Review: Mazes & Perils (2012)

EDITED TO ADD: There is a new version out, but I have not had a chance to read it yet.  I will get to it, sometime in the future.

My first experience with D&D was the Eric Holmes version of D&D Basic.  While I soon moved on to Moldvay and to AD&D 1st Ed, the Holmes edition holds a warm and fuzzy place in my gaming recollections. I know I am not the only one that feels this way. So anything that is done as an homage to Holmes I pay attention too.

So I was thrilled when I heard there was a "new" retro-clone that was an homage to the Holmes version of D&D.  That thrill quickly turned sour when a.) I couldn't get it any more and b.) I heard the author was the same one as the OSRIC fiasco about a year ago.  You can read the drama here as a retrospective:
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2011/09/osric-players-guide-retraction.html
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2011/10/fool-me-once-shame-on-you-fool-me-twice.html
http://swordsandwizardry.blogspot.com/2011/10/copyright-and-osr-part-1.html

Fast forward to this year and there is a new Mazes & Perils out.  I was curious and more than a little skeptical about the game.  I want to give the game and the author, Vincent Florio, a fair shake. The OSRIC book was a copy paste job with some art that he didn't own and the first M&P was copy and pasted from Holmes.  But again, I never saw that first M&P and can only go on what I read.  So, I want to judge this new M&P on it's own merits.

First things first, obviously the name of the game is a nod to John Eric Holmes' book "The Maze of Peril" and I can respect that. If you are going to do a Holmes' homage or pastiche then that is a perfect name really.
Secondly, some others have complained about the art.  I rather like it to be honest.  The cover is very cool and the interior is no worse than what you would have seen in Holmes.
While this is an homage to Holmes I am not sure what I have here.

Taken as a retro-clone by itself it is not much different than Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy RPG, except it is now quite as good as either of those.  M&P stops progression at level 9.  Which I kind of get, but there is not enough here to support an end-game style D&D, say the way Adventurer Conqueror King System does.
The rules are simple, as befits the times it is emulating.  There is some missing information in some areas (or not easy to find, which is just as bad really).  There are tables for STR, INT, CON and DEX but not for WIS or CHA. This is an artifact of Holmes, but M&P expands STR into the AD&D1 numbers, but still does not include these other tables.Some other oddities are the XP levels for Cleric and Magic User.  Some of the monster text is awkward to read.  There are various grammar errors that even I noticed, and I am terrible at that.

Taken as a "Holmes clone" it certainly does that, even to the point that they are little too similar in some respects.  There are some spots of the text that are nearly identical, including some text that is more similar to Holmes than OGC text that is essentially the same in LL and BFRPG.    Other differences from the source material has Elves, Dwarves and Halflings as races and not race/classes like Gygax/Holmes/Moldvay/Mentzer.   This puts it closer to BFRPG.

This is certainly a labor of love on the part of the author.  And as a Holmes fan myself I can respect that.
But I am left feeling that this is too close to the source material.  It even shares some of the shortcomings of the Holmes book.  I understand the desire, but to mimic the style, even to the point where some sections are not very clear, is not a good idea.  This is one of the reasons the Moldvay book was made, Holmes was a transitional project.  There are lot of places in Holmes that say "these are give in ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS".  M&P does not have that advantage.

In the end this still comes off as a collection of house rules added to Holmes and not really a "Holmes clone" or even a "Holmes what-if".   Plus I have the suspicion in the back of my mind that this is merely an edit of a Holmes cut-and-paste job.  I am sorry, but it's true.  If this had been the first effort of this author then I would give him the benefit of the doubt, but that went out with the second copy-pasta.  If you read LL or BFRPG you can see where their text came from; the SRD.  This text does not.

Mazes & Perils is a free product.  It has that going for it. It is also released under the OGL and has it's own compatibility license.  If you can't get a copy of Holmes on your own then this will give you an idea of what it is like, but it's not as good.

In the end it has too many flaws, both in terms of execution and design, for me to really get behind it.

So behind on reviews

I am woefully behind on my reviews.

I am going to try to get some up here soon, but this is a rather busy time of year for me.  Hope to have something up later.

White Dwarf Wednesday #30

White Dwarf #30 covers the months of April and May 1982.

Cool cover art this issue with some weird bat-like creature.

This issues' Ian Livingstone editorial talks about the new Dungeons & Dragons electronic labyrinth game from Mattel and the Intellivison video game.  I had the post of the dragon from the electronic board game (till my ass college roommate ripped it up) but I never owned the game itself till a few years back.

Roger E. Moore gives us another of what I consider the "Classic" Traveller articles for me.  That is, this one of the ones that we had access too as a big xeroxed packet.  Androids in Traveller tells us all about artifical humans, replicants and your plastic pal that's fun to be with.

Designing a Quasi-Medieval Society for D&D is back.  Paul Vernon presents Part 2: The Economy Mercenaries and Resource Owners.  Again, this is quite in-depth (for a gaming magazine) and has a lot of useful information.  What is most useful though were the presented incomes of NPCs.  In our age and in 1982 I think it was hard for everyone just to understand how little people lived on. A group of adventures coming in to town after slaying a dragon is likely to throw the local economy totally out of whack.

E. Varley writes about Unarmed Combat in RuneQuest.

Open Box has some items that gamers today still love.  First up is Thieve World from Chaosium.  It gets a 10/10 for very good reason.  I was a huge TW fan back then and I still have my copy of this.  Champions from Hero games makes it first appearance here along with a scenario/adventure The Island of Doctor Destroyer.  Dave Morris likes the game, but doubts anyone will run a Champions campaign.  He gives it 7/10 and 8/10 for game and adventure.  Adventurer from Yaquinto Publications gets a solid 8/10.  Anf finally another Traveller board game that convinced me I'll never understand Traveller, Invasion: Earth gets 8/10 from Andy Slack.

"Griselda Gets Her Men" is the sequel to Lucky Eddi from last issue.  I have been told they are worth the. Maybe I'll give them a try.  After all it is only a page long.

Letters follow next.

Phil Masters presents The Curse of the Wildland, a cool looking adventure for 4-7 characters of 1-2 level in AD&D.   A couple of pages long and featuring a new monster, the Hsiao.

Starbase looks far a field for more ideas for Traveller Referees.

In what was/is one of the more interesting articles from the time we had "The Apocrypha According to St. Andre" by Ken St. Andre himself.  He explains a bit about himself and his game Tunnels & Trolls.  A very interesting read about one of the early pioneers of the gaming world.

Fiend Factor is back again.  This issue's theme are creatures that are often found with other creatures.   The Stirge Demon, found with Stirges has no treause but his Stirge Summoning necklace.   There is also the Weresnake.  The Muryans are giant ants that walk around on their hind legs.   The next page the monsters improve significantly.  The Sprite Knight is a larger sprite that protects other sprites.  The Vampire Wolf (or Coacula) is an undead wolf that serves a vampire.  Other wolves are mentioned, but not detailed.  Finally the Minidrag is a minature dragon like creature.

Treasure Chest has a collection of spells.

We come next to 10 pages of ads and the back cover.
Again, not a stand out issue, but certainly a fun one.  The Ken St. Andre article is a great highlight and the AD&D adventure is a good one too.

Pathfinder Witch

Witch by cromaticresponses

It looks like I am *finally* getting a chance to play Pathfinder style witch in a game.

I don't have many details yet, except I am excited about the prospect since I haven't got a chance to play one yet.  My son wants to run a game sometime with "Alternate-reality" versions of the Dragonslayers.  All the same classes and everything, just in a Pathfinder world.

I also quite pleased to see there is so much good stuff online for this witch, in addition to all the products I keep buying, but hardly ever use.

It will be interesting to see how she differs from the Liber Mysterium witch I have been playing all these years.
Hexes seem a little like my Occult Powers, save that the PF witch gets 11 of them vs the 3 (or 4 if you count the talisman feat) occult powers.  But the LM witch gets more spells; usually an additional 2 per level.  So it feels roughly similar.

But reading over all the Pathfinder material yesterday and today reinforced the idea I had a while back. There are not enough witch-like Prestige classes out there.
I am going to have to come up with some more I think.

Links
Local
Prestige Class: Queen of Witches
Prestige Class: Witch Priestess
Witch Books, Part 3. Pathfinder

Pathfinder SRD
Witch
Witch Spell list

So Long City of Heroes

It has been announced that City of Heroes, the Supers MMORPG is closing up shop.

http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/news_archive/thank_you.php

I never played CoH, but I did playtest the RPG version that Eden was working on back in the day.
Of course I stated up some characters.

What can I say? This was at the height of my involvement with The Dragon and the Phoenix.
I have to admit I liked how these turned out.

Zatannurday: Hero Clix!

I really enjoy my minis for Fantasy RPGs.

I also enjoy them for Supers games, I just don't have as many.
I do have some HeroClix.  Ok, I have (or rather had) 2.

I stopped by my favorite local game store and saw they had some new ones, so I bought one.
Guess what I got?

A Justice League Dark Zatanna!  I was hoping for this but really did not expect it.

She looks cool next to my classic Zatanna.

And Raven. That is all three of the HeroClix I own.  I just need the other Zatanna one.

They look pretty cool next to my Little Witches and Lego Witch.

D&D Zombies vs. The Walking/Running Dead

"Zombies are the new Vampires" - True Blood

Zombies are a great threat for lower level characters in any version of D&D.  They can be deadly in groups, but are slow.  They are affected by all the same magics other undead are, so Clerical turning or Radiant Powers really get to ..er...shine.

The trouble is that D&D-style zombies are stuck in in a old modality of just being undead shamblers. Think Shaggy from Scooby-Doo only more dead.

Zombies in the game All Flesh Must Be Eaten by Eden Studios are much more deadly and their bite is lethal, just not right away.  Plus there are all sorts of Zombies in AFMBE including what we now call "quick"  or ""fast" zombies.

Of course the question has been and will be asked again, "why not just use Ghouls?".  Well simply put Ghouls are eaters of the dead.  If thought about I'd add subtle demonic influences to them as well to reflect the Ghoul/Ghul  relationship.

Improved Zombies
Let's take a page from modern interpretations via AFMBE and define a few new zombies.  Instead of full blown stat blocks, I'll just talk about how to make changes to your current game's Zombie.  Let's assume a couple of basics.  First, Zombies have no intelligence, they are slow, attack last in any round and had HD roughly equal to twice a normal human (so 2 HD in older games). XP awarded for these needs to recalulated up.

The Hungry Dead
This zombies appear to be most like Ghouls.  Their stats are the same as a regular zombie but once they kill a victim they begin to eat it.  They turn as if they were one slot higher ("Ghoul" for older games).

Plague Zombies
These might be the scariest of all. They do not appear to be any different than a regular Zombie until they bite a victim.  Then the differences are more apparent.  They look and act like The Hungry Dead, but their bite spreads the zombie infection. Anyone that is bitten (a roll of a Natural 20) becomes infected and will become a mindless zombie in 1d6 rounds.  They can be healed by a cure disease, but once dead they are dead forever. These zombies typically have twice the HD as their counterparts.

The Fast Dead
These zombies also appear as normal, until the move.  These are no shamblers, these zombies know the value of running.  They have an effective Dexterity of 16 and can attack normally (not last).

Alchemical Zombie
Stats-wise this is the same as any other zombie. The difference lie in how the zombie was made.  The alchemical zombie comes for a vat of foul smelling liquids produced by an alchemist and not a necromancer.  These zombies can not be turned.

These types can also be combined, so a Fast Plauge Zombie or a Hungry Alchemical zombie is possible.