The Inside Scoop on Gaming

For those who know the name, Ysgarth is associated with the early days of roleplaying and with the discovery that there was more to roleplaying than chopping up monsters for experience. When the rules first started appearing in a series of articles in Alarums and Excursions in 1978 they opened a lot of eyes. It was one of the first systems to combine point-based character generation with purchased skills, while still preserving some of the high-fantsy flavor of Dungeons and Dragons, a perfect next step for maturing D&D fans.

Like many of the interesting early RPGs, Ysgarth never took off as a great commercial success, but unlike so many that fell by the wayside, it never went away. Instead it went underground and became a cult phenomenon, with xeroxed copies of the rules circulating in game clubs, and news of new releases spread by word of mouth. Aside from a brief sales renaissance in 1981 and 1982 spurred by a relatively successful series of Ysgarth adventure modules which were D&D compatible<, sales of the game remained modest and it was kept in print through a series of new editions, more or less as a hobby of the author. Possibly because of the small scale of the production, Ysgarth grew and changed like no other RPG I know of. Every few years a new edition would appear and with each edition the setting material was more developed and the mechanics had changed and evolved in radical ways. Sometimes the changes were for the better, sometimes they were for the ! worse, and sometimes they were just too much of a good thing. Playing Ysgarth over the years has been like an adventure in itself

One of the interesting things about Ysgarth is that it is enormously self-indulgent. It's David Nalle's game, and to a large extent it represents what he is taken with at the time. Although I know from personal experience that the game is extensively playtested by many different groups and types of gamers, the end result has an unmistakable stamp of authorship. This has never been more true than in the recent 6th Edition rules. The only way to describe these rules is as exhaustive. In fact, reading them is exhausting. In 100 or so pages they manage to cram in every system and every mechanic you need to play, plus two or more variant versions of every major rule. It is more like three or four different RPG systems combined together into one book. For every standard rule there is a basic variant and an advanced variant, and you can mix and match different versions of the rules to customize the game to the way you want to play.

This is a terrible, wonderful way to write a roleplaying game. The presentation of the material is absolutely brilliant, with the main text containing the standard rules and with the variant rules in sidebars highlighted with clever character icons linked to each type of variant to identify and explain it. You couldn't arrange this material much better (though an exhaustive index would also help). The problem is that it's overwhelming. It took me days to read through the book and figure out exactly how I'd want to play the system, and I'm pretty experienced. For a novice roleplayer or even your average player who just wants to create a character I have visions of a padded cell and a drool bucket. Admittedly, you can just go straight through the standard version of the rules and use them as written, but the moment you look at a sidebar you're doomed, because you begin to see all the interesting ways the basic ideas of the game could be warped and twisted to fit particula! r playing styles. It's too much power to put in the hands of beginners or even of average players, but it may be one of the greatest RPG mechanics reference books every written.

Mechanically, although the game has changed from earlier editions, it's still basically Ysgarth. The emphasis is very much on character development and the place of the character in his world. Character creation is by point allocation. Skills are purchased from a fund of skill points and improve with training. Combat is quick, somewhat cinematic, but rather deadly. Magic is intricate, arcane and very believable. The system puts most of the control of how the character is developed in the hands of the player, except for some logical guidelines based on background and the world, designed to encourage realistic diversification of character abilities. The core of the rules is very simple and could be summed up in a few pages. Making your character is serious work, and requires a bit of thought, but once the character is made the actual play of the game is pretty simple. While Ysgarth is not mechanically complex, it is loaded with information which players have to ! process to play effectively. You can learn the actual rules in 10 minutes, but may spend weeks getting to understand the relationships between skills and how to use various combat tactics. This can be intimidating to many players, because it gives them so much to work with and puts much more decision-making responsibility on their shoulders than most other RPGs, but ultimately the result should be that it gives those players more opportunity to be creative and more material to work with in developing their characters.

Some of the specific systems are worth noting for their elegance. The combat system is based around a truly unique concept, combining limited dice rolling with a system where poorly placed blows are located by the choice of the defending player. When a player rolls to hit he can achieve several levels of success. At the higher levels he picks the location he wanted, but at the lower levels the opposing player gets to choose where the blow actualy lands. It's a unique idea and hard to explain here, but the result is that it uses player choice to produce a result which seems like random chance, and thereby reduces the true randomness of the system. The section on magic in society is also extraordinary, and on the whole the magic system makes Ars Magica look anemic. The development of magic as a part of the world and as an experession of art and skill for the characters in Ysgarth is a step beyond any other system I know of.

The world background of Ysgarth is eclectic. It combines medieval and ancient elements with a particular emphasis on the social and economic structure of society. The 6th Edition does not include the entire world background, but it does feature extensive historical material and also a very strong section on character background and how characters fit in the world. In a number of ways Ysgarth makes an extra effort to immerse players in the game world by making background characters substantial and realistic and handling many aspects of play through social and situational constraints rather than simple mechanics. When you're told you can't learn a new spell because you are illiterate and your master lived in a cave and only knew 3 spells you get a sudden understanding of where your character fits in the world - much more so than if the system were to just tell you that certain spells aren't allowed for your character. It also offers an interesting take on how ! polytheism would function in a sophisticated and culturally diverse environment. The setting is great fun to play, but it is more of a simulation of the universals of how people interract and how societies work than it is of the Middle Ages as they really were. It uses a medieval framework, but ultimately puts the focus on people and how they live with each other. The book makes the point again and again that Ysgarth is a game about people and their lives, which is a refreshing change from the tendancy to reduce characters to numbers and objectives.

The 6th Edition of Ysgarth comes from a grand tradition, but unlike some of the earlier editions (I still run into people who are playing with the 1981 version of the rules) it isn't a game for beginners and it certainly isn't a game for everyone. It makes the most sense to me as a resource for experienced gamemasters. I don't think I'd let my players any where near it, but I've already updated my campaign with many of the mechanics and keep the book in my briefcase for reference. I think that any gamemaster who is serious about making his games a richer experience for the players should take the trouble to seek Ysgarth out.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Ysgarth 6th Edition
Author: David Nalle Category: game Company/Publisher: Ragnarok Press Cost: $12 Page count: 104 Capsule Review by Alan Masefield on 04/08/98. Genre tags: none	For those who know the name, Ysgarth is associated with the early days of roleplaying and with the discovery that there was more to roleplaying than chopping up monsters for experience. When the rules first started appearing in a series of articles in Alarums and Excursions in 1978 they opened a lot of eyes. It was one of the first systems to combine point-based character generation with purchased skills, while still preserving some of the high-fantsy flavor of Dungeons and Dragons, a perfect next step for maturing D&D fans. Like many of the interesting early RPGs, Ysgarth never took off as a great commercial success, but unlike so many that fell by the wayside, it never went away. Instead it went underground and became a cult phenomenon, with xeroxed copies of the rules circulating in game clubs, and news of new releases spread by word of mouth. Aside from a brief sales renaissance in 1981 and 1982 spurred by a relatively successful series of Ysgarth adventure modules which were D&D compatible<, sales of the game remained modest and it was kept in print through a series of new editions, more or less as a hobby of the author. Possibly because of the small scale of the production, Ysgarth grew and changed like no other RPG I know of. Every few years a new edition would appear and with each edition the setting material was more developed and the mechanics had changed and evolved in radical ways. Sometimes the changes were for the better, sometimes they were for the ! worse, and sometimes they were just too much of a good thing. Playing Ysgarth over the years has been like an adventure in itself One of the interesting things about Ysgarth is that it is enormously self-indulgent. It's David Nalle's game, and to a large extent it represents what he is taken with at the time. Although I know from personal experience that the game is extensively playtested by many different groups and types of gamers, the end result has an unmistakable stamp of authorship. This has never been more true than in the recent 6th Edition rules. The only way to describe these rules is as exhaustive. In fact, reading them is exhausting. In 100 or so pages they manage to cram in every system and every mechanic you need to play, plus two or more variant versions of every major rule. It is more like three or four different RPG systems combined together into one book. For every standard rule there is a basic variant and an advanced variant, and you can mix and match different versions of the rules to customize the game to the way you want to play. This is a terrible, wonderful way to write a roleplaying game. The presentation of the material is absolutely brilliant, with the main text containing the standard rules and with the variant rules in sidebars highlighted with clever character icons linked to each type of variant to identify and explain it. You couldn't arrange this material much better (though an exhaustive index would also help). The problem is that it's overwhelming. It took me days to read through the book and figure out exactly how I'd want to play the system, and I'm pretty experienced. For a novice roleplayer or even your average player who just wants to create a character I have visions of a padded cell and a drool bucket. Admittedly, you can just go straight through the standard version of the rules and use them as written, but the moment you look at a sidebar you're doomed, because you begin to see all the interesting ways the basic ideas of the game could be warped and twisted to fit particula! r playing styles. It's too much power to put in the hands of beginners or even of average players, but it may be one of the greatest RPG mechanics reference books every written. Mechanically, although the game has changed from earlier editions, it's still basically Ysgarth. The emphasis is very much on character development and the place of the character in his world. Character creation is by point allocation. Skills are purchased from a fund of skill points and improve with training. Combat is quick, somewhat cinematic, but rather deadly. Magic is intricate, arcane and very believable. The system puts most of the control of how the character is developed in the hands of the player, except for some logical guidelines based on background and the world, designed to encourage realistic diversification of character abilities. The core of the rules is very simple and could be summed up in a few pages. Making your character is serious work, and requires a bit of thought, but once the character is made the actual play of the game is pretty simple. While Ysgarth is not mechanically complex, it is loaded with information which players have to ! process to play effectively. You can learn the actual rules in 10 minutes, but may spend weeks getting to understand the relationships between skills and how to use various combat tactics. This can be intimidating to many players, because it gives them so much to work with and puts much more decision-making responsibility on their shoulders than most other RPGs, but ultimately the result should be that it gives those players more opportunity to be creative and more material to work with in developing their characters. Some of the specific systems are worth noting for their elegance. The combat system is based around a truly unique concept, combining limited dice rolling with a system where poorly placed blows are located by the choice of the defending player. When a player rolls to hit he can achieve several levels of success. At the higher levels he picks the location he wanted, but at the lower levels the opposing player gets to choose where the blow actualy lands. It's a unique idea and hard to explain here, but the result is that it uses player choice to produce a result which seems like random chance, and thereby reduces the true randomness of the system. The section on magic in society is also extraordinary, and on the whole the magic system makes Ars Magica look anemic. The development of magic as a part of the world and as an experession of art and skill for the characters in Ysgarth is a step beyond any other system I know of. The world background of Ysgarth is eclectic. It combines medieval and ancient elements with a particular emphasis on the social and economic structure of society. The 6th Edition does not include the entire world background, but it does feature extensive historical material and also a very strong section on character background and how characters fit in the world. In a number of ways Ysgarth makes an extra effort to immerse players in the game world by making background characters substantial and realistic and handling many aspects of play through social and situational constraints rather than simple mechanics. When you're told you can't learn a new spell because you are illiterate and your master lived in a cave and only knew 3 spells you get a sudden understanding of where your character fits in the world - much more so than if the system were to just tell you that certain spells aren't allowed for your character. It also offers an interesting take on how ! polytheism would function in a sophisticated and culturally diverse environment. The setting is great fun to play, but it is more of a simulation of the universals of how people interract and how societies work than it is of the Middle Ages as they really were. It uses a medieval framework, but ultimately puts the focus on people and how they live with each other. The book makes the point again and again that Ysgarth is a game about people and their lives, which is a refreshing change from the tendancy to reduce characters to numbers and objectives. The 6th Edition of Ysgarth comes from a grand tradition, but unlike some of the earlier editions (I still run into people who are playing with the 1981 version of the rules) it isn't a game for beginners and it certainly isn't a game for everyone. It makes the most sense to me as a resource for experienced gamemasters. I don't think I'd let my players any where near it, but I've already updated my campaign with many of the mechanics and keep the book in my briefcase for reference. I think that any gamemaster who is serious about making his games a richer experience for the players should take the trouble to seek Ysgarth out. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Ysgarth 6th Edition