MRAAKTAGON

Oh boy, that was a long one… I’ve been playing the game on and off since 1999 (when it originally came out) and found it to be quite fun, and not at all about the winning of the game. If you play to win, it can go sort of faster, but when you first play the game it’s more about exploring and being an RPG (where the character is your clan) than a game you ‘win’.   Like Dwarf Fortress and FTL, the fun is not always in success.  Recently on the phone, I played a few times trying to win the game, failed and quit (just sell off all your cattle to end the game) and in frustration, finally picked a great name for my clan that actually won: Rape Margin.  One of the offshoots of playing a lot of KoDP is an interest in Glorantha and Runequest– while it does seem like an interesting period to roleplay in, it’s tough to imagine every getting people to play a game of it.  Runequest 6 looks quite good for a very detailed and realistic system.  Reading the combat system has made me look at D100 systems (the whiff systems) a lot differently, especially WFRP 2nd edition who’s combat could have been a lot better.

Winning King of Dragon Pass is not easy, it takes quite a long time to do because a lot of the events are completely random, and your clan can go on a pretty hard core death spiral if you get hit by bad events over and over, but after years of play, there are some clear steps:

1. Form a Tribe. This means completing a the Making of the Storm Tribe heroquest which can both kill your guys and kill your will to continue playing. Just remember, completing a heroquest is a HUGE deal in the game. Think of the game as a means to complete the heroquests and you’ll be good. Making your clan into a heroquesting engine is the most important part of the game.

2. Complete ALL the other heroquests (including Making of the storm tribe a second time). My advice here is to read all the myths, memorize the correct answers and be ready to try the same one over and over.  There are walkthru’s on the internet too of course, and if it makes the game more enjoyable USE THEM.  Remember though, many of the answers to the situations have many ‘winning’ answers.   Some of the heroquests give you hints about other ones, those are good to do first.

3. Win. This is the hard part because you have to be the king of your tribe, which isn’t easy. Once you are king of your tribe things can happen to your king, so you NEED to complete the heroquests as soon as you can.  Keep at it.

An Excerpt from my clan’s saga (the Rape Margin clan).  The whole game took 76 game YEARS to complete.

This is what looked like to be the beginning of a typical death spiral, but I pulled out of it:

1382
Our seers predicted that the hunters would find little game this year.

A gigantic Chaos creature appeared on the boundaries of our tula. It ate some sheep, and scared away the shepherds. We sent for Uroxi warriors. While we waited for word to get to them, the Chaos creature ate some of our horses. The Uroxi refused to help us, because we had not respected them before now. “Maybe now you will realize how important we are,” they said. We sought the aid of other clans. While we were talking to other chieftains, the Chaos creature ate some of our children. No other clan agreed to help us. We sacrificed to Urox for aid against Chaos. While we prepared the sacrifices, the Chaos creature ate some of our cows. The god-talkers said the signs were good; Urox would aid us in our battle. We attacked the creature. We fought the creature, but its terrifying powers were too much for us. It devoured many of our fighters before our eyes, and horribly wounded many others. It shambled off only when it had gorged itself on the corpses of the slain. Many people expected it to come back later. – This is a horrible event in the game and if it keeps happening, you will be fucked forever.

Outlaws blocked our caravan to the Apple clan. Branbrig attacked, but was wounded and had to return home. – I always choose “Kill as many bandits as possible” in these events.”

Brenna was accused of secret magic and deliberately spreading disease. Our ancestral spirits held her blameless of spreading disease. They said she was a friend of Ernalda but would say no more. Many people concluded Brenna was a member of the Earth Witch spirit tradition. We proclaimed her innocence. The people said that Brenna must be guiltless, and agreed that her magic, though secret, was not harming anyone. Not long afterwards, several farmers reported digging up valuable items. – Always do a divination if you have clan magic because this happens a lot and most of the time the people are doing some sort of good.

Korlmar, a trader of the Arnoring clan, warned us to be wary of another trader, Yerestia of the Zethnoring clan. We avoided becoming entangled in this dispute. – I haven’t seen all the permutations of this event tree, but it happens a lot.

A dragonewt came and asked for its old body back. “We don’t have your body,” we told it. We said that we really had no idea exactly where the body was. It flared its crest and hissed, “You not lie, exactly — but you not truthful either.” It departed, promising stern action. – This is when you find a ‘dead’ dragonnewt and make armor out of it. You want to keep the armor!

Foul weather turned back our trading caravan bound for the Vanstali clan.

Salinarg began the Elmal Guards the Stead heroquest. Orlanth left on his great quest, and Salinarg stayed to guard the stead. A Chaos creature called the Eater of Skin came and attacked. Salinarg became bright, in order to blind the Eater of Skin. The creature reared back, shrieking. It tore at Salinarg, tearing his arm from its socket. Salinarg easily slew the sightless creature with his other arm, and the people rejoiced. Our worshippers, back in the ritual ground, had a chance to help Salinarg knit himself back together. We gave of our tears, weeping and wailing, so that our tears soaked the ritual ground. Salinarg knitted himself back together and everyone, whether from the Rape Margin clan or the Storm Tribe, rejoiced. More Chaos enemies came, including the Author of Sores. Salinarg let the creature tear him apart. The Author of Sores did so, and then destroyed the stead of the Storm Tribe, and slew everyone inside. Our god-talkers were distressed by this terrible omen; even more so when the dismembered pieces of Salinarg’s body were found outside the ritual ground. The god-talkers said that we were sure to be visited by Chaos in the seasons ahead. – Elmal’s quest is one of the hardest because there are no right answers to the challenges, all of them give some sort of possibility of moving to the next stage– but if you give of anything but your tears after you get fucked up, you will lose.

We spotted a cattle raid by the Arnorings. We drove the Arnorings from the battlefield, striking them down as they fled. – There are a bunch of magic items that help to stop cattle raids– you need to buy and find them whenever you can.

A gigantic Chaos creature appeared on the boundaries of our tula. It ate some sheep, and scared away the shepherds. We sent for Uroxi warriors. While we waited for word to get to them, the Chaos creature ate some of our horses. 2 great holy warriors of Urox came to aid us. We sacrificed to Urox for aid against Chaos. While we prepared the sacrifices, the Chaos creature ate some of our cows. The god-talkers said the signs were good; Urox would aid us in our battle. We sought the aid of other clans. While we were talking to other chieftains, the Chaos creature ate some of our children. No other clan agreed to help us. We attacked the creature. We slew the creature. It decomposed over a matter of days, and we had to keep everyone inside their steads. Where it died, nothing would grow. – Again, this is a fuckall event.  

The Apples raided us. We drove the Apples from the battlefield, striking them down as they fled. – This needs to happen a lot, a combination of tech (the blessings of the gods), magic items and people on the ring can make this happen all the time.  I always pick: Sacrifice to Humakt, Kill as many as possible and Charge as my options unless there is something special. going on.

Good luck, the game is winnable after all!.

…and RPG rules for it are typically tacked on to the main system and don’t do it justice (some hand wave it away completely–I’m looking at you 13th Age!) or SUCK.

Look at the following video from “Battle of the Nations” which features real armor and blunted weapons for combat. Granted they are not trying to kill each other (no stabbing), but I think a lot of what’s happening here is very close to what we’d see in a melee on the battlefield, or a fight between armored opponents in say D&D.  Again–this is between armored opposition who use their weapons as clubs.  A non armored opponent would have to be extremely good to beat someone in armor like this mano-y-mano (also because someone in medieval  times would be extremely good to HAVE armor like this).

Think about the following factors:

1) It’s nearly impossible to breach the other guy’s armor with a strike from a weapon. You could knock him out or damage him (legs, arms, etc.) but you’re NOT going to land a killing blow unless you know exactly where there is a chink in the armor. Even then, the hit area would be tiny as to make it nearly impossible. Say in D&D you have hit points which do not indicate lethal damage (ever really), and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay wounds that represent your ablative-ness before you start taking critical wounds. Exalted/D10 acknowledges lethal and non lethal damage, and armor reduces both–usually lethal is HARDER for armor to reduce in these systems, but I would argue that lethal damage should be the easiest to buffer against (or soak). Essentially, armor should be far better than it is represented in these games based on the video above for stopping cutting/lethal damage.

2) Once you fall down, likely you’re dead, before you fall down, you can still fight if you’re not grappled.

3) If you’re grappled, your chances of harming your opponent is near to zero, but being in a grapple also reduces the chances of an opponent harming you, so it’s a viable defensive AND offensive tactic.

So look at how the medieval guys in the video fight.  One guy gets close, exchanges blows as a DISTRACTION for the grapple, at which time a second comes along and whacks at the grappled opponent’s legs or head until he goes down. Once down the opponent is typically out of the fight and can be dealt with later if not killed outright.

How would OD&D model this? Not very well in the printed version but there is this super obscure rule that was never properly published that makes more sense.  Modelling the video above, Fighter 1 would roll to hit with a D20.  This represents a series of blows in D&D remember, not a single attack.  If a hit happens (since it’s ‘harder’ to hit someone with armor on) then it will do some damage in terms of hit points.  The opponent would attack back and then the third guy would come in with a grapple attack which starts with a successful hit (including modifiers like armor which should actually make it EASIER for someone to grapple you), then goes to an opposed roll, etc.  The thing is, if you watch the movie above one notices that grapples happen EASILY all the time.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (2nd edition) has some rules for grappling that work well for the system– both the grappled and grappler have +20% for people to hit them and cannot block or dodge.  The grappler can attempt to inflict unarmed damage during his or her turns and the grappled can attempt to escape and that’s it.  It models what’s going on in the video above just fine though doesn’t model people being thrown to the ground nor the grappled being able to do damage (I would mod it to just say that he could attempt to do unarmed damage to the grappler just the same). 3rd Edition WFRP has– you guessed it! A card.  As much as I wanted to write this and have it thoroughly researched– I just couldn’t be bothered to dig through all my 3rd edition cards to find it.

Despite it’s issue with Lethal/Non lethal soak of armor, Exalted’s grappling I would rate as good, mostly I think because White Wolf did the Street Fighter RPG (and Aberrant) and had to deal with this then, as well as the Vampires gripping each other in their pseudo sexual way.  Grappling is an attack and the attacker, if successful, can pull an action (crush, throw, maintain) but each turn that comes up the grapple is contested, with each winner of that round able to crush, throw or maintain the grapple.  Exalted does not let armor help you not be grappled (like D&D) which makes sense.

Finally, we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about Marvel Heroic Roleplaying/Cortex and FATE as they model it fairly well in both.  In MHR, any grapple would be a complication die stuck to an opponent.  So, if the THING is trying to grip Wolverine and got a D10 effect die, he would stick a D10 complication on Wolverine for everything he’s doing (as a negative die) and it would be a D10 that others could use to hit Wolverine when they attack.  Invisible Woman could add a D10 to her (weak) punching of Wolverine and whenever Wolverine tried a non-opposed roll, he would have a D10 complication.  Note that this D10 complication would be the same if the Thing punched Wolverine into a wall (and trapped him) or sat on him– the system doesn’t care what the type of complication is, except within a narrative context.

In FATE you are trying to create an advantage over your opponent by grappling using an opposed roll. You can give this advantage to another player, so it models fairly well after looking at the Battle of Nations video.  However, the issue I have with both FATE and MHR is that the GRABBER should have some negative complications as well as the grabbed.  Both are in a grip, and neither may be winning. If one can overpower the other he may be able to hold him in place long enough for another person to smash him over the head, but it’s possible that they may miss and hit their buddy.   You can see how it’s a very complicated thing to model in any game (not just RPG’s).

I know this started out as a bit about armored combat, but it’s expanded a bit into a tirade about grappling in RPG systems.  I think it’s an extremely important part of fighting, one that cannot be hand waved off and must be simulated, especially in combat with heavily armored foes who use their swords as clubs until the very end.   Tactically, grappling is especially important when outnumbered– you better watch out because those Kobolds may drop like flies, but there are a lot of them and if they kobold-pile you, you may be skewered on a spit thrapple to anus before you know it.