I ended up running three demos at the Free RPG Day events this past Saturday at Guardian Games. Here’s a run-down of the demos, what went down, and my afterthoughts.
The first and third demos were of the same game, a quick-start swamp boat adventure for the Tunnels and Trolls edition 5.5 RPG. The first session was a bit shaky at first, but after a bit we (all 8 of us!) all got into the flow of things and had a lot of totally ridiculous fun. In the second run, there were only two players, but both of them instantly got into the groove of things and commented frequently on how the absolute simplicity of the system made the game all the more fun. I posted about this game previously, and I’m glad to say my initial forecasts were mostly correct. So simple a five-year-old can learn it, and more fun than the cracker-jack-box prize-toy.
The second game I demoed, however, was unfortunately quite awful. This game was a quick-start adventure for Chronicles of Ramlar, called The Blackarrow Run. The game was a pretty straight-forward “move from room to room and murder the bad guys” kind of adventure. I’m not a big fan of these styles, but I figured I could make it actually interesting by designing some pre-gen characters with actual depth and conflicting intentions. Sadly, despite the best efforts by myself and the excellent players who joined the game, the rules system was just terrible. Chronicles of Ramlar is powered by a system the creators call the “Armor/Body System,” or just “A/B” for short. In this excruciating and unnecessarily crunchy system, body parts end up flying left and right as you randomly roll to determine hit location. Hit location systems aren’t necessarily bad, but this one does something horribly wrong. In Ramlar, there are 12 separate hit locations: upper and lower portion of each arm and leg, the torso, the abdomen, the head, and the neck. While the locations themselves are fairly simple and straightforward, the fact that they are evenly distributed along a single 12-sided-die (which you roll each time you attack) is terrible. It did lead to some funny moments, however, in which the whole group at the demo would laugh and yell out the name of each location as it was rolled. A lot of limbs got severed in fights that took far too long to resolve.
One of the system’s advertised features is the ability for you to customize your armor and equipment on any part of your body. If I were the type of gamer to which this concept were appealing, I would probably already be having a lot more fun playing games like Diablo, Dungeon Siege, or any of the MMORPGs currently on the market - LotR:O, anyone?
Anyway, enough about Ramlar. A short while after that game, I ran the second Tunnels and Trolls demo, and then a bunch of us headed out to a nearby tavern to discus the possibility of a new Saturday campaign to both create a house setting and playtest the Verses RPG rules. I’ll post more on that as the information arises, but for now, the future looks promising for both fun, creativity, and productivity. Perhaps at next year’s Free RPG Day, a Verses RPG product will be involved in the lineup?
And finally, a very special thanks to those who played in the demos: Aaron (”Nannsae”), Alex (”Angurm”), Allan (”Astus” and “Bale”), Angel (”Mandel”), Bob (”Krunch”), Iggy (”Korshwaine”), Jesse (”Nobby Beard”), Joe (”Thorn”), John (”Dexter”), and Max (”Dansiford”). An extra very special thanks to Nievita for the yummy-deelish birthday treats from Saint Cupcake. Seriously, folks, if you have not been to Saint Cupcake and had their delicious delectables, you need to. Fly to Portland, eat some cupcakes, and say hello while you’re out here.
By the way, if any of you mentioned above drop by this site, by all means post a comment here and say hello. You’re good folks, all of you, and I’d love to enjoy some more games with you in the future - and I promise, no more Ramlar!
- Nathanael Phillip Cole
