AD&D Roots of Might and Magic

AD&D Roots of Might and Magic

Let's have a short post before I delve into testing my abstract combat system. Might and Magic is one of my favorite video game series that affected my view of fantasy settings and roleplaying games in my childhood, and I'm feeling these effects to this day. For the most part, I'm talking about Might and Magic VI-VIII, although I am familiar with the earlier (and latter, unfortunately) installments of the series, but to a lesser degree. The games do certain things differently when compared to other CRPGs. And as someone who has read the AD&D rulebooks only relatively recently, now I look at these games and think "Oh... now I understand where it came from." In some other posts, I already mentioned this partially, but I'd like to reiterate and expand it here.

First of all, domain management. This is a contentious topic in both D&D and GURPS communities, with players either wanting to do it or abhorring it, believing it to be boring and unneccessary. GMs are asking around for the rules to run domain games or create their own systems that can range from really abstract ones with plenty of things handwaved to extremely detailed ones where you calculate how many pounds of wheat the fields yielded this season. While there are plenty of domain management rulesets for different editions of D&D and of different quality, GURPS has GURPS Realm Management that, if you have read my blog, you know that I am not very fond of. I'm yet to see any actual receipts of people running domain games in GURPS, especially with that book.

But anyway, back to Might and Magic. My favorite game in the series is Might and Magic VII, and its central theme is domain management. I say "theme" and not "mechanic" because it's exactly that - there are no domain mechanics, the domain management is just a plot thing. However, I believe that it's an excellent example of the faulty belief that many players seem to have that being rulers of a domain is an anthithesis to adventuring. It also can be used as an example of introducing "regular" players to domain management in a gentle manner that doesn't require much attention to the domain mechanics but shows off how they can become important in-universe players and still retain the ability to delve into dungeons and whatnot.

The game has an interesting premise - you are a ragtag group of adventurers of the Emerald Island participating in a contest held by Lord Markham. The winners of the contest become new owners of Castle Harmondale and lords of the town of Harmondale. It seems that many players are averse to the idea of building up their own domain/fortress, and conquering/capturing one usually requires to have an army, which requires them to own a domain/fortress. See? This is a circle. One suggestion or option provided in the books is to grant the player characters a domain as a reward for some kind of major quest. However, major quests usually are the domain (pun intended) of high-level characters. Here, this problem is circumvented. But how? The catch is that Harmondale is in the contested lands between the human nation of Erathia and the elven nation of AvLee, who have warred over this territory in the past and are willing to war over it again. Oh, and Castle Harmondale itself is in a really crappy condition and overrun by rats, bats, and goblin squatters. And the outskirts of the town are swarming with goblins. Oh, and the townsfolk do not really respect you much. Basically, this entire contest was a scam.

Thus, while you are given a domain, there's still a lot of work to do in terms of "normal" adventuring to get it working. However, once the place is cleaned up, the townsfolk notice that and begin to respect you, and your butler suggests you to hire a dwarven renovation team from the Stone City to repair the castle after what's been done to it by the goblins. Of course, the dwarves do not do it for free, and you need to complete another quest. When your castle is repaired, your neighbors go "Huh, these new lords are better than we thought at first" and send ambassadors to try to sway you to their side. Thus, you have to deal with the human-elven political tensions and have to side with one of the neighboring nations. (Actually, there are ways to double deal and screw over all of them and become fully independent too.)

After this questline is done, your importance in the world rises even higher. Judge Grey (the guy who was mediating the human-elf conflict) passes away, and you have to choose a new judge. The other major players send their representatives - the mages of Bracada and the necromancers of Deyja. This is where the most major split of the plot occurs - you choose the path of Light or the path of Darkness. Regardless of which path you take, you may get blackmailed if you got a "gift" that helped you win the contest from a specific NPC at the very start of the game on the Emerald Island. This may cause a mass attack on your castle (however, it's a rather underwhelming one for your level). If you choose the path of Darkness, you continue dealing with the internal politics of the necromancers, where the rulers change, and the ending (a non-canonical one, unfortunately) sets us up for some interesting domain-level opportunities with a potential war breaking out.

I have only dabbled in domain management stuff in TTRPGs, but doesn't this look like a great way to ease players into it? If they want to adventure, they leave their seneschal to rule in their absence, which is something both AD&D 1e and 2e support. One of the 3e third-party domain management supplements - Empire by Alderac Entertainment Group (my review here) - even explicitly says to do that during winter months, as there's not much to do management-wise. Go out and adventure! But if your players begin to become fond of being important figures, they may devote some time to developing their domain and/or create new characters who will go out to delve into dungeons while they do the management stuff. I think it's a good setup.

Second, training. How does leveling up works in most CRPGs? You gain enough experience, and you level up - that's it. In Might and Magic, this is a bit more involved. Once you get enough experience, you become eligible for a level up. To actually level up, you have to go to town, find a training center, pay a progressively increasing sum of money, and spend a week per level there. It also should be noted that training centers have different level caps in different towns. So, your small starting town will be able to train you up to, for example, level 10, but if you want to train further, you have to go to a bigger city. The combination of training only in town, only for money, and especially spending a week per level - this is pretty much straight up what AD&D DMG says.

But that's not all, there is another layer to it. Leveling up gives you some skill points to spread across an assortment of skills that can be weapon skill (sword, spear, etc.), armor skills (plate, chain, etc.), magic (fire, air, mind, body, etc.), or miscellaneous (merchant, learning, bodybuilding, etc.). Each skill has a level, and to level it up you have to spend (current level + 1) skill points on it. Not all skills are available to all character classes, and to learn skills in the first place you have to find a teacher. Once the skill is learned, you can put as many skill points into it as you want.

However, this is not the end. Each skill also has stages of expertise - Basic, Expert, Master, and Grandmaster. Each stage unlocks new major benefits. The simplest ones are magic skills. For example, while damage or duration may be based on your skill level, you can only learn Master spells if you are Master of that type of magic. If you are an Expert dagger user, you become able to dual-wield daggers. If you are a Grandmaster of leather armor, your armor adds not only to AC, but also to elemental resistances. And so on, and so on. Not all stages of expertise are available to every class. For example, only a paladin can become a Grandmaster of mace, a knight can become only an Expert of bow, and only the druid can become a Grandmaster of alchemy.

But that's still not all! Even if you are not locked out of some stage of expertise due to your class choice, you may be required to complete a promotion quest. For example, a knight can be promoted to cavalier and then to either champion or black knight, depending on the choice between Light and Darkness. A monk can be promoted to initiate and then to either master or ninja. All these promotions require quests of varying difficulty.

This has several benefits. First, the players get a quest and have to do something - this is obvious. Second, to even find a teacher for a certain skill and stage of expertise, you may need to travel and ask NPCs around (or memorize their location if you've been playing this game for 20+ years like some people). Third, the progression becomes more organic - you do not abstractly gain levels and learn new stuff - you are being taught by a proper teacher. Fourth, this serves as a measure to control progression and facilitate exploration. Might and Magic VII is the best in this regard, in my opinion. You see, there are certain spells in the game that make the game much easier, such as Fly and Town Portal. These spells require you to be a Master or air and water magic, respectively. The game world has an isolated region called Nighon - you can get to it only via long and dangerous tunnels under the Stone City. Wouldn't it be better to get there via the Town Portal spell? Well, sucks to be you - the Master water (and air) magic teacher is in Nighon, so you better go there the normal way. However, only you traverse that rather annoying and dangerous set of tunnels, you feel very rewarded, as now you will not have to do it again (unless you're playing wizard-less). And this is only one of such examples.

I'm enamored with this idea in tabletop RPGs, where characters have to find teachers, pay, and spend time to train. It just feels proper to me, all thanks to Might and Magic, even though now I see the AD&D roots of this system. I did try to implement this in my games, but my players despised it, unfortunately.

Third, sci-fi elements. Back in the day, it seems that the genres of fantasy and science fiction haven't really been separate. You can see some sci-fi elements in the early D&D books as well. Might and Magic felt unique to me in that regard, as I thought that it's one of the few settings that combine the two together, where wizards, demonic aliens, elves, robotic caretakers of the world, magi-tech-looking droids, Star Trek references, robot wizards, blasters, etc. coexist. Sure, the Heroes of Might and Magic spinoff series makes it look like a generic fantasy setting, but the sci-fi stuff is central to the actual RPG games. Now that I'm reading Appendix N (the Jeffro Johnson book, not the actual Appendix N novels), I see that this sci-fantasy blend was quite common in the past. GURPS facilitates this blend quite well.

Anyway, this is just an inane rant, but reading AD&D books made me appreciate Might and Magic even more than before.