes the character creation process. The rest of the book goes into "performing actions", "heka" (which is their proprietary name for magic/mana), "combat", "leveling up", "how to play your character" (and example play sessions), the advanced version of the game, "game master rules", two sample adventures and "magic items" (along with an appendix). All of these topics I'll have to save for another post.

In Conclusion

Deep down, the mechanics of this game aren't bad. If you're into percentile-based RPGs, there's a good balance between the luck-of-the-draw and customizing your character the way you want.

The Good The game had massive potential, on paper. It was a universal system, it used D100 percentile rolls, and the basic version was intentionally left generic. This allowed players (and GMs) to tailor the setting to almost any genre (though the game was flavored towards fantasy). A "wiseman" could become a "jedi" or a "cavalier" could become a Captain America of sorts.

I also liked the tie-ins between a character's starting social status and the options they had available later in the creation process. Once the system is understood, the mechanics are fairly easy to follow and transparent in intention.

The Bad At times the game feels too generic. The BUC is a good example of where one-size-fits-all doesn't always "feel" right in certain settings. Species apparently aren't an option to choose between during character creation. There also wasn't enough differentiation between the classes (but this is more of a gripe I have towards skill-based systems as a whole).

The skills also felt a little confusing (e.g. "Phaeree Folk & Culture", "Apotropaism"). They also came off as a tad bit random since some seemed far more useful in a day-to-day play session than others (e.g. "combat, missile" will always be better than "agriculture").

Instead, I think Gygax should have let players make up their own skills, and assign them to the most logical basic attributes with a generic number of starting skill points.

The Ugly Obviously the TSR lawsuit sunk this ship; but even if TSR allowed the game to publish and thrive, there were still some major rough edges that needed grinding down. To start, the cryptic nomenclature is almost laughable. Referring to things as "K/S", "STEEP", "Heroic Persona" and "SEC" isn't my idea of a fun Friday night. While I appreciate the great lengths Gygax went to to avoid a lawsuit (which ultimately happened anyway), the vocabulary needs some major cleaning up. If a "retroclone" of this game ever gets made, it's the first thing that has to go. Use normal, industry standard terms that everyone knows and loves.

Secondly, the wall of text. Each page is jammed packed with small-sized font that talks about every facet of every mechanic (and doesn't always do a great job of it, either). Many concepts and ideas could be explained in far-less verbage, and allow for more white space.

How to Use New Rules to Capture the Classic Feel

Today's post is a partial response to the above video made by "Black Belt Games". If you haven't seen it, I encourage you to watch it and the two other parts to the series. It's a discussion about the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1E classic feel, and how that contrasts to many modern RPGs (including modern D&D).

Classic Style Dungeon Crawling

In the video there is talk about the methodologies used to negotiate a dungeon back in the 1980s. Specifically, how players often had to rely upon their own wits, common sense and attention to detail (to the GM's descriptions of both room, scenarios and circumstances) to avoid traps, ambushes, solve puzzles and otherwise get into a dungeon, loot it of treasure, and survive on the way out.

This, as the video says, is a very different approached compared to the emphasis, encouragements and negligence of modern tabletop gaming. Today's players often have what has been called "Heads Down Syndrome"; which is to say that whenever a problem is presented to a band of adventurers, every player looks down at their character sheet to figure out which skill, feat, spell, etc. they can evoke to solve the problem. The entire affair of navigating a labyrinthine dungeon of horrors has been reduced to a simple act of "hunt and peck" for the best superpower that suits the problem. This is akin to having a toolbox full of tools, and your three hour game session boils down to being presented different scenarios and your only job is to find the right tool.

In classic gaming, and that of the Old School Renaissance (OSR) community, YOU--the player--had to out-think the problems you were presented. The tools you had at your disposal were whatever your character was physically capable of doing, as well as whatever equipment your character was carrying on their back.

Characters were no super heroes out of the gate. They were mortal men and women who were very squishy and often times met an untimely demise (sometimes early into the adventure). This in turn encouraged players to handle their characters more cautiously. No smashing down doors without first considering the noise it'll create in a cramped dungeon; and whose ears may be alerted to your presence. Traps were a constant fear, and the seemingly-now-extinct tricks would play with player's minds.

If you've ever played the game "Dungeon Quest", you'll understand the sentiment I'm trying to convey. It's a parallel solitaire boardgame of players-versus-the-game style where you are an adventurer trying to get to the center of a dungeon, rob a sleeping dragon of its riches, and get back out before sundown. The challenge is hinted at when the rulebook states there's only about a 20% survival rate. What other boardgame have you played has proudly stated such a steep difficulty? It immediately sets a mood "survivalism" and adds tension and excitement to the play session.

Skills Systems

In OD&D, BD&D and AD&D 1E there were no such things as "skills". No skill checks, no +1 to falconry or anything like that. The logic was that if your character attempted to do something extraordinary, they would simply roll 1d20 and hope they rolled under their score ("Roll Under for Achievement"--RUNA). The six attributes (strength, intelligence, dexterity, constitution, charisma and wisdom) were broad enough and generic enough that they could (theoretically) cover 80%+ of the situations you had to roll for. I've always found these six attributes genius, really. They were perfectly balance; not too generic but not too limiting.

Yet in 2E and on we begin to see the introduction of skills. Even Rules Cyclopedia introduced optional rules for a skill system. The idea was that characters could have a base score for their six attributes, but then excel in certain fields of study, or perform poorly in other fields, in some cases. To me, the introduction of skills was genius. It allowed players to further flesh out and express their characters. It allowed characters to be more individual.

Yet, as often happens, sometimes there is too much of a good thing. As Wizards of the Coast bought the Dungeons & Dragons intellectual property from TSR, we then saw tons and tons of skills, and even more bonuses, feats and so forth. I call this transition the "death of a thousand +1's". The ability to mix and match various bonuses, spells, feats, skills and so forth caused huge swings in balance. The traditionally physically weak wizard could suddenly negate their weakness with feats, and amplify their spells to ridiculous heights; which in turn caused an arms-race between the classes, in an attempt to keep up.

So it should be no surprise that in today's age many people of the OSR community reject skills, almost on principle, because of what it has lead to. But what if there was a better way? A compromise?

Let's start by throwing out the skill tables/lists. Every RPG tries to come up with their own unique list of skills that the designer thinks the players will need in their adventures; depending on the genre of the game. However, we've all been ignoring the gorilla in the room: if skills are based off the type of action, then there are literally tens of thousands (if not unlimited) potential skills a player character could engage in. Trying to cover every conceivable action is ignoring the genius that Gygax gave us: the generic "six attributes" cover most of what we need. So, we need to adopt a "one size fits all" model, rather than a "1,001 skills" model.

Let's imagine that every player started with a number of "skill points" equal to their intelligence. There are no defined skills in the rulebook. Instead, players are encouraged to "make up" their own skills based off what they want their character to know, instead of what the game designer thinks they want them to know. For example, if I was making a burglar and I have 10 skill points to allocate, I could choose to place them like so:

• Lock Pick: +2
• Hide Motive: +5
• Climb: +3

In my mind, I want my character to pick out victims he'll steal from, then talk with them under the guise of becoming their friend. In truth he'd be fishing for information to determine if they're wealthy, and if so, where they live and any security measures he should be aware of before robbing their house.

Because this example skill system is amorphous, I was able to tailor my character exactly how I wanted, rather than being pigeon-holed into a preset. That's not to say that you can't provide example skills for players who enjoy the "pick and go" method to character creation.

Professions

One mantra the OSR community likes to parade is more narrative freedom and emphasis on GM fiat and player character expression. The idea being that there should be more immersion within the game; and less about preset superpowers or getting lost in the complex rules. This sometimes is expressed as a "roll-playing versus role-playing" argument.

One aspect I'd like to see expanded is a character's background; specifically that of their profession. Where did your character come from, and what trade did they take up prior to adventuring? What skills did their trade teach them? Why did they take up that trade? Answering these questions is a great way to develop a personality for your character and better understand the hardships (and growth opportunities) they experienced in their past.

Many modern RPGs treat professions similar to that of skills. Game designers try to come up with a list of professions they think the players will want to play, throw handfuls of +1 modifiers at the previously mentioned skill list/table in a way that they think best suits that profession, then call it a day. For example, a game designer might determine that a "ranger" profession pivots off the idea of having an animal familiar, and so states that all rangers get a +2 to animal handling.

The problem will all of this is the same as that of skills: there are literally thousands of professions out there, and the multitude of skillsets required to operate effectively within each of those professions can differ dramatically. Game designers are faced with a fork in the road:

• Create a massive compendium of 1,001 professions that covers as much as humanly possible
• Create a paired down table that covers a few core professions that is subject to the designer's own biases/preferences
• Ignore the whole problem and don't have support professions or hand wave it away

But what if there was another way? Something akin to the skills system laid out above. What if we had the audacity to let the players "make up" their own professions? Would the world end? No, I don't think so. So long as we say that players can choose any profession/background for their players but every part is subject to the GM's approval, I think we'll be fine.

This "virtual profession" system opens the flood gates to countless job titles that we don't typically see in RPGs. Instead of being a "fighter", suddenly you could be a "baker" or a "fletcher" or "artisan". The real question is, how would this self-proclaimed profession affect the in-game mechanics? For that, we turn to our next point.

Advantage/Disadvantage System

One of the best things that came out of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, in my opinion, was the "advantage/disadvantage" system. The premise is so simple, yet can be used in a wide range of areas. If your character has advantage in something, you can roll twice and take the better roll. Disadvantage was simply the opposite: roll twice and take the worse of the two rolls. Genius.

We can take this simple, yet "modern" system and apply it to our professions and skills system. Here's how (this may come off as a bit controversial and bold):

Rule 1: Anytime you would perform a skill test, you must perform it with disadvantage.

I don't know about you, but to me that's a pretty sweeping rule. It sounds kinda dumb, too, at first glance. Every single time I want to pick a lock, climb a cliff or bargain over the price of an item, my character has disadvantage? Why? Here's why.

If your character was a warrior for many years, it is reasonable to assume that they are good at all things warrior-related. They're good with a sword, battlefield tactics, command structure and so on. But if a character attempted to perform an action they've never done in their life (e.g. the warrior attempts to dance), they're naturally going to suck at it. But if it's an action they've done many times professionally, or because they're naturally skilled in it, they wouldn't suck (aka wouldn't have disadvantage). So, performing all actions with disadvantage is another way of saying "As beginners, we all suck the first time." so all actions we perform start with disadvantage. To complete this train of thought, we need a second rule:

Rule 2: If your character attempts to perform an action that would fall within the responsibilities of their profession, or they have one or more positive modifiers (e.g. "+1") in that skill, they can perform that skill test as normal (without disadvantage). 

Let's imagine that warrior, who is used to forced-marches, battling foes on the battlefield, and sleeping in military encampments, suddenly finds himself deep in a dungeon and wanting to climb down a sheer cliff face. The GM could make a call that "rock climbing" is not in the job description of a warrior, nor did the player choose to put any of their skill points into such a skill, therefore if they do choose to climb down the cliff they will do so with disadvantage.



At this point I want to take a moment and discuss what the implications are for such a set of rules. What would you, the player in charge of this warrior, think knowing their life hangs on a climb test with disadvantage? How would you react? My guess is your reaction falls somewhere within one of these possibilities:

• Discouragement: You think "gee, on second thought climbing down this cliff looks dangerous and I don't really know anything about rock climbing. I better not."
• Teamwork: You think "gee, on second thought climbing down this cliff looks dangerous and I don't really know anything about rock climbing. I better let the rogue do it since it is actually something he does professionally."
• Inspiration: You think "gee, on second thought climbing down this cliff looks dangerous and I don't really know anything about rock climbing. I better get out some rope."

Of course it is possible you might think "this sucks" and attempt to flip the gaming table over in a fit of rage, but I hope cooler heads prevail. Anyway, I want to talk about each of these points individually.

In the first reaction (discouragement) we have a dangerous situation that forces the player to play more cautiously, and to second guess their decisions. This is the exact style of play the above video was talking about when they described the "feel" of AD&D 1E. We want things to be hard. We want things to be deadly. We want the characters to fear for their lives and stay close to their strong points.

In the second reaction (teamwork) we have what I call a "soft class limit", which is different than a "hard class limit". To better explain what I mean, I'll tell you of something that happened to my fighter character last night, during my weekly AD&D 1E session:

[My fighter and his allies were climbing the stairs leading to the top of a pyramid.]

Me: "As I climb the stairs on the right-side, I want to look carefully at each ledge to see if I notice any foot prints or other sign of recently activity."

GM: "Are you a ranger?"

Me: "No..."

GM: "You see nothing."

I couldn't help but chuckle when the GM said this. However, my initial reaction was both a positive and negative one. Negative because I felt like it was unfair for my character to insta-fail at attempting a task simply because I was not a ranger. This is what I call a "hard limit" to a class. Because I wasn't a ranger, I had no chance of succeeding at tracking.

However, I also had a positive reaction: I was obviously attempting to do something outside my expertise, and the GM was reminding me to color within the lines, or, put another way, "play your class/role".

The balance between these two reaction is to have limits, yes, but not make them so glaringly black and white. Make the limits "soft". We can encourage teamwork between players by giving everyone a role to play. If you're a fighter, you knock heads. A thief "knows things". A magic user casts magic. But characters should still be able to attempt any "skill", it's just that if they try to do something that isn't within their profession, they get disadvantage. Success is still possible, just far less likely.

The last reaction (inspiration) is all about using an obstacle or problem to foster creativity. Specifically, through dungoneering equipment.

 Equipment

In the video, the narrator mentioned how in old-school RPGs, players would spend considerable time carefully picking out the necessary equipment needed to travel overland, enter a dangerous dungeon, cave, catacomb or castle, loot it of its treasure and return home safely. In a way, equipment was the original "skill system". The idea being that equipment was used to augment or enhance character capabilities. In modern RPGs players choose a bunch of skills and gloss over equipment. But back in the day, however, skills didn't exist and players picked spent time choosing equipment.

Equipment, and resource management, should play an important role in any adventure. But in today's age it's hard to convince players of the importance of equipment because it's often difficult to quantify its importance. We can say that equipment does one or more of the following:

• Opportunity: Some actions, without the necessary equipment, simply cannot be done. For example, one cannot pick a lock without a lock pick kit (or home-made equivalent). Therefore, much equipment simply affords characters the opportunity to do something otherwise impossible.
• Value: Of course equipment has a price, or a value associated with it. Treasure is a great example where it has no utility function; it's simply there to be sold for money.
• Enhancement: Some actions can be performed without equipment, but by using equipment, it greatly increases your convenience or chances for success. A rope used while climbing down a sheer cliff is there to help you, though you could attempt to do it without such an aid.

The first two points go without saying. A key unlocks a door, a torch lights a darkened passage, and a beautiful painting sells for big bucks. But the last point (enhancement) can be harder to pin down. For this, we need a third and final rule:

Rule 3: If a character attempts an action that can be performed without equipment, but uses equipment to aid them, they may perform that action normally (without disadvantage).

With this rule, we can provide a universal value to all equipment. Characters are encouraged to buy and use various gear because it will offset the default disadvantage most everyone has to suffer when performing an action outside of their comfort zone. Players will be less likely to skip through the equipment acquisition step of character creation. They can compare their character's strengths to that of the opportunities and enhancements provided by their accessories.

Conclusion

To tap into the spirit of classic gaming, we don't need to be super-specific like modern RPGs are today. We can have broad-reaching professions that provide a fast-and-simple advantage system. We can also use the popular skill modifiers that are in literally every RPG made today, but tone down the complexity and tailor it as an expression of our character's background and personality. Lastly, we can bring back the important of expedition equipment by giving players a small treat for using it.