The Real Monstrous Matters: Oliphaunts in India

So this is pretty cool.  A pair of papers recently dropped giving a detailed analysis of a huge elephant skull that was found in India way back in 2000 (alongside a bunch of human tools).  And no, it isn't an Oliphaunt (or Mûmak)...but it is pretty darn big.

One of the papers focuses on the morphology and phylogeny of the skull (and thus the animal), placing it in the genus Palaeoloxodon, which has some of the largest elephants that ever walked the planet.  (There's a really good summary of this paper over at Discover Wildlife.)  It appears that this individual is a second example of a species previously named Palaeoloxodon turkmenicus, which in the range of 4 meters/13 feet at the shoulder (and around 10 tons) was certainly...well, mammoth:

P. turkmenicus and a human silhouette.  Image by Chen Yu; swiped from Discover Wildlife.

It's worth mentioning, though, that there's another species in the genus, Palaeoloxodon namadicus, that some estimates would place as the largest land animal ever at over 5 meters/17 feet, and up to 22 tons in weight!  Here's a nice little video on that one:

(The other paper, meanwhile, has more information on human interaction with the elephant, based upon marks on the bones and tools found nearby.  Both articles point to an age in the range of 300,000 to 400,000 years, which will never stop blowing my mind.)

Of course, even a 22-ton behemoth doesn't measure up to what we saw in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films:

From here

I'm not familiar enough with Tolkien's original works to know if that's the size we should expect based upon the books themselves, but man are they fantastic animals.  (What is it Sam tells Frodo?  "No one at home will believe this...")  They've got to be at least...what, 40 feet tall?  So if we assume, at the high end of Palaeoloxodon, a beast that's 17 feet tall and 22 tons...something roughly the same shape but about 2.35 times the height would probably give us an animal weighing about 13 times as much.  So...around 286 tons?  Did I do that right?  Impressive!  (The Mûmak, not my work...)

And the coolest part is that they're using them as war machines.  I'm sure there have been plenty of takes on Oliphaunts in RPGs over the years, but I think I'll just stat one out for Monstrous Matters purposes on the premise that it's a REALLY big elephant.  It looks like the flagship proboscidean has about 8 or 9 hit dice in a typical d20-based system.  Do I really want to make a Mûmak a monster with like 80 HD, or as I would play it in Monstrous Matters gaming, a Strength value of around 80?  (Rhetorical question...)

Considering the D6-based system I've been playing with, it probably makes the most sense to pull ideas from Mini Six (which includes elephant stats and some nice, simple scaling rules) and WEG's Star Wars Miniatures Battles (which has a nice way of handling creatures by not worrying so much about what humans consider intelligence, and instead giving them an Orneriness Code that's used to test how difficult they are to work with).

From here

Oliphaunt

Scale: +4

Handling Difficulty (trained): 7

20 HP, 11 Defense

Strength 4

Dexterity 1

Knowledge 1

Presence 1

Attacks: 2x Tusk (1D6+4 damage) or Trample (2D6+4 damage plus target is knocked prone)

EDIT:  And I realized I posted this without mentioning the most basic of courtesies...a Happy Halloween to everyone!

5 tips for running the Ghostbusters RPG (AKA another lazy post!)

Inspired by Adam Dickstein's killer Chapter 2 writeup of his awesome Ghostbusters + Tokyo Ghost Research idea in action over at his Barking Alien blog (seriously, check it out), I really wanted to get another Ghostbusters RPG post out into the world. BUT...I have to focus on real life a little too much today. Aha...BUT(!!!)...I did finally write up a little list of things I've learned along the way as I've run the classic West End Games RPG myself. I said I might get around to it, and then I finally did so in...another Reddit thread.

So here we go. Written to a first-time Ghostmaster, and with pretty minimal editing here (like I said, another lazy post!). Maybe someone will find it helpful...? [This is where I shrug, but I'm not sure if I should put an emoji or just write *shrug* or what...]

5 Tips for Running the Ghostbusters RPG

1.  The more you set things in locations you're familiar with or can easily imagine, the easier it will be to improvise over the course of the adventure.  (I guess this really applies to any RPG...)

2.  Have a list of potential complications to turn to if nothing comes to you after the roll of a ghost on the Ghost Die. I have had a session before with so many ghosts rolled that by the end I was just like, "Okay, you miss hitting the demon and...uh...you fall down. Yes, you step on a well-placed banana peel!" (This may or may not be a precise example, but it ultimately helped me realize that you can put ridiculous stuff on a complication/fumble list, and it somehow seems to hold more weight among players if you randomly generate it from a list rather than just making it up in the moment. [NOTE: That's probably just my own assumptions showing through.] Although...I'm sure there's an effective GMing style that involves ridiculous ad hoc complication creation as well!)

3.  If you have the time, you can try prepping (to whatever extent you plan to do so) like three adventures, then have multiple calls come into Ghostbusters HQ in rapid succession. It gives a sense of agency to the players from the start. You'll just want to make sure they don't try to split up to cover all three at the same time, which would be pretty cumbersome. (Ghostbusters as a game lends itself to possibly humorous notes to players along the lines of: "Each of these calls seems really dangerous. You can just tell that you're going to need to take the full crew to whichever one you choose, for the sake of either Ghostbuster safety or Ghostmaster sanity...I'll let you know which in a little while.")

Obviously there's a good chance the players won't get through all of the adventures in one session, but then you're already prepped for a future game AND you have some security in case someone comes up with something that makes you think, "Yeah...that IS really smart and could potentially solve this case in about five minutes' time..."

4.  I've had good luck with the adventures written for the game Paranormal Investigators & Exterminators (P.I.E.), a Mini Six variant from Genius Loci games that works as a GB retro-clone. (Specifically, I've used versions of the adventures "Humble Pie" from the original P.I.E. release, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" from the Good-bye American P.I.E. supplement, and "Chocolate P.I.E." from its own individual module, all in the "three calls" setup above.)

(You can click HERE to head to the company's DriveThru page...)

5.  I'm sure this will vary by group, but I've always found it fun to zero in on a fairly specific time in the past to set things. Sharing some of the details of the world in general that you'll find with just a google search or two can help give the game a retro feel, which I think is often part of the appeal of playing as Ghostbusters. This can conflict with #1 a little bit -- you can set things in a location you're very familiar with, but you may not have much of an idea of what that place was like in, say, 1986 (not that it necessarily matters unless you have a player who will recognize and care about any inaccuracies) -- BUT a little touch like a certain song or sporting event playing on the radio is an easy way to add a little atmosphere.

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With the Monstrous Matters campaign in progress, I'm really interested in seeing everyone's approaches to the art of running a Ghostbusters-style paranormal RPG, so please hit me up with your own tricks and insights if you get the chance, here or elsewhere!

Mini Six vs. OpenD6 (vs. TinyD6, kinda)

Okay, a very low-effort post today...!

There was a recent Reddit thread on universal RPG systems, so I had to chime in and spread the love for the D6 System, my current mechanical obsession.  Another poster asked if I could explain the difference in OpenD6 and Mini Six (as well as TinyD6), and I ended up writing a bit more than I imagined I would.  Then I realized that there's a chance other people might google something like "OpenD6 vs. Mini Six," and that it might be helpful to have that same response as a blog post, especially for anyone who avoids Reddit threads when they search.

So, eliminating my opening and closing caveats and apologies, here's my from-memory take on the differences:

TinyD6 is the one I know the least about and have never played. As far as I know, it is its own system using one or more (I really don't know which) d6s and is pretty rules-lite. It seems to have a following of its own, and content in a variety of genres, so it is probably a good gateway to "univeral gaming" even though...AFAIK...it is not directly related to the other two.

OpenD6 and Mini Six, on the other hand, are very much connected. OpenD6 is the license/movement/set of games that came about when the owner of West End Games' D6 system (used in Star Wars and DC Universe, with a proto-version in Ghostbusters, among others) released it via the OGL. You can probably find a lot of the old WEG books...or versions of them with IP removed...for free on the net, although it's been a while since I've surveyed that availability. At its heart, the D6 System is more of a toolkit than a specific way to play, and there's even an old book simply called The D6 System (with the subtitle The Customizable Roleplaying Game) that is often called "the cookbook" and has a bunch of options laid out with the idea that you'll choose the ones most appropriate to your game (including stuff like which attributes you'll have for characters). There was a set of three books for Fantasy, Adventure, and Space that had rules specifically tailored to those genres. (Space, for example, was built heavily upon the old Star Wars rules.)

Once OpenD6 became a thing, the Mini Six system was one of the first to use the license. It is a very approachable, fairly stripped-down ruleset that is also available for free and that can be used for just about any genre. At the time it was released, I saw it as the authors (Ray Nolan and Phil Morris of AntiPaladin games) sort of reverse-engineering Ghostbusters (probably my favorite RPG ever) while bringing in some of the options and technology that had been innovated for the D6 System over its lifetime. I definitely recommend checking it out:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/144558/mini-six-bare-bones-edition

Overall, the potentially diverse application of the system was a plus for folks who really like to tweak their games, but some of the drastic differences in how the games end up playing out probably made it tough to gather as much of a unified community as there was for, say, the d20 System. It's typically pretty easy to convert from one "subsystem" to another, but I just don't think that feels as universal as systems that have a unified set of attributes (and skills, and even how to read the results of rolls, in the case of games like DC Universe that used a success/fail-based version called D6 Legend).

The D6 System has recently gotten some love with stuff like the Zorro RPG and a recent Kickstarter for a "D6 2e." I've gravitated to my own houseruled version as a sort of house system for my own games, and so I check out new developments when I think about it and have the time, in case there's something I can bolt onto the form of the game I'm running with.

And then I followed up quickly after to add this:

Also, just wanted to add that the owner of the system IP who released it into the wild was Eric Gibson of Purgatory Publishing. It was a really kind move that definitely helped keep the system alive. There are a few other folks who have been vital to it over the years, but I don't want to start naming them because I'm afraid I'll leave out someone important...!

If you happen upon this while investigating the system(s), please let me know if there's anything more to my opinions that may be helpful in your search!

The BIG 4 of RPG attributes

It is possible that I would be a little embarrassed if most people knew how much time I spend thinking about character stats in roleplaying games.  And not in the sense of theorycrafting a perfectly minmaxed build...more about which attributes are the simplest or fastest or somehow the best for breaking down an RPG character.

I think my approach to it -- and probably that of many others, honestly -- is rooted as much in beauty as it is in usefulness.  Like a physicist drawn to supersymmetry, I don't know that I am ultimately being guided to the set of attributes that actually describe people most accurately.  I think I mostly want a set of stats that feels whole and balanced...which may or may not be the best approach, honestly.  I mean...that's subjective anyway, eh?

Lots of systems employ a physical/mental attribute split, including the one that probably introduced most of us to the idea of characters as numbers...the six stats of D&D.  Strength/Dexterity/Constitution and Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma are a nice 1:1 divide between body and mind.  The other main approach to rational attribute assignment would probably be the one taken by games that break stats down into Mind-, Body-, and Soul-related attributes (e.g. the appropriately named Tri-Stat System).  That's a different symmetry that still "feels" good, I think.  (Conversely...the five stats of Savage Worlds?  They do not feel good.  I know, I'm weird.)

At any rate, I would guess most gamers who care to think very hard about attributes realize pretty quickly that there's an arbitrariness to the division.  And since gamers love nothing more than to fiddle with the games they already love, a lot of work has been done over the years to perfect the spread of stats.  I'm pretty sure that somewhere out there, there's a big list (maybe even called the "Big List of...") compiling a ton of the attribute options on display in various RPGs.  This post isn't about exploring that diversity, though; it's about expressing appreciation for what I consider a sort of Big 4 of RPG stats:

1. How strong and tough are you?

2. How quick and nimble are you?

3. How knowledgeable and logical are you?

4. How emotionally resilient and capable of manipulating others are you?

Or, as the Ghostbusters RPG introduced them to me:

MUSCLES

MOVES

BRAINS

COOL

Not necessarily in that order.

I just keep coming back to these as potentially the most succinct yet simultaneously satisfying way to describe a character...two physical, two mental; two based on power, two more about skill.  (I think one of my friends, when I first described the stat breakdown to him many years ago, just said, "Yeah, that pretty much covers it...")

I loved it when Mini Six came out and sort of codified this set of attributes for light hexahedral gaming (as Might, Agility, Wit, and Charm).  I enjoy spotting other games that follow in this tradition.  And I think it's kind of cool to see that even the West End Games Star Wars RPG -- probably the best known game to use the WEG D6 system that grew from Ghostbusters -- basically rehashes these four (as Strength, Dexterity, Knowledge, and Perception) then adds on a couple of extras by pulling out the otherwise Dexterity- or Knowledge-based skills which are technologically oriented into their own stats (Mechanical and Technical, which do give D6 Star Wars some of its space opera flare.)

If in doubt...I could probably stat out most RPG characters using these (with an established scale) and translate them to a ton of other systems without an excess of effort.  I'm not sure if it's best to try to figure out how to define them generically or if I should take on more of the D6/Mini Six spirit and pick my favorite names.  I kind of partial to Might, Dexterity, Knowledge, and Presence right now.  I've gotta let those settle a bit...but they feel pretty whole and balanced at the moment.

This is definitely worth obsessing about for a while.  I'll get back to you on it.

Tweaking Ghostbusters to play nice with the OSR

I've now run three mini-sessions (plus a Session 0) of the "Ghostbusters meets Urban Arcana" game (which I will attempt from here on to refer to simply as the Department-7 game, since that's the organization that's the focus of it) with my friend Josh, who has been an immeasurably good sport in letting me blindly lead him through a set of mechanics and setting tropes that are being figured out as we go along.

From my seat, it's been a ton of fun.  Agents B.J. Flech and Johnny Fix have done a great job so far taking care of the giant ants invading a giant picnic and managing to also handle the group of kobolds living in the ants' lair.

They're now off to Colorado Springs to investigate some odd visitors that have made swim practice impossible the past couple of days at the U.S. Olympic Training Center (they're prepping for the 1990 Goodwill Games, y'know)...

My goal with this game has been to mash up Ghostbusters and D&D in a couple of different ways.  First, they're scrambled together thematically, as the PCs are just investigating something strange in the neighborhood, it's just that their brand of strange is stuff that's made its way to our world from a fantasy realm.  I also wanted a mechanical mashup, though, taking the basics of the Ghostbusters RPG and working in monsters from fantasy games pretty much as written.  Here's how things are shaping up thus far...

The game is still very much attribute + skill based and built on dice pools, with stats changed from Ghostbusters' Muscles/Moves/Brains/Cool to the very, very similar Might/Dexterity/Intelligence/Presence.  I like that breakdown of abilities, I like that DEX and INT can be preserved from D&D, I like Might (which is used in Mini Six) and Presence as STR-CON and WIS-CHA combos.  I should maybe just use the GB names but figure these alternatives will work fine for now.  Twelve points are divided up among the attributes, with a starting range of 1-5 for each.  We're dealing with whole dice only...no pips to "complicate" things like in later D6 games such as Star Wars.

In Ghostbusters, starting characters get a single talent (or skill) for each of the attributes.  When the talent applies to a roll, the player rolls three additional dice.  We've gone the same route with Department-7 but are only throwing two additional dice in for rolls that include the talent.  This keeps them from being so game-swinging at the start and aligns things more with "standard" D6 System games, where seven skill dice seem to be the norm at character creation.

I've dropped Brownie Points and just given the characters straight-up hit points instead...10 plus a Might roll.  Counting down on these seems like a nice way to keep the spirit of Ghostbusters' Brownie Points (a simple number rather than a wound system), and I think it adds to the D&D feel.

Task resolution, including combat, is where I'm trying the hardest to integrate the systems smoothly.  As I have now rambled on way longer than I thought I would at this point, I think I'll save that for another post to come along soon...

Project 5.5 - System finalists

After going over options in my head for...well, months now...I have finally narrowed the choice for a set of rules to serve as the basis for Project 5.5 (a wargame using bulky MOTU-style action figures) down to two.

The first option builds from my last contender post, which was...wow, way back in 2019...taking the game in an OSR direction using Swords & Six-Siders as a model (although I'll probably end up going with a more freeform "OSR but only using d6s" style).  The lean toward this choice comes from the free and open nature of various OSR products produced under the OGL, the quantity of OSR resources to draw from, and the fact that I can pair this effort with work I have done and will do on Light City, which I really need to spend a little time on at some point.

In addition, as James from James Mishler Games and Adventures in Gaming v2 was kind enough to point out when I asked for info on the origin of 1d6 skill rolls in D&D, d6-only resolution was there from the very start, on page 9 of OD&D's third booklet (The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures).  There's something very clean and simple about taking the approach originally used for dealing with doors and applying it to all rolls in the game.

However, there's another great option that I just can't quite shake.  Starting with the fact that this might be my favorite RPG of all time...

...and that it was used to later create this game, another great one...

...and then the fact that there is already a miniatures system based upon those rules, which I very handily have a copy of...

...AND the fact that even the minis system has been released under the OGL (you can find it HERE)...

...and, well, that's a tempting way to go.  Also, the next RPG I plan to run (hopefully starting next week!) is a semi-homebrew setting using semi-homebrew rules based upon Ghostbusters and its descendant Mini Six...which means that going this route could synthesize a couple of my gaming projects much like Light City and Project 5.5 could mix in an OSR approach.

At the moment, I'm leaning OSR.  But that could change at any time.

I'm thinking.