FAQs

Q: Does the name Glory Road Roleplay derive from Glory Road, the novel by Robert A. Heinlein?

A: The title was suggested by the title of the novel, which I have read several times, but the game is not based on the novel. It shares the concept of the road of adventure common to action and picaresque fiction and now, to games like this one. The game does not address the central question of the novel, which is what does a hero do after slaying the dragon and the struggle or adventure is over or, in other words, how does the hero live as an adult?

Q: Why did you choose to make human males larger than human females and what impact does that have on game play.

I did it because men are larger than women. Not to be snarky, I decided to design human player-characters so that they would seem familiar to players who wanted to play people somewhat like themselves.

Size is not an exclusively positive quality. During character generation, it makes the character a point or two stronger than a female character who is equal in all other things. However, women get an extra point of Constitution, which is One HP right there. Also, higher Con gives one an extra chance of survival below 0 HP. Finally, the one point of Con sometimes improves the Con Bonus, which is directly added to the character's Strength. Size impacts Agility in a negative fashion and Strength impacts it in a positive fashion, so being strong for your size is quite important.

During game play, Size is generally negative. Large characters have a harder time performing some tasks, like climbing and jumping and dodging and an easier time performing a few.

Most importantly, larger characters are easier for opponents to hit. Every Bonus Point for Size increases ones Target# by one, just as every Bonus Point for Agility decreases it by one. As hard as things hit in Glory Road, being hit more often is a negative.

Q: Is Glory Road part of the Old School Roleplaying (OSR) movement or Old School Renaissance?

A: I don’t think so. OSR games have a much closer relationship to D&D than this game does. They share assumptions that Glory Road does not, like increasing hit points to model increased competence in combat and many of them, if not most, also use the Vancian magic system. In a real sense, but this shouldn’t be taken as criticism, they are not separate games. They make some tweaks in the game system but it is their settings and adventures that are original, and usually very good. They are different editions of D&D but not by the parent company.

I too share some assumptions with D&D, mostly classes and levels, but my action-resolution systems and character creation system are quite different. There are different attributes and they influence one another in a way not seen in any D&D edition. Glory Road Roleplay characters do not start out as fragile as D&D or OSR characters nor do they reach the state of apparent invulnerability that sometimes happens in a D&D campaign. There is one action-resolution system for situations where multiple actions by several characters have to be resolved and another for the actions of one character in which everyone in the campaign has an interest.

Q: Does Glory Road Roleplay owe anything to Dungeons & Dragons?

Of course, it does. The whole hobby owes Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax for its very existence. When I started playing and running games, it was all called D&D but many Dungeon Masters used only bits and pieces of the rules as written. My first DM, Jon, used almost nothing from the D&D rulebooks and the rules differ depending on what part of the game world you were playing in. At the other extreme was my friend Simon Rich who tried very hard to play by the rules and save his imagination for the setting and the non-player characters. Both of them ran excellent games.

In my case, I called the games I was running D&D but I started using something very much like the Glory Road combat system from the beginning. Hit Points did not increase but the characters had more HP to start than in D&D. I used several different formulas but finally arrived at double Constitution or Constitution + 10, whichever was better. And armor did not make a combatant harder to hit, it protected them from damage. Characters got better at hitting and at avoiding being hit as they improved as combatants. I changed some weapon damages and tweaked the magic system but not much.

When Advanced Dungeons & Dragons came out, the Dungeon Master’s Guide said that you weren’t playing D&D if you weren’t playing rules as written. So, I set out to make the other changes that would make Glory Road Roleplay a different game. You can see those changes in the Core Rules.

Q: What is the game going to cost when it comes out?

A: The core E-books are out now, the Core Rules cost $4.50, the Encounters cost $2.00 and the Game Manager's Guide $.50. The prices for the paperbacks will depend on production costs.

The modules At the High Pass Inn and In the Pass are out and cost $.50 each. The modules coming out later, Into the Westwood and Under the Abandoned Monastery, will be $1.50 each. Plans for adventures to be published after the "preposition series" are not finalized but there are several in the pipeline.

Q: Do you need all the books to play?

A: All that the players in a group need is access to the Core Rules, so that they can set up their character sheets. The game can be played off of a well filled-out character sheet, although someone should have the Core Rules handy for the rare instance of having to look something up during play. If one or two people in a group have the Core Rules, that should be sufficient.

The game manager should have, and be conversant with, the Core Rules and should also have the Encounters and probably the Game Manager's Guide.

If a module is being used, the game manager should have it.

Q: Why does target number (T#) improve by getting smaller. Armor class, in D&D, used to do that but it was changed and most players seem to think it was a good change?

A: I remember hearing discussions about "ascending AC" versus "descending AC" when that was being debated. I remember thinking that it seemed a very minor point and that changing from one to the other wouldn't matter much. I have played D&D quite a bit and my favorite DM never changed to ascending AC and I played with others who did and it never made any difference to me.

For Target Number, it just seems to me that the smaller number representing something being harder to hit made sense, so I never considered changing. The objection that descending AC leads to negative values seems rather silly to me and none of my players have ever mentioned it.

The damage absorption of one's armor is closer to what AC is about and DA is an ascending number. More and better armor leads to a higher DA and that is beneficial.