High or Low?
WW Williams. Wall of the camp, Din-Sylwy, Anglesey. ~1850.
Avid readers of this blog will know that one of my groups recently started and abruptly ended a micro-campaign of Beyond the Wall by Flatland Games. I've seen BtW introduced as "your favorite designer's favorite retro-clone." Its standout feature is its character creation system, where players and GMs narrate their characters' coming-of-age stories via a simple lifepath system, generating NPCs, village landmarks, and quest hooks as they go.
Despite all of that, after two sessions, we agreed weâd seen what BtW had to offer and were ready to move on. For my part, my apathy toward the game comes down to three factors - lack of procedures of play, conflicting resolution systems, and a failure to deliver on the promise of character creation.
Rules Friction
Published in 2013, BtW may have narrowly preceded the OSR's fascination with procedure. The core book omits exploration and travel procedures completely. Combat is only thinly sketched. Can a character charge across a room and attack in one turn? Probably yes, but it's unclear, rules as written. I think the authors envisage the kind of action one might find in a young adult novel - pages of creeping through an old ruin only to have one fateful confrontation with the adversary - but I couldn't tell you for sure.
I'll admit the resolution issues stem from player expectations and past experience more than the system itself. Players make three types of rolls - ability score checks, saving throws, and attack rolls. For some of these you want to roll high while for others you want to roll low. Ability scores and saves always feel redundant to me, but the bigger problem is that switching between roll-high and roll-low added friction to every action for our group. When playing GLoG in the same setting, the players were astonished by how much smoother similar mechanics felt.
I also didnât love the sidebar insisting this wasnât actually a problem...
As a brief aside, Beyond the Wall has a perception problem. What rules do exist lean heavily on perception and knowledge tests. These plus repeatable detection spells mean much of play becomes simply trying to perceive what is or isnât there.
Wasted Potential
As I mentioned at the outset, one of the gameâs highlights is its character creation system. Characters emerge with relationships, community ties, and flavorful kits of spells or equipment. The issue is that the game doesnât do anything with these.
While players build their characters, the GM works through a âscenario packâ - a set of tables that outline your first session. It includes a few ports for NPCs generated by the players, but most of it relies on pre-baked adventure seeds and complications.
My players left character creation excited about the setting they had co-created. Many happened to pick playbooks tied to a noble house. Since we generated only one village, they were all likely in the same one. Character creation centered on inheritance disputes, family roles, and how our lowborn characters hoped to rise. The NPCs we made reflected these dynamics - the lord of the manor, his second wife, the aged alderman soon-to-be father-in-law to one of the PCs. Our group has some story game diehards, but I suspect most invested tables would land on something similarly rich.
Then the scenario pack intrudes, agnostic to these developments, sending the characters into a tomb or faerie circle to engage in mushy B/X exploration. The expectation seems to be that these relationships and NPCs will fuel a larger campaign the GM spins up whole cloth. Maybe, but if thatâs the intent, Iâd like to see guidance pointing in that direction or some system for doing so.
On top of this, Beyond the Wall doesnât shirk the OSR expectation of character fragility. First-level characters often have 4 to 6 HP. Losing one of these lovingly crafted OCs to a lucky goblin spear would be deflating. The game feels torn between trad and old school influences, unwilling to commit in either direction.
EDIT: Anon from Phlox's helpfully pointed out that this is just incorrect. While HP values can be low, they often aren't. Death doesn't occur til well below 0 and PCs have a luck resource that can be used to shrug off lethal blows. I'll leave the above for historical purposes.
My takeaway is that I want games that are more opinionated. I want mechanics that express the story the game wants to tell. I donât have much patience for another generic fantasy dungeon crawler. I already have plenty of those or could whip one up myself, and theyâd likely have fewer points of mechanical friction. I can see the bones of a game in Beyond the Wall focused on being a young adult in a small village, but theyâre obscured by the long shadow of Lake Geneva.
Some Highlights
I donât just want to complain. Here are a few elements worth skimming or borrowing:
The character creation system really does do a great job distributing abilities through narrative devices. Itâs cool to roll up âCircle of Protectionâ; itâs cooler when you get it because your only mentor was a demonologist who recently disappeared.
The spell list is split into three tiers: cantrips, which can be cast any number of times per day but require an INT check; spells, which can be cast once per day; and rituals, which require hours equal to their level. The spells are fun, specific, and flavorful, and the three-tier system created interesting pressures in play.
The game features a system for True Names, one of several mechanics that could, if leaned into, tie the game more tightly to inspirations like Ursula K. Le Guin. They provide a skill-agnostic way to help allies, impose maluses on enemies, and add texture to summoning rules. Very cool and fairly modular.