RetroRoleplaying

Several years ago I picked up a number of Tiny D6 games in a couple of game bundles. I was interested because from what I had read about Tiny Dungeon 2e, the system sounded quite similar to a two-page RPG I had written up in the late 1980s called “Generic Quick Simple RPG” (another of my infamously bad names). Tiny Dungeon 2e and GQS-RPG had a nearly identical general resolution system, vaguely similar but weirdly different combat systems, and a similar method of describing characters and monsters. Tiny Dungeons 2e was like a much improved,  greatly expanded, and actually play-tested GQS-RPG. I was very impressed with Tiny Dungeon 2e. Impressed enough to put it on my short list of modern games I’d be willing to run. I then put it and the other Tiny D6 pdfs I had purchased in a folder on my hard drive and forgot about them. After all, I had an old school campaign I was running and did not need yet another system.

Fast forward to today. Covid-19 killed the above-mentioned campaign as the players and I discovered we really loathed any type of online play. Because of immunocompromised family members, face-to-face play was out until everyone could get vaccinated and studies were done to be sure the vaccines actually protected our immunocompromised family members. By then (18+ months later), all our schedules had gotten out of sync, so the campaign was essentially dead. My wife and I were discussing the problems I was having getting the Sunday game running again while waiting for her doctor in the doctor’s exam room last month. There was a knock on the semi-open door and one of the nurses apologized for overhearing us, but asked if I would be interested in running a game for her, her husband, and 4 of their friends on Sunday afternoons. I asked what system — fearing it would be 5e which I have no interest in running. I was surprised to hear that they had been playing Tiny Dungeon. I gave her my phone number and email address and said I’d be willing to discuss it with them.

After about a month of email exchanges, phone discussions and a couple of meetings, we had a session on the 21st (and a second session yesterday) and everyone – including myself – seems to be having a good time. After only two sessions of Tiny Dungeon, I’ve concluded that I like the Tiny D6 system. It’s the first system since Microlite20 that actually excites me as much as old school D&D and retroclones. It’s almost old school as written – rules lite, fast to play (including very fast combat – a requirement for me to even touch a system any more), easy and fast to create characters (and monsters/NPCs), and very easy to house rule.  Also, while Tiny D6 systems are not a variant of old school D&D systems, after running a couple of sessions I can state that I can convert all my TSR D&D stuff – including my homebrew settings – to Tiny Dungeon on the fly without advance conversion work.

All the house rules I needed to run these sessions “old school” was to change the individual initiative system to group initiative and to warn the group that I was using morale rolls and reaction rolls which I ported directly from B/X. The eyes of those who know me are probably popping out of their heads at this point as I generally have pages of house rules ready to go for any new game I’m going to try before I ever run it.

The basic system for Tiny Dungeon 2e (and Tiny D6 games in general) is simple. To determine if an uncertain action succeeds, roll 2d6. If either die comes up a 5 or 6, it’s a success. If you have disadvantage, you only roll 1d6. If you have advantage you roll 3d6. Advantage and disadvantage do not stack. Disadvantage has priority except when the advantage comes from a magic item. Combat follows the same basic system (with a few minor complications like focus and evading). Hits from weapons generally do 1 point of damage. Characters start with 4 to 8 hit points depending on their heritage (aka race/species). Monsters are on the same hit point scale. For a rough idea of monster hit points in Tiny D6 games add 3 to a monster’s hit dice in 0e or B/X.

Characters are defined by traits which do things like provide advantage or special abilities. Creating characters is relatively easy although more choice (and therefore system knowledge) is required than in TSR D&D. First, the player selects a heritage (human, elf, dwarf, etc.) which provides starting hit points and a trait. For example, the Dwarf heritage provides 8 hit points and the Dark Vision trait which allows seeing in total darkness. Then you select three traits from the trait list. There are only 4 pages of traits, each with a few sentences explaining the trait so this is not as bad as it sounds; although having new players helped by an experienced player will speed this part of character creation up. Next you select one of the three weapon groups to be proficient in and one weapon from that group you have mastered. (Using a weapon from a group you are not proficient with gives disadvantage, while using a weapon you’d mastered gives advantage). Then you come up with a mundane family trade – what you learned about as a child: another source of possible advantage. Finally you decide on a belief: a simple statement of something that drives the character. An example belief: “My home is in my backpack.”

Starting characters are more capable than in old school D&D – probably about the equivalent of  a third level B/X character. Characters can grow with time — however, experience is an optional rule. There are two suggested experience systems. The simple system has characters gain a new trait every three sessions up to a total of seven (non-heritage) traits. A more complex system has a few experience points awarded each session when can be used to buy either a new trait, a new weapon proficiency (or a new mastered weapon), or an additional hit point. Tiny Dungeon 2e characters tend to broaden their abilities with experience rather than increase a limited number of abilities to “super-powered” levels.

Magic is handled very differently from old school D&D. There are two “obviously magic” traits: spell reader, and spell-touched. The healer, familiar, beastspeaker, and alchemist traits can also be considered magical if doing so fits what you are trying to do. The spell reader trait gives the ability to read one-use scrolls of fairly powerful spells, releasing their magic. Of course, these scrolls have to be found or purchased. The spell-touched trait gives the character the inherit power to sense magic and subtly affect their surrounding with minor magical effects (very roughly around the power level of first or second level TSR D&D spells).

Optional rules provide traits with more powerful magic, animal companions, and martial disciplines There are also optional rules for critical hits and misses, variable weapon damage, armor (provides damage reduction), and simple ship and mount rules.

The GM section of the rules provide advice from running adventures and a good selection of enemies (aka monsters) ready for use.

The rules section of the 194 page Tiny Dungeon 2e book ends on page 84. The remainder of the book contains an adventure generator and 18 micro-settings: 4 to 6 page campaign ideas each developed enough to give a good feel for the setting. Many of these micro-settings provide new heritages and/or traits developed specifically for the setting.

I would normally complain a bit about the high price of the Tiny Dungeon 2e book (as of late May 2022, its $17.99 in PDF at DrivethruRPG), especially with over half the book being micro-settings only of use to GMs. However, one of my players pointed out that there is a Player’s Guide that’s only $6.99 in PDF. I remembered I actually had a copy of this from one of the Tiny D6 bundles and hunted it up. Calling it a “player’s guide” is a bit of a misnomer as it actually has all the rules needed for players and GMs to run the game – basically all the material from the more expensive Tiny Dungeons 2e book except the micro-settings. This is everything needed to for both players and GMs to run the game if the GM provides the setting. The Tiny Dungeon 2e Player’s Guide turns the system into one of the most affordable good rules light game systems available.

In case you can’t guess from the above, I think Tiny Dungeon 2e and the Tiny D6 system in general are fantastic. I’ll probably be using the Tiny D6 system for most of my games in the future. If you want to run old school style games with a modern rules set that is easy to learn, teach, customize and use at the table, take a look at the various Tiny D6 games. They all use the same basic rules and so are easy to mix and match. Want to run a science fantasy game with “elves and orcs” in space? Combine Tiny Dungeon 2e with Tiny Frontiers. Super-heroes battling an evil empire in a galaxy far-far away? Tiny Supers with Tiny Frontiers. Modern espionage agents against Cthulhu cultists? Tiny Spies and Tiny Cthulhu.

I started 2022 with big plans for this web site. In late February I began to implement them (see this post). While setting up the framework implementation for these ideas was interesting and even fun, I’ve been having trouble deciding when to actually open the site up to members. The more I thought about doing so, the less enthusiastic I became. The more I thought about doing so, the more I wondered if a complex community site was really needed. Sure what I planned provided a lot of features — some fairly unique to the OSR web “scene” — but given all the other OSR sites out there, were these features “needed” enough to justify the amount of work it would take to build and manage a complex community of OSR folks.

I’ve been running and helping to run online communities  since the late 1980s (fidonet echoes, GEnie Roundtables, Delphi forums, mailing lists, web forums, etc.), so I know exactly what I’m getting into. I also know that one of the main things needed for a successful online community is an enthusiastic and motivated site host. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve just not that motivated. Therefore, I’ve decided to drop the idea of turning this site into an Old School/OSR community site.

Instead, I’ll continue to spruce up the site as time permits and use it to host this blog  and free downloads of (currently) 200+ old school/OSR/rules lite games. The blog probably will only be slightly more active than it has been the past few years, but there are hundreds of older posts dating back to 2008 or so.

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an ‘men
Gang aft agley,
An’lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy.

— From “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns

As you can see we are still remodeling the site. However, enough is complete that we can reopen. A lot of the ancient cruft that has accumulated over the years has been removed — most will not be back. New material will be coming to replace it.

RetroRoleplaying.com started out as a site devoted to out-of-print, unsupported, and/or out-of-style tabletop roleplaying games (and modern “retro-clones” of those games), started when my wife had oral cancer to give me something else to think about. Then came Microlite74. Within a couple of years the focus of my blog and this site turned from information and discussion about old school style games in general to Microlite74 and the various other Microlite20-based versions of TSR versions of D&D I was creating. This was partially because creating games is time-consuming and because I eventually starting creating these games as was way to get money to pay all the cancer-related bills. For the last 11or 12 years, everything else fell by the wayside.

I turn 65 this year and I’ve retired. The cancer bills are paid. While my wife was diagnosed with MS a few years ago, she has insurance that covers most costs (thanks to the fact that advanced MS is as close to an automatic disability qualification as you can get). So I intend to return the focus of this site to old school and OSR gaming in general again. As I love designing games, I probably will not stop releasing new games. However, the emphasis will not be on selling these games as I am not longer under pressure to make extra money to pay medical debts. Most new games will be free (or perhaps Pay What You Want).

I have a number of plans for this web site, but I haven’t quite decided exactly which of these plans I will go with. The first step in any of those plans, however, is remodeling this site. The fact that I’m far enough long to reopen the site after less than a week is a good sign, I think.

Here are the changes so far:

• New Look – It’s nothing special as I’m still not a visually oriented person, let alone a graphics designer, but it is an updated look. Be warned that I’m still tweaking it.
• Blog moved back to its original home  (blog.retroroleplaying.com on blogger). I’ve cleaned it up to remove all the out-of-date cancer fund drive footers and post solely related to said fund drives.  There’s a lot interesting material there, especially in the early years 2008-2012. Note that most pictures are missing as they were stored on tinypic.
  Update (7 March 2022): I moved the cleaned up blog back to this site from blogger to cut back on Google tracking of blog readers.
• Reviews are gone. This was a silly attempt to link to old school game reviews on other sites in an attempt to provide a centralized list of reviews. I doubt I updated it since 2008 or so. It may have been a semi-decent idea when I started this site, but even if it was its time has long passed.
• Articles — Some ancient and generally outdated or pointless articles have been removed. For the time-being the short game system articles remain, however, they may eventually go as well as they really aren’t that good.

Some of the features I’m considering adding:

• Memberships — The web site will allow people to join so they can participate in some of these features I’m thinking about.
• OSR News — News postings of new games, supplements, adventures, settings, kickstarters, etc. Members producing such things will be able to post such news items directly to this news section.
• Reviews — Actual reviews of old school, OSR, and other interesting rules light games in stead of links to reviews elsewhere. Any I write will probably be short reviews (similar to the “capsule reviews” in the The Space Gamer magazine in the 1980s), but the review section will be open to RetroRoleplaying site members who wish to write reviews.
• Downloads — A download area where free games can be downloaded. Site membership will probably not be required.
• Forum — The forum will use bbpress upgraded with all the nice Dev4Press addons to turn it into a powerful and much more usable modern message board. The prime rules will be no personal attacks and no real world politics of any type.
• Special Interest Groups — Members will be able to create their own SIGs with a forum, document storage, and more. These can be used to discuss specific games, run play by post games, etc.
• Wiki — An easy way to extend the site without having to master complex software.

Naturally, as this site is currently a one-person show, most of these ideas will not turn into reality overnight. Some may not actually happen as not everything I consider a neat idea turns out to be practical or truly useful.

Stay turned for future developments.

I have recently discovered Brian Mathers’ blog, The Gnomish Embassy. Brain’s blog has a large number of posts for Microlite20 in general although his Microlite20 seems to focus on Microlite74 and Microlite5e. Here is a small sample of his Microlite20/74/5e posts:

• M74 – Ratfolk: A Player Race for Microlite74
• M74 – Minotaur: A Player Race for Microlite74
• M20: Rogue Talents
• Microlite5e: Fighter Talents
• Microlite5e: Warlock

The Gnomish Embassy also features well-developed characters and monsters for these (and many other games). It is one of the most interesting and useful blogs I’ve discovered this year. I don’t know how I’ve missed it before.