Good morning everyone. It feels nice writing something that isn’t a play report. This week, I am going to start a series of letters going through The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg by Greg Svenson et al. The book is divided into eight parts: history, general DM advice, the dungeons of Tonisborg, game rules, treasure, monsters, spells, and appendices. For the sake of this series, history and advice will be together, the dungeon will be on its own, and the rest, which will be under the umbrella “ZED”, will be together. The parts are presented in the order just given, but I will be working in reverse order. The latter parts of the book are the outlines under the paint put on by the former. In other words, reading the book as presented raises questions which are answered as the reading continues. The layers are removed one by one until you finally get to the rules, and everything else clicks into place at that moment. I would guess it was done like that intentionally, but I would rather point at past letters when giving examples than point to an unreleased future one. It works for reading the book, but not so much for how I want to talk about it.
This week, then, I am reviewing ZED: Tonisborg Edition (ZED meaning Zero Edition Dungeoneering), the dungeoncrawling system included in the book The Lost Dungeons of Tonsiborg, as impressed on me merely by reading through the rules. A full review requires actually playing the system and applying its methods, so this review should be taken with the grain of salt being that I have not personally tested its mettle at the table. This version of ZED is only available in the Tonisborg dungeon book as of the writing of this review, but perhaps, once the last of Kickstarter rewards are delivered in full, a POD option will be released for general purchase. This review will correspond closely with the order of information as it is presented in the book, going section-by-section.
Introduction (and Pre-Intro)
The book gives a general statement about the rules merely being guidelines, and that one should frankenstein it apart and back together as desired to make a fun game experience. There is also a clarification that the rules are a revision to only the dungeoncrawling rules in a previously-released and currently-unavailable product called Champions of ZED by Dan Boggs. Rules for the wilderness are stated to be included in some future product, an Egg of Coot campaign book according to Boggs (Source). The Introduction begins properly with describing ZED as a “fantasy adventure role-playing game” in a time when law and chaos are in a continuous clash for power. It distinguishes itself from other simulacrum games by its intention not to take a snapshot of any game system from a specific point in time, instead focusing on presenting mechanics that reinforce concepts and ideas for its genre that were actually practiced by the original creators before any games systems were published until the conclusion of (many of) their lives. The primary influences are Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, but, as anyone who plays original or retroclone systems is surely aware of, there are ideas from many others that made their way into the rules. Additionally, editorial freedom was maintained in choosing to ignore revisions to some rules from the original minds as well as revising others. What this meant to me as I read it was that Arneson and Gygax would probably not recognize the rules as-written, but, if they watched the action play out, it would be very familiar to them.
Dice, You, and Your Character
Dice
The dice are described in terms that everyone who is already involved in tabletop gaming would understand. One thing to note is that that rules sometimes reference ranges of numbers (i.e. 2-5) rather than always calling them by their dice notation (1d4+1). This explanation is followed by a prompt for the player to consider what role they would like to play in their referee’s world.
Races
ZED has four included playable races: halfling, elf, dwarf, and human. Only the human may be of any class, and the elf is the only non-human who may be a magic-user. Further, all non-humans are prevented from becoming clerics and are limited in the highest level they can achieve in their available classes. This is offset by powerful abilities such as seeing in the dark, boosted saving throw values, various immunities, and special other senses. Players of the original edition of D&D will find familiarity in that elves may gain experience as either a fighter or magic-user, making the decision at the beginning of an adventure, while having access to the abilities of either (with restrictions). There are also some guidelines for playing races not mentioned, including playing monsters using a race-as-class convention.
Classes
Following the races are the classes, as well as an explanation about the name of the classes not being descriptive of exactly how a character should be. A fighter is not pigeon-holed into being a knight in plate armor, rather the class confers certain capabilities that a character can utilize in their own way. The background of a character is given a mention to point out that such a detail may describe some capability of a character that is not covered by the rules. Many games also do this, including AD&D 1E, where the player characters are assumed to have some skills besides those directly related to adventuring. The mechanical application, of course, is left to the Dungeon Master to decide. ZED: Tonisborg gives more ideas for the DM and player to allow characters to become specialized as a campaign progresses, such as creating subclasses and allowing background or secondary skills to develop and improve. Lastly, there is some advice given for DMs who are soured by level caps and ways to work around it. The classes themselves are normal fare, being the fighter, cleric, and magic-user. The cleric stands out to me from other games I have played, since clerics can cast any spell they know and do not have to prepare the spell. The caveat is that, unlike the clerics I know, the ZED cleric does not automatically gain access to new spells. They are similar to magic-users and must learn the spell from a book or scroll to be able to cast it in the future. There are also financial duties that a cleric owes the church, and severe penalties are given for clerics that hoard wealth. The cleric is also where we see a special restriction on experience awards for treasure; experience from treasure is only gained by a cleric if donated or used for religious purposes. The magic-user also has its own quirks. For starters, the amount of time necessary to prepare spells is vague but also apparently very short. Only a few moments to read the scroll or book containing a spell is required to have it available to cast. These few moments must be undisturbed, however, otherwise a magic-user cannot concentrate on the task. There is also an interesting effect that iron has on magic. Rather, the effect is simple, which is a chance for spell casting failure depending on the amount of iron, but the fact that the rule is there is interesting to me. Before you run off and buy a set of bronze armor for your magic-user, though, there is a secondary property associated with spellcasting, which is that the body of a casting magic-user becomes irradiated with energy. Wearing armor of any kind, or even just having very tight-fitting garments, will reflect this energy back into the caster and fry him like an egg. These restrictions and effects are only applicable to the mystical, arcane means of accessing magic. The cleric is safe on this one. Near the end of the magic-user class description, special elven armor is mentioned that can be worn without interfering with the flow of magic, providing an early goal for these characters.
Character Traits and Their Effects
ZED Tonisborg uses the same six ability scores common in D&D and simulacrum games with similar benefits for high and low scores in each. The stat-generation method is unique and can be done with either a pair of d6s or of d10s and generally creates above-average characters. Of course, any standard method may be used instead without issue. The only real issue I have is that the d10 method could potentially generate a stat with a score of 2, yet the ability tables only range from 3 to 18. It’s a small issue anyway, and I’m sure most DMs would give the extra point for free or decide on the spot what the penalty should be. Each character class does gain a benefit specific to each with a high score in their respective prime requisite, and especially intelligence and constitution are useful for every character by granting extra languages and shortened recovery times, respectively, with high scores. I appreciate the description for strength, where the authors say exactly how much weight each point in the ability allows the character to carry, and encumbrance values are given in both coins and pounds but only for this table. The table that immediately follows, “Standard Item Weights”, lists each item in pounds only. It’s a small, minuscule even, peeve, but there definitely would have been room on the table for it. A suggested method for tracking encumbrance on the character sheet follows that, which basically is just a matter of using the weights from the standard weight list and only keeping closer calculations of your character’s remaining encumbrance as you collect items from the adventure.
Saving Throws
After the ability scores are the saving throws. The book explains what saves are and the situations they normally are referenced and rolled, but it also gives them different titles than other games do, at least on the character sheet. There are six saves, and they are called Type I, Type II, Type III, etc. up to Type VI. This is all you find printed on the character sheet, although the book explains what they actually represent. Type I is for life and death situations, II is for poison, III for tests of will, IV for gaze and aura effects (I might call them exposure effects or something like that), V for how quick your reflexes are, and VI for magic in all forms. Although the value of saving throws are related to character level, they do not follow a fully-detailed matrix for each class. Instead, the values are generated by rolling dice, and they are improved as your character gains levels. Unlike D&D, you want your saving throw values in ZED to be high. I also find it interesting the way the phrase “saving throw” is used. It seems to me that a “saving throw” simply means rolling dice to determine an outcome. Consider the following sentence at the end of the “Making Saving Throws” section:
Most Saving Throws will involve either the six Character Traits or the six Saving Throw types…
It then mentions saving throws for when a character falls, as well as saving throws for items, but the phrase is also used in instances I would not have expected it to be used, like when referring to making a morale check.
Experience and Leveling Up
Next we arrive at the section detailing experience and gaining levels. There are four tiers of play, which contain a different range of levels for each class. Each tier confers benefits which apply to all characters of every class and are given in addition to any benefits gained by leveling in their classes. A promotion in tier always adds a fixed amount to saving throws, but there are also benefits that are meant to emulate social progression and what I call “adventure sense”. For example, reaching the third tier of “Superhero” gives characters an imprecise sense for invisible creatures automatically and instantly, like spidey senses. These powers may trivialize some portions of the game, but they occur after those portions become a meaningful or novel obstacle, in my opinion. They are also very easy to adjust. I would probably limit the spidey sense ability to a distance of 1” (yes, ZED measures distance in inches) and with a blind spot directly behind characters, but I would at least try it as-is before doing so. After each tier is described, there is a section with guidelines for granting creatures, monsters, classes for individuals of high exception, such as “the great prince of orcs” as the book suggests. Following that are the two tables for cleric and magic-user spellcasting ability for each level 1 to 20. Curiously, by the time 20th level is reached, a cleric actually has one more spell than an equivalent level magic-user, although a magic-user has access to an additional spell level that a cleric does not. As is the norm in these games, the ability to cast more spells does not automatically grant any additional spells to cast. The book does say at this moment that a cleric may obtain new spells automatically, but I would personally lean toward the acquisition method from the class description, that new spells must be taught by another religious figure or learned from some other source. Besides that, the spell lists contain nothing revolutionary, which is a good thing to me, because that means there is plenty of room for players to brew up their own spells through research.
After the information for spellcasting characters, we come to experience points, including how to award them and how many each class needs to advance at each level. The first source of experience is from “winning prizes”, or finding magic items. There is a concise table which explains how much XP to award for each type of magical item, although some listings simply have ranges, leaving it up to the DM to decide where within that range a specific item should belong. The book notes that XP awarded from a prize is only earned once, and that selling the prize later will net no experience whatsoever. That’s important, because acquiring loot is part of the second method for gaining experience points, which comes at a rate not exceeding 1 XP per 10 GP recovered. It is not merely granted either, as that gold piece value must be spent on class related activities. The example given in the rules is a character who recovers 500 gold pieces. The character can spend 50 of it to gain 50 XP; spending more will not net any further XP, but, of course, there may be in-game benefits for doing so, as determined by the DM. It is also suggested that players may simply deduct 10% of their treasure and convert it into XP if deciding how to actually spend it is not fun. The final means of gaining experience is by killing monsters. Characters gain XP equal to the hit points of the slain monster, nice and simple. There’s a special section about magic-users gaining XP by casting a new spell for the first time, as well as calculating XP for hirelings and the impact that prime requisites have on XP required to advance in level. Yes, ZED does not grant an adjustment to the actual XP values earned, instead the amount needed to reach the next level is reduced (or increased) based on the score of your character’s primary attribute.
I would personally aim to adjust the sources of XP to match closer to things I want the party to be doing in the campaign world. I would keep the prizes as-is, but I would change how loot grants XP as it relates to clerics in particular. First, Clerics would have to donate 10% of their treasure right off the bat. They would not get XP from that, since it would be part of their duty, and their reward for being dutiful is that they can continue to be a cleric. Clerics would then have their possible XP calculated based on what’s left after their tithe, which they can either donate on top of their tithe or spend while performing acts of selflessness, such as clothing the naked and feeding the hungry. I would also add more onto how XP is awarded from monsters. Rather than simply say “dead or nothing”, I would look at it as whether the monster was dealt with in a permanent way or not. For example, wild dogs may be either tamed or killed and grant the same amount of XP, according to my way. It mostly only affects beings of animal intelligence, but it is also possible to overcome certain humanoids (e.g. the playable races at minimum) without killing them, because, surely, if the PCs may alter their alignment, then NPCs may as well. Of course, there may be consequences divine and diabolic as a result, but the same goes for players anyway. Ultimately, what’s considered permanent would have to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Even “killing” some monsters doesn’t truly kill them, or at least I run some monsters that way, so monster XP requires a broader set of terms to be awarded.
Level Loss and “Life”
ZED encourages the referee to deal out consequences for tragedies that affect the paramount devotions of each class. Destruction of towers, temples, and fortresses, for example, are massive losses for player characters. Equally as lamentable are the characters’ divergence from their chosen alignment or class-related duties. In these and other cases as determined by the referee, a loss of 1 to 4 levels of experience should occur, but only after being warned of its looming presence. I think that the system sounds harsh on paper, but, when it comes to actually applying it, I think most DMs would use common sense. I would not, for example, simply have a player character’s fortress besieged while the party is on an adventure and have levels be lost for it, at least not without warning. If a player is aware of an invading force and chooses to go dungeoneering anyway, I would explain at that point that, if the fortress falls, levels would be lost. Then, a choice would have to be made by the player.
Losing levels has its own negative effects, and there are monsters that can cause a loss of levels, but there is also a “life” currency separate from hit points that characters have. It does not have its own space on the character sheet, at least not a space labeled “Life Points”, because it is already on the character sheet as the Type I saving throw value. The authors leave it up to the DM to decide whether “life drain” has the same effect as the level drain mentioned previously, but losing “life” makes the character reduce the value of their Type I save value. I would definitely run it that way, at least to try and see how it works out at the table. It also opens the door to monsters and effects that can reduce the value of other saves. Perhaps a rust monster would reduce the Type III or V save as it imparts an arthritic effect on characters, the snakes on the head of a medusa reduce Type IV saves, and so on. I will probably carry that concept forth into my weekly Basic Fantasy game and see how it plays out.
End Part I
I intended to include all sections relating to ZED in this letter, but I think splitting it up a bit further will make it easier to take in, as well as allow me to give each subsection greater attention. The next letter on this topic will address the economy of ZED, equipment, exploration rules, and maybe combat. I may give combat its own letter, especially if the other sections come out rather lengthy. Thank you for reading, and stay blessed.