The Tolkien Reader Discussion Questions: Farmer Giles of Ham

“This is the hour of the Shire folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the great.” — The Lord of the Rings, Book II Chapter 2.

1) How well does the story Farmer Giles of Ham follow the precepts outlined in On Fairy Stories?

2) How does the tale incorporate elements of historical and geographical fact?

3) How does Farmer Giles primarily gain his experience points: for killing monsters, finding treasure, or selling magic items?

4) How does the ending of the story comport with the implied end-game of the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons?

5) Compare and contrast Farmer Giles with the heroes of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Thousand Suns Readalong Chapter 11: Worlds and Trade

I really like what the designer is trying to do in this chapter. There are several choices that avoid a metric ton of pain and potential flame war topics. My only gripes are that a couple of key rules are unclear, and (as us usually the case with the crunchiest rules in Thousand Suns) the text offers no clarifying examples to help out with the finer points. Here is a quick tour of the main points of interest:

Making a sector map: This is a neat & simple process for making a jump-line map. I’ve tried to make such maps in the past for GURPS Space homebrew campaigns, but never came up with anything as good as this. The implied setting of these rules are that no slower-than-light travel is going to be happening at all– there are no coordinates or hard distances generated in this approach like those that plagued Traveller. This might imply that the worlds on the jump lines are so far apart that this is a reasonable assumption. The only problem here is that the algorithm for generating sector maps does not have crystal clear starting and ending conditions, which I would have preferred.

The world design rules are explicitly descriptive and omit all kinds of hard scientific data. It unapologetically abstains from the gaming arms race to produce the most realistic (and useless) star system generation tables. I completely agree with this design decision. The first big improvement over Classic Traveller is that weird worlds get a population penalty and terrestrial worlds get a population bonus. I suppose it is still possible to get an asteroid megalopolis right next to a deserted garden world, but it is not as bad as Traveller where population was completely independent from world type. Unlike Traveller’s long and inadvertent use of imperial units for its size code, planetary diameters are in kilometers here.

The designer defines world tech level as being what is available through local manufacturers, but admits that high-tech stuff will be available anyway and states that tech level really doesn’t have much a game effect. I’m not sure if anyone has yet determined the significance tech level for Classic Traveller, so this seems like a pretty safe design decision in comparison. (Working out the implications of its significance is a rite of passage on par with reworking OD&D’s Thief class.) Traveller had various obscure trade codes that could be derived from the world statistics. Thousand Suns has a much more free-wheeling world hooks table. This is a cool way to do it, as a couple of hooks would seem to give you some immediately playable information instead of more data to try to figure out. The designer’s push to make the referees make up new stuff reappears here in the form of the “other” hook that requires you to make up something new even though you’re rolling on a table for inspiration.

The trade system is intentionally simple. The available trade goods and their quantity are randomly determined– I can’t tell how many times you get to roll on the chart just from the rules. (Just one good type per stop is available for purchase??) Purchase and sale multipliers are determined by Bargain (Trade) tests and modified by the tech level and good category. An example would have cleared up any questions I have about the trade system, but the rules by themselves are just not clear to me. And what if you have Bargain, but not Bargain (Trade)? Probably the most significant omission here is there’s no rules here for taking on passengers. I guess this was to avoid the complexity of having to figure out how many people are going everywhere and whether or not you can take on people to go to later stops or not. To this day I’m still not sure what the exact procedure and rates for that are in Traveller. And given the flame wars I’ve seen on Traveller economics, I’m not sure I’d touch it either….

Bottom line: these rules are a very reasonable response to thirty years of science fiction world generation sequences. Everybody else wants to fix what they perceive to be the rough edges of the game, but Maliszewski has reworked the axioms to help save you some grief down stream. The way he has omitted rules in some cases and intentionally left areas for game masters to develop themselves makes a lot of sense. My only complaint is where these appear to be unintentional or where the rules he gives are unclear or under-illustrated. The latter can easily be fixed with a few magazine articles or blog posts, but fixing them myself would actually be quicker in some cases than learning and applying other games’ much more elaborate rules.

Thousand Suns Readalong Chapter 10: Game Mastering

This section opens with almost the same game mastering advice that comes at the end of the Moldvay Basic D&D rulebook. (“There’s always a chance” shows up in both.) This is followed by several sections on the main themes of “Imperial SF”. This is even more clear and to the point because this game does not have to go to the trouble of explaining (or explaining away) the various complications that have arisen in the course of Traveller’s long history. Each premise is illustrated with a few related adventure seeds; I find this particularly helpful in illustrating the concepts as they pertain to the game.

This image does not appear in Thousand Suns.

Unfortunately, there is no epic cut-away view of a planet or space station to fire the imagination. In its place we have a random plot generator that uses D12 tables to fill out a Mad Lib in this format: “the character must [verb] [noun] near [place] while contending with [complication] and being confronted by [bad guy].” I think a natural thing to do is to take whatever idea you get from this and develop it into a patron encounter with a d12 table for determining what’s really going on. Some results would indicate that things are as they seem while other outcomes might add plot twists and maybe even plot twists to the plot twists. (Such a table is important in order to prevent the GM from doing the obvious cliché every single session– though the value of an obvious cliché should never be underestimated.)

The experience point system is fairly close to GURPS, but there is an insane hard core book-keeping option included that would fit the tone of an otherwise unplayable space role playing game. (A space role-playing game without pointlessly overcomplicated subsystems is simply incomplete.) The system for spending experience points reminds me more of my beloved Third Edition Gamma World set, but there is no incomprehensible stuff glommed into them here. Probably the biggest news here is that you can’t improve your attributes after play begins. This experience system will see a lot more use than Traveller’s incarnation ever did. Indeed… most people weren’t even aware of the experience rules that were buried in Book 2….

Thousand Suns Readalong Chapter 9: Starships and Vehicles

First let me preface my remarks on this chapter by saying that starship combat systems in space role playing games are almost uniformly horrible. The Traveller games were never seriously revised– they just kept making more incompatible spaceship games that were broken in different ways and that continually introduced contradictory information in regards to the implied setting of the rules. The ones in GURPS Traveller are probably a decent set of rules if you can both slog through them and agree with the authors’ take on the Official Traveller Universe, but the playability factor is low to me– the game stats and modifiers are built around a baseline of a dude with a sword, not a gigantic spaceship. In any case, I don’t think people actually play Traveller starship combat games in any form except for some diehard High Guard fans. I’ve heard good things about D6 Star Wars and rave reviews for FASA’s Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator. For the most part, though, your only hope here seems to be in games that existed well before their role playing rules counterparts. Prime Directive with its backing by Star Fleet Battles and Federation & Empire is about the only space role playing game where the space combat is given anything like first-class treatment.

The only thing Starmada lacks that I can see is a good set of ship designs tailored to a particular set of scenarios and rules options.

If you’ve played a setting’s space combat games a lot, there’s all kinds of minor details that you will know that are difficult to get any other way– players will ask you stuff and you’ll just know how things work. But I still hold out for some kind of good, playable micro-game treatment for this and it doesn’t really exist. If you asked me what I wanted I’d probably say… oh… a design system more or less like Starmada’s… with a sequence of play probably closer to Starfire… and with record sheets and a quick playing feel like The Last Starfighter. From there… it’d need to have several interfaces for the role playing game rules and the character stats, but all of that needs to be optional. The game would have to stand on its own first and foremost. Yeah, I know… it’s not going to happen. But there it is.

This was not a bad game in spite of the guessing stuff. FASA knew how to make things nicely degrade in capabilities until they exploded.

The Starmada rules are very difficult to dig out from the book, but the scenarios are very well designed for helping train you up.

Now the Thousand Suns space combat rules as presented in this second edition PDF… what can I say? I didn’t get very far with this before I started designing my own game, so let me just detail where I went off the rails with it. It’s a shame, as there is some good design decisions; I think there’s potential for a Thousand Suns space combat game to be really good given the overall design philosophy of the game. I just don’t think it exists yet.

• The linked weapons descriptions in the sample starships… they don’t make any sense to me. The author is clearly doing something different than either CAR WARS style linked weapons or Traveller style batteries, but I couldn’t tell you how some of these ships like the corvette or the cruiser are armed.
• The section on movement is just one giant steam of confusing text with no illustrations. What kind of map are we expected to play on…? My best guess is… this is played on squares where the diagonals are declared to be the same length as the sides. That’s weird. Well be weird, but at least make it clear what you’re doing. I need pictures for this especially given how weird it is. (Height and depth definitely ignore diagonals as well, though.)
• The sequence of play is not pulled out into a sidebar. That’s no fun for me.
• Okay… it sounds like this is a vector movement system but these ships have turn ratings when they don’t have firing arcs. I don’t think you can really have it both ways. And why having only 45 degree turns…? What is going on here? I need more pictures in order to double check that I’m reading you right. (I think you should either go full vector movement and deal with all the boredom that such a move would entail or else go more of a CAR WARS route and go mapless, give the ships an acceleration rating, and add more variety in the maneuver options.)
• In a scenario where a Corvette and a Cruiser start in the same location… the game hinges entirely on who wins initiative. If the Corvette wins, the Cruiser gets one missile shot at him before he escapes. If the Cruiser wins, then he gets two turns of fusion beam fire and two more turns of missile fire after that. I might have more confidence in such a result if sensor use and electronic warfare had a more explicit role in the sequence of play– especially if such contests could change the initiative order somehow later. As it stands, the movement system is strange and poorly communicated, the sequence of play is too lean, and the initiative system leads to bizarre outcomes.

As to the Vehicles section of the chapter, there is one glaring problem with the rules that just cause me to move on to the next chapter. It seemed kind of cute that the author left the duration of a round as being only vaguely defined…. But if you have characters and vehicles interacting on a miniatures map you really need to know how far the vehicles move in a round. The author gives us the top speeds in kilometers per hour, but we can’t do anything with that fact because the basic unit of combat time is left undefined! This is especially greivous to me, because in my opinion, no role playing game is complete until you can play CAR WARS in it.

Ardmore Arena: Killer Kart Duelist Stats

These are the campaign stats for the duelists from the 8-car Killer Kart team event at Ardmore arena. (Note that a session report is here and arena designer’s notes are here.) Earlburt talked me into dropping the saving throw dice down from 3d6 to 2d6 and this resulted in two deaths here. That the two deceased characters both had kills they would have otherwise taken away means that this event has a pitifully small impact on the wealth levels of the participants. (Only one of my characters walked away with any sort of salvage.)

Team Jeffro

Buck Lescynski (Security Six)
Pres: 4 (-1)
Dr: 14
Gn: 13
HG: 10
Kills: 1
8 March 2029: Won 3rd KK team event at Amex Proving Grounds. Scored MG kill, but lost salvage to fire.
17 April 2029: Lost road duel in Firehawk promotional event. Set on fire but escaped in median after fancy driving. Earned entry to Hotshot tournament round, and flown by blimp to Waco.
21 April 2029: Lost Hotshot team event at Double Drum. Killed by MG and knocked unconscious.
Ardmore: The first duelist killed in the event. Orrel Allan in the Sargasso tagged him through his right side armor early on with a lucky shot.

Coyotito Alvarez (Applause)
Pres: 3  (+2)
Dr: 11 (+2)
Gn: 12 (+2)
HG: 11
Kills: 1 (+1)
10 March 2029: Won 4th KK team event at Armadillo. Scored and salvaged MG kill, but vehicle then killed by peds.
10 April 2029: Wielded an SMG in the Grenadier Motors Sortie trials in cordoned off ruins of Forth Worth, TX.
Ardmore: Faced off against Chase Chonon (Texan) at the beginning… then slowed, turned, and pounded him into the wall with MG fire when Chase turned his back on him. It was 2-to-1 after that, so Coyotito surrendered after a token engagement.

John Turing (Econobox)
Pres: 0 (-1) Dr: 11 Gn: 14 HG: 10 Kills: 1
10 March 2029: On winning team of 4th KK team event at Armadillo. Scored MG kill, setting it on fire. Then killed by MG, set on fire and injured.
10 April 2029: Drove Firestarter in the Grenadier Motors Sortie trials in cordoned off ruins of Forth Worth, TX. Laser hit caused a Sortie to spin out, but it escaped and did not score kill.
16 April 2029: Lost Amateur Night 6-way at Armadillo. Was sideswiped and knocked unconscious.
Ardmore: Sped past Catalina Jones’ (Bombardier) and got outmaneuvered. Getting someone on your tail is guaranteed death in a Killer Kart event.

Arnold Schlamer (Scorcher)
Deceased (had been Pres 4, Dr 12, Gn 13, HG 11, Kills 1)
8 March 2029: Won 3rd KK team event at Amex Proving Grounds. Scored MG kill. Kept own KK and salvaged kill.
31 March 2029): Lost Stinger team event at Armadillo. Killed by MG and injured.
Ardmore: Killed dead by Orange Rodance (Courier) in a pass. Arnold did well by killing Orrel Allan early in the game, but could not use his speed to his advantage. Orange pulled off a devastating low-speed pivot. Arnold will be sorely missed by his peers.

Team Earlburt

Orange Rodnance (Courier)
Pres: 3 (+7)
Dr: 13 (+2)
Gn: 13 (+2)
HG: 10
Kills: 1 (+2)
17 March 2029: Lost 5th KK team event at Armadillo. Scored and salvaged MG kill, but then killed by MG.
10 April 2029: Manned a tripod MG in the Grenadier Motors Sortie trials in cordoned off ruins of Forth Worth, TX.
16 April 2029: Drove Bombardier on the losing team in a 3 vs. 3 Amateur Night team event at the Retama Duel Center Mini-Slalom in San Antonio. As last survivor, initially got the better of enemy Bomb in an ATG and ram duel, but eventually forced to surrender by rest of enemy team.
Ardmore: Kept his cool and executed a perfect low-speed pivot to outmaneuver his opponent and score a crucial kill for his team. Arnold Schlamer could not be resuscitated by the arena’s medical staff.

Catalina Jones (Bombardier)
Pres: -1 (+5)
Dr: 10 (+2)
Gn: 13 (+2)
HG: 10
Kills: 0 (+1)
21 March 2029: On winning team of 6th KK team event at Armadillo. Killed by Mg, set on fire, left vehicle, then injured.
27 March 2029: Lost Amateur Night 3-way driving a Stinger, versus a Sargasso and an Iguana II at the Double Drum. Took a turn too tight and rolled, winding up on side.
10 April 2029: Wielded a LAW in the Grenadier Motors Sortie trials in cordoned off ruins of Forth Worth, TX.
16 April 2029: Gunner in the Bombardier on the losing team in a 3 vs. 3 Amateur Night team event at the Retama Duel Center Mini-Slalom in San Antonio. Forced to surrender to end the duel.
Ardmore: Outmaneuvered and drove down John Turing (Econobox).

Chase Chonson (Texan)
Pres: -1 (-1)
Dr: 13
Gn: 11
HG: 10
Kills: 1
27 March 2029: Lost Am. Night 3-way driving a Sargasso at Double Drum. Killed by Iguana.
10 April 2029: Drove Sortie in Grenadier Motors trials in ruins of Fort Worth, TX.  Scored ram kill on Popper & wrecked.
Ardmore: Turn his back on Coyotito Alvarez (Applause) and paid for it with his car.

Orrel Allan (Sargasso)
Deceased (had been Pres -2, Dr 11, Gn 12, HG 10, Kills 0)
17 March 2029: Lost 5th KK team event at Armadillo. Killed and set on fire by MG.
20 April 2029: Lost 3-way Amateur Night event in Stingers at the Octagon. Killed by MG.
Ardmore: Got tailed early on by Arnold Schlamer (Scorcher) and was killed.