RIP: Terry K. Amthor (1958–2021)

Terry K. Amthor, one of the original founders of Iron Crown Enterprises, has died, according to the following announcement from the ICE website:

To all in the ICE family

It is with the greatest sadness that we must inform you that the incomparable Terry Amthor has died. We extend our most heartfelt condolences to his sister Tamara, his family and his friends.

The cause and circumstances of his death are still under investigation, so we cannot provide any details on this and will defer to his family on what they choose to disclose in due course.

Terry was a founder member of the original ICE and a cocreator of Rolemaster and Spacemaster, writing and contributing to many of its most iconic products, and to some of the most exceptional 1st edition Middle-earth modules. Most of all, he has shaped our imaginations with his masterful Shadow World epic fantasy setting. He continued to develop Kulthea through his own Eidolon Studio company, before joining forces with Guild Companion Publications to create new sourcebooks and adventures bringing ever more of Shadow World to life, and working as our layout guru for most of our other products.  

Author, designer, world builder, and friend, Terry’s genius has enriched our lives for decades. His creations will continue to inspire us all for years to come.

Rest in peace, Terry.

Nicholas, Colin, John and Thom

In recent months, I'd begun to delve into the Shadow World setting, which was largely the creation of Amthor, so this news is strangely affecting. I now wish I'd had been more familiar with his work and other contributions to the hobby over the years. I now have added impetus to correct this oversight in my gaming education. Rest in peace, Mr Amthor.

Retrospective: The Iron Wind

My direct experience of Iron Crown Enterprise's Rolemaster during my youth was limited. I'd dabbled with Arms Law & Claw Law but that was the extent of my exploration of this venerable fantasy roleplaying system. (I was much taken with its "little brother," Middle-earth Role Playing, which occupied a weird sweet spot in terms of its presentation of both rules and Tolkien's setting.) Nevertheless, thanks to the advertisements appearing in the pages of Dragon magazine, I was reasonably well appraised on ICE's releases for the game – and sometimes cast an envious eye upon them.

A good example of this is The Iron Wind, whose second edition was published in 1984 (its first edition appeared in 1980 and predates the existence of Rolemaster, but I have never seen it in the wild). The subtitle of the book is "a series of adventures in the world of Loremaster," but that's not truly accurate. Yes, The Iron Wind does include some scenario outlines within its 50 pages, but those are brief and take up less than a single page. Instead, the bulk of the book is devoted to an overview of the Mur Fostisyr, an island cluster northwest of the setting's main continent of Jaiman. 

As one might expect in a product of this sort, we're given discussions of the geography of the island cluster (including maps, both color and black and white), native flora and fauna, its people, and "places of power" – locations of mythic and/or magical importance, aka potential sites for adventures. All of these places of power are then detailed extensively, providing the referee not just with maps, but also keys indicating their inhabitants, treasures, and traps. Each is also given context within the larger history of the Mur Fostisyr islands. The titular Iron Wind is a malevolent force associated with the Unlife – the main antagonists of the Loremaster setting – that swept down from the north, bringing with it cold, demons, and corrupted elves who seek to subjugate the entirety of the region and enslave its peoples. Clichéd though it may be, it's nevertheless a decent set-up for a campaign set in the region.

Never having seen the first edition of The Iron Wind, I can't speak to its contents. The second edition, though, looks and feels very much like a MERP regional sourcebook – which I mean in a positive way. One of the things I always liked about those MERP books of old was the way that they provided plenty of low-level detail, like what the terrain looked like, the kinds of animals that could be hunted nearby, and the types of medicinal herbs available to characters who take the time to seeking them out. The Iron Wind is much the same. When combined with the extensive maps, NPC descriptions, and local magical items, it's a solid collection of tools for the referee setting up a campaign here (or even just a series of adventures).

From our vantage point of the present day, what stands out to me about The Iron Wind is how much it leaves open to the referee to decide. This is stated explicitly in the "Adventuring in Mur Fostisyr" section of the book, which points out the areas an enterprising referee can decide for himself. Back in 1982, I wouldn't be surprised if some buyers saw this as a cop-out; now, though, I find it very refreshing and strangely inspiring. In some ways, The Iron Wind feels a lot like a MERP module whose contents are largely unconstrained by a singular vision. Mind you, I know next to nothing about the larger Loremaster setting or its subsequent development; this one may well be an outlier in this regard. Whatever the case, I saw a lot to like in The Iron Wind. Had I read when it was first published, it might well have tempted me to give Rolemaster another try.

Retrospective: Future Law

Though I write a great deal about topics related to fantasy and fantasy roleplaying games, science fiction is actually my preferred genre. Consequently, I've amassed a fairly large collection of SF RPGs over the years and I still take an interest in new ones as they appear (despite my desire to keep my gaming library reasonably small). Iron Crown Enterprise's Future Law is among those I own and, though I have never played it, I often find myself idly flipping through its pages, for reasons I'll discuss presently. 

Published in 1985, Future Law is the first of two volumes making up SpaceMaster, ICE's sci-fi counterpart to RoleMaster (on which I've touched previously). The 88-page volume focuses primarily on character generation, but also includes information on creating and running a campaign, as well as a sample adventure. As a derivative of RoleMaster, I doubt anyone would be surprised to learn that the rules in Future Law are complex and employ multiple charts and tables, just like its predecessor. That said, the rules are fairly well presented and, in re-reading them for this post, I didn't have too much difficulty following them. Based on past experience with RoleMaster, I've learned that the game plays reasonably well if each player has copies of the charts his character needs (e.g. weapon and spell charts) at hand. 

Even so, there can be denying that the character generation in Future Law requires more time and attention than, say, Traveller or Star Frontiers (though it's vastly simpler – and more coherent – than Space Opera). Characters possess a profession and a collection of skills, the ease with which they are learned determined by the former. Among the professions is that of telepath, which provides access to psychic powers called psions. There are a number of race options, ranging from Terran humans, mutants, eugenically enhanced Terrans, androids, and aliens. Of the latter, only a few examples are given. I say examples, because Future Law presents itself as a generic system the referee can use to establish his own setting. Even so, the book presents a sample setting, that of the Terran Empire some 10,000 years from now. The Empire is authoritarian and feudal, divided into territories governed by noble house. Little more detail is provided in this book; the Empire is fleshed out at greater length in the game's many adventures.

To aid the referee in creating his own setting, or simply fleshing out the sample one, Future Law provides a system of generating star systems and planets. It's not an especially complicated system in absolute terms, though more so than the system in Traveller. The sample adventure is set in the Terran Empire and centers on conflict between two of its noble houses. It's nothing memorable but it does include plenty of useful maps of starships, planets, and installations. More interesting in many ways is that the book is illustrated by James Holloway in "serious mode," which is to say, without any of the goofiness or sly humor for which he is more well known. 

Even though I've never played it, I have a strange fondness for Future Law because of its particular mix of elements. Every science fiction RPG picks and chooses which aspects of prior sci-fi it includes. Future Law leans heavily into the "far, far future" end of the genre, evoking Frank Herbert's Dune, Asimov's Foundation, and similar kinds of decadent Imperium settings. I have a great weakness for these sorts of settings, though I've never actually used one in all my years of refereeing SF roleplaying games. That likely explains why I own a nearly complete set of SpaceMaster adventures: they're inspiration fodder for the day when I finally get to run a campaign in a setting like this one.

Retrospective: Middle-earth Role Playing

While working on last week's entry in this series, I realized that I had never written a post about Iron Crown Enterprise's Middle-earth Role Playing, despite the fact that I had, long ago, written one about the notorious The Court of Ardor. This frankly surprised me, because I not only owned the game – having purchased it by mail order – but ran a short but intense campaign set in and around the Trollshaws (as I recall, though my memory is hazy). Having now been made aware of this oversight, I have no choice but to correct it by presenting my thoughts about MERP.

Originally published in 1982, Middle-earth Role Playing is an odd game. As the cover of the first edition proclaims, MERP is "a complete system for adventuring in J.R.R. Tolkien's world," that system being based on Iron Crown's Role Master system, with which I was already somewhat familiar. Had I been asked beforehand, it's not the system I'd have chosen for gaming in Middle-earth, but I doubt I could have explained why at the time. Role Master always struck me as much too complex and finnicky, especially in the area of combat, and this seemed at odds with the overall feel Tolkien's works evoked. Furthermore, it was supposedly set in the middle of the Third Age, some 1500 years before the events of The Lord of the Rings, which is not what I had been expecting. I imagine the period was chosen for maximum freedom, since it's not as well documented as other periods of Middle-earth's history.

The cover image accompanying this post is quite instructive. Depicting a multi-racial adventuring party looting what appears to be a tomb, it looks more like a scene from a D&D game than something one would find in Tolkien. At the time, that didn't bother me very much, because I was much more a fan of Tolkien's world than I was of Tolkien's stories. In that respect, MERP did its job well enough: it provided all the things one would expect to find in Middle-earth – dwarves, elves, hobbits, orcs, etc. – and didn't worry too much about the tone. For example, MERP had extensive rules for magic, as well as allowing characters of every profession, including warriors, to learn spells. As Gary Gygax famously complained, Middle-earth is notably low-key in its magic, but not so MERP. It's a very peculiar decision on the part of the game's designers, if fidelity to Tolkien were one of the game's key principles. On the other hand, if their goal was to use Middle-earth as the backdrop for more typical fantasy RPG activities, it makes perfect sense.

Since my friends and I weren't overly concerned with fidelity to Tolkien's literary works, none of this bothered us in the slightest. Much more important was the fact that we could create hobbits and elves and Dúnadan rangers and visit Mirkwood and Moria and all the other amazing locations described in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. There were orcs and spiders to be fought and great treasures to be won, all against the backdrop of a rich setting for which ICE provided some truly inspiring maps. Sure, our adventures didn't materially differ all that much from what we'd done in our Dungeons & Dragons sessions, but what did it matter? At that point in our roleplaying development, we were simply enamored of being able to use Tolkien's words, names, and locales and any more sophisticated concerns would have to wait.

In that respect, Middle-earth Role Playing gave us just what we wanted at the time, even if, in retrospect, it seems clear to me that MERP wasn't particularly well suited to its source material. I know many gamers of a certain vintage have great fondness for the game, in part, I think, because of the aforementioned maps and the Angus McBride artwork that graced the covers of the second edition of the game (which I never owned). There are worse reasons to have affection for a RPG, honestly, but I can't help but feel that MERP was something of a missed opportunity. Middle-earth holds so much potential as a fantasy roleplaying setting and one day I'd love to play in or referee a campaign set in it. 

Humorlessness

Last night, before bed, I was reading my recently-acquired copy of Character Law & Campaign Law. Now, Rolemaster, as has been noted many times, has a reputation for being dry and abstruse and I don't think that reputation is entirely unearned. But I will defy any man who thinks Rolemaster humorless (as will anyone who's used its critical hit charts will as well). Within the first few pages of the book, I came across multiple examples of play that brought a smile to my lips, such as this one from Section 7.12:

Snidepucker the Rogue dies after eating a poisoned bagel.

I'm not sure whether I was more amused by the character's name, his manner of death, or the fact that the whole thing is right smack in the middle of a rather detailed discussion of the deterioration of stats due to death. Then there's this one in Section 7.21:

Bandring is fleeing from the dreaded Malevolent Moose.

As with the previous example, this one appears as part of a larger discussion of game mechanics, in this case "movement maneuvers." I can't help but find this charming, as I always do when I find quirky little bits of text that suggest a real person rather than the Design-o-Tron 9000 has written the book. I think such bits are especially important in games like Rolemaster which might otherwise be mentally painful to read.

Mind you, when I was a younger man, I was, believe it or not, even more dour and humorless than I am today. Back in those dark days of yore, I didn't like this sort of thing in my game books. Roleplaying, after all, was a serious hobby and serious hobbies didn't include puns and anagrams and goofy examples. This attitude all looks terribly pathetic in retrospect, but you must remember that it was not an uncommon one (then or now) and many of my gaming mentors inculcated a number of prejudices into me, many of which had to do keeping things "serious."

I look forward to finding more examples like this as I make my way through Rolemaster. Heck, it wouldn't be a bad thing if I found more examples like this in every RPG product I read.

Comments to this post can be made here.

Descent into Madness

As I've noted on more than a few occasions, I have, in addition to face-to-face gaming, been playing in and refereeing several different RPGs via Google+ Hangouts. If anyone among my readership hasn't already given this a whirl, you really ought to, because it's a lot of fun. These days, it certainly seems as if the center of gravity in the old school world has shifted to G+, due in no small part to the exceedingly large numbers of games being run there. This hobby, after all, is about playing games, not merely talking about them and, as I said, there are a lot of games for every taste being run on Google+.

Among the games I'm playing is Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, refereed by the awesome Shawn Sanford. Among my fellow adventurers are the equally awesome Jason Sholtis and Will Douglas, though we've recently had an influx of several more stalwart souls to add to our company. That not only improves our chances of survival but also the fun. One of the many lessons Google+ has taught me is that roleplaying with only two or three players is a pale imitation of what it's like to play with six or more players. My online Dwimmermount sessions, for example, typically have at least six players and I've sometimes had as many as eight. Yes, it requires a bit more coordination to deal with the presence of so many players, but it more than repays the effort in terms of dynamism and chaotic creativity.

Back before DCC RPG was released, I remember that one of the big knocks against the game was that it used "too many dice" and had "too many charts." Having actually been playing the game for months now, I can honestly say that neither of the critiques holds much water. In play, one only uses a few dice types or charts at any given time and, as time goes on, their use becomes second nature. Moreover, the presence of these dice types and charts adds a lot of delightful unpredictability to play, so much so that I found myself thinking (as I often do) that what many RPGs need is more, not less randomness.

As it happens, Shawn Sanford is a huge Rolemaster aficionado, having used that system for years with great success. He's also currently involved in Iron Crown Enterprise's open playtest of the next iteration of this venerable game system. Consequently, we often talk about Rolemaster, a game with which my past experience has been decidedly mixed, but that, I freely admit, I've long been intrigued by. So, I've been slowly acquiring some of the old Rolemaster products I remember from the early '80s and examining them, not so much with an eye toward actually playing the game -- though I wouldn't shy away from doing so if an experienced referee made himself available (hint, hint) -- but in order to get a less biased understanding of it.

As I've noted before, "old school" is not synonymous with "rules lite" and we do the larger hobby a disservice when we talk as if it were. For that reason, expect to see more musings on some of the more complex RPGs of the '70s and '80s, since they're very much on my mind these days.

Comments on this post can be made here.

The Ads of Dragon: Middle Earth Role Playing

In my younger days, I was largely limited to buying RPGs that I saw on game store shelves. I knew I could use mail order to get games I never saw locally, but I never did so -- never did so, that is, until I saw this ad in issue #85 (May 1984):

Back then, I liked to think of myself as an admirer of Middle-earth, but, in truth, I had only the most superficial appreciation of Tolkien's works. So, when I saw this advertisement, showing a dwarf, a pair of hobbits, and two Men (unless the woman is actually an elf -- it's hard to say for sure) looting some forgotten tomb of its riches, I knew I wanted to buy this game. Middle Earth Role Playing was the first RPG I ever ordered through the mail and my friends and I had a lot of fun with it, even if the adventures we played out would likely have horrified Tolkien.

Every now and again, I find myself wishing I still had my copy of this game, but it disappeared long ago. On eBay, most of the copies on offer are later versions with the Angus McBride artwork, which I've never much liked -- heresy, I know!

Retrospective: Claw Law & Arms Law

Along with last week's retrospective, another product -- well, set of products -- I remember seeing relentlessly advertised in the pages of Dragon was Claw Law & Arms Law, one of several rulebooks that would, in time, join together to create the game system known as Rolemaster (as, as my friends and I called it "Rulemaster"). Back in 1982, though, (when the boxed set pictured here was released) products like Claw Law & Arms Law were initially sold as add-ons to other RPGs. Certainly, one could buy all the various Law books (such as Spell Law and Character Law) and combine them to play a wholly different game (or simply buy the boxed Rolemaster set that included them all), but there was no way I was going to do that. My friends and I were still deeply devoted to D&D and there was no way we were going to forsake it for another fantasy RPG. We'd house rule the heck out of D&D, of course, but, in our minds, that was somehow different and so it was that we decided to take the plunge and add Claw Law & Arms Law into our campaigns.

You must remember that 1982 was the tail end of the Golden Age. The fantastic realism that carried the day in the early part of the Silver Age was becoming an undeniable force in gaming culture, with lots of our older contemporaries dabbling in games they'd earlier told us were "for weirdos," like RuneQuest and Chivalry & Sorcery. Why? Partly because those other games had more "realistic" combat systems. That's where Claw Law & Arms Law came in: they were designed to make your RPG's combat system more realistic -- and deadly. That greatly appealed to us, as we'd already had solid experience with critical hit tables and, while their results were decidedly mixed, we nevertheless continued to see the appeal in making D&D's combats bloodier.

The big problem was that, for all their advertisements as add-ons to other games, they worked very poorly with AD&D. Like Rolemaster itself, Claw Law & Arms Law used percentiles for its combat system. To use it with Dungeons & Dragons, you weren't merely modifying the existing combat rules; you were completely replacing them. That caught us off-guard and probably ensured that we'd never adopt the rules on a permanent basis. To our way of thinking, it was perfectly fine to add or subtract to the existing combat rules, but to replace them entirely was a different thing altogether. At the same time, we wanted to see what all he fuss was about and so we decided to test out Claw Law & Arms Law.

The result not pretty, not because the new combat system was difficult to use; it wasn't. Indeed, despite our own mocking of Rolemaster by calling it Rulemaster, the game isn't particularly rule-heavy but it is chart-heavy. The new combat rules slowed down play, because we had to keep consulting charts. I am sure that this was because of our inexperience with the system. Indeed, I know it was, as I'll explain shortly. Charts catch a lot of undeserved flak in certain quarters, but my experience is that they're often better at presenting complex rules than are formulae, unless the formulae are very simple. Once one becomes familiar with which charts are needed and when, speed is increased considerably.

But the simple truth of the matter is that, for D&D, the addition of Claw Law & Arms Law just never felt right. We were far too accustomed to the existing combat rules (including weapons vs. AC modifiers, but not speed factors) to change midstream. The additional detail these add-ons provided simply didn't justify the cerebral rewiring necessary to make it all run smoothly. Yet, there was still something about these rules that we did like, which is why, when Middle Earth Roleplaying was released in 1984, we happily played it. MERP felt nothing like Tolkien's novels in my opinion, but the rules presentation was cleaner and more compact than in Rolemaster. We enjoyed playing the game as an alternative to D&D rather than as a replacement for it. That seemed to be the best way to use Rolemaster and its derivatives and we had a lot of fun doing so.