[Musings] Reviews & Ratings

One night during my vacation in Rijeka I had a vivid dream of finding new issues of PC-Guru and 576 KByte at a newsstand. These two were the defining gaming magazines of my childhood. I was an avid reader of them from 1997 till 2003. After that I stopped caring about gaming magazines, because the editors I adored were mostly gone, the magazines got ridiculously expensive, and internet access became available for me in high school. When I saw that both of them had the old layout and editorial staff I started digging for my wallet, then woke up.

PC-Guru rating StarCraft

Besides the utter disappointment that it was all just a dream one thing kept bugging me: their info boxes. Both magazines had them, usually at the end of their reviews. These summarized basic stuff about the game (developer, publisher, requirements, etc.) and the editor's opinion presented in the form of a single mighty percentile value. 576 KByte even had a short tl;dr section above the final grade, and rated each of the game's four major attributes: visuals, playability, length/replayability, and sound.

576 Kbyte rating
Might & Magic VI

I really loved the percentile ratings, especially how counterintuitive they were. For many readers these numbers didn't serve as the closure of a review, but as the beginning. While I usually read the magazines cover to cover, I too prioritized reviews about games that got excellent or horrible rating over the others. I also found amusing how people interpreted the ratings. One would think that on a scale of 1 to 100 a game with 50% rating is mediocre. Even the editors told us so! Yet the general rule of thumb among readers was that games with less than 75% were not worth bothering with. Make it 80% if you are picky.

This got me thinking about improving my reviews a bit. A terse information box will not only help the reader find basic stuff about the product quickly, but also allow me to throw out trivialities from the text - like page count and format. I will also use percentile ratings from now on, because they are awesome. I have three reviews in the pipeline: Tunnels & Trolls Japan Adventures, Monsters! Monsters! 2nd edition, and Fuchsia Mayonnaise... Maladies... or something like that. They will be perfect to experiment with the new format. Stay tuned for more!

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[Homebrew] It's a Kind of Magic

The magic-user's choice.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here! These heretic house rules were written in the blood of massacred sacred cows. They haven't been properly playstested, because our Old-School Essentials campaign has been in stasis since the plague, when the highest level character just hit level 4. The reason for experimenting with spell points and throwing out memorization is as old as the hobby: most of my players are ambivalent, or at best neutral towards spell slots. I also tampered with clerics, so they have magic at level 1, and don't get both level 3 and level 4 spells on the same level. We'll see how these rules work out in the end, though so far my players liked them and I'm not that worried that it will horribly upset balance or break the game. Or maybe I just don't give a fuck anymore after running DCC RPG for years.

Preparing Spells

Spell casters don’t have to memorize spells. Users of arcane magic can cast any spell within their spellbooks, while users of divine magic can cast any spell from their spell lists.

Spell Points

Instead of spell slots, spell casters use spell points (SP) to cast magic. Casting a spell costs 1+spell’s level spell points. Recovering spell points requires a night of good rest.

Spell caster classes have the following amount of spell points:

• Illusionists, Magic-users: level x 4 SP.
• Clerics, Druids: level x 3 SP.
• Bards: (level-1) x 2 SP.
• Rangers, Samurai: (level-7) x 2 SP.
• Paladins: (level-8) x 2 SP.

Spells become available at the following levels :

Maximum spell level by class
Lv	Ill, MU	Cl, Dr	Brd	R,S	P
1	1	1	-	-	-
2	1	1	1	-	-
3	2	2	1	-	-
4	2	2	1	-	-
5	3	3	2	-	-
6	3	4	2	-	-
7	4	5	2	-	-
8	4	5	3	1	-
9	5	5	3	1	1
10	5	5	3	2	1
11	6	5	4	2	2
12	6	5	4	3	2
13	6	5	4	3	3
14	6	5	4	3	3

Spellburn

When running out of spell points, spellcasters can burn their own hit points. The chance of success is equal to the chance of copying spells (OSE Advanced Fantasy Genre Rules p. 50.) with a penalty of (missing spell points x 10%). The caster spends the remaining spell points to cast the spell, then takes damage equal to the missing amount of spell points.

Success: The spell is successfully cast.

Failure: The spell fails, roll on the table below.

Healing: Spellburn damage temporarily reduces the maximum hit points, which can only be recovered through natural healing.

Spell Mishaps

When spellcasting fails during spellburn roll on the following table to see what happens. In case of thieves failing with scrolls the spellburn damage is 1d6.

Spell Mishaps
1d20	Result
1-2	Spell fails, no further harm done.
3-4	Etheric backlash doubles spellburn damage.
5-6	Etheric explosion, in a 100’ radius everyone suffers the spellburn damage.
7-8	Caster stunned for spellburn rounds.
9-10	A random spell of manifests. Its level is equal to the amount of spellburn damage taken.
11-12	Spell backfires at caster! If the spell is harmless, be creative with the result, or choose another spell of the same level.
13-14	Reversed spell! If the spell has no reverse, be creative with the result, or choose another spell of same level.
15-16	Temporary loss of random ability score equal to spellburn damage. With each day of rest 1 point of the ability score returns.
17-18	Caster unable to cast spells for spellburn turns.
19-20	Caster knocked out cold for spellburn turns.