Review – Tale of the Manticore (podcast)

And now for something completely different…. usually, I write this blog about Wargames and the Kings of War wargame specifically. This time – something new. All of us wargamers spend ungodly amounts of time getting paint on miniatures and it’s good to have something to listen to while doing so. As I’m not really into music, I opt for podcasts instead.

A few weeks ago, a friend refered me to the Tale of the Manticore podcast as a good listen. And a good listen it’s been!

For those of you who don’t know this podcast: Imagine an audiobook where the narator is as invested in the characters as the listeners. The story is captivating, characters go through very real dangers and (spoiler alert) some of them may -and will- die. The story features a group (party) of people who are bound together by fate and suddenly become the centre of a number of major events.

The narator uses the oldschool Dungeons and Dragons engine to tell the story and the podcast regularly swtitches between story, dungeon crawl or background information. I’m surprised how deadly this system is and characters, both protagonists and antagonists will bite the dust eventually.

The story is engaging and fast paced. I’ve been binging the 2nd season (because the blog – did I mention the podcast has a blog?- told me the 2nd season starts of better than the 1st). Recently, as I caught up to the current episodes, I started the 1st season as well. Though the tune of the story is much different, the story of Umura, Aradine, Gyrios, Kagan and Soley is as engaging as the 2nd season party.

So for all of you who have time to burn (commuting, doing household chores?) or need something to listen to while painting miniatures, go give this podcast a try!

The engine

Then, because the podcast is as much a game as it’s a story, I cannot leave but comment on the engine.

For the game itself. I believe the basic DnD ruleset from the 80’s makes a wonderful engine for playing the game/narating the podcast. It’s simple, fast and extremely brutal. With this engine, it’s a surprise the PC’s survive as many encounters as they do. To avoid spoilers:  I will not reveal when -and if- party members die, but rest assured that the show’s premise (“there will be pain”) isn’t there in vain. This game does not have plot armour, so PC’s are in real dangers of dying every time they are in combat.

That said, I believe the basic dnd rules can be improved on slightly. Not because the PC’s need more power, but because the game does reward some classes better than others. It’s two classes in particular that need some attention:

a) Thieves in general

b) Magic users in the first few levels of their career.

The other classes (Dwarves, fighters and clerics) have their roles and, in particular the combination of high hit dice and good armour ratings make them very viable in this format. The race=class  choice from basic DnD is a bit strange to modern players, but it’s so much a staple of the engine that it shouldn’t change. Furthermore, I will not dwell on the other pecularities of the system (why do priests lag one level behind magic users in spellcasting until level 6, when they suddenly get level 3 AND 4 spells at once?) but only point out the things which hamper the story.

a) Thieves in general are very weak. Low hit dice and only light armour steer them away from the front line (or face death, remember: no plot armour) when their most powerful attack -backstab- requires them to be there. Moreoever, their special abilities that set them appart have a really, really low chance of success. At first level, the chances of a thief succeeding in hearing noise, picking pockets or opening locks are nearly nonexistent. The numbers grow slowly over their career, but even at level 7 they fail more than half the time.  Finally, to add insult to injury, the skills that a thief can do only well half the time can be done with 100% success chance by a magic user with the right spell. (Knock, levitate and invisibility come to mind). Generally, there’s no reason anyone would aspire to be a thief in this DnD world, because fighters do better damage and magic users make better thieves. For the sake of the story, it’s hard to make the thief character shine and be a valueable addition to the party and therefore the story as a whole.  In season one, the thief finds this role being an archer, but she would have been better off with the fighter class overall.

The author of the podcasts has commented on this too and solves this partially in Season 2  by letting thieves level up faster.  This is a good thing, but doesn’t solve the above limitations. Also, for the sake of the story, he drops the skill “read languages”. For the story told, I fully understand, but this penalises the weakest class even more. 

Withouth diverting too much from the basic rules, I’d advocate giving starting thieves either of two advantages:

a1) Generalist: all thieves’skills increase by 10% permanently, with a maximum of 90%.

a2 Specialist: Choose  one thieve skill. Increase this thief skill by 25% with a maximum of 90%. 

Either option gives the thief a better chance to actually succeed on their thief skills. It also grants the ability to specialise in being either a pickpocket or locksmith or -alternatively- be a more well-rounded thief.  With this, the thief gets more chance to actually succeed in their role. Thereby, it might actually become viable to use their skill when getting caught is actually a danger. 

b) magic users are very weak in the early stages of their career.  As soon as they are useful, they are *very* useful (see Season one’s ‘charm person’ effects midway the season why), but a lot of their spells are very situational. This means they benefit from a wide selection of spells and may increase in power exponentially as soon a particular powerful spell has been gained. Most of the time, the low-level magic user ends up to be a liability with low hit points and nonexistent armour class to be kept alive until mid level. If they are not casting their sole (or one of the few) spells, they are better off doing nothing at all instead of fighting with their dagger, placing themselves in harm’s way.

A sollution to give the magic user a wider spell selection may be effective in the first levels, but also increases their power in later levels. As season 1’s last dozen episodes show, a late level magic user is *very* powerful even with the limited spell selection they already have.  Increasing their versatilty shouldn’t be the route to go.

Alternatively, I would give the magic user something to do while they are not casting spells. Later editions of the (a)dnd game give magic users the ability to use a low-powered missile attack such as the sling or darts. As this ability does not increase their spellcasting, but does give them the ability to impact the game in a slight way when their spells are used up.  Darts/slings aren’t part of the Basic Set DnD rules, these would need to be added for a D4 or D3 damage. I would port this rule into TOTM to combat this.