Tuesday, July 19, 2022

The Mystara Campaign, Part 1

So I started my Mystara campaign last night and generated characters. The inspiration for this was pure nostalgia, going back to the world and characters I played with my brother as kids. We played in Mystara pre-gazetteer days, so having these come out later was a tremendous gift to our game, though by that time, roleplaying GI JOE (Aftermath rules) and Car Wars (Traveller rules) was the central focus of our gaming. At this time, Star Frontiers has fallen off with us as well, we got into that game early and modded it heavily, and there was not too much left to do in the Frontier.

Since Mystara was so well developed, we did not need much more than the first map to figure things out. This was the northerner area like the Norse, this was the desert Arabian Knights' place, this was the good kingdom, those were the elves, that place was orcs, and so on. The world has this strange "first campaign" feeling like it was designed by and for adults, and then eventually, TSR relegated it to the starting world for younger players.

Our world had demons and devils, straight from the AD&D Monster Manual. The official Mystara world had no real mention of them. Our Mystara world also had all the classic Greyhawk modules, like the GDQ series, Tomb of Horrors, and many more. This was the sort of world and game that Labyrinth Lord does so well, the mix of AD&D and D&D with the best of both mashed together in one crazy mess of rules hacks that works anyways. For us, this was also pre-Greyhawk, since we never picked up that boxed set until 1984, even though, yes, the Greyhawk setting existed far before that.

When TSR switched hands, they went full-bore Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, and Mystara was the forgotten world.


Forgotten Realms in the 1990s

This was also pre-Forgotten Realms, which was 1987. We were poor, so we never had access to the original Greyhawk books, so Mystara was our world. We did play pretty heavily in the Realms later with AD&D 2e around 1995, and those were more character and story-focused games than dungeon adventures. There was a shift away from monsters and gold as XP in AD&D 2e, and the concept of story XP was introduced. This massive change got us back into fantasy gaming as something more than hack and slash, grab the loot. This world died for us when D&D 3 came out, Greyhawk became the official campaign world, and the game went back to hack and slash, grab the loot.

One of the best things the Forgotten Realms did for us was focus on characters and stories. Our NPCs never became god characters like many lamented; they were played by the rules with no "writer fiat" and could suffer the same fates as characters. This "stories plus characters" combo drove many of our roleplaying post-Realms, and this is one thing this world did right. I don't think we really went into dungeons in this world at all, and our world was much more cinematic and pulp-action driven than our dungeon-crawling Mystara game.

We never had traditional dungeons in our Forgotten Realms world, not one of them. We never found a great module with a classic Forgotten Realms dungeon crawl, and a lot of the modules of this era were the novel-inspired railroaded ones, so we skipped dungeon crawling and instead did character-focused stories. If we had an "evil temple," it was not about exploration; it was a backdrop for a fight, more like a movie set.

If I ever revisited the Forgotten Realms, it would likely be with the Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion. Our world was centered around characters and wasn't as rigidly structured as Savage Worlds Pathfinder. A ranger could pick up druid magic, and characters evolved naturally through their stories. Our game was not as focused on dungeons and monsters, so just a solid set of rules for characters - plus rare creatures - will do very nicely. We didn't even focus on leveling and powering up; the characters played at similar power levels through our games and only went from level 8 to 14 or so, so even the range of power felt identical among all of the characters we played.

Plus, with a cinematic game, some characters should feel like the Wild Cards, while others are the extras. With this world being so character-focused, that heroic feeling works perfectly. Fewer characters, more courageous, and stories that resemble dramatic arcs in novels.


Mystara Today is Castles & Crusades

I picked Castles & Crusades (C&C) for the rules for my Mystara game over a B/X such as Old School Essentials or even the cinematic Savage Worlds Fantasy or Pathfinder. C&C does away with every chart reference in an AD&D-style match, and you can play the game just from a character card. There are no saving throw charts, thief skill charts, class ability percentage calculations, massive skill systems, or anything you need to open the book for during play. My character's class abilities are listed on my character cards, and the chance of success is based on the SIEGE Engine and ability scores.

While Old School Essentials is my B/X game of choice just because of clarity and organization, C&C does not need that much ease of reference because there is not much to look up in the books. Looking up a chart or replicating it on a character sheet takes time, and multiply that by the hundreds of times you need to do it during a campaign, and that time adds up. I would rather have a universal save, skill, class feature, and ability score check system handling all of the game's inner workings than have everything work dozens of different ways based on class or what you are trying to do.

I can run dozens of characters in Castles & Crusades efficiently. I can't do that in many other games just because of the amount of legacy cruft they choose to maintain and support. Plus, I want every character to be on the same power level and footing; everyone is that AD&D iconic character, and there is no concept of a Wild Card with an extra "second chance" die to roll and more hits. And I want the characters to be compatible with the classic AD&D modules and monsters.

And that is my latest character card. Some saves are abbreviated, but you are good as long as you know ED is Energy Drain and P&P is Polymorph & Petrification (poly-petri). This hits all my wants, such as a primary column, a base to hit (BTH) space, and the top reading like a character bio "John, NG, Human (Male), Bard." Plus, whitespace makes the entire card easier to read. GAC is grapple AC, and TAC is touch AC.

I guess why I want C&C is for the easier-to-manage characters. I like that robust single-player heroic experience for some games, and I like a lot of detail in my sole character. For others, I almost want a wargame with a few dozen units at my command, which means a system that simplifies and reduces complexity. I could run 9-12 characters in C&C and never feel like I am bogged down in the details, ignoring a class, or missing the point due to my inability to dive into the needed level of complexity a class requires to play it correctly.

I need to open the book for very little. This is much like Index Card RPG, where you can mostly play without referencing the rules. But this game is very AD&D-like, which is just so cool.

Honestly, I am happy to be playing and trying to think of a plot to carry me through the campaign. I have a start, but not a story or theme.

More soon.

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