Visitors on the Glory Road

ACKNOWELDEGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

ORIGINS

A BRIEF DISCLAIMER

This game system is not intended to be used in a campaign based on the novel _Glory Road_ by the late master of speculative fiction, Robert Anson Heinlein, nor is it an attempt to simulate or exploit that novel or any other particular work of fiction. The game and the novel share as a common thread, the long road to adventure, and back, that is the feature of so much heroic and picaresque literature, they are not otherwise related. However, in gratitude for the wonderful novels and short stories that fed my imagination through several rereadings of every one of his books, this game system is respectfully dedicated to the memory of Robert A. Heinlein, the greatest story-teller I have ever experienced.

As part of this dedication, I would like to urge my readers to give blood, a practice that Robert Heinlein always encouraged and that would please him mightily, if he could see it.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Do not expect me to be the final authority on these rules. I had not been running them for a month when Peter Price became the greatest expert on the rules. In recent years, as Pete succumbed to the temptations of Real Life, he has been succeeded by Scott Coady and Jack Byrne, with Bruce Fowler as the keeper of precedent. If a rule was interpreted in a certain way in June of 1986, Bruce will KNOW that it was and he will be certain that it should be interpreted that way in 2086. It CAN be mildly annoying but any other way lies chaos.

At this point, I should acknowledge all of those who have participated in the creation of the game: The legendary John Leyland, my first GM, for getting me ‘hooked’ on gaming at an SF club Halloween party in 1977, Simon Rich, a truly fine DM in his AD&D (tm) campaign, for being my first gaming partner and helping refine my idea of how to GM, Rick Hall for his cheerful manner and for pointing out problems in the rules. Bruce Feist for showing me some very useful ideas on several key issues and for years of insane and brilliant play and GM work. Gay Banks, Jenny Hines and Doug Banks for being my first gaming family; The guy we called "C&S" for insisting to us that there COULD be a system that wasn't D&D; Rick Corey , Mark Miller, Helen Rosenberg, Chuck Landau and the late Arthur Downs for undergoing the madness of my earliest attempt at writing new rules. Many Yalies for playing during their time in New Haven, Dr. Dominick Mariano for his introducing us to "Vanar Dangeskold, ranger hero of the northern forest, who treacherously slew a herald under the sacred flag of truce." (of course, the herald WAS a Demon) We enjoyed playing with John Berlin and his Yale classmates. Jim Altham for playing with us although it certainly shocked his legal secretary and for financial backing for an early attempt to publish a first edition. Andy Gister for playing with us for many years and for running the first Glory Road campaign away from my personal supervision and the first long-running campaign with a GM other than me. The late Charlie Whitley, artist and wit, for his many contributions to the game; Gay, Jenny, Helen, Allissa Clough, Janice Levy, Sandy, Joanne Fry, Joan Carella, Velmut, Kelly, Arwen, Lee Baird and the other ladies for bringing a touch of class to what otherwise might have been a vulgar brawl. Ed Rauh, gamer, coder and critic. To the kid, Bill, known to us mainly as Lord Butterfly, may he rest in peace. To the guy who always named his characters ‘Stone Arrow’, for a brief period he served as a bad example. To Bill and Crazy George and your fascinating characters during your visit to the game that one summer. To Andy, Art and Bob, Brian and Walter and all the others who have become first names, faces and voices to me but whose last names are gone. The rest of you, the players in New Haven or at Dexcon or Origins or MITSiGs or ConCon, are not forgotten. Your real names are lost to me but I remember the games, the characters and how you hung with me through problems in the rules or in my GM style. To Andrew Dodge, who spread the game. To the several dozen people who have played the game in New York City and in Maine and England without my immediate participation. Among these, special thanks to those who reported how the games went and the problems that came up.

I want to especially thank our current core group, without whose assistance the new edition would have no chance to see the light of day. Jack Byrne, our current GM, always one to challenge my basic assumptions, Chris Chevalier who has given editorial and layout assistance, CJ Carella, noted game designer, author and and scenario creator who plays with us and been our GM on occasion and shared his thinking, Bruce Fowler, who knows what the rule HAS BEEN, always vital, Bryan Greene who plays whenever he isn’t married, Scott Coady, although he is working evenings, he is always in touch and his ideas are always with us. And Joanne Fry, who has brought a bit of beautiful madness to almost every session in which she has been involved. "It's only an island from the water."

SnowBall Reich, who watched almost every session, wagging her tail and hoping for goodies, from 1980 thru 1995 is gone and missed by us all. Feather Reich, who walks on our table today, is part of our gaming experience.

To all of you, may the road rise up to meet you.

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INTRODUCTION

Officially, this is the second edition of the game. However, we have been playing the game for a long time and the two printed versions are each the result of years of play, talk, experimentation and negotiation between and among a large group of gamers. The changes from the first edition are of two kinds. First of all, I have changed some of the rules. In more cases, it has been pointed out that a certain section of the rules is clear only to an experienced player of the game, and not always to him, or her. In those cases, I have attempted to clarify, even at the expense of brevity. In other areas, I have tried for more brevity. These rules are intended primarily to be played, not to be read. A copy of software that I developed to assist in creating characters and running the game will be available with the game rules. A more elaborate and better system, created by Ed Rauh is not immediately available, through no fault of Ed’s. Peter Price did the groundwork for both these programs with his first version. In the first edition, I pointed out that we had been playing some version of these rules for almost ten years. Now, it has been more like twenty. We are far past the stage of play-testing , yet every session brings its questions about how the rules apply. While I will not guarantee to answer all questions correctly, I will attempt to answer any questions sent to me at

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Please include a return email address. I will try to consult the other experts on GLORY ROAD, especially Scott, Jack and Memory Bruce but I will give some sort of answer as fast as I can. These are rules for fantasy roleplaying. If you want to try modifying them for other venues, people have done so fairly successfully and I can tell you some of their experiences. We did run a game set in nineteenth century Tejas with very little in the way of fantasy and it worked out OK. However, I have never been entirely satisfied with the way these rules have handled the use of firearms. There are no rules for firearms in the first edition and I have decided not to put them in here, either. I would be extremely happy to forward a rough outline of how we handled the weapons in our Tejas campaign to anyone who writes for them. However, they will be in unfinished form. A supplement may be in the works that handles it better but I have no plans to write it and Scott, who probably has the best chance of doing it, doesn’t have the time. Maybe YOU should write it; we would be glad to help.

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The links on the left-hand side of the page will take you other places on the Road.

The Road Jounal is the "New York Times" or maybe "the National Enquirer" of the Glory Road game. We will use it to tell you about the various products we will be distributing, some for free and some for sale. It will have game openings and news about Glory Road campaigns, from the point of view of players and GMs. As with any good newspaper, or bad one, it has a place for "letters to the editor," a forum link that lets us all discuss gaming. The page will also feature some well-writen articles from the point of view of the characters. Items intended for this page should be submitted to me at

This page is never complete and will always change but is worth looking at now.

The Featured Character is the character sheet, history and, if possible, a picture of a Player-Character or important NPC with input from the player or GM involved. Items intended for this page should be submitted to me at This page is ready for use and has two characters featured at present.

Characters: The basics of creating characters are followed by our skills system, our older levels system, and an explanation of how we handle tasks. this page is far from complete but some useful information is already there.

Combat: No page yet exists for this vital part of our game. It is coming soon.

Glory Road Spells are another part of the game rules. This is a multi-page section with internal links. The section will never be completed as new spells are invented by characters fairly often. However, these pages ARE ready for use.

Encounters are the rules for who and WHAT your character might meet in a Glory Road adventure. This page is not really much use yet.

The Ice River Valley page is a map and the start of the campaign background for the current campaign that I am running in New Haven and will be running soon online. At some point, this page may be replaced by a page about a later campaign, or another page may be added about another campaign.

The Golden Trident Inn is the place where the Player Characters have been hanging out when in the town of Hengst's Landing in that campaign.

It is also the place where I have put our chat room, where we will play our online games.

OTHER SITES

The link marked ShadesofGrey is to a rather neat website for a modern, magic mercenary RPG. It is not part of the Glory Road site but it is certainly fun.

The link marked Pendragon is to a midieval fantasy play by email game that looks intersting.

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ORIGINS:

I first decided to write these rules out of dissatisfaction with the AD&D (tm) rules when I was running a campaign in the late seventies. That is not to imply that AD&D is not a great game. Literally millions of players sit down to ‘go at’ an AD&D game every evening; there is not a doubt that it is a satisfactory, even wonderful, system for many players and, truth to tell, I AM SOMETIMES ONE OF THEM. Any time Simon Rich wants to run his campaign, which is unfortunately seldom, I am right there to play, even if he hasn’t cooked a wonderful meal. Even if the rules were bad, WHICH THEY ARE NOT, the most important thing about a session of gaming is the company of good people. The second most important thing is a fine GM or, in the case of AD&D (tm), Dungeon Master. The third thing is a good scenario or well-realized longer campaign. Only after those things are settled does the question of system arise. A good system DOES make it easier to develop a good campaign and to be a good GM, however, so it is never far from ones mind. I have played in good sessions of RuneQuest (tm), Gurps (tm), Traveler (tm) (although we always wind up being #$%^$#^ space pirates), Witchcraft (tm), UniSystem (tm) and even Bunnies & Burrows (tm) among others.

I will try to describe in the next few paragraphs why I developed my own system and the reasons for the choices that I made in a few instances. In the rules themselves, I will mention on occasion the reasons for specific choices.

My first problem with the older rules was in the engine for modeling combat. In the earliest games, it was always pretty clear that most blows struck the target but that armor warded off many. The To-Hit rules referred primarily to penetration of armor rather than striking the target. The origins of early combat systems seemed to be in war-gaming, where weapons were compared to armor and casualties assigned. In my personal experience in the martial arts, in SCA-type fighting and in entirely too much personal combat, the secret of surviving a blow is not to let it hit. Indeed, an explanation given for AD&D hit points is that part of ones HP comes from various abilities not to be hit that accumulate with experience, luck and becoming a hero. I felt that the best way to model that was directly, to have the blow never strike the target. I therefore devised the concept of Target Class or TC that is central to this game. TC is the target’s susceptibility to being hit. It starts out as a factor of size (which is bad for you) and agility and improves (decreases) as the character gains in combat experience. Unlike skill-based dodges and parries, it does not require an extra die roll but it still reflects the impact of the character’s defensive skills on combat. While special dodges and parries are allowed and mechanisms given to handle them, ordinary ducking and dodging and weapon blocking are subsumed into TC, allowing for speed of play. If we were trying for strict realism, gains in TC would not help against missile weapons, only size and movement (agility) would count. It would also be impossible to use the character’s full TC improvement against a foe coming in at an angle or from behind. In hand-to-hand combat, a large man, if his arms were long, would actually be HARDER to hit. We give everyone their full TC versus missiles; we have improved the lethality of missiles far beyond what earlier games allowed, no use making this game into _Snipers and Victims_. We make TC adjustments for dealing with second attacks and rear attacks while aware (not all that major) or while unaware (extreme). We don’t try to figure out whether a character has long arms. We try for some detail, we are not fanatics. Ironically, long after I had devised the Glory Road rules, I read an article that that the Castles & Crusades Society games that preceded the development of D&D sometimes used rules that involved a concept very much like TC but that the concept didn’t survive into the printed rules.

If a blow strikes, armor can be extremely important in staying alive. Armor absorbs some or all of the weapon impact and can be a real life-saver. However, armor may have a cost in agility. If ones armor is too heavy, one becomes an easy target. Also, circumstances alter what armor would be most effective. Therefore, the characters have meaningful and different options. There is no best armor for all characters and all possible circumstances. Fatigue due to wearing armor can be a factor as well but characters in heavy armor tend to ride up to the point that they must move for short distances on foot, or they actually ride into combat. In the short distances they usually travel on foot, the characters can usually stay pretty fresh. When circumstance does dictate long overland travel on foot, fatigue can become very important. None of the armor in my rules is equivalent to the tournament armor of the late Middle Ages. While this armor would provide excellent protection, it would lead to IMMEDIATE fatigue problems and its weight would be such that the agility penalty would be very large. That is fine in a tourney where safety first is a good motto but not on an adventure where a character would be expected to keep up and be able to engage an enemy at the end of a walk of a few hundred yard or several miles. Another thing that I noticed in the older rules was that bigger foes didn’t hit as hard as would seem likely. Since the character’s main protection was the number of HP that he or she had attained, this made some sense. It would be silly to have a Giant usually slay a great hero with one blow but that is what would happen if the Giant were given the kind of damage that a Giant might be imagined to have. In our rules, a Giant might well kill a great hero with one blow but that blow would have to CONNECT. The hero’s TC and the ineptitude of many Giants would keep that from happening all that often and, in my opinion, it would do a great deal to enhance visualization of the combat. I will give a quick pair of examples:

GM#1: The huge Ogre swings his massive club at you, he hits, you take nine hits of damage. The Player (to himself) I had fifty-four HP, now I have forty-five, got to kill that Ogre pretty quick now or I will be seriously inconvenienced.

GM#2: The huge Ogre swings his massive club at you, he barely misses. The Player (to himself) One blow from that toaster-oven-on-a-stick will probably kill me, certainly put me down, I better kill him now or get help or run like mad.

I think that the second situation is more vital and more entertaining. The basic problem of subsuming luck and skill into HP is that it does not aid visualization. Of course, it is still possible to be creative and visualize but it is harder when a blow may have merely fatigued you or cut down a bit on your luck or actually struck you a glancing blow. In the Glory Road game, a blow that takes away hit points has connected, injured you through your armor and you are bleeding or bruised or burned or whatever. It is possible when playing a hard- bitten macho type, to minimize ones response to this sort of thing and the practical implications of being wounded are spelled out in the rules, but a certain amount of reaction would be expected from most characters. It is easier to react when you know, within broad outlines, what has happened to you. That has been my goal. Giving the player the kind of information that his character would have, aiding the GM in creating a visceral experience. This has led to an emphasis on consistency and an avoidance of extreme abstraction. At the same time, there is no claim herein to realism in any strict construction of the term. Consistency and a broad range of real and interesting choices are the best goals that I can think of for a roleplaying game and I have tried to provide them here.

Long ago, I realized that the system that I would like would make it a good idea to react in a common sense way and to react differently to different situations. I think that I have realized a fair approximation of that goal.

Defining a character by a set of characteristics or attributes is a common, indeed almost universal, feature of roleplaying games. What attributes to use and how to arrive at them are a set of problems vital to game design. Fewer attributes certainly make the game simpler and simpler, all things being equal, is better. It is also true that we cannot model a person with numerical attributes, no matter how many we use. However, I created a system that needs several inter-related attributes to run it effectively. This means that one character can rarely be truly superior to another in all of the attributes and is even unlikely to be so in most of them. Varied strengths and weaknesses make the characters more interesting. The games that feature choosing ones own attributes, given a point total with which to work, are usually good games in other respects and that is a vote in favor of doing it that way. The design of the character is an interesting sub-game in itself, another point in its favor. I, on the other hand, had always had the idea that attributes should be related to other attributes and that would be a great difficulty for using the ‘design your own character’ option. Also, as you will see, some attributes are not unmixed blessings. ‘Size’, for instance, is primarily useful during character creation. It makes for greater ‘Strength’ and more ‘Hit Points’. After the character is set up, it would be usually better to be smaller. Sure, a big character can sometimes reach a shelf that is out of other character’s reach. However, his or her ‘TC’ is higher and that can be fatal. Since the first four attributes influence the other six, there is little way to play 'design your own' character in Glory Road. However, with computer generation, we can play ‘choose your own character’ without spending hours rolling dice and with the skill system that allows for improvements in selected attributes, we can still have that fun period of character creation. I have tried to follow several guidelines in choosing the modifications that make this edition different from the first. I have observed, first of all the way the rules WORK in my game. Those rules that needed changing in the first edition have already been modified, some several times, in the intervening years. This book is what has resulted. The reaction of my players to the rules has also been noted. In some instances, rules that seemed, TO ME, to work very well caused great agitation and annoyance among my players. I have worked on changing those rules just as the ones that obviously had mechanical problems. I have also been listening in on the community of roleplaying gamers. From the old days on "Alarms and Excursions," Lee Gold’s APA forum for gamers, to recent times on rec.games.rpg.misc I have tried to feel the ‘pulse’ of the people who take gaming seriously. I have not always followed the clear trends in the field but I have listened and, I hope, learned. I have tried to simplify wherever possible without compromising the goal of having concrete-seeming events and meaningful options. I have tried to use a few general systems of event resolution but I have not unified all tasks into one system, although there are many who find that desirable. A Glory Road GM can handle some event decisions without using dice. However, we do use random rolls fairly often. Basically, I have retained the ‘attack’ roll where one tries to roll high on a twenty sided die (attempting to reach a total of 21 or better with various modifiers and the ‘target’ adding its TC) and the ‘task’ roll where one tries to roll low on percentile dice against ones skill and attribute score, getting multiple attempts, depending on the difficulty of the task, as set by the GM.. All the event handlers that involve dice are of one of these two ‘uber’-systems. Since people do not really ‘try’ to influence their dice and cannot do so even if they do try, this seems to me to be less of a problem than some people think. The task rolls could be converted to attack rolls or vice versa but I cannot see any benefit to be gained and none of my players have ever had a problem with the two different systems within our system. Go to the Top of the Page