Rat on a Stick
To many people, Skerples' Rat on a Stick is the original GLOG: the first thing to rise from Goblin Punch's weird primordial game-soup.Overview
- Roll-under System
- Standard Stats + Secondaries (Attack, Defense, Movement, Stealth)
- 4-template classes
- Roll under your attack + (10 - the target's defense) to hit
- 1d50 race table of mostly animal-lings, each with 1 advantage and 1 disadvantage
- Feudalistic Setting
Rat on a Stick's main problem is the combat system: instead of a faster d20 against AC, it has math, the bane of my existence. Rolling under a stat + (10 - another stat) for each attack is cumbersome and hard to explain.
The race table is one of the best parts of the system, and easily pulled out and used in a different hack.
I rate Rat on a Stick 3/5
Owlbear Stew
Owlbear Stew, created by Meandering Banter, is a good example of what I think of as a second-generation hack (because I'm pretentious): it obviously shares most of its words-DNA with Rat on a Stick, but adds new secondary rules and character creation options.Overview
- Roll-under System
- Standard Stats + Secondaries (Melee, Ranged, Defense)
- 4-template classes
- 2d8 race table of traditional races
- No actual combat rules - just unexplained stats (melee, ranged, defense)
- Gambits - have something worse happen on a miss to do something good on a hit
- Many extra and optional rules: diseases, mindsets (situational bonuses, such as Angry - reroll a failed initiative check if you immediately charge), trauma and mental breakdowns, karma (dying in a good way and doing good deeds gives you a bonus for your next character)
- Many more classes, some even having subclasses
Owlbear Stew is less like stew and more like a box of (sometimes exploding) chocolate: it's less a complete system, and more a load of mechanics to take things from.
If you plan to take mechanics, I'd recommend Mindsets: if you give them to your players at character creation, they're a really easy way to add some character differentiation (along with a small personality trait). Gambits are also very common in later GLOG hacks.
I rate Owlbear Stew 2/5
Moonhop
To be honest, I'm not sure if this is more of a GLOG hack or an ItO hack. Either way, it is a very interesting game, with mechanics far from more conventional GLOG hacks.Overview
- Roll-under System
- 3 stats - STR, DEX, CHA
- No classes - combination of a branching race table and branching background table
- Initiative is a DEX check: players roll one every turn
- Attacks always hit, Gambits based off STR checks
- GLOG magic system based around components
Moonhop is probably the easiest of these hacks to run at the table: between its short size and easy character creation, players can read it and prepare for the game in minutes. The backgrounds also show a strange setting, with options from medieval squires to starship engineers.
Unlike Owlbear Stew, Moonhop has few extra rules that could be taken - this helps the book be half the length, despite its large text.
I rate Moonhop 4/5
DIE TRYING
DIE TRYING is a 2nd edition of Owlbear Stew, with an expansive classless character creation system.Overview
- Roll-under System
- Standard Stats + Secondaries (Melee, Ranged, Defense)
- 2d8 race table of traditional races
- More organized than Owlbear Stew
- No classes: roll 3 times on a nested 2d20 table
- Less extra rules than Owlbear Stew
DIE TRYING has one of the longest, most complex character creation system in any OSR game I've ever seen. While many people will certainly have a problem with this, I find it excellent. Outside of that, it stays very similar to Owlbear Stew.
The improved organization when compared to Owlbear Stew is very noticeable. As well as the better organization, it's also 10 pages shorter than Owlbear Stew. This does remove many of the interesting extra rules found in Owlbear Stew, but they can easily be picked out of that game and placed in DIE TRYING. (I also like it's name the most.)
I rate DIE TRYING 4/5
Oh my, two reviews at once! You make an excellent point, that picking houserules out of Owlbear Stew and adding them to DT is perfectly reasonable (and something I often do), and I will eventually move them all across. Perhaps I should just make a shared document of "Optional Mechanics" that applies to both systems.
ReplyDeleteWould an explanation of the full combat system improve Owlbear Stew beyond 2/5? What is it particularly lacking? What would, in your opinion, bring DT to 5/5??? Thanks for doing this btw!
The issue with OS was the lack of combat system: while it’s easy to bolt one on, the game seems less complete without one.
DeleteAlong with that, splitting the rules into before and after the classes makes the book harder to read. DT also has this problem, but the character-creation table takes up only 5 pages, instead of more than 20.
I have been trying for hours to say what I think is missing from DIE TRYING.
The only 2 things I think are 5/5 are Veins of the Earth and LANCER. The only thing missing from DT is a setting, but OSR games usually don't have settings, so it seems kind of unfair to say that.
I have gone too deep into my own mind and confused myself.
This was a helpful post. I linked to it earlier this week. Still not sure I understand GLOG....one day!
ReplyDeleteHow do you feel about using a single button press to roll a character, as in Die Trying?
ReplyDeletePersonally I love how fast it is, because if a player dies, rolling up a new character is just a matter of clicking once and writing down the details on an index card or blank character sheet. Some people might prefer the crunchy, tactile process of rolling dice to build a character but that limits the potential complexity of the chargen process.
I absolutely love the automated character creation - I would've brought it up in the article, but I hadn't noticed it at the time.
DeleteHowever, I think automated chargen like that is really only a bonus to games like Die Trying, where you have many, many options that would be rolled at character creation. In a standard GLOG hack, where you have Stats, Race, Class, and Equipment as your full set of options, the speed is outweighed by the joy of "dice go clicky clicky i write number".
Hiya! There is also the "save character" button (which I think I have fixed about 9 times) but writing it down is just as good.
DeleteI also try and keep character creation as streamlined and self-explanatory as possible if I am going for an auto-gen system. It also improves my coding style! I may have gone a bit overboard with Finders Keepers (not on this list) but I've still tried to keep that as a goal: it should be as easy to make a character *without* the generator as it is with one.