Episode 3: What Jery Jax Did

[Special thanks to Thomas Denmark, who let me borrow his copy of J. Jery Jax's Warhamster and helped me decipher JJJ's text and rules. Couldn't have done it without you, Tom.]

Before we begin, let's get one thing perfectly clear: J. Jery Jax did not "ruin" Warhamster. A lot of hardcore Cottonworthy fans will tell you that. They are wrong. Mr. Jax's contributions to Warhamster are innumerable. I've often likened him as August Dereleth to Cottonworthy's Lovecraft, and the analogy isn't entirely incorrect. First, Jax made sure Cottonworthy's vision stayed alive in print. Second, he fought for Warhamster, running demos everywhere he went. Third, through Warhamster Magazine, he expanded the Wh fanbase by tenfold. Finally, he expanded the world of WH with hundreds of essays and dozens of books. His contribution to WH cannot be ignored.

But that doesn't mean it can't be analyzed.

Let's take a looka t what J. Jery Jax did to Warhamster.

* * *

First, Jax changed the fundamentals of the game system. He did this in two ways. First, he made it an open-ended system. Second, he added (gulp!) charts.

Lots of charts.

You think Rollmas - I mean Rolemaster has charts? Oh, baby. You ICE fans better get a cigarette ready. You'll want one when we're done.

Open Ended

Remember how the game system worked in WH1st? Roll under your Bonus? Well, Jax turned that around. What he did works something like this:

Step One: Roll the d1000

Roll 3 ten-sided dice. The first coutns as hundreds, the second counts as tens, the third counts as ones, giving you totls of 4-5-2 (four hundred fifty-two), 9-2-7 (nine hundred twenty-seven) and 1-0-2 (one hundred and two). And, of course, three zeroes counts as one thousand.

Step Two: Find Your Bonus

Next, find your Bonus Chart. That's right, Jax wrote one hundred charts for each Skill. So, if you have a 432 Brewing Skill, you check out the 400 Brewing Chart. Follow the left side of the chart (rows) until you come to the column that corrosponds to your roll. The columns are divided into A-G. Once you've found your Success Total (A-G), consult the Effect Chart.

Step Three: Determine Effect

Lastly, you'd carry that letter (A-G) to the Effect Chart and roll the d1000 again. That total gave you your Effect. There are 6 flavors of Effect Charts: Physical, Spiritual, Social, Mental, Magix, and Psykix.

Yeah, Jax had a penchant for spelling things with x's. Sue him. We've all got our own writing voice. We all try to make our writing distinct. We've all got our own set of tricks.

Don't we?

Character Creation

Jax also expanded character creation.

A lot.

No, more than that.

Step One: Determine Characteristix

WH1st had 10 characteristics. Jax thought it needed more. Here's a look at the characteristics in WH 2nd.

• Appeal
• Attraction
• Dexterity
• Endurance
• Fortitude
• Guile
• Health
• Hearing
• Intuition
• Mentality
• Nerve
• Presence
• Prowess
• Psionix
• Psychix
• Resistance
• Sanity
• Sight
• Smell
• Stealth
• Strength
• Taste
• Touch
• Willpower
• Wisdom

He divided each of the characteristix into 4 categories: Physical, Intellectual, Spiritual and Sensory. The first three were analogous; that is, if you read them on the character sheet, Attraction (Physical), Appeal (Intellectual) and Presence (Mental) were the Physical, Intellectual and Mental aspects of the same characteristic. The Sensory characteristix, however, were not; they just represented how well you perceived the world.

(Of course, there's a lot of inspiration here. I've heard Sandy Peterson say the whole inspiration for Call of Cthulhu came from seeing that Sanity Characteristic. The designers of Harnmaster took one look and knew they had to make a Characteristic for each sensory organ. And, of course, Mark ReinoHagen saw that "Divide the Characteristix into groups" thing and went wild with it in the Storyteller System.)

Jax also added character classes to the game, completely dropping Cottonworthy's idea of Guilds. Without having ever met Mr. Jax, I can only speculate why (the ones he added didn't quite fit the whole "Guild" theme). He included Beastmen, Beastmasters, Beastriders, Berzerkers, and Barbarians.

I guess he had something for the letter "B" as well.

Then, of course, there's the Ethix System&

Ethix

This was the crowning achievement of Jax's work. While Cottonworthy dumped the whole clumsy, awkward, unrealistic, completely arbitrary notion of "alignments," Jax thought differently. He was going to do alignment right.

Hence, WH2nd has Ethics. Here's how they work:

First, look at the two columns below. The first is the Good vs. Evil Column. The second is the Order vs. Discord column. Choose one from each column. Then, find the corresponding Ethic under each of your choices. That's your character's Ethixs.

(I have to give another tip of the hat to Tom Denmark - the old school J.J.J. fan. I would have never made sense of this without his help. Jax's writing is just& well, maybe we'll get into that later. Just imagine what it'd be like reading Hunter S. Thompson - if he was a gamer. Yeah. Like that.)

GOOD VS. EVIL

GOOD
Altruistic, Disorderly, Holy, Scrupulous and Virtuous

NEUTRAL GOOD
Amiable, Beneficent, Congenial, Indulgent, and Rapturous

NEUTRAL
Anarchist, Malfeasant, Neutral, Righteous and Upright

NEUTRAL EVIL
Baneful, Corrupt, Felonious, Malicious and Mischievous

EVIL
Malefic, Malignant, Sinister, Villainous and Wicked

ORDER VS. DISCORD

ORDER
Beneficent, Corrupt, Holy, Malefic, Righteous

NEUTRAL ORDER
Altruistic, Baneful, Indulgent, Malignant, Upright

NEUTRAL
Amiable, Malicious, Neutral, Sinister, Virtuous

NEUTRAL DISCORD
Congenial, Malfeasant, Mischievous, Scrupulous, Villainous

DISCORD
Anarchist, Disorderly, Felonious, Rapturous, Wicked

* * *

Don't ask me why, but people went nuts over the Ethix System. Just taking a look at it, you can see much of the inspiration for the Alignment System found in Paladium, and you have to wonder if Kevin was a Warhamster fan& Of course, he'd drop that whole "Neutral" thing; a design consideration I just can't disagree with.

Right then. That's all you get this week. I'll see you all in 7 (I promise, this time) with the first look at Warhamster 3rd. And that's when the real Wick hate letters start rolling in.

Take care, all.