tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41815120246506849322024-03-12T22:40:57.563-07:00SwanosaurusA Fierce and Beautiful CreatureUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-29441941901430623052024-01-26T17:41:00.000-08:002024-01-29T05:52:16.151-08:00Marvels and Prodigies<p><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/images/26616/467292.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="618" height="419" src="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/images/26616/467292.jpg" width="324" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />(I've already posted a slightly different version of this review on the product page on drivethru rpg. I don't really have time to do the in-depth review of all things <i>Marvels and Prodigies</i> I'd love to do now, so I'm re-posting my review here. Let's just say it struck a note with me!)</span><p></p><p>I thought I'd never touch another RPG going to the Lovecraft. Well, I made an exception for <i>Marvels and Prodigies</i>, which, I'd dare say - is it really possible? - makes Lovecraftian Horror feel fresh again. It is not simply another "take" on the
same endlessly regurgigated Mythos tropes "(It's Cthulhu, but this time
with aether-powered biplanes!"); it is an unassuming RPG that has a point of view on cosmic horror that is subtly, but significantly different from "RPG mainstream Yog-Sothothry"; and it has me as excited as back then
when I first laid my hands on "Call of Cthulhu" by Chaosium, which was
just as slim and unassuming and clearly knowing what it was doing.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><br /><p></p>
<p>The introduction of M&P talks about the ambivalence of xenophobia
and xenophilia that runs through Lovecraft's work and that has been
critically explored by several current authors who write tales of cosmic
horror - specifically, Ruthanna Emrys is mentioned, but I could easily
see M&P emulating the athmosphere and themes of stories by a lot of
current horror authors, Lovecraftian or not, like Laird Barron, John
Langan or Livia Llewellyn. It's about <i>Seekers</i> - people who can't let the
unknown alone, to whom the terrors they encounter always hold the
promise of wonders and epiphanies. It's not a "Let's play the cultists!"
take, but more like: Let's play people who are curious and tough enough
to dig deeper when they find out that the world is not what they
thought; who find their own way to deal with their harrowing experiences
that doesn't have to be "shoot at/run from everything that has
tentacles!" Thematically, I'd describe it as "Lovecraftian Unknown Armies".<br /></p>
<p>The <i>Seeker's Handbook</i> is pretty barebones in a lot of ways: It consists of the player-facing rules and a long example of play, with no bestiary
and no mythology (for either, you will need the <i>Gardener's Manual</i>). It has
no illustrations beyond the (powerful) cover and a few chapter headings,
and the layout is just text on a page. It's fine, really - a lot better
than thinking you have to throw at least one color illustration on
every page, regardless of the quality of the art. <br /></p>
<p>The core mechanism is: Roll a skill's pool of dice (usually 3-5 for
starting characters) and count successes (all dice showing a 5 or 6). One
success is usually enough to, well, succeed. There's some twists (if
you roll with disadvantage, only the 6s count, if you roll with potency,
double the number of your successes after the roll). Beyond the skill
list, there's three core attributes (Physicality, Acuity, Willpower) -
usually, you don't roll these, but they serve as Hit Points for your
body, mind and soul, and you can spend a point from them to buy a
success in a skill roll. They're also tied to a neat little mechanism
called Challenge, where you roll a test of them to avoid suffering a
narratively defined consequence - if you roll too low, you can decide to
either suffer the consequence or lose points from the relevant ability.
This is mostly used for interpersonal skills - if you're trying to talk
someone down, for example, you'd roll your Persuasion or Charm skill,
and your successes set a difficulty to their challenge. Now they roll to
see whether they shrug it off or whether they have to decide between
lowering their weapons or losing a few points of willpower (which might
lead to them being penalized on further rolls).</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">(This mechanism, by the way, reminds me of the Maneuver rules from the Gumshoe RPG <i>Swords of the Serpentine</i>; There's a very neat bidding element here, that can accomodate a lot of narratively different stuff with just one type of roll.)</span><br /></p>
<p>Combat is an extension of the core rules and keeps it simple and
sensible: You won't be dodging bullets here, though you can run for
cover. On paper, it looks pretty deadly - or at least, scarring. If any
of your 3 attributes falls below zero (-5 means your dead), their
negative value is converted into afflictions at the end of the scene,
which linger. If your've been shot and are at -3 Physicality, this will
haunt you at the very least until you've spent three Downtimes
recovering - with a Downtime being a flexible amount of time, but it is
assumed that it is about a month of not doing anything terribly
stressful. So chasing someone, you might end up having to give up
because two months ago, someone shot you and you're still not quite over
it.</p>
<p>Mind/Soul damage works the same way - you don't have a sanity score, you just get scarred mentally; most of these scars just
take a long time to heal, but they can be permanent as well.</p>
<p>There's a hint of a "class system" in M&P as well, though it is
only relevant for advancement: You choose a "study" (stuff like Marital
Arts, Scholarship or even getting wealthier) which is your current
focus. Whenever you engage with a problem in a way relevant to your
study, you earn XP which you can spend on advancement rolls and some
special abilities provided by your study. (alternatively, you can spend
advancement rolls to recover attribute damage if there's no time for
Downtime). Advancement comes with some hard choices, especially because
even paying XP, you still have to roll whether you succesfully advance a
skill, as in BRP games. Maybe it's a little too harsh, I don't know ...
that's something I'd have to find out in play. It is, however, very
thematic and flexible (you can change your study at any time) while
still giving you some kind of framework for advancement.</p>
<p>Regarding gameplay: When it comes to investigation, M&P takes a
different route than the Gumshoe engines, where you get all essential
clues for free. M&P is a lot more old school in that you usually
have to roll to get information and might very well fail; but it also
assumes a more sandbox scenario structure, where there's always another
clue to chase down, where the characters lead the narrative and try to
make whatever skills they bring to the table matter. I'm not sure it's
for everyone, but the good thing is that as with practically any system,
you can always apply the "Gumshoe rule" to M&P and just give the
players what you consider core clues.</p>
<p>All in all, the system is well designed and very evocative of the
kind of fiction it seeks to emulate; It's no terribly detailed, and
there's certainly a lot of edge cases necessitating GM fiat, but the
system looks robust enough to support all kinds of on-the-fly solutions.
Oh, there's also an abstract wealth/income system included that, on
paper, looks like it might actually provide results that make sense
(which would be a first for me).</p>
<p>The long example in the end does double-duty as a kind of opening
fiction: It's both atmospheric and makes sense as a gaming session, and
it gives a good idea of the kind of horror that M&P emulates (hint:
no tentacles to be seen).</p>
<p>I haven't read the <i>Gardener's Manual</i> yet, which contains all
the magic, the creatures and other mythos, supernatural and GM only
stuff; to get a full-fledged horror RPG, you obviously need both. But
even on it's own, the Seeker's Handbook provides a concise and original
system for modern-day campaigns that knows what it's doing, and if
you're just playing a gritty modern-day campaign or feel fine with
coming up with your own horror mythology, it might be all that you need
(though in the latter case, you'd have to design your own magic,
creatures and advanced studies, so you'd probably want to get the <i>
Gardener's Handbook</i>, anyway).</p><p> <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/26616/Marvels-and-Prodigies" target="_blank">Here's the authors landing page on drivethrurpg</a>, where you'll find the <i>Seeker's Handbook</i>, <i>The Gardener's Manual</i> and the introductory scenario <i>The Thing That Comes in Autumn</i>. <br /></p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-62927376890158323882023-11-14T10:43:00.000-08:002023-11-14T10:45:23.164-08:00Some More Everywhen Awesome<p>So, with about 35 years as a gamer under my belt, I certainly don't have to read to GM tips in an RPG book before reading it? After all, what could they tell me that I don't already know?</p><p>Well, there actually is one thing or another, so I need to amend my review of <i>Everywhen</i>: The chapter on game mastering is awesome. It's only 10 pages, but they are packed. There's some system-specific stuff about setting difficulties first, but that already features some good general advice for most RPG genres: Look where the players have put their build points and consider that that's where they want to shine - so make sure that they get the opportunity to do so in your adventure. It also re-iterates an important idea that has been stated before in <i>Everywhen</i>: A failure doesn't necessarily mean that a hero has failed due to ineptitude; always err towards assuming that circumstances beyond their control thwarted them. <br /></p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Then we get some great advice on investigative adventures and information management that articulates something that I feel I already knew, but couldn't put my finger on: It's about the players often getting stuck in the information-gathering stage, spinning out ever more theories, without starting to narrow down possibilities. Everywhen makes a very neat and helpful distinction between open ("Why would anyone want to murder a blind old lizard-man?" and closed questions ("Did the priestess do it?") that helps a lot to figure out when and why the players might get stuck and how to get things rolling again. I've read an GMed a lot of <i>Gumshoe</i> games and know the problem, so I really appreciate Garnett Elliott spelling it out for me in a way I couldn't have!<p></p><p>Following that, there's stuff about planning and pacing adventures and campaigns, listening to your players, enlisting them for your world-building, encounter-balancing and setting creation. None of it is revolutionary, but it's solid, concise, and there's nothing in there that screams "Bad advice!" to me (which means a lot, because usually, when I'm reading through GM advice chapters, there are a quite few fingernails-on-chalkboard moments ...).</p><p>Also, I have to retract my allegation that <i>Everywhen</i> doesn't feature any career examples: There are a few (albeit short) career examples in the two mini-settings at the end (one Buffy-ish Urban Fantasy, the other Tolkienish Fantasy). I haven't bothered to read these two in depth, because I already know that I won't be using them, but obviously, some of the "worked example" stuff that I was missing is in here.</p><p>So, more good reasons to go get <i>Everywhen</i> - you don't only get a really good rules engine, but also remarkably good advice on how to use it!<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-6025393721952140372023-11-11T10:49:00.001-08:002023-11-14T06:17:16.958-08:00Reading Everywhen<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/images/19234/249193.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="618" height="398" src="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/images/19234/249193.jpg" width="308" /></a></div><br />I've played a little <i>Barbarians of Lemuria</i> here and there, always found it easy-going, but never got really invested in it. However, in my perpetual search for the right system for my setting heartbreaker, I remembered that with <i><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/249193/Everywhen?term=everywhen" target="_blank">Everywhen</a></i>, there is a generic rules-set for the engine, so I dug that one out again, and lo and behold: I really like it. Let's see why:<p></p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>The core mechanic:<p></p><p><b>2d6+Characteristic+Career or Fighting Skill +/- difficulty mods: Beat 9 and succeed!</b></p><p>That's it in a nutshell - a core roll that goes back to <i>Traveller</i> (and is very similar to the core roll of the <i>Fighting Fantasy/Troika!</i> family of games, which is dear to my heart). I like the "pyramid" curve of this roll were most results will be between 5 and 9, but that still has a lot of room for the occassional 2 and 12 - which are made a lot more likely by the use of dis-/advantage, which will have you roll an additional die and the drop the highest/lowest.</p><p>I like the simplicity of mechanical character traits: you basically get 3 sets of four; one is your characteristics (Strength, Agility, Mind, Appeal), one is your combat Abilities (Initiative, Melee, Ranged, Defense), and is four careers that you can choose freely (everything from Alchemist to Zealot). Yes, that means that mechanically, combat gets the same weight as "everything else" - but it also means that you don't have to worry about balancing in combat, because everyone gets 4 points to distribute among combat abilities (though there is an optional rule that allows you to move over 2 points to Careers), and even Careers like Warrior or Gladiator won't influence your combat abilities directly. And if you're really set to play a non-combattant, put 2 points in Initiative and 2 in Defense (to get somewhere safe before combat begins and to not get hit). Also, if combat doesn't play a big role in your campaign, it's not as if anyone would have wasted points they could have used elsewhere on their combat abilities.</p><p>I really like Careers - they both serve as your lifepath, as something like character classes and as skills. If you've been a sailor at some time in your life, you just add that Career for tying knots, balancing, swimming, scrubbing decks ... the system lends itself perfectly to easy adaptation to all kinds of settings - I can see Career descriptions do a lot of the heavy lifting in setting descriptions, much like they do in <i>Troika!</i> Careers will probably also shine in hard-ish science fiction setting, where you often end up with far too complex skill systems otherwise.<br /></p><p>Generally speaking, <i>Everywhen</i> is a pretty simple skill-governed system without skills that lets the characters try to do whatever comes to mind, with a usually pretty good chance at succeeding, as well.</p><p>What <i>Everywhen</i> as a rulebook specifically lacks is a little more flesh on some of the bones: There are no worked career examples, and the magic/psionic chapters give you good general guidelines for how to gauge difficulty and effect, but there is not one example spell. The same goes for monsters: You get procedures to create different kind of monsters (human-ish opponents, creatures, entities like demons and elementals), but practically no examples for actual adverseries.</p><p>Instead, <i>Everywhen</i> provides several rules sub-systems that I'm not sure would have needed that much attention. There's Scale (which basically adds advantage dice for super-human traits), which I understand a lot of people don't like - I'm fine with it, though it seems a little too complicated, compared to the rest of the system. There's Challenges, a kind of extended conflicts, which seem interesting, but aren't explained that well. And there's mass battle and vehicle rules - the stuff that usually makes my eyes glaze over in <i>any</i> kind of rules systems, so I probably can't blame <i>Everywhen</i> for me not being able to to read through them. The vehicle rules are probably fine (I really couldn't say), but the mass battle rules, for some reason, seem really invested in having you use military units like squads and platoons to calculate losses, and since I really only have a less than vague idea of what any of these terms mean in relation to each other, it all leaves me scratching my head. There is a table giving you the numbers, but why ask the GM to do the arithmetics with weird, non-decimal units if you could just abstract all of this into a rough number of combattants? To me, it feels a little like RPGs that, instead of having 100 Copper Pieces=10 Silver Pieces = 1 Gold Piece, insist on having 64 CP =12 SP = 1 GP or something along the lines, just because the latter is supposedly more historically accurate.</p><p>However, let me stress that the sub-systems kind of make sense - be it for careers, magic, vehicles or creatures, <i>Everywhen</i> quite consistently provides procedures that you will need to fill with life, which, in the case of this system is a pretty easy task. It's just that procedures for vehicles and mass battles don't quite justify the page count they take up, in my opinion.<br /></p><p> The interior art (B&W) is alright, though not terribly inspiring. I feel that the cover is kind of a miss, it's murky and ... I don't know, it just doesn't say anything to me. That's a pity, because I adore artist Peter Frain's colorful and pulpy work on the <i>Barbarians of Lemuria Mythic</i> edition. <br /></p><p>So, in the end, I would have preferred having all that mass battle and vehicle stuff in a supplement to make room for spell, and, most importantly, career examples. The good thing is that the recently published <i><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/445007/Sword-and-Sorcery-Codex?src=also_purchased" target="_blank">Sword and Sorcery Codex</a></i> for <i>Everywhen/BoL</i> offers both that AND a bestiary, but I haven't read through that yet - I'm pretty sure it will be awesome, though. So, despite a few reservations, I really recommend <i>Everywhen</i> as a simple, flexible system for all kinds of adventure genres. I really want to see a space opera take on it.<br /></p><p>There's some really interesting settings for <i>Everywhen</i> already out there - my favourite for now is <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/265751/Red-Venus" target="_blank"><i>Red Venus</i></a>, a dark-ish take on sovjet rocket retro-scifi. And there's a <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/452532/SC5-Hellflower?src=newest" target="_blank">series of great FREE Sword&Sorcery scenarios</a> by <i>Everywhen</i> author Garnett Elliott on drivethru.com.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-9274590646239135902023-08-20T00:42:00.001-07:002023-08-20T00:42:38.788-07:00Metegorgos Gives Us Her Milk<p> Evey Lockhart's Ruinous <i>Palace of the Metegorgos</i> is a small Troika!/BX scenario of abject beauty that the author probably needed to write to cleanse the adorable positivity of her very own <i>Very Pretty Paleozoic Pals</i> setting away. It weighs on your soul, far out of proportion for a slim book of 29 pages. It should start with about two pages of trigger warnings, but really, if you're in doubt, just read the <a href="https://www.melsonia.com/the-ruinous-palace-of-the-metegorgos-424-p.asp">product description</a> at Melsonian Arts Council and you'll know whether this is for you. DON'T play it with anyone without proper warning.<br /></p><p>ALL OF THE ABOVE IS ALSO TO BE UNDERSTOOD AS <b>TRIGGER WARNING</b> FOR THIS REVIEW: BIRTH AND ASSOCIATED TRAUMAS. ABJECTIFICATION OF WOMEN.</p><p>NAMEDROPS: JULIA KRISTEVA, JACQUES LACAN<br /></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><i>Metegorgos</i> is a very small dungeon crawl where the characters enter the decaying palace of a queen who has been cursed ages ago by several gods envious of her power. Mete was not only known for her fertility, but also for her wise politics, and so the gods had to destroy her. Now she's the very image of abject feminity, she and her offspring having been turned into a carricature of pretty much every misogynistic taboo surrounding fertility and menstruation.Her children are sad zombies shuffling through the woods in search of love, or giant flying cholera bacteria living in a shithole and feeding on her yellowish milk. It's really quite disgusting and permeated by a deep sadness about what Mete has been turned into by those fucking patriarchic asshole gods. The whole book engages in that way with politics that really only fantasy occassionally manages to do, peeling the mythology back by taking it <i>for real</i>, laying bare its political heart. How does it look like if women are <i>literally</i> turned into something monstrous to deny them power? How sick is that? And even if the characters want and manage to lift the curse, be sure that Lockhart has another twist of the knife in store with the druidic aftermath.</p><p>As this is a Troika! scenario (though with added BX stats), the text is evocative, sometimes mystifying and will yield several layers of meaning on close reading. Its short length is deceptice. Make sure to read "The Truth" (pp23) and then re-read the scenario if you're interested in them. If you just want to run a weird and disturbing 5 room dungeon, you don't need it, though.<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-50758592376555988892023-05-26T14:08:00.001-07:002023-05-26T14:08:48.914-07:00Mindjammer Press is Back with Lair of the Leopard Empresses<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://wwwdotmindjammerpressdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/lair_announcement.jpg?w=406" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="518" data-original-width="406" height="320" src="https://wwwdotmindjammerpressdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/lair_announcement.jpg?w=406" width="251" /></a></div><br />Yay, one of my favourite authors and publishers is back on the scene - and doesn't disappoint!<br /><p></p><p>Sarah Newton's <i>Lair of the Leopard Empresses</i> is based on the <i>Monsters! Monsters!</i> rules, which are based on <i>Tunnels & Trolls</i>, which means that they are from a family of RPGs I've only ever had the most fleeting contact with. My takeaway after reading most of the rules chapters of <i>LotLE</i> is that it's a system where the players have to start thinking out of the box, and quickly, if they find themselves outmatched. Your randomizers are usually 2,3 or 4d6, added to stats than can, even at the beginning, reach values like 30 or 50, so even a stellar dice-roll might often not allow you to come close to what a superior opposition has in store. I've decided to consider this a feature and not a bug, because at the very least, it is interesting and new (to me), and it really leans heavily into a "rulings, not rules" philosophy.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Combat will look strange to anyone not familiar with <i>Tunnels&Trolls</i> or <i>Monsters! Monsters!</i> (like me), It's basically both sides rolling all their attack/damage dice (which are the same thing), comparing the totals and the side with the lower total suffering the difference as damage to be freely distributed among them. There's special cases like missiles, spells, triggered effects and, most importantly, stunts to mix things up. Stunts are free-form with some guidelines and will probably often be about trying to distract the most dangerous opponents for a round so that you get a chance to chisel down on the others, weakening the opposition. The core system is as simple as it gets, but there's an extended combat example that shows how things can get pretty complex and tactical. (You should also definitely read the example to understand how missile damage worked - I feel that this is not made clear in the rules.)<br /></p><p>Anyway, I came for the setting, not the rules (though I think I might stay for the rules), because it's by Sarah Newton, who has written <i>Mindjammer</i> and <i>Chronicles of Future Earth</i>, two settings that are practically <i>exactly</i> what I would have come up with and how I'd done it if I had the time, the talent and the discipline.</p><p><i>LotLE</i> is your basic gonzo ancient world stuff with a decadent empire, lots of terribly dangerous places to visit and a few twists: For example, there's something along the lines of forest elves living at the bosom of nature, but they are more like jungle elves, and instead of being tree-hugging vegetarians, they love to eat other intelligend kindreds after having toyed with them a little. Okay, there's also proper forest elves, and while <i>LotLE</i> clearly is a Sword&Sorcery setting, it also has the Tolkien stuff - dwarves, hobbits (here they're called Hobbs) and orcs, some of them with nice little twists attached, others pretty much how you already know them. The overall vibe, though, is more Talislanta than Westeros and more Fafhrd then Frodo. It is also more Glorantha then Forgotten Realms: There's really a sense here that cultures, realms, species and languages are in flux. You won't play a fantasy viking who speaks fantasy viking, lives in the realm of fantasy vikings ruled by the fantasy viking queen and who prays to the fantasy viking god. There's a short historic overview at the beginning that makes it clear that rulers and cults have come and gone, that borders keep changing and that a realm or nation not always equals a culture. Admittedly, that also means that you'll have to dive a little deeper to make sense of the setting, but it's worth it. By the time you reached to Cults&Brotherhoods chapter (around page 100), this will already feel like a living, breathing, complex word. Luckily, the system supports mixing and matching of disparate character elements, because in the end, it's all about picking whichever 2 or 3 special abilities from your kindred, class and cults lists you like best. (Which means that you can even go classless by just picking from your kindred and cult lists.)</p><p>And while this is a big book (400 pages) with lots of setting material, Newton really excels at concise, atmospheric and flat-out funny descriptions of setting elements. Take this NPC description:</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><i>An ancient Leopard Cultist who never leaves the Empress' side. She has only two teeth: One tells the future, the other the past.</i></p><p>(I'll let that be the one glorious quote to represent the fun that is reading <i>LotLE</i>.)<br /></p><p>I have only read about a third of <i>LotLE</i> yet (maybe half, if you count skipping ahead a few times), but it really makes me pump my fist - YES, that's how you do a proper fantasy RPG! Intertwine the setting with the rules, but don't lose yourself in point-buy micromanagement, trying to represent each and every character detail in the rules. (LotLE doesn't even have a skill system, and I strongly feel that it doesn't need one. It <i>does</i> have dozens of spell lists for different magical traditions.) Create interesting species, cultures and organizations for the characters to be part of, but don't box them in. Make the world feel like a real place by giving it a history that creates hybridity and diversity. Most of all, have FUN writing it and let it show.</p><p>Finally, <i>LotLE</i> feels very much like a played-in combination of setting and system. The setting clearly flows from a love of the rules system, but it's also obvious how the setting then has changed the system, and how actual play has lead to tweaks and clarifications. The result is a beautifully organic whole that really just makes me want to play it.<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-14451204715625117332023-03-07T14:58:00.005-08:002023-03-16T07:03:45.328-07:00AGE Catching Up With Me<p>With a second edition of Green Ronin's <i>FantasyAGE</i> RPG and the AGE-based <i>Fifth Season</i> RPG coming up (the latter being an adaptation of N.K. Jemisin's excellent postapocalyptic sfnal fantasy trilogy), I've been drawn back to this very nice and simple system. Year's ago, I used FantasyAGE for a lot of one-shots at the open gaming nights in our bookshop and came away from it kind of ambivalent. The pros outhweighed the cons, but I could never get my regular gaming table invested in it, and it kind of faded into the background of my gaming interests for quite some time; but right now, I feel like dusting off my (limited) expertise on all things AGE.<br /></p><p><b><span></span></b></p><a name='more'></a><b>So what's great about AGE?</b> <br /><p></p><p>The array of core stats: There's the usual suspects (Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Willpower), two that totally make sense and should be in any RPG with core stats (Communication in lieu of Charisma and Perception) and two that, initially feel weird (Accuracy for light and ranged weapons, Fighting for the more martial stuff), but totally make sense because as it turns out, the core stats are more along the lines of very broad skills in AGE. You'll usually raise one of them every level. You can narrow things down by picking focuses under them that simply give you a fixed bonus of +2 - so, a lot like what specialisations would do in other games, but the focuses are still as broad as Riding or Bows or Fast-Talk. This basically means that when levelling up, you get better in a lot of things by raising your core stat, not just in a few narrow skills. It's not very fine-grained, but extremely clean and simple and practical.<br /></p><p>The core resolution method: It's based on a 3d6 bell curve that makes it pretty unlikely to fail if you're half-ways competent and the task is not ridiculously difficult. This makes the occassional unlikely failure at a reasonable tasks feel a little like a fumble, which is cool, because it also makes it clear that failure is a serious thing that has consequences. Normally, you'll have a pretty good idea whether you will make a roll or not. This relative security is offset by the swinginess of the Stunt system (see below).</p><p>These two factors, in combination, make for a simple and effective core. The rest, even the Stunt system which is kind of advertised as being at the heart of AGE, are bells and whistles, as far as I'm concerned. Some of that stuff I like, some I consider fiddly or not that well-designed, but the core system is pretty perfect. <br /></p><p><b>What is so-so:</b><br /></p><p>Stuff that I didn't like was that the classes in F-AGE felt pretty rigid and that partly, levelling seemed to be about collecting little bonuses here and there from special talents. Though that was always more of a theoretical problem for me, because I never playered any AGE system beyond 3rd level, so none of the characters had had the time to accumulate a lot of bloat.<br /></p><p>Another thing that I am actually ambivalent about is the Stunt system, which sounds great on paper: If two of your three dice in a test show the same number, you get 1-6 stunt points that you can spend on special effects like disarming an opponent, driving her/him back, doing more damage, or (out of combat) doing stuff faster, using up less ressources or even making people laugh or making them tell you the truth (or keep quiet). It's cool, but it can also cause a lot of frustration if you're rolling stunt points and really can't find any option that fits with the situation on the list. F-AGE's sister game <i>ModernAGE</i> tries to solve this by introducing a LOT more stunts, which did nothing for me ... The other way to go is obviously to make the stunts more abstract, like adding a variable bonus to your next test or to your defense, and newer AGE games like <i>The Expanse</i> RPG or <i>Fifth Season</i> offer such options in their respective quickstarters. The downside is that that takes some of the flavour out of the stunts, but generally, I prefer it - flavour is easy to add on the fly while playing, but analysis paralysis is the bane of every gaming table. For my one-shots, I came up with some guidelines for a more free-form stunt system that worked pretty well for me and that was basically: "Tell me what you wan't to do and I'll tell you how many Stunt Points you need; or convert your Stunt Points directly into a bonus on your next roll."<br /></p><p>Right now, with all the new stuff being added by <i>Expanse</i>, <i>Fifth Season</i> and the upcoming 2nd Edition of F-AGE, I feel like AGE would be my go-to system to start a new fantasy (or sf) camapign. It seems like over the years, Green Ronin came up with a lot of cool ideas to make the game more flexible without making it more complicated - switching Hit Points for Fate Points for example, which kind of work the same, but also have some other uses and make it clear that they're an abstract ressource and not meat points. Some things still feel like workarounds for idiosyncracies of the systems, but you get them with all systems but the ones with the strictest design philosophies (and these usually come with their own problems, like often being pretty bland ...).</p><p>Also, I'm pretty sure that Green Ronin and the AGE community are on record as caring about stuff as diversity in gaming and generally not being a-holes (GR publishing <i>Blue Rose</i> should be a hint ...), which is actually kind of important to me. I just cut ties with a system because its publisher doesn't seem to care that one of their books features pretty hurtful racist tropes. I'm not saying that Green Ronin (or me, or anyone) would never misstep, but from what I've seen of GR, I'm pretty sure that they'd own up to it and make amends. Yeah, this is not about the gaming system, but roleplaying is a community thing, and being part of a community that largely will dogpile on you for insisting that a critique of racism is to be taken seriously kind of takes the fun out of it.</p><p>F-AGE 2nd Edition should be out as pdf any day now - bring it on, Green Ronin!<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-68928888772608251462023-01-31T19:32:00.005-08:002023-02-01T07:29:08.787-08:00The Cloud Empress<p> There's a crowdfunding underway for <i>Cloud Empress</i>, an RPG that hits all my buttons: ecological science fantasy with a bingo card of inspirations that has Miyazaki's <i>Nausicaä</i>, Samuel R. Delany's queer post-apocalytic fever dream <i>Dhalgren</i>, Frank Herbert's <i>Dune</i>, LeGuin's <i>Earthsea</i>, Cixin Liu's <i>Three-Body Problem</i> and the art of Moebius on it:</p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/039/674/821/1779e3490afce6570642c2774d29471f_original.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.0.2&w=680&fit=max&v=1673805139&gif-q=50&q=92&s=2c7ed8f11a28c64d709feaaea044e0d2" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="587" height="578" src="https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/039/674/821/1779e3490afce6570642c2774d29471f_original.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.0.2&w=680&fit=max&v=1673805139&gif-q=50&q=92&s=2c7ed8f11a28c64d709feaaea044e0d2" width="424" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p>The art on the project website is crazy great. The covers of the books look like the world's greatest 70s science fiction novels. The preview edition of the rules doesn't have a lot of meat on its bones (<i>Cloud Empress</i> is based on <i>Mothership</i>, a system that I've been wanting to try for a while), but it's soooo evocative, in a similar way to <i>Troika!</i>, but a lot more focused. For example, the Chalk is some kind of ubiquitous substance that poisons the people living on this post-apocalyptic earth; it can also be used to wield magic, but because it's so poisonous, magic-wielders never get old. There's the Imago, giant insects that leave their hives every summer to feast on the Chalk-saturated bones of humans, so people make great bone-hills from their dead to feed the Imago and keep them away from the living.</p><p>Cloud Empress will come in two 54-page chapbooks (rules and setting, partly presented as a hexcrawl), along with about half a dozen of pamphlet scenarios. Just the little that can be gleaned from the playtest edition has a lot more substance and consistency than, say, <i>Numenera</i> (which, while fun, remains my biggest disappointment as a science-fantasy setting yet).</p><p>If any of this sounds remotely as great to you as it does to me, <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hotstuffonshoreleave/cloud-empress-ecological-science-fantasy-roleplaying">I humbly suggest backing Cloud Empress</a>.<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-78792174410425293092022-12-28T06:28:00.004-08:002022-12-28T18:01:15.734-08:00The Comae Engine<p>Clarence Redd debuted his <a href="https://www.frostbytebooks.com/">Frostbyte Books</a> a few years ago with <i>M-Space</i>, a stripped-down science fiction rules set based on <i>Mythras</i>. I suspect that <i>M-Space</i> is pretty good, though due to a certain necessary blandness, it never quite clicked with me - I was never sure why I should choose it over something more flavourful like <i>Traveller</i> or <i>Frontier Space</i>.</p><p>However, <i>M-Space</i> brought an interesting innovation to <i>Mythras</i> and d-100 gaming in general: Its own extended conflict mechanism, which basically consists of a series of opposed rolls, where the winner deals damage to the loser's conflict pool (the conflict pool being based on one or two of the core characteristics).<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><a href="https://www.frostbytebooks.com/comae-engine"><i>Comae Engine</i></a>, Clarence Redd's new RPG, takes that as its core mechanism: Characters are defined through about a dozen broad skills on a scale of 1-100 and through four conflict pools (Body, Intelligence, Power, Charisma). At first glance, the conflict pools seem very much like other games' core characteristics, being on a scale of usually 8-18, but they have a very distinct function in CE: They don't really tell you how inherently good you are at something (that's for your skills to say), rather, they are a kind of endurance for different kinds of tasks. This is most straightforward with Body, while Intelligence should maybe rather be called Concentration (it's about how long you can try to figure something out before you just have to give up). Power and Charisma might be a little tricky, they're both mainly about self-confidence, though power can pull double-duty as all kinds of mystical energy. I guess Power is basically your "soul energy", while Charisma is more about your composure in difficult social situations.<p></p><p>Basically, Coma Engine is either simply "d100, if you roll under your skill, you succeed. Doubles are extra good/bad", or it's and extended conflict (for combat, shouting matches, picking an especially complex lock under time pressure or scaling a mountain), where one side will sooner or later run out of pool paints. Player characters can push through when they hit zero, continuing the conflict, but at serious consequence - pools under 0 are regenerated much more slowly (in combat, that would be where you go from bruises and exhaustion to pierced organs and broken bones). It's all pretty simple and abstract - I'm not sure whether it feels like an iteration of BRP any more, but I'm also not sure whether it needs to.</p><p>As it is right now (Dec 28th 2022), Comae Engine isn't quite finished - there's placeholder text instead of examples, and some elements of the rules feel half-baked. When it comes to weapons and armour, I think the system can't quite decide yet what it wants to be, sticking to the traditional BRP rules. It is made clear that CE, for the moment, is a BETA and will be updated regularly. The core, though, is pretty great and extremely flexible. It's interesting how it finds a clear distinction between the role that characteristics (conflict pools) and skills play mechanically and thereby avoids the "What do we need characteristics for, anyway?" question that often arises in BRP games.</p><p>Comae Engine reminds me a little of Chaosium's QuestWorlds; both are focused on opposed conflicts. QuestWorlds extended conflicts feel a little more regimented, while Comae Engine tends to say: "Do what makes sense", for example, when it comes to who takes damage in a conflict with multiple characters on one or both sides. CE has the advantage of being more immediately compatible with BRP games, and from reading it, it's also a little easier to figure out how things work. I have played neither yet, so take that assessment with a grain of salt. All in all, I'm really looking forward to the finished CE.<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-11603695716336361972022-12-02T19:05:00.006-08:002022-12-05T06:38:06.080-08:00Open-Ended Rolls Will Pierce Your Liver!<p> I'm immersing myself in all things Rolemaster right now.</p><p>It's madness.</p><p>(Imagine Charlton Heston, slamming his fists into the sand.) <br /></p><p>To be clear: I've played about three sessions of Rolemaster (the classic edition) about 30 years ago because we considered it "Advanced MERP". It was a PITA. We returned to MERP pretty fast. And I haven't played MERP in ages, I even sold off my collection about 15 years ago because I'd convinced myself that I'd never, ever again muster any interest in anything to do with MERP or RM.</p><p>How I regret that. How wrong I was.</p><p>Now, I long for the days of critical hits that describe which inner organ has been skewered.</p><p>Now I long for endless customization of characters I will never play.</p><p>I can't really say why, because by all logic, I should be interested in systems like PbtA or Savage Worlds or Fate, which are more than enough to handle for my age-addled mind.</p><p>But I want more than I can handle. I want to bite off more than I can chew.</p><p>So I've absorbed <i>Against the Darkmaster</i> into my system.</p><p>I keep opening up my HARP pdf, reading random passages.</p><p>I've read the Player's Guide to Shadow World (which really is not a player's guide at all, but probably a serviceable introduction for prospective GMs nevertheless).</p><p>I'm reading a third party campaign for Against the Darkmaster right now.</p><p>I'm even brainstorming a campaign setting for Against the Darkmaster on their Discord server. <br /></p><p>And tomorrow, I'm going the buy the "Core Law" of the new edition of Rolemaster: Rolemaster Unified.</p><p>I'm beyond help. Don't try.<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-14201236354107310682022-11-24T07:13:00.009-08:002022-11-24T08:16:44.825-08:00Reading FrontierSpace Part 2: Character Creation & Advancement (&Equipment)<p>What better way to review character creation than to create a character?</p><p>There's 6 character creation steps (that include equipping your character) - a FS character starts in pretty broad strokes. In game-mechanical terms s*he is defined bei 6 Abilities, 3 Skills, Species, a Moral Code an 6-8 pieces of equipment. There's a little more differentiation involved in selecting how your species impacts your stats.</p><p>I start with rolling up my six Abilities (the core characteristics), taking them in order as they come - RAW, you are allowed to allocate them or use a standard array, but since I have no idea where I'm going, I'll start out as random as possible. Abilitier are rolled with 2D10, using a table that will mostly generate results between 45 and 65, with the minimum and maximum values being 35 and 70.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>The first set of stats I come up with is not terribly impressive - Strength 55 (slightly above average), Agility 45 (sligthly below), Coordination 60 (good), Perception 55, Intelligence 45 (not the brighest), Will 65 (at least nows what s*he wants). I decide that, for simplicity's sake, my character will be a human.</p><p>As skills, I choose Diplomat at 0 (0 is actually the best starting skill score, meaning that you can bring your full Ability value to bear when you use that skill) - I imagine that a lot of Diplomat rolls will be combined with Will, my best core stat. Then I pick Thief at -10 (agility 45 doesn't make me terribly sneaky, but Coordination at 60 is pretty good). Finally, I go with Pilot -10 (though I'll change that one later on to Medic-10).</p><p>Next, I need to skip forward to the <b>Species chapter</b> to read up on what it means to be human. One cool thing about FS: There's three non-human alien species, humans and robots. Except for robots, they're presented in alphabetical order (so humans come after the insectoid Erekai), and they are described in the same manner as all the other species ("Humans are two-armed, two-legged beings with five fingers on each hand ... They have a head mass that holds their brains and primary senses ... their coloration varies from pale to dark ..."), which works really well to make clear that humans aren't more or less special than any other species. (which is kind of ironic, since one of the creators has mentionend on mewe.com that the original plan was to make a humans-only RPG and adding alien species was a choice made relatively lately in the design process).</p><p>The other playable species come with a few twists:</p><p>The insectoid, genderless Erekai are traders with giant bio-ships. They have several life phases, and player characters are supposed to start out in their "Seeker" or "Protector" phasees: As Seekers, they're still looking for a worthy cause to pledge their lifes to, while as Protector, they´ve found it (ability modifiers depend on these phases, with Seekers being more perceptive and Protectors being tougher). I like it how they made the insect people, of all the species, the ones with a culture based around individual idealism.</p><p>The tailed, smooth-skinned Novim are genetically modified slaves who fled from their masters and fear their return. Their pretty cosmopolitan and, apart from that, relatively non-descript; though I'm still thinking about switching my characters species to Novim, which somehow feels fitting.</p><p>The hairy Yar are organized in clans, which, in terms of character, really makes them a catch-all for all the Star Trek species you could want. They seem kind of spiritual, choosing one path of self-mastery when they come of age (Fury or Serenity). They also choose their own clan, which is basically their job and gives them an advantage at one skill and a disadvantage at another. You want a Klingon, you pick a Warrior on the Path of Fury, you want a Vulcan, you pick a Scientist on the path of Serenity ..</p><p>Robot characters, finally, can have developed self-awareness or not (player's choice) - a robot lacking self-awareness doesn't earn XP and is unable to develop apart from adding hardware, while self-aware robots develop just like characters from all other species. Apart from that, robot creation is pretty free-form and creates characters that are slightly tougher, but about as competent as all the others. (I immediately thought that you could also start with a non-self-aware robot and save up XP for the moment when you finally become self-aware to spend them on a big development boost; it's not quite RAW, but I like the idea).</p><p>Coming back to my human character, I have to roll or choose a specific Background that defines his or her species modifiers: I roll "First Responder", though I'm not quite sure if that is supposed to be the character's former job or what his or her parents did for a living. There's stuff like "Light-g-Worlder" or "Urban Survival" that implies a whole social background, but "First Responder" not so much. Anyway, I stick with it and decide that it was my character's job (by now I'm also pretty sure it will be a he). I now may freely choose two positive and one negative modifiers from a list, keeping Background in mind. I decide on +5 Perception (to help people, you need to find them first), Advantage in Social Dealings with the Medical Community (I might not be a full-fledged doctor, but I know the talk), and -5 Body Points (one time when I had to help evacuate people from an airlock, I was exposed to vacuum, and my lungs were permanently damaged).</p><p>I decide that while my character likes to help, he also feels that he shouldn't be supposed to put his life on the line for others constantly; that will be reflected in the personality traits I get to choose. Personality traits have no mechanical impact, but offer suggestions for roleplaying. There's five opposed pairs (kind/cruel, focused/unfocused, brave/cowardly, selfless/selfish, honorable/deceitful), and for each of them, you can decide whether you're one or the other and whether you are "somewhat", "very" or "totally". I decide to be Very Kind (I've learned that it is most important to help people), Somewhat Unfocused (I'm not a First Responder anymore and don't really know where I'm going), Somewhat Cowardly (my experience in that airlock has shaken me more than I'd like to admit) Somewhat selfish (I may be kind to people, but I'm done with sticking my head out too far for others) and Very Deceitful (I'm kind of on my way to become a conman now). In the end, I guess I'm a person who is more about talking the talk than walking the walk, but nevertheless, I have a kind heart. Okay, that definitely helped define my character (though I find the focused/unfocused pairing a little less interesting than the others).</p><p>You're also supposed to come up with two descriptors, one leaning towards positive, one towards negative (think Fate aspects, but without game mechanics attached). I go with "I have learned how important it is to help others" and "I won't put my life on the line for others", which feels like an interesting internal conflict.</p><p>Finally, you have to do some maths - your Hit Points (called Body Points) equal half your strength (28, in my case -5, so I end up with meagre 23 BP). You get 1 Destiny point, +1 of your worst Ability score is 45 or lower (applies), +1 if your highest Ability score is 65 or lower (doesn't apply), +1 if you haven't chosen the Marksman skill (applies), +1 one if you haven't chosen the Warrior skill (appiles), so I start with 4 of 5 possible DP. An interesting aside: If you acquire these skills later or raise your relevant abilities, you will actually lose the corresponding DPs permanently (though you can acquire skill benefits that will give you more limited DPs for specific uses). It's a real incentive to stick to the initial weaknesses of your character for a while.</p><p>Now my character only needs a name - I'll just call him Elroy for now - and equipment, which I'll skip for now; there's a list to select your starting gear from that seems to make sense, but really, equipping my character is always my least favourite part of character creation, and there's an Equipment chapter later on.<br /></p>The next two chapters are about <b>Species</b> (which I have already covered) and <b>Skills</b>. The latter describes FS's broad skills and possible Specialisations (you can pick one Specialisation per Skill, which gives you +10 in your specialised area and -10 when you're using the skill for something else). What's not in the Skills chapter are the Skill Benefits, special abilities you get for each positive increment of 10 in a Skill (so you can buy your first one at +10, the second one at +20). These are relegated to the Character Development chapter (see below), which is a slightly awkward design decision; it makes sense in that you don't need the skill benefits for character creation, but for later reference, it's probably not ideal.<p>The <b>Equipment</b> chapter follows - TBH, I never read those completely, though they are essential to SciFi RPGs and may contain important information on the setting. What I gather from this one are two important rules concepts: First, a lot of equipment comes with abstract usage units - the most commonly used being energy units, but you also get bullets (one size fits all) and different kinds of provision units for medkits, explorer kits, food ... keeping track of those might be a hassle, though most character will have only 2 or 3 at max of those tracks, the character sheet provides ample room for easy bookkeeping, and the system works the same for all kinds of provisions and pretty much boils down to "Shot at someone? Lose one EU. Patchet someone up? Lose one medkit provision". In the end, I think it's a good solution to make money matter (you'll regularly have to restock supplies), which is important when the default core story of the campaign is that the characters constantly need to secure their next job to keep their ship afloat.</p><p>The other important concept is damage types - there's kinetic damage, beam damage, sonic damage and electrical damage, and specific armor types and screens to protect you against each of those while being mostly ineffective against the others. On the one hand, this might provide interesting tactical choices and make sure that there's pretty much always a weak spot you can exploit, on the other hand, I imagine that playing rock-paper-scissors with damage types might end up tiresome; that's something that's really hard to tell from reading the rules. I guess at least at the beginning, while the characters will have to make do with whatever equipment they have, it won't be a big problem.</p><p>Armor is ablative - basically, it just adds Body Points and is destroyed once they are used up. That works well for personal energy shields (which just eat up energy units when they take damage and are rechargable), though for actual armor, I would probably houserule things in a way so that your armor won't be completely destroyed everytime it is succesfully penetrated - maybe just deduct 10 or 20% from the max armor value instead everytime it hits 0.</p><p><b>Character Development</b> works with XP (called Development Points or DP) handed out by the GM. You can improve your Abilities and Skills directly in increments of +5. There's no fixed upper limit, but the prices increase the higher your score gets. Improving skills also costs money. All used-up DP go into your Reknown, and based on your total Reknown, your Rank improves. Rank is basically level; it determines your Mission Pay Grade (how much you can demand for your work), and also, each Rank gives you +1D10 Body Points (or five, if you don't like to roll). Mission Pay Grade seems like a concept that makes sensev for FS, though I'm not that sure about increasing BP, which feels awfully like getting additional Hit Dice in D&D. That's something I would probably waive, keeping the characters squishy (at least, they'll be able to buy better armor and better energy shields with their improved pay grade).</p><p>As soon as you hit +10 in a Skill, you can also start to acquire Skill Benefits. These provide a lot of the skill differentiation that you would get out of the gate in a more granular skill system. For example, using the Marksman skill for starhip gunnery, you would be at -20, unless you have the Gunnery Skill Benefit. Another big class of Skill Benefits are the specialised Destiny Points that basically give you a DP that can only be used in a way that is tied to the respective Skill. Skill Benefits also include licenses (for example to install cybernetics) that provide cheaper and safer access to certain ressources; and the Command Skill gives you a number of "Plans" as benefits that let you hand out bonuses to your companions when following a certain strategy. Because of the skill requirement (you need to have at least +10 in a Skill for each Benefit), I guess you probably won't get much more than 6 or 7 Benefits in you adventurer career, and they all work pretty simple in terms of rules, so you won't have to deal with tons of special effects for all of your feats. In other words, this looks really playable, but if you're totally into having specific feats for "Fighting with two medium length weapons while blindfolded and standing on one leg", you might be disappointed. Generally, the scope and use of Skill Benefits reminds me a lot of Stunts in Fate.<br /></p><p>That's it for now - next time: Robots, Vehicles and Starships.<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-7311494897915191952022-11-17T06:53:00.001-08:002022-11-17T08:46:25.300-08:00Reading FrontierSpace Part 1<p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="http://dwdstudios.com/sites/default/files/thumbnails/FS_PHB_FrontCover_sm.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="238" data-original-width="184" height="238" src="http://dwdstudios.com/sites/default/files/thumbnails/FS_PHB_FrontCover_sm.jpg" width="184" /></a></i></div><i><br />FrontierSpace</i> is very loosely inspired by TSRs old space opera RPG <i>StarFrontiers</i>, which I actually played back in the day - though just a little. From the looks of it, it assumes the classical setup of a starship crew for hire, though the PCs probably won't start with a starship. True to its title, <i>FrontierSpace</i> also assumes that you'll operate in regions of space where the rule of law can mean the rule of the bigger blaster. It would probably serve well to emulate stuff like Firefly or Farscape. While the same can be said about <i>Traveller</i>, <i>M-Space</i> or <i>Stars Without Number</i>, <i>FrontierSpace</i> does its thing really, really well, and in terms of its rules, it might be my favourite science fiction RPG yet. It has pretty light and consistent core rules, and most of the page count of the two core books (which clock in at more than 400 pages together) is made up of sub-systems that can be slotted in and of encyclopedic stuff like equipment lists. I'm pretty sure that at the table, this is al lighter game than, say, Mongoose Traveller.<br /><p></p><p>However, I haven't played FS yet, so this is just a thorough read-through of the core books. This first part is just about the first chapter of the Player's Handbook, which packs a lot of punch.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>Overall Impression</b></p><p>Im reading a 248 page pdf here - hard- and softcover editions are available through drivethru. The cover has a classic space adventure feel (crashed starhip and a firefight) with some nie little twists - I really like how the one female character depicted is from a less human-looking alien species, and while you wouldn't know it from looking at them, the insect person is genderless.</p><p>The interior is black and white with pretty good line-art. It's artistically conservative and won't blow your mind, but it gets across the mood and the setting really well and reminds me of early editions of <i>Traveller</i>, <i>Paranoia</i>, <i>Cyberpunk 2020</i> and even <i>Shadowrun</i> (sans Jeff Laubenstein). The layout is very clean, functional and generous to the eye (none of the grey smudges that look like someone made a color version first and then remembered that they don't have the money for a full-color interior and so put it all through a greyscale filter).</p><p>Having read through half of the <i>Player's Handbook</i> as of now, I'd say that it is extremely well-structured. There's a 12-pages overview of the rules at the beginning that covers all the basees, and from there on, we move on to character creation, character advancement and chapters about Robots, Vehicle, Starships and finally, the Setting. All the rules seem to be where I would expect them to find. The one structural decision that doesn't really make much sense to me is that they put the Equipment chapter in between character creation and character advancement. I guess the idea is that you will need the equipment chapter for character creation, so it should come before advancement, but in terms of initial reading order, hitting a forty-page-wall of everything from medkits to poison gas granades at this point isn't optimal, so I skipped most of that chapter on first reading. Anyway, when using the book at the gaming table, the order of chapters is less important than whether you can find all the rules in their proper chapters, and the latter definitely seems to be the case.</p><p>Now, let's go through it chapter by chapter:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Introduction</b></p><p>This part mainly explains the core conceit of the game being basically a gritty space western. It is assumed that you never quite have enough money and ressources, that you'll do a lot of your repairs with duct tape, that none of your gear is shiny and new and that most of the time, you'll be on your own.</p><p>The introduction then goes on to claim that FrontierSpace is an "old-fashioned" RPG that depends on the GM (called Referee here) being in charge and making rulings; though I must say FS doesn't feel old-fashioned to me, the rules design actually is pretty modern, and there's a lot of "player empowerment" baked into the rules, which is all fine by me. In the end, the core advice about the role of the Referee is: Let them do the rulings in the heat of the moment, they're not out to get you, and if there's really need for discussion, wait until afterwards. In my book, that's a good piece advice that you'll find in most current rpg rulebooks.<br /></p><p>One thing that I don't really care for (pretty much the only thing that, as of yet, I don't like about FS) is the authors' short explanation for their use of the generic masculine. I'm okay with their decision - I tend to go for gender-neutral whenever possible, including singular they, but if they don't want to do that, that's no dealbreaker for me. I'm not even sure they're wrong, I've just decided differently for myself. But their explanation contains more than a little snark against anyone who prefers gender-neutral language, that just seems uncalled for. I will discuss this here and not come back to it (promised), because while on the one hand, I disagree with some of the things being said in that little text box, I feel that it doesn't really marr FS as a whole. So, if you don't care for this discussion, just jump to where the font gets bigger again.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">The authors claim in that little text box that they're "just not wired" in a way that would make them think of people in terms of their gender, sexual orientation, race, class, age ... I appreciate what they're trying to say. But they might have stopped to think about how arrogant this must sound to people like me who assume that it is actually a daily struggle not to be racist, not to be sexist, to not act on all those ugly little notions that have been put into our heads by a society that keeps discriminating, keeps reproducing hurtful stereotypes. (Later, in the "Species" chapter, it is mentioned that "more than any other species, humans are shaped by their background", so I wonder how the authors, if they truly believe that, can claim "not to be wired that way." I'm pretty sure that they haven't grown up in a society free of racism and sexism.) The authors then go on to assure that the use of generic masculine is merely a convention of grammar that they have learned and don't want to unlearn (which, as I said, I can live with pretty well, though I would handle things differently) and then kindly ask the reader not to take offense to this "unless you also take offense to regular uses of the Oxford comma or occasional applications of split infinitives." Now really, this is a little too much - to me, it basically seems to say: "Hey, we're using high-brow language here, and the generic masculine is just part of it, if you don't understand that, you're just wrong and uneducated!" That not only feels insulting, it also goes against the grain of linguistics, which always strives to be descriptive, not prescriptive.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Apart from that, as of yet, there's nothing in FS that looks like they want to "stick it to the SJWs" - quite on the contrary, there's characters written against gender stereotype and there's some really good stuff in the species descriptions that I'll come to later. Still, that one little passage has kept me from reading most of FrontierSpace for 2 or 3 years. It just kept raising its head, souring my reading experience. I finally got over it, because hey, the people form DWD studios might disagree with me on this point, but everything else about FS points to their anti-discrimination statement being heartfelt and honest. In the end, I just hope they consider my reaction to this passage and find a less snarky way to say what they have to say in future products.</span></p><p><br /></p><p>Okay, that being out of the way ...let's get to the next section, the <b>Rules Overview</b>. This is shiny. In twelve pages, they really get you up to speed on all the mechanics. You have six core abilities with starting scores somewhere between 30 and 75 (Perception being one of them, which, in my book is always a bonus). All tests are d100 roll-under; skills act as modifiers to abilities and can be freely combined with them. Unskilled rolls are at Ability-20, so if you have a skill at -10, it means you already have some expertise, a skill at 0 is solid, and every skill at +10 and more means that you are becoming a true master and gain some extra perks called Skill Benefits. Skills are broad (Medic, Pilot, Scientist, but also Artist or Thief), but you can specialise in one specific area and later gain Skill Benefits that often act as enableers, allowing you to use your Marksman skill for gunnery without penalty, for example. (The authors mention that they've been met with negative reaction about the notion that skills start at a negative value, but really, to me, this is much cleaner and more intuitive than how it works in FS's sister game <i>BareBones Fantasy</i>, were skill values are always positive, but are added to only half the abilitiy value.)</p><p>Dice-reading conventions are pretty low-math for a d100 system: doubles on your roll act as crits or fumbles, there's a die-switching mechanic for advantage and disadvantage, and bonuses and penalties to you roll normally come in increments of 10 or 20. There's a multi-action-penalty which seems to be the main tacticaly element of combat, and it's really neat and simple: When it's your turn, you can take as many actions as you like, but there's a cumulative penalty of -20 to your roll for each additional action, and yes, reactions like dodging also forward that penalty. Some version's of Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying have that kind of cumulative penalty for multiple defenses, but just extending it to all actions and basically allow everyone to keep acting as long as they are suficciently skilled to pull it off just solves so many problems.</p><p>Destiny Points are FS's version of Fate or Luck or Bennies. You'll start with between 1 and 5 destiny points (depending on how awesome your character is - the better your stats, the less DP). They refresh after each adventure, but you won't be able to raise your limit - actually, the limit will go down as your character improves (there's some interesting implications for advancement in that, because it gives you an incentive not to buy up your worst and best abilities early on). They are pretty powerful, allowing you to upgrade a roll (fumble to failure, failure to success, success to crit), to max out damage or even to be guaranteed to survive the next round - the idea being that this will allow you to pull off some really crazy stunt that might kill you otherwise.</p><p>To round out a chapter, we get a 3-page example of play that is pretty entertaining and shows how the multi-action penalty works in, well, action (though it made me a little confused about how cover works).</p><p>All in all, a pretty good start. Next post, I will look at character creation.<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-63662270161590516412022-03-09T13:51:00.002-08:002022-03-09T13:52:22.827-08:00A (belated) Review of Hessaret's Treasure<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://thedesignmechanism.com/resources/Cover_Images/Hessarets-Treasure-2.jpg.opt174x225o0%2C0s174x225.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="174" height="225" src="http://thedesignmechanism.com/resources/Cover_Images/Hessarets-Treasure-2.jpg.opt174x225o0%2C0s174x225.jpg" width="174" /></a></div><br /> I've been meaning to review<a href="http://thedesignmechanism.com/store.php#!/Hessarets-Treasure/p/32088844/category=5186110"> this Mythras scenario </a>since I ran I more than a year ago, but somehow, I'm only now getting around to it ... full disclosure: I'm working on a few small, Mythras-related projects with its author Matt Eager, but that's actually only because I've reached out to him after reading and playing the scenario. Also, this review is based on the German translation of it.<p></p><p>I'm not going into details here, but still,</p><p><br /></p><p>SPOILERS AHEAD</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><i>Hessaret's Treasure</i> bills itself a fantasy spaghetti western, but since I'm not that studied in that genre, that didn't tell me much. The core idea is that the characters have to navigate two factions of shady NPCs who both hate and need each other to hunt for the eponymous treasure. As such, I would call the adventure story-focused, not in terms of being a railroad, but in the literal sense of it being focused on the dramatic story elements it brings to the table - the goals of and relationships between the NPCs, how they might interact with the goals of the PCs, and how they might form relationships with them. Both sides need the PCs as go-betweens to keep the other side from just trying to kill them off.</p><p>That's the core of it; and consequently, while running the scenario, I mostly referenced the extensive NPC descriptions in the back - that's where the meat of it is. You get four major players here, two on each side, and they're all multi-layered, with strong passions about their friends and foes. I found it easy to find their proper voices in play, because the ground-work laid by the text is rock-solid. The characters could believably side with any or none of them - my players gravitated towards each one of them in turn over the course of the adventure, only to doubt later whether their trust was misplaced.</p><p>Don't let yourself be fooled by the adventure being structured in scenes: Especially in the beginning, <i>Hessaret's Treausure</i> reads like it very much wants the characters to follow a particular order of events with a pre-determined outcome. Partly this is to get them into the tight spot between the two rivaling factions - but there's plenty of other possibilities for this to come about, and frankly, even if this central conceit doesn't work out as planned - like the characters getting what they need to go treausure-hunting on their own, or the characters clearly siding with one faction -, the adventure offers all the material you need to just keep playing. Part of <i>Hessaret's Treasure</i> might look like a railroad, but the material is really so encompassing and well-organzied, and it all makes so much sense - which is not at all a given in story-focused scenarios, where twists and turns are often deployed quite unmotivated and at the whim of the author - that, at no point, it would be a problem to go off the rails.</p><p>That being said, the central conceit <i>is</i> pretty cool, and it is well worth the effort to get your players to buy into it. As a GM, you'll have to be ready for some intense PC/NPC interaction. With a larger group of PCs, I can imagine that it might be a bit overwhelming to keep track of that - luckily, I ran this scenario with just two other players, which, to me, seems like the ideal number for <i>Hessaret's Treasure</i>. It not only made for intense role-playing, it also meant that the PCs really had to play their cards well to keep both factions at bay, since they wouldn't have been able to overwhelm any side on their own, and maybe not even with the help of the other faction.</p><p>Right now, I'm gearing up to revive my Mythras campaign with a sequel to <i>Hessaret's Treasure</i> - Arkannad is still out there and wants revenge, and by now, he has had time to not only catch up with the PCs, but also to get some back-up ...</p><p>This is really a great scenario - it's also a good read, but I recommend reminding yourself once in a while that things might go very different then suggested. The whole set-up is full of possibilities that can easily be explored with the material presented.</p><p> </p><p>5 treacherous scoundrels out of 5 <br /></p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-65335105694604858072021-11-10T08:11:00.004-08:002021-11-10T08:11:57.427-08:00Some thoughts on OpenQuest 3rd Edition<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://openquestrpg.com/files/2021/04/oq3-cover-web-preview-john-o-logo-232x300.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="232" height="300" src="https://openquestrpg.com/files/2021/04/oq3-cover-web-preview-john-o-logo-232x300.png" width="232" /></a></div><br />I'm having trouble with reading through the third edition of OpenQuest. The thing is, this new edition warrants a complete re-read, but since I feel that I know <i>most</i> of it from 2nd Edition, I keep leafing back and forth for the new stuff. And the new stuff is good, good enough to convince me that OQ3 is both the best expression of OQ yet and probably also the best rules-light take on BRPish d100 mechanics out there.<p></p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>My main takeaway from 3rd edition for now is:<p></p><p>Experience has been re-worked to allow for extended campaigns.</p><p>Reaching 100% in a skill (which is where they are now capped) is a BIG THING. (It remains a little vague how skills at 100% interact with negative modifiers, though - I suggest deciding how to handle that at your table in advance.)<br /></p><p>Newt has moved on to the modern (and, to my mind, more intuitive) concept of doubles (33, 44, 55, ...) as critical rolls and to the blackjack style "roll high within your skill rating" approach. I'm happy with both because they greatly reduce math (though I also know that a good part of the d100 community doesn't like either).</p><p>"Social Combat" is codified for Fast Talk, Oratory and Intimidation, which are actually part of the combat chapter. I'm a little bit wary of that, because all three systems take an all-or-nothing approach (you either convince/intimidate them or not), and I rather prefer it when systems for social interaction are about changing the attitude of an NPC (on a ladder of hostile - adverse - neutral - open-minded or slightly intimidated - friendly or terrified) and not about dictating an outcome (a frienly NPC can still deny you your wish, a terrified NPC might still fight). I think the term "social combat" in itself is a little bit too leading here, because it implies that these interactions should be modeled on RPG combat and therefore have a definitive outcome.</p><p>Apart from that, the main systems remain unchanged, though there's a lot more support for realizing a multitude of character concepts, and also for running the game - for example, concepts like when to roll and failing forward are explored in a way that should be especially helpful to novice GMs.<br /></p><p>What's really cool about the OQ framework is that, if you feel that a rule for a certain specific situation is missing, it is usually pretty easy to come up with a solution that's in line with how the system works in general.</p><p> </p><p>Let me give you three examples:<i><br /></i></p><p><b>Weapon reach in combat:</b> Although OQ does use some modifiers for combat, it has always shied away from suggesting rules or even rulings for weapon length. I suspect that is due to the fact that most versions of BRP are notoriously complicated in that regard, and OQ wants to keep it simple. However, in OQ, you can easily get by with eyeballing this. So you could simply give a combattant with a significantly shorter weapon (say, dagger against spear) a disadvantage (-20%) on attacks and parries (not dodges, which would be another reason to be good at dodging) until they land a succesful sblow that is not parried; then they're considered to have closed to their own weapons reach, and the disadvantage is on the side of the combattant with the longer weapon, until THEY land a blow, and so (back and) forth.</p><p><b>Lethal damage bonuses:</b> Damage bonuses of very large creatures are still so high that each hit will kill any human-sized creature (a dragon has +7d6). I'm not sure whether I consider this a bug or a feature ... anyway, if it bothers you, one way around it might be to roll only one d6 and treat the leading number as a multiplier: that way, there's still a slight, but not negligible chance that a giant monster rolls a 1 or 2 for a hit that might be survivable.</p><p><b>Keeping opponents down in unarmed combat:</b> if you feel that holding a grip in unarmed combat should in some way be modified by the strength and stature of you opponent, take a page out of Mythras and use the damage bonus steps for that. You can keep a hold on a creature of up to one step above your damage bonus with no penalty; at two steps, the penalty is -20%, at three steps -50%, above that, you just don't stand a chance (a strong or even just very skilled human might wrestle a minotaur or troll, but not a giant!).</p><p>These are three house-rules that I came up with while reading, and I'm pretty sure that they should work fine, not because I'm such a genius at making up house-rules, but because OQ is such a great toolbox.<br /></p><p> </p><p>Art (mostly line-art) and layout are in black and white evoke the early nineties, especially Stormbringer, which is wonderful! To be honest, I kind of hated both the 2nd Edition and the 2nd Edition Refresh in that regard (Jeshields is a great artist, but I feel that coloring their illustrations doesn't do them a favour).</p><p>I#m not doing OQ3 justice here, because as of yet, I haven't really read through it from cover to cover (I've not even mentioned the magic systems and the included setting), but I've been wanting to blog about it for months now ... anyway, it's highly recommended. Next time, I'll be reviewing the quickstart adventure The <i>Lost Outpost</i>.<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-78837804792892959982021-11-06T21:42:00.004-07:002021-11-06T21:49:31.560-07:00A Legacy of missed Opportunities<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://d1vzi28wh99zvq.cloudfront.net/images/13767/374191-thumb140.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="140" height="181" src="https://d1vzi28wh99zvq.cloudfront.net/images/13767/374191-thumb140.jpg" width="140" /></a></div><br />By the end of this review, I well tell you that <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/374191/Legacy-of-Blood?term=legacy+of+blood"><i>Legacy of Blood</i></a> for vsD is worth buying - after picking it apart in bloody pieces. Really, I'm positively angry about many things this scenario does, BUT it features a great premise and enough material to actually make it work. This could be a great, complex, atmospheric scenario about falling from grace (and maybe rising again) - instead, author Jonathan Hicks for some reason decided to write <i>LoB</i> as a railroaded mediocre dungeon romp that doesn't make much sense. It's a mystery, and not one of the good kind, but it leaves enough to be salvaged and turned into something beautiful.<p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><br /></p><p><b>What's it about? [SPOILERS from here]</b><br /></p><p>The premise is that after the long and undeserved fall from grace of the noble Leoric family, its current Lady, in her desperation, has secretly allied herself with the Darkmaster and invited his servents into her home. Most good souls have been driven away from her seat at Windown Castle, and a subtle shadow has fallen over her holdings. Her handmaiden Amberly Ash knows all about this and doesn't approve, so she steals a magical key that opens the door to a cache of magical items hidden in Castle Dulgroth, formerly owned by the Leorics, which lies in ruins these days and has been claimed by as lair by the dragon Delveniul. She gives to key to the heroes, imploring them to get the magical items so that they don't fall into the hands of the Darkmasters servants. She knows of a secret way into Castle Dulgroth, through the old family barrows beneath it. Naturally, the servants of the Darkmaster will find out about the stolen key and set out after the characters ...<br /></p><p>As an added complication, the Gelbreth family, old rivals of the Leoric, want to get their hands on some of the documents kept in the cache that could stain their good name, and send out an agent.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b>What's right with it?</b></p><p>We get good write-ups of the central characters - Lady Leoric, her handmaiden Amberly Ash, the two major servants of the Darkmaster living in Windown Castle and a spy of the Gelbreth family. Lady Leoric is a tragic character - her families name has been wrongfully smeared for generations by corrupt kings, her holdings have dwindled, and she finally had enough of it and taken the outstretched hand of the Darkmaster (she's even supposed to get a Theoden moment at the end of the adventure that turns her around). The servants of the Darkmaster, Varus and Eorin Darkelm, who are father and son, are pretty straightforward bad guys, but still get some delightful pieces of characterization that should make them fun to interact with. Amberly Ash is a classical everyday hero who just does the right thing, and Stry Hemborn, the Gelbreth spy, is characterized as a capable adventurer and smart manipulator with few scruples who will try to remain on the good side of the characters as long as he can. This is rich material for interaction.<br /></p><p>We also get some introductory mini-adventures along the lines of "clean the ghouls out of the old watchtower" to establish the characters in the area and make them likely candidates to approach for Amberly Ash. These don't go beyond giving out a mission in one or two sentences and providing some adversary stats, but they still make sense in the broader context of the adventure.<br /></p><p>Together with the backstory, that makes for the first third of the scenario, and if that sounds appealing to you, I'd say it's worth the price of admission.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b>What's wrong with it?</b></p><p>Basically, that the rest of the adventure decides against doing anything with the good stuff - more so, if you play it as written, it actually seems to try to keep you away from interacting in any meaningful way with Lady Leoric, the Darkelms and Amberly Ash (beyond her role as the one who sends the characters on their mission).</p><p>As written, the characters are supposed to meet Amberly Ash in an inn. How hard would it be to suggest that the characters - after, for example, cleaning out a watchtower full of ghouls - might actually be Lady Leorics guests at Windown Castle, where they could meet the bad guys in person and maybe sniff out that something's wrong about them? It's possible to spin the scenario that way, but there's no guidance for it, and while we get good NPC descriptions to work with, there's next to nothing about Windown Castle itself.</p><p>So the adventure presupposses that the characters go relic hunting without ever having met Lady Leoric or the Darkelms (and without worrying about what will happen to Amberly Ash, as well), which is the first big wasted opportunity of the scenario as written, because it robs later encounters with the Darkelms and the likely epilogue with Leoric of a lot of its possible impact.</p><p>After that, we get a heavily scripted wilderness chase sequence, in which the GM is told quite explicitly when the heroes are supposed to hold their ground, when they should flee due to overwhelming numbers and when Stry, the Gelbreth spy, shows up to save their asses and endear himself to them with a cooked up story about him being a friend of Amberly's. The dramatic timing of all these events might look excellent on paper, but really, dramatic timing is best left to the GM, because it's highly dependent on what's actually happening at the table. I'm not buying a scenario because I want it to tell me a dramatic story, I'm buying it because I want <i>tools</i> I can use to create a dramatic story together with my players. At the same time, there's very little help provided for running the actual encounters. One of them is heavily dependend on missile combat, so you'd think there'd be some guidance about how far the opposing sides might be apart ... but no. Instead, it is stated that if, at a certain moment, none of the heroes loose an arrow at Eorin Darkelm, Stry will do so and kill him with one shot. Because you know how much players love it when NPCs steal their thunder ...</p><p>Oh yeah, did I mention that Eorin Darkelm is following the heroes with a warband of orcs ...? Until now, it looked like the Darkelms operate with human henchman. Them having orcs at Wondown Castle would have certainly been a huge red flag in the implied setting of vsD that might have been mentioned before. And if the orcs are not from Windown Castle, they must have camped somewhere around - but there's no orc camp to be seen on the map of the surroundings. While reading, this was the point where I started to wish that <i>LoB</i> would have just followed the scenario format of the other two vsD adventures, which would have provided just that kind of information.</p><p>So after the scripted chase follows a trip through the barrows. Again, there's some nice scenes here, but in the end, the whole sequence lacks coherence and is full of ill-judged ideas. For example, each time the characters disturb a grave or rob a piece of treasure, an undead guard will awaken - but in a room at the very end of the barrows! So the worse the heroes behave on their way through the barrows, the more opponents they'll have to face in the end ... but there's no way for them to know that or find it out. So either the GM rubs their noses in it in the end ("You were very, very bad, and here's your just deserts! Ha!"), or the whole thing is pretty pointless. Also, in terms of trying to guard your graves from graverobbers, it just makes zero sense.</p><p>Even worse is the room where, if you rob a piece of treasure, you'll be cursed to not gain any XP as long as you don't get rid of said treasure - and the adventure text explicitly tells the GM not to mention anything and let the players figure it out for themselves. Yeah, that's going to go down well: "You're not getting XP this session." "What, why?" "Go figure!"</p><p>These two things actually made me angry (I'm still angry!), because they seems to be written for GMs who feel the need to punish their players for doing "bad things". I <i>hate</i> this. It's not about the actions of the characters having consequences, because for that to be true, the players would have to have at least a slight chance to figure out the consequences of their actions and think them through on an ethical and/or practical level. This is just "You better behave, or you'll see what happens!"<br /></p><p>Apart from that, vsD has truly great rules for cursed items that can provide lots of role-playing fun for players as well by giving them new, problematic passions ... why not use them, instead of coming up with a simplistic and mean-spirited punishment for grave-robbing characters <i>and</i> their players? (Actually, <i>LoB</i> seems to be reluctant to engage with the rules of vsD on several occassions.)<br /></p><p>And then there's the grand finale that takes place in a vault right under the room where the dragon Delveniul is sleeping. Delveniul remains a purely abstract threat - if she awakes, she will send down a burst of fire, but she won't be able to fit into the corridors to come down to them. Though I shouldn't write if, but <i>when</i> she awakes, because once again, it is a foregone conclusion that she will <i>not</i> wake up while the characters sneak around in the vault beneath her, but that she <i>will</i> wake up as soon as the bad guys catch up with the characters and make a racket. At least, that will leave the characters with some decisions to make about whether to save treasure, magical items or information.</p><p>Once again, it feels like <i>LoB</i> is afraid to let the characters interact with the major players while the actual adventure is underway, because that might lead to things going off the rails laid by the author. So you have a dragon, traditionally a monster with personality, a threat that can not only be avoided or defeated, but also negotiated with, and instead of doing something with it, you reduce it to a burst of flame at the showdown.<br /></p><p>There's an epilogue to let us know that Amberly Ash has (against all odds, it would seem) survived as a prisoner on Windown Castle, but it is really the first time that it is implied that the characters might care about her fate. Strangely enough, in the next section, that deals with Lady Leoric shedding the influence of the Darkmaster, it is implied that, on the contrary, her handmaiden has died and that she is heartbroken about that. Both these conflicting outcomes are not described as options, but stated as fact. Finally, we get several good suggestions for follow-up adventures, including dealing with Delveniul, who becomes more destructive once plunderers start to venture into the now re-discovered barrows under her castle, and investigating the shady Gelbreth family. While I could well imagine running the former with the material provided, there's next to nothing on the Gelbreth family in <i>LoB</i>, which is quite a shame.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b>What can be done?</b></p><p>However much I might have written myself into a rage, this doesn't change the fact that <i>LoB</i> offers a great premise and good scenario material, especially when it comes to NPCs. I do want to run this, but certainly not remotely as written. There's so many options that the scenario fails to explore, support or even hint at. For example, it would make so much sense to have the characters actually visit Windown Castle before starting their quest. How would the atmosphere in this shadowed place of former greatness be? Will the heroes figure out that Lady Leoric and the Darkelms serve the Darkmaster, and if they do, how will they react? Will they confront them? Will they pretend to be agents of the Darkmaster themselves? Even if they pick a fight with the Darkelms there and then ( "You, Sir, are scum, and I will call you such!"), there's ample room to still let the treasure hunt unfold after that. And it would make so much more sense for Amberly Ash to approach them if they turn up as guests at Windown Castle.</p><p>And a dragon - always a golden opportunity to let the characters negotiate for what they want! They could ask Delveniul to just let them go with the coveted magic items and offer her to bring her the treasures from the barrows instead. They could even ask her to guard the magic items against the Darkmaster (but could she be trusted not to ally with him of he makes her a better offer ...?). There's so much potential here that the adventure seems to actively try to cut off by stating that the dragon will just kill anyone who ist stupid enough to venture further up into the castle.<br /></p>Oh yeah, and I would probably just throw out most of that barrows nonsense ... <br /><p>What I really don't get: Nothing about <i>LoB</i> calls for that kind of railroaded wilderness/dungeon chase that takes up most of the pages of the written scenario. Quite the contrary - after reading the first 8-10 pages, I was really baffled by what came afterward.</p><p>In the end, this one gets 3 out of 5 grumpy dragons for all the good stuff in the first pages that, for some reason, it doesn't want you to use.<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-39810712449192330412021-10-23T11:25:00.005-07:002021-10-26T08:36:59.348-07:00vsD Adventure Review: The Silence of Dawnfell<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA9Q8QIpgbMxbcUjm93y5TbX7JIC6p6LQB1bkMVVAvua_NPpbKtf0vr3QvnkGAx2tEcYwX0uJCloOk0FYK8oqbnLw9pWQdqdfsnaSOWGIcmutL2wOvAgfWxuwREWnEB5pjoMxIuifnjiJf/s792/dawnfell.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="792" data-original-width="612" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA9Q8QIpgbMxbcUjm93y5TbX7JIC6p6LQB1bkMVVAvua_NPpbKtf0vr3QvnkGAx2tEcYwX0uJCloOk0FYK8oqbnLw9pWQdqdfsnaSOWGIcmutL2wOvAgfWxuwREWnEB5pjoMxIuifnjiJf/s320/dawnfell.jpeg" width="247" /></a></div><br /> I fear that I might be a little unfair towards this adventure: It is a good one, but I'm reading it right on the heels of <i>Shadows of the Northern Woods</i>, which is a tough act to follow. Especially since a lot of motives and themes of <i>Dawnfell</i> are reminiscent of <i>SotNW</i>: Again, there's a small village to be saved, free folk who have become estranged from each other and must be brought back together, a magical McGuffin that the bad guys are after and a climatic battle where the outcome depends hugely on how many checkmarks the characters were able to make on their adventurous to-do list in advance. In both adventures, we have spiders in the woods and ancient burial sites hiding treasures and answers. Even some of the NPCs feel like variations on a theme when compared to <i>SotNW</i> (Annis/Beltine, Wulfric/Brynjar, Morcant and his She-Wolf/Urgusk and his Mountain-Lion). It's hard to say if, playing both scenarios back to back in an actual campaign, this would feel like a thematic throughline or rather like "Oh well, another troll with a vicious pet and another problematic thane."<br /><p></p><p>But while <i>SotNW</i> uses its sleepy, rural setting as a springboard to dive deep into the (admittedly vague) mythology of vsD's implied setting, <i>Dawnfell</i> firmly sticks to being an adventure about saving a village from a band of trolls. Which is actually a good thing, because it makes <i>Dawnfell</i> truly self-contained and also thematically more suitable for a group of 1st level characters. As such, one might say that <i>Dawnfell</i> is better at being what it is than <i>SotNW</i>, but it is also a little less impressive.</p><a name='more'></a><p>Going into detail, <i>Dawnfell</i> is again very reminiscent of classic ICE modules in being mainly a collection of NPCs and places that are all connected to a backstory. The enchanted tower bell that has been protecting the village from the nearby troll clans has been stolen, and there's a troll chieftain out for revenge, so the characters are on a ticking clock to bring back the bell and find some allies. The latter is complicated by twenty years of distrust and bull-headedness by the local Thane.</p><p>The NPC's and their relationships to each other are well thought out, and I can see this scenario go any number of ways - if the characters fail to mend relations with the elves in the woods, they can still try to strike a deal with the bandits or even with the trolls themselves. The investigative element of the adventure is pretty basic, and the village of Dawnfell can be saved without solving it at all; the characters might very well be able to locate the bell without ever finding out who stole it in the first place, or saving Dawnfell without ever locating the bell.</p><p>The final battle of <i>Dawnfell</i> looks pretty good on paper - it is not quite clear how many trolls there are around Dawnfell and how many trolls Urgusk commands, but it can't be many, since he attacks the village with only two others; however, it is easily imaginable that three trolls are a major threat to some village out in the wilds, as well as to a first level party.<br /></p><p>Some elements of the scenario don't quite ring true to me, however: For one thing, there's the aged hero Gwendoline, who slew the father of Urgusk the troll chieftain and must now be saved from him ... though if you take a look at Gwendoline's stats, it doesn't really make sense that she would need a lot of saving. My take at Gwendoline would be that, in her battle against Urgusk's father, she has suffered an injury that causes her great pain when she walks, and give her a loving husband who is not a fighter at all, but would do anything to defend her. Thus, it is clear why Gwendoline can't really join the heroes in saving Dawnfell, the heroes actually have two NPCs to save and not one (Gwendoline and her husband), and there's potentially lots of tragic and/or romantic moments to be had, from Urgusk just backhanding Gwendoline's husband out of the way when he goes for her to Gwendoline making a last stand suffering from the agonizing pain caused by her old injury.</p><p>A rather minor quibble is that I don't quite buy Urgusk's quirk - he's an art-collector, which is a nice touch, but the adventure does little with it; there's some paintings and statues in his den, but it seems a little far-fetched that he should have been able to obtain those intact, and also, it is of no real relevance to the rest of the adventure. I'd either drop this element or expand it.</p><p>All things considered, however, I'm quite happy with <i>Dawnfell</i> - it is a well-designed, self-contained scenario with reasonable stakes for a beginner group and gets a solid 4 out of 5 Darkmasters from me.<br /></p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-80190754983828656602021-10-20T08:08:00.002-07:002021-10-20T17:12:39.647-07:00 vsD Adventure Review: Shadows of the Northern Woods<p>In my previous post, I was singing the praise of the classic Iron Crown Enterprises scenario structure, and since <i>Shadows of the Northern Woods</i>, the mini-campaign included in the corebook of <i>Against the Darkmaster</i>, follows similar design principles, I'll just jeep on singing.</p><p><i>Shadows of the Northern Woods</i> (<i>SotNW</i>) is a joy to read. It hits exactly my sweet spot between creating a sandbox environment, but also giving lots of support for the three interconnected scenarios provided (much more support than the old MERP modules usually offered). More importantly, it really makes the environment come alive; it's a small setting, basically a village and the surrounding wilderness, but it's brimming with NPCs, factions, unique monsters, history and current events.</p><a name='more'></a> <br /><p></p><p>The campaign first provides the backstory of the Northern Woods and the village of Willow Lake, Silmarillion style. Big stuff has happened here, armies clashed, great spells were woven and greater tragedies suffered. These days, only age-old ruins and haunting ghosts speak of this past (though characters who succeed at their Songs&Tales rolls will know one thing or the other). The adventure does a good job at providing a sense of deep history while keeping the greater picture vague. Sometimes, that doesn't quite work to the advantage of the adventure - especially in the final act, it feels like the GM needs to nail down a little more background to allow the players to arrive at a satisfying conclusion - but in general, <i>Shadows of the Northern Woods</i> is evocative of the 80s fantasy source material it draws from in all the best ways. It's deeply atmospheric, and its fantasy tropes have both feet planted firmly in rich mythological soil.</p><p>I'm getting into mildly <b>spoilery territory</b> now - if you're a player, the following might give you some clues you're better off without ...</p><p><br /></p><p><i>SotNW</i> comes with three scenarios which are each quite distinct in tone, even though they share the same set of locations and NPCs and will probably blend into each other at most tables. The first one, <i>The Beast of Willow Lake</i>, is a small investigation with some whimsical overtones; it feels very much like the <i>Hobbit</i> Tolkien, with Trolls arguing about how to prepare dwarf, but also some hints of a deeper darkness.</p><p><i>The Winds of War</i>, then, is a <i>Seven Samurai</i>-type scenario where the Player Characters need to defend the village of Willow Lake against a small army, while at the same time investigating the root cause of what's going on. It uses vsD's Warfare rules and provides some good examples for how the PCs can turn the tide. <i>Winds of War</i> feels like a microcosm of the battles of the <i>Lord of the Rings</i>; it's all very local and small scale, but you will find hints of the siege of Helms Deep, Rohan coming to the help of Gondor and even of the Oathbreakers. It's not derivative, but <i>Winds of War</i> knows the "War Tropes" of epic fantasy and makes excellent use of them. It's also the scenario that makes the fullest use of the setting elements presented in <i>SotNW</i>, and I can easily see it taking four or five sessions to finish - there's just so much places and people for the PCs to interact with.</p><p>The final adventure, <i>Island in the Mist</i>, feels more like an epilogue that digs deep into the tragic backstory, an expedition into a gloomy otherworld. It's a great scenario, as well, but it suffers a little from the lack of a wll-defined larger setting; there's a suggestion of how the characters might find a very satisfying, non-violent solution for it, but that is basically dependent on a wider context that is simply not there. Basically, this is where you see the seams that are unavoidable when you have a scenario that engages with some deep history, but still needs to slot into a vaguely defined, implied setting.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p>The general organizsation of the material is very good - not perfect, since there's a few a few pieces of information you'll have to hunt through the text (I found it hard to figure out when and under which circumstances exactly Wulfric became Thane of Willow Lake until I'd read the whole adventure), but generally, the clear separation into places, NPCs and hazards is really neat. I especially like that each NPC comes not only with an explicitly stated main goal, but also with information about what will happen if they succeed. Another small but helpful thing: Elements of the surroundings the GM should take note of (like <b>poisonous vines</b>) are <b>printed in bold</b> - actually, if you're playing Fate, these would be your location aspects.<br /></p><p>What makes <i>SotNW</i> truly great, however, is the sheer multitude of possible events to interact with - and they're all connected to the core story and backstory in one way or the other, so nothing feels random here. There's some nice twists, as well, but the adventure doesn't depend on them, which is great as well: So even if the PCs spot the main bad guy within five minutes of play (which is highly unlikely, but still ...), walk up to him and dispatch of him, there's more than enough adventure left for them; gears are in motion, things are happening, and the characters will have to react. Whatever they do, they've stumbled into some serious sh** here, and it won't be over for them until it's over.</p><p>If I'd have to point out problems, I can think of two: One, all three scenarios practially need to happen over the course of ten days (you probably could have the triggering events of <i>Island of the Mist</i> occur a few weeks later, but it would be a stretch), and the characters are supposed to advance several levels to meet the challenges of the third. While this is certainly possible, given the wealth of story that can happen in <i>Winds of War</i>, this speed of character development still might beggar credibility ... also, there's one little piece of backstory that I really don't care for (and that is, luckily, easily changed): Why does warrior-queen Blaithneid have to <i>seduce</i> the evil general before annihilating his troops? Really, there's no good reason, and it's such a tired cliché ...</p><p><b>Final verdict: </b><i>SotNW</i> is a great example of the classic, open-ended ICE sandbox module, augmented with some additional guidance. I haven't been itching to run something this much in a long time.</p><p>You can get <i>SotNW</i> not only as part of the core rules, but also <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/329327/Shadows-of-the-Northern-Woods">separately as PDF</a>. If you're playing Rolemaster or HARP (or even MERP), it should be easily adapted, and if you're into classic Tolkienesque fantasy roleplaying at all, you should just get it. It's only 2,99$!<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-61988316934540868062021-10-02T20:07:00.007-07:002021-10-03T05:22:39.397-07:00The Great Modules of the Late Terry K. Amthor<p> <a href="http://ironcrown.co.uk/iron-crown-enterprises-announcement/?fbclid=IwAR1jQX-KnoMHzr6vikbTwz-1Yh85P0_Jd8LSxeLiiE58P4jbpsGCx6S3SnQ">Rest in Peace, Terry K. Amthor</a> <br /></p><p>Terry K. Amthor is a name that means a lot to me, even though I've read only very little by him, and played less. His main creation, Shadow World, sits alongside several high-concept setting that I have heard of again and again and that I never found the time to delve into - along with Tekumel, Talislanta and Glorantha (though I've actually found my way into Glorantha a few years ago).</p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>However, back in my early roleplaying days, I was fascinated by his MERP modules <i>Thieves of Tharbad</i> and <i>Lorien</i>. We played some MERP back then, but we never quite figured out how the adventures were supposed to work. To us, they looked like a disjointed mess of NPCs, places and a simplistic "Task" described in five or ten sentences. There was something about these modules that made them enticing to us - part of it were the Angus McBride covers - but in the end, we came to the conclusion that they just weren't very good.<p></p><p>You see, we'd been playing the German RPG <i>Das schwarze Auge</i> a lot, and the published scenarios for that were usually presenting you an actual story you were supposed to reproduce at your gaming table. They were set on rails, and usually, that was especially true of the ending: often, the author envisioned some kind of twist, and as GM, you were supposed to run the adventure in a way that enabled the twist to happen. Some of these actually had sentences along the lines of "if you're a good GM, you'll know how to get your players to do (insert something that makes no sense at all, but needs to happen for the adventure to continue as planned by the author)."</p><p>Back then, we thought that's what makes a good RPG scenario.</p><p>And we had fun playing them, no question. But actually, we had the most fun when they were going gloriously off the rails.</p><p>Much later, I realized that the MERP modules we couldn't make any sense of back then were actually all about providing you with the material to go off the rails, which, in most cases, didn't exist anway. Yeah, you had that usually pretty short section "The Task", which, as a story, didn't seem like much. But in most of these modules, you also had tons of story seeds. These module's weren't quite sandboxes in the classical sense; they provided you with a starting point and a suggestion were to go from there, and a good set of tools for forging forward. They were open-ended, but <i>focussed</i>.<br /></p><p>Unfortunately, by the time I realized that, I had already sold off my complete MERP collection because, like I said, I had convinced myself that all of that stuff wasn't very good.</p><p>And still, for some reason, I always rememebered two names: S. Coleman Charlton and Terry Kevin Amthor.</p><p>By now, I've been able to (re-)acquire some of Amthor's works, including <i>Thieves of Tharbad</i>. I've still not used it at the gaming table (since sadly, I don't play that much these days), but the MERP module as written by Amthor has become a fundamental touching point in adventure design for me. They taught me not to write adventures with twists. Instead, write NPCs with interesting goals and places with cool and unexpected stuff to discover. Don't create a timeline for when the characters have to discover what; never ever make your scenario depend on the PCs not finding out something "too early". Suggest a story, but only in terms of a starting point and a trajectory; NEVER EVER suggest that it needs to end in a specific way.</p><p>It's really nothing revolutionary, but it was a revelation to me; and Terry K. Amthor is the name I will always associate with that revelation.</p><p>I'm sure there's so much more to thank Terry K. Amthor for; I guess I'll find out when I get some of that more recent Shadow World stuff to finally get a closer look at one of the great, legendary RPG settings.</p><p>Still, from me, thank you for that, Terry Kevin Amthor!</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-943715864567862532021-09-30T07:14:00.001-07:002021-09-30T07:18:48.186-07:00Reading vsD Part 4: GM Stuff, Shiny Stuff and Beasts<p>So, I'm finally ready to finish my series on vsD; on to vsD's GM chapter, which gives some generally good advice on game-mastering and designing scenarios and tools to deal with stuff like war and battles, powerful magic items, or the taint of the Darkmaster, an also presents three possible Darkmasters. None of this is groundbreaking, but again, vsD keeps its sight firmly set on creating highly thematic rules and tools for an epic fantasy rpg.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><br /></p><p><b>General Advice and Scenario Design</b></p><p>The general GM advice basically boils down to "Don't cheat!", "Talk to each other and make group decisions - it's everyone's game" and "everyone, including the GM, should enjoy themselves and feel comfortable." As far as I am concerned, these are very good general guidelines. They come with their own pitfalls, of course (making group decisions about how much drive should carry over from one hero to the next in generational play, for example, sounds like something that could lead to bad blood ...), but if you don't want to go too much into detail, I'd say this is as good as it gets.</p><p><span style="font-size: small;">The main part of the this chapter is about scenario design. VsD suggests starting small by creating a scenario that somehow connects to the player characters passion, seeing what works and creating the broader setting and mythology from there. The takeaway here is not to overthink things, to prepare only what you need and to let yourself be carried by where the campaign goes. Since vsD's rules support this "build your own epic fantasy story as you play" well through stuff like the Haven rules, this makes a lot of sense; and it's also good advice to new GMs, who might otherwise feel overwhelmed by the task of creating a saga on par with <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>. There's tables for stuff like NPC quirks, optional reaction roll tables, mook rules and advice on how to adapt vsD's kins to your campaign ... all in all, it covers the bases pretty good.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Warfare in vsD</b><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">This chapter starts by asking the GM to think about the role both warfare in general and a specific battle are to play in their campaign. Is an ongoing war just an obstacle for the PC's when trying to reach their goal? Then it can be treated like all other dangers, as the PCs will try to avoid getting caught up in battles, or if they do get caught up, simply surviving them. If war or a specific battle is a key element of the game, however, we need a way to figure out how the PCs influence it's outcome.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">VsD doesn't provide any mass battle rules; it simply asks the GM to pick a number that represents how difficult it will be for the PCs to turn defeat into a victory, based on the relative strength of the two armies. That difficulty number basically is the number of interventions the PCs must succed at to turn the tide. If the difficulty is 0, the heroes really just have to do something, <i>anything</i>, to tip the scale in their sides favour. If the difficulty is something like 7, they'll have their work cut out for them ... hold a breach here, crash a siege tower on enemy troops there, kill their Wraith general and maybe also find that routed elven riders and bring them back into battle, and that just might do the trick. It's basically about the players coming up with a suffient number of sufficiently cool command missions and the GM awarding victory points for their efforts.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">While this is everything but crunchy, it seems like a good way to keep the game focussed on the heroic deeds of the characters and making individual successes and blowbacks count. If the GM is transparent about the numbers of victory points that can be earned by a mission, there's a real chance of earned victory (or failure).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">Interestingly, RAW; if you choose to use the warfare rules for a battle and the characters then do <i>nothing</i>, their side will always lose.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"> The chapter about Warfare is followed by a few optional rules for stuff like high-powered campaigns beyond level 10 or true low-magic campaigns; for the latter, vsD provides the Sage class, which is basically your <i>Game of Thrones</i> maester - a learned woman or man who might just know a smattering about actual magic. Then it goes on to ...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></p><p><b><span style="font-size: small;">Rewards</span></b></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"> Here, vsD once again stresses that the best way to get the characters involved in adventures is playing to their passions, and that, conequently, the main reward will be drive points, followed of course by XP. Putting material rewards front and center is discouraged (and made difficult by the abstract wealth system); however, it should be mentioned that this doesn't prevent you from playing a character who is motiviated by material gain. Just give her a passion along the lines of "I'll show everyone that a gutter-rat like me can make their fortune out there", and the GM can play to that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">Magic items, the other classic material reward in RPGs, get a larger section, which greatly expands their thematic relevance to vsD's genre. Basically, you can get the usual bonus items, magical focuses for wielders and XY-slaying weapons. The interesting options here are to make items cursed (for example, an item might be "Madenning", giving you a new passion and preventing you from earning drive from any of your other Passions) or to discover new properties of items as part of your Heroic Path (which I discussed earlier). Finally, Items of power are magical artifacts with their own volition, which can be loyal or disloyal to you, depending on whether you further their goals or not. This category is clearly designed for stuff like the One Ring or Stormbringer, although the example provided is a more benevolent artifact, a blade that want's to unite the elven peoples. None of this is revolutionary new, but once again, it does a very good job at thematically expanding the old MERP mechanics.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></p><p><b><span style="font-size: small;">Bestiary</span></b></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"> And finally, monsters! These include the essential LotR-creatures by any other name (tree-people are called Aenths) and the more mythology-inspired RPG staples like giants, dragons and undead. Interestingly, werewolves are a type of demon here, which is probably another piece of Middle-Earth mythology that found its way into vsD. There's an interesing take on dark elves (basically Elves that have become jaded by eternal life) and some unexpected creatures rooted in folk stories like the boggart (a kind of evil halfling), the nightmare and the redcap. Player races like orcs and trolls are also represented in the bestiary.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">VsD takes a slightly asymetrical approach to statting NPCs; they only have broad skill category values, and they don't use magic points to reduce bookkeeping. They're also categorized as either Common, Elite or Antagonist, with Elite NPCs suppposedly on par with PCs of the same level and Antagonist NPCs being superior opponents that the whole group will need to work together to take down.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">The Bestiary is followed by the spell Grimoire, which I will skip since I've talked about magic before. In the next and final installment, I'll discuss "Shadows of the Northern Woods", a series of three adventures included in the core book that remind me of MERP in all the best ways!</span><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-10882026203578680512021-09-02T08:57:00.002-07:002021-09-02T08:57:44.031-07:00Bogged Down by Big Moves<p> So, I kind of got stuck on writing on rpgs (or playing them) in the last months - my family relocated to another continent a month ago, and getting us settled in is basically eating up all of my free time.</p><p>Which is a pity; I really want to finish my series on vsD (the scenario in the core rulebook is pretty great, basically a sandbox mini setting, but with strong story seeds well-supported by the material), and I'd also like to get around to take a closer look at Gildor Games' <i>Elemental</i> system, which, by first reading, looks like a kind of GURPS ultra-light to me (highly universal in its applicability, classic attribute+skill mechanics with a few little twists, point-buy characters). Not to speak of finishing another 3-4 Mythras scenarios I have outlined, translating them into English and converting them for a few other systems like Warlock!, Troika! and, probably, Elemental. And another Ashen Stars scenario is waiting in the wings, as well.<br /></p><p>I hope that 2022 will be my year of getting to work on rpg stuff in earnest. Until then, have a great time and stay safe, everyone!<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-27532646575666500572021-03-14T09:34:00.002-07:002021-03-15T00:37:06.037-07:00Reading vsD Part 3: Combat, Magic and the Flight from Weathertop!<p> The next part of this review covers the major game systems vsD employs: skill rolls, resistance rolls, casting magic, combat, health and healing and rules for stuff like travelling and equipment. While the core system is true to it's MERP/RM lineage, the influence of more current game design becomes more apparent in this chapter. There's rules and guidelines for the ad-hoc creation of safe havens or healing herbs that encourage player input and also minor stuff like "choose how you fumble". Both reminds me a lot of pbtA games.<br /></p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>But first, let's have a look at the basic resolution system: Basically, when you're trying to do something that warrants a roll, you take your relevant skill score (called a skill bonus in vsD), subtract any difficulty modifiers and add an open D100 roll. "Open" means that the roll explodes both upwards and downwards: On a 96-100, you roll again, adding to your total, while on an initial roll of 01-05, you roll again and <i>subtract</i> it from your total.<p></p><p>In a standard skill test, you want to reach a total of at least 75, which is a partial success with a complication, or better a 100, which is a full sucess (with a superior success at 175 and a critical failure at a total below 05). Since your skill bonus in a vocational core skill will be in the 60-70 range at level 1, you can usually expect to score at least a partial success when rolling them - at least as long as there are no difficulty modifiers involved. In opposed rolls, the side with the higher total wins (but, the way I read it, you can still apply the 75/100/175 thresholds to see how well each side did). All in all, it's a pretty simple and flexible system that you can always fall back on. Having to add two- to three-digit numbers might be a stumbling block for some, however - Your Maths May Vary.<br /></p><p> </p><p><b>Combat</b> <br /></p><p>Attacks, spells and resistance rolls are also made by adding an open d100 roll to your relevant bonus, but use different resolution tables. For attacks, we get the tables that Rolemaster and its descendents like MERP, HARP and now vsD are famous (or notorious, depending on who you ask) for, where you cross-reference attack roll total with armor type and get hit points damage and possibly a level for a critical that has to be rolled separately. Crits can result in anything from minor bleedings to cumulative action penalties to instant death (however, player's can use drive points to downgrade them, making an instant death much less likely than in MERP or RM). I think the crits are not quite as graphical as they used to be in MERP or RM (along the lines of: "Punctured kidney, double over in pain, -25 to all rolls, pissing blood for two weeks."), but still ... well, they're flavourful.</p><p>I'd say that keeping track of bleeding, skill penalties and other crit results is probably the most fiddly part of the combat system, but since any relevant crit will usually finish a fight, this might not be much of a problem at the table. Apart from that, it is pretty much: Decide how offensive or defensive you want to be by assigning some of your attack skill points to parrying, roll on your weapon table and see what happens. There's options for special maneuvers like disarm or feints, but I think the most tactical aspect of the combat system is actually your choice of weapons and armour. VsD has a slightly unusual initiative, in that characters and their opponents actually don't have an initiative score. Instead, you simply have all readied missiles, thrown weapons and spells fire first, followed by melee weapons, from longest to shortest, followed by all missiles, thrown weapons and spells that had to be readied during the round. In some cases, the higher combat skill will act as a tiebreaker. This means that you can't just go round and have everyone decide on what they're doing when it's their turn - you'll need an action declaration phase first to figure out who goes when. I suspect that this sounds more complicated on paper that it is in play.</p><p>An interesting tidbit is how important the perception skill can be in combat: Some critical or fumble results may force you to make a so-called (perception-based) assessment roll at the beginning of the round to be able to do anything but parry. While you will definitely want to wear a helmet in vsD to protect you from some of the most ugly criticals, the perception penalty imposed by it can be quite painful ...</p><p>All in all, an interesting and deadly combat system that is obviously one of the crunchier parts of vsD.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b>Spellcasting</b></p><p>Spells are skill rolls, but they fail only on a 25 or less (unless the other side has a resistance roll). Attack spells are basically treated like missile attacks with their own attack table. However even a successful spell can attract the attention of your campaign's personal Sauron. Any time you roll natural doubles on a spell roll (11,22,33 ...), you need to roll to see whether the dark powers take an interest in you, which might mean nothing more than a cold shiver down your spine, or could end with a powerful lieutenant of evil hunting you down to turn or kill you (with that latter result being reserved for the more powerful spells).</p><p>Overall, magic has a straightforward core, but gets fiddly in some places, especially when you're trying to cast a spell which would be usually beyond your abilities. However, I'd say the flexibility earned is worth the effort. The system of Spell Lores which are learned as separate skill is also a nice way to allow for specialisation without boxing magic casters in too much.<br /></p><p>Tonally, vsD is supposed to be a low-magic system, which I would translate rather as "low-key" magic than "little magic". Theoretically, pretty much anyone can learn some magic, but the lower-level spells are relatively subtle and can easily be explained as extraordinary abilities of the caster. Casters will usually have ample magic points, so I suspect that in practice, things will be less about having enough juice to cast a spell and more about weighing the risk of attracting the Darkmaster's attention. I could imagine that, if you were to ditch that element (which is absolutely possible), you'd end up with a lot more spell-slinging (you decide whether this is a good or a bad thing).<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b>Travelling, Safe Havens, and Healing </b></p><p>So, let's finally get to my favourite bits of this installment, which I'm lumping together because they introduce strong thematic elements in similar ways.</p><p>Emcumbrance, for example, seemed a little weird to me at first glance: On the one hand, there are five different levels of encumbered from non-encumbered to overloaded, but on the other hand, you're supposed to handwave them - there's nothing about what weighs what and how much Brawn carries how much weight, just some general guidelines like: If you're carrying three weapons and a sleeping roll, you're probably lightly encumbered. I'm fine with handwaving something like that, but why then the five levels of encumbrance? Then I realized that encumbrance is part of the travelling rules and that it actually mostly matters to figuring out how fast the party can move over long distances, and things started to make sense. The system asks the characters to make a general decision about how much stuff (rations, tents, weapons) they want to take along, with the effect being how long it will take them to reach their destination. I'm still not sure if you need five levels of encumbrance for that, but what it does well is to assign a certain narrative relevance to encumbrance, without bothering with this usually annoying piece of bookkeeping beyond that.</p><p>The travelling rules themselves are basically guidelines to help the GM figure out how much hazardous encounters they should pre-plan for a specific trip; however, there are optional tables for random hazards by terrain type, which usually go beyond just presenting a wandering monster. Some of these hazards imply a whole adventure (which can be a double-edged sword, though - you'll really need to be ready to improvise, and fast, if you're using them). There is a slightly more complex subsystem for setting up camp, which is not about finding a place for the night, but about finding a safe place to rest and heal for several days. It's made clear here that vsD is supposed to be a game about the characters travelling through dark and hazardous lands, beset by their enemies.</p><p>The rules for safe havens drive this notion home even more effectively: The idea is that, when in dire need, one of the heroes can roll their "Songs & Tales" skill to remember stories about a safe place somwhere in the area (with the roll being modified by how tainted by darkness the lands around them are). On a success, the GM, aided by some tables with suggestions, has to come up with a safe haven that the characters can reach within d5 days and where they can rest and heal in safety. It's a rule that I would have expected to see in some pbtA-based indie game, but it makes a lot of sense in vsD, given the source material. After all, the run for a safe haven like Rivendell is usually a truly dramatic moment in epic fantasy, and you can't always pre-plan those - so coming up with the safe haven when the developing story calls for it is exactly the right thing; and providing some rules for how to do that saves it from being nothing but GM clemency. You might be able to find a safe haven nearby, or you might not - but whatever it is, it will happen in your time of need.</p><p>Searching for healing herbs follows a similar principle - there's no fixed herbarium. Instead, it is expected that the characters search for some herb that does what they need it to do. On a success, they can name the herb and write it down, and next time they're looking for it under similar circumstances, it will be easier to find. I really like how that reduces rules clutter, while making the art of healing a thematically more interesting element of the game. That's also true of how healing works in general, but I won't go into detail about that. The rules for it are a little more involved and require some bookkeeping, but still manage to generalize all the various kinds of injuries you can suffer from a critical hit. The spirit is the same: Stick to what is thematically relevant for a game about hazardous travels.</p><p>All in all, if you're looking at the travelling/healing herbs/safe havens rules, you can really see the flight from Weathertop to Rivendell come together at the table: Damn, one of us is badly hurt and can't really travel. Well, we can slow that magical poison down with a herb that I happen to know grows around here, but in any case, we need to reach a safe place, and a true healer. However, we're just too slow, and the ring-wraiths are behind us! Hey, Glorfindel, you're mounted and only lightly encumbered, best you take him and ride like the wind!<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b>Stuff ...</b></p><p>Which leaves me with the rules for wealth and buying stuff, which are a part of this chapter. Wealth doesn't usually play a role in epic fantasy, and vsD consequently strives to downplay it. Each character's wealth is simply measured as an abstract number from 0-5. If you want to buy something below your wealth level, you usually just get it (if it's available), if you want to buy something at your wealth level, your wealth level drops by one, and everything above your wealth level is out of reach. There's guidelines for improving your wealth or for what happens if you want to buy in bulk, but basically the system tells you to do what makes sense and don't sweat the details.</p><p><br /></p><p>That was a lot of crunchy stuff, and I think I've covered most of the actual game system. Next up: Tales of Legend, which looks to be the GM chapter of vsD ...<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-8154051172599458132021-03-06T09:32:00.003-08:002021-03-06T09:32:26.237-08:00Reading Against the Darkmaster Part 2<p> I kept the subchapters about Passions, Drive and advancement for the second installment, because I want to stray a little further afield here.</p><p>In vsD, there's an interesting relationship between Passions/Drive and Achievements/Experience. Both are about getting yourself into trouble and feed into character development, with Passions being more about each individual character and achievements being more about the experiences the party makes as a whole.<br /></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><br /></p><p><b>Passions and Drive</b></p><p>Usually, a character has three Passions: A Nature ("I'll never harm a creature that hasn't tried to harm me first"), an Allegiance ("I'd give my life for the rightful king") and a Motivation ("I'll punish Morgar the Mage for his evil deeds!"). These can and probably will change, which is simply a matter of player decision (however, it is suggested to give each Passion a chance to shine before scratching it).</p><p>Each time you get yourself into trouble on behalf of one of your Passions - or when you bring it into play in an entertaining way, like having your character question it in a crucial moment -, you get a point of Drive.</p><p>Drive is your basic Luck/Fate Point/Bennie ressource. It allows you to reroll dice with a bonus, get a substancial bonus in a skill for a whole scene, save your life or at least a limb by downgrading a critical hit, or even to treat a roll as a natural 100 on a D100. Each point of Drive you spend this way goes into your "Heroic Path", and once that reaches 10, you have earned a Milestone. A Milestone can be spent for certain special advances: The most prosaic use is to get 10 extra Hit Points, but Milestones are also the only way to raise core characteristics, and they allow you to upgrade magic items in your possession by making them more powerful or granting them totally new powers (which basically represents you mastering the item).</p><p>This basically means that to turn your Passions into character advancement, you must get yourself into trouble with them AND spend the Drive points earned to be awesome. Which means that Drive points spent are not lost, quite the contrary: by spending them, you turn them into character advancement currency.</p><p>There's two specific things I like about this system:</p><p>For one thing, it looks like it will create a nice rhythm of getting into trouble and getting out of it by spending Drive to the hilt, and it achieves it without getting the GM involved (beyond her role as a potential arbiter about handing out Drive). A lot of systems, like Fate and Modphius' 2D20, create back-and-forth economies of Fate points between players and GM, and frankly, I don't like it. It means more bookkeeping for the GM and always seems to pose problematic questions about when the GM should spend points to make the character's life difficult and when it is just par for the course. Keeping the Drive point economy about the characters and their Passions is also a way to make sure that the spotlight is on them.</p><p>Also, the system manages to tie Drive points into advancement without forcing the players to decide whether they want to get a short-term advantage or save their points for character advancement - they always get both. In that, it's actually pretty much the equivalent of the houserule I introduced in my Numenera campaign. And it also makes sure that the players that tend to put themselves into the spotlight more often don't get much of an undue advancement, because Drive and Milestones are more about the small cherry on top, while the core levelling is done by, well, levelling, which is a separate system, namely<br /></p><p><b> </b></p><p><b>Achievements and Experience Points</b></p><p>At the beginning of the campaign, the group decides which achievements shall be worth XP. The usual core list is "Travelling somewhere you've never seen before", "facing Dangerous foes and/or situations" and "Completing a mission, quest or story arc"<b>.</b> There's additional suggestions, like discovering secrets or treasures, suffering a serious wound or interacting with another named character in a meaningful way, which can be added freely, thereby suggesting the main themes of the campaign. Each time a character meets one of these achievements, her player can checkmark it to get an XP for it at the end of the session. I'd surmise that most of the time, all the characters will get about the same amount of XP for a session that way (since they'll travel together, face foes and dangers together and complete their quests together), so levelling will probably be pretty balanced, but there's still some incentive to play to certain themes and get yourself into danger to earn XP.</p><p>After that, it's pretty much your usual skill-focussed levelling system: You reach a new level, you spend a number of points determined by your Vocation in your skill categories. (As I mentioned, characteristics are only increased by spending Milestones).</p><p>Again, this looks like a pretty solid system to incentivise players to do interesting things, without straying too far into the dangerous territory of handing out XP for "good roleplaying" (shudder). I can see this working nicely in a long campaign, and I'm pretty sure the Heroic Path and Milestones can be used for all kinds of little thematic advances.</p><p> </p><p>That's it for today, next time, we'll get to the actual resolution system. <br /></p><p></p><p></p><p><b></b></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-48020895980916278392021-03-04T04:58:00.005-08:002021-03-04T08:47:47.104-08:00Reading Against the Darkmaster Part 1<p>So I caved in and got me that not-quite-MERP-clone I've been eyeing since the quickstarter came out two or three years ago. I played a lot of MERP back in the days, and the gory criticals and the good adventure modules made it a fun system. For us, it was always less "play something that feels like LotR" and more "Let's play some gritty low fantasy that happens to take place on Middle-Earth."</p><p>So I was a little wary of Against the Darkmaster's (or vsD's, as they abbreviate it) stated goal to drift the whole game more towards LotR style Epic Fantasy; and I was even more wary of the idea of blending all this with Heavy Metal aesthetics (as in <i>Blind Guardian</i>, not as in <i>Metal Hurlant</i>). Both seemed to imply the danger of making vsD something overly pompous, the RPG equivalent of Zack Snyder's painfully dull and self-important takes on Superman and Batman.</p><p>I'm happy to say that it's not.</p><p>Oh, there's pompousness to be had here, especially in the art: There's brooding guys in heavy armor smiting orcish scum and beautiful-but-sad women in flowing gowns weaving mystical energies. But it all feels tempered by a certain amount of both black and good-natured humor, and by the whole game obviously not being about wading through your enemies. There's a fine balance struck between the dark fantasy melodramatics of heavy metal, the cheesiness, but also creativity of 80s movies like <i>Krull</i> and <i>Dragonslayer</i>, and the simple good-heartedness of something like Terry Brook's <i>Shannara</i> books or David Edding's <i>Belgariad</i> books, which were pretty much <i>We're going on an adventure to save the world, because, you know, we're the good guys!</i></p><p>Which is pretty much saying: vsD doesn't really harken back to Tolkien as the "source"; it harkens back to a mix of 70s-90s media that has been heavily influenced by Tolkien, which serves not to dilute, but to expand it.The result is the most convincing of the slew of "nostalgic but re-imagined" RPGs I've encountered yet.</p><p>In other words, I think I like it.</p><p>So let's have a thorough read-through, shall we?</p><p> <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><b>Opening Fiction and Introduction</b><br /></p><p>I tend to skip fiction pieces in RPGs, but this one was just two and a half pages, and it's actually quite nice. It leans heavily into the foreboding aspect of vsD's implied setting and into horror, wich has its firm place in epic fantasy. Interestingly, it features a solitary protagonist instead of a group, and there's no combat, just scouting and exploration and a sense of both lost greatness and mounting dread.</p><p>The Introduction does a short version of "what's a roleplaying anyway" and follows it up with the core themes of vsD - the headlines are "Good vs. Evil", "Ruins of the Past", "Magic is Rare and Dangerous", "Gods Watch from Afar" and "Heroism & Hope", which tells you what you need to know in a nutshell. The chapter closes with vsD's "Appendix N", which features a lot of the books, movies and RPGs you would expect (<i>Lord of the Rings, Shannara</i>, Tad William's <i>Osten Ard</i> Series, <i>Dragonslayer, Willow</i>, <i>MERP, The One Ring</i>), and some that might seem a little out of place, but still kind of make sense (<i>Earthsea, The Princess Bride, Princess Mononoke,</i> the <i>Ryuutama RPG</i>). I especially liked the inclusion of Lloyd Alexander's YA <i>Chronicles of Prydain</i> and even the Disney movie <i>The Black Cauldron</i>, which is based on it. And I'm happy to say that they ditched the reference to Terry Goodkind that showed up in the early advertisements and the Quickstart for vsD - he is just too awful ...</p><p>And then there's a long list of metal bands, well, I'll let someone else be the judge of that. <br /></p><p>All in all, a good introduction to vsD. It kept me reading when I wasn't yet sure whether I'd be buying into this game or not.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b>A Fellowship Gathers (Character Creation)</b></p><p>The character creation as outlined at the beginning of this chapter is pretty traditional: You roll or buy characteristics (rolling is suggested, but a closer look at the pregens shows that they've been created with the point-buy method), choose a kin, choose a culture, choose a vocation (class), distributte skill points accordingly, pick some specials (called Backgrounds), decide on passions and are good to go.</p><p>The characteristics are the traditional six (by any other name ...); vsD ditches MERP's 1-100+ scale and just uses what was the characteristic bonus back then, which makes sense, because the percentile values in MERP never saw any use, anyway.</p><p>Kins are your classic elves (in three flavour from nature gals and guys to high elves), dwarves and halflings. Orcs and trolls are also present. While orcs are described as often serving the Darkmaster, they're not his creations and not by definition evil - it's more that they are shunned by other kin because of their monstrous looks, thereby being driven into the welcoming arms of evil. It's obviously a departure from Tolkien and MERP, but a welcome one (although the reasoning behind it is a little simplistic). Trolls are simply huge and hungry (and turn to stone when in sunlight), which makes them monstrous, bot not necessarily evil, as well.</p><p>I'm not so much a fan of the inclusion of "High Men" as a kin. They're a holdover from Tolkien/MERP, but one I could really do without. At least, vsD doesn't describe them as especially "noble" or anything, basically, they're just bigger, stronger and very long-lived humans.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">(As a side-note, there's an interesting departure from Tolkien to be found in the description of the Star Elves, who are said to be the favourite children of the gods, having inherited all their best - and worst - qualities. Among the latter is obviously pride, which made them to try to become gods themselves and led to their expulsion from their home country. Obviously, like most fantasy RPGs, vsD departs from Tolkien's underlying catholicism and instead implies gods who are prone to human failings.)</span> <br /></p><p>There's two other kins (which came about as kickstarter stretchgoals), the Wildfolk and the Firbolg. Wildfolk are animalistic humans, and while I'm not sure if I see the point of them, there's nothing wrong with them, either. Firbolg are horned half-giants who have been cursed by the Darkmaster, for whom they once fought, and have a tragic viking warriors vibe going on.</p><p>Generally, vsD tends to enforce clichés like hobbits, dwarves, orcs and trolls not being magic wielders, though it is not as strict in that as it seems at first glance - you can learn some magic without choosing the wizard or the animist vocation; also, you can buy off kin restrictions with background points. Still, I'm not sure why someone who wants to play an orc wizard should be taxed for it (it is not as if that were are very potent combination in terms of min-maxing, anyway). Especially with orcs being potentially more than the foot-soldiers of evil in vsD, I don't quite see why they shouldn't have wizards or animists.<br /></p><p>The characteristics bonuses and penalties for the kins can be pretty extreme, as they were in MERP. There's always a balance to be struck between describing a kin and painting it into a corner, with all the ugly racist implications that has. Of course, the high road is creating a rules set that basically tells you: "You decide what being a dwarf/elf/halfling/orc/fluffy creature from alpha centauri means for you", but I can't see that working for something so strongly inspired by MERP. In the end, I feel that vsD gives you just enough suggestions and tools to play against type, but it is a close call.</p><p>What is definitely a good decision is to separate kin and culture, with culture being the type of environment you grew up in, from arctic wilderness to city and magically hidden fey realm. The possibility to combine kin and culture freely makes for a lot of potential diversity, Culture determines your starting skill ranks.</p><p>From that, you go to vocations, of which there are six - Warrior, Rogue, Wizard, Animist, Champion (which covers all kinds of mystical warrios from monks to paladins) and Dabbler (your basic rogue or bard with a little extra magic). If you're missing the ranger, it can best be realized as a warrior with certain background options you get to choose later.</p><p>Your Vocation gives you some fixed skill bonuses and determines how many development points you get to spend in which skill categories when you level up. Again, this is more flexible than it looks on first glance - you get to move points around between categories on a 2:1 basis, so even though a wizard doesn't get any development points in weapon skills, she can, for example, convert some points from her Lore category to invest there.</p><p>Skills are pretty broad, with about five skills on most categories, from weapons (bladed, blunt, pole, ranged, brawl) through Roguery (Stealth, Locks&Traps, Perception, Deceive) to pretty general lore skills like Songs&Tales and Culture and Spell Lores. There seems to be some overlap in the Adventuring category between the skills Hunting, Nature, and Wandering, but I'll have to read the travel rules before I can be sure about whether this makes sense to me. I definitely like how most skills are broad enough to encompass bascially everything to do with a certain type of activity. For example, the Culture skill isn't split into knowledge of your own culture and however many knowledge of other cultures skills, it's a catch all for knowing about social rules and rituals; if you want to roll to see if you know how to address some noble from a foreign land, that is simply represented by a higher difficulty.</p><p>Languages are treated even more pragmatic - RAW, there is no language skill, and the group should simply decide whether a certain character would know (or be able to pick up) a certain language based on their background or not. A long distance trader will probably have a basic understanding of several language, and the same might be true of a noble (or not, if said noble has spent their life in some backwater castle). A ranger operating at the border to the darklands might know some Orcish. It's a rule not quite in line with the crunchy nature of most of the rest of vsD, and there are some options outlined for languages as skills, but I think they made a good call here in keeping it simple and character-focused.<br /></p><p>The vocations section is followed by descriptions of the general and special skills - yes, there are more specialised skills, and yes, one of them is Assassination, which always seems to be among the first things players will ask about in whatever system. The special skills are strictly optional, and I guess most characters will have a maximum of one or two of them.</p><p>The last crunchy bit of character creation is backgrounds - here we get stuff like shape-shifting, magical gifts, animal companions and heirlooms, as well as a few options to get special stat bonuses. Here, we also get the Background "Eccentric", which allows you to buy off all kinds of restrictions that come with your kin, so if you're jsut dying to play a Troll wizard, you can, but you're taxed for it. MERP veterans will find some familiar options (like getting five ranks in a special skill), but vsD's list is much better organized, flavourful and rich.</p><p>Equipment is part of the "Finishing Touches" section and pretty much works like: "You get what is implied by your Culture, your Vocation and your Background Options. I you feel there's anything else your character should own, talk to your GM." I'm fine with that, it's much better than buying your stuff from starting money ... vsD has an abstract Wealth system, but that'll have to wait until I reach that chapter.</p><p>The last sections in "A Fellowship Gathers" are about Drive, Passions and Experience, but they'll have to wait until the next part of this review ... as will have the actual resolution system, though I'd like to mention that, maybe not that surprisingly, shows some hints of pbtA with a D100.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-89449229552200034322021-01-29T02:31:00.001-08:002021-01-29T02:32:10.806-08:00Out of the Ashes, OpenQuest and Groundedness<p>I'm gushing a lot about the beautiful weirdness of <i>Troika!</i>, but I also have a soft spot for a very different type of fantasy, something that feels more grounded and familiar, something about relatively ordinary, good-natured characters doing the right thing. It probably comes from the fantasy I read as a child: LeGuin's <i>Earthsea</i>, Lloyd Alexander's <i>Taran</i> and, maybe most importantly, <i>Ronja Robbers Daughter</i> by Astrid Lindgren. (I've just read the latter to my daughter and was suprised how many of the themes and monsters I'm using when designing scenarios can be traced back to it.)</p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>So <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/9257403/out-of-the-ashes-2/description"><i>Out of the Ashes</i> by Paul Mitchener</a>, which is being kickstarted at the moment, pushes a lot of buttons for me - even if it presents itself as a little more high-fantasy, the whole <i>banding together to protect our small community</i> concept speaks to me on that particular level, as does the fact that it is not an EDO setting. Of course, the cover and illustrations by Jon Hodgson also help to get me excited for this ... and the system, which builds on Mitchener's <i>Liminal</i> (which I'm not familiar with, but people seem to love it) looks nice and simple as well. So I say, check it out and support it - the kickstarter page is not terribly flashy, and you'll need to read a little to get a feel for the thing, but I think it's worth the effort. This campaign could do with a little more support!</p><p>Apart from that, I'm also pretty hyped about the <a href="https://openquestrpg.com/">third edition of Newt Newports <i>OpenQuest</i></a>, which has already been succesfully funded and will be out soon. No, scratch that - I'm not hyped, I'm looking forward to it in a very relaxed, confident way. <i>OQ</i> is just that simple D100 system that I can imagine putting on the table for all my grounded-and-familiar needs. Also, for the first time, it looks as if there's going to be a lot of support for it (with a lot of Hodgson covers!).<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-6961963730439430552020-06-28T12:41:00.000-07:002020-06-28T12:54:44.025-07:00God Creatures and Cults with Ulterior Motives... I seem to be unable to come up with something else!<br />
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Well, it's not quite as bad as that. I'm okay with writing low fantasy stuff that doesn't touch on fantasy religion at all - dealing with wacky goblins, negotiating with a bored dragon, finding out about that giant boar that terrorizes the village.<br />
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But whenever I'm writing something that is supposed to feed into my far too ambitious weird fantasy heartbreaker setting, I come up with some combination of the following elements: Some (usually giant) god creature (floating in space in an ancient cocoon, sleeping at the ocean bottom with its back bristles breaking the surface, living in a giant hive of beetles conditioned to do staggeringly complicated calculations for it), some kind of cult that has access to a valuable ressource (a drug produced by people turned into trees that lets you experience a jumble of their memories, the boiling, poisonous blood of that sea good, impossibly accurate answers to complex mathematical and mathemagical problems), and an event that involves the player characters and that will probably upturn <i>everything</i>.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Now I wonder: Is that the <i>theme</i> of my setting? Does all of that stuff firmly belong into the same setting because it has such similar themes, or does each of these stories belong into a different setting for that very reason? Should I try to conceal the essential repetetiveness of my imagination by trying to spread these scenarios on as many worlds, maybe even rpg systems as possible? Does it even make sense to ask that question as long as I have written up no more than <i>one</i> of these scenarios (and that one being far from ready for publication)?<br />
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You see, I really don't know if I just want to write a bunch of interesting scenarios about themes that, for some reason, seem to matter to me, or if I want to come up with a Fantasy World with a capital F and a capital W.<br />
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At the moment, I'm leaning towards the easiest way to not make that decision: Just write the first scenario in a way that wouldn't make it impossible to have all these other scenarios take place in the same world. Then write the next one. And by then, I should have about ten to fifteen years of additional life experience under my belt, which should help me making a more meaningful decision.<br />
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EDIT: Or, I could just stop complaining and write some kind of sourcebook featuring a collection of God Creatues and Cults with Ulterior Motives and be done with it. Of course, I only just thought of that AFTER writing that blog post. Sigh. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4181512024650684932.post-76280075925877386222020-03-04T23:43:00.002-08:002020-03-04T23:43:51.864-08:00What's Up?I haven't blogged for a while - so here's what I'm up to and what you can expect in the next few weeks from me:<br />
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First, I'm reading <i>Sword of Cepheus</i> (Sword&Sorcery based on the <i>Traveller</i>-inspired old school Cepheus Engine) and <i>FrontierSpace</i>, and I'm hoping to give both a spin soon, so reviews are coming up.<br />
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Second, I have a lot more <i>Troika!</i> backgrounds in store, but I'm also working on two scenarios to tie in with them, so I'm holding some of those back to see how exactly the scenarios shape up.<br />
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Third, I'm eagerly awaiting the "Zero Edition" of Newt Newports new d100 game <i>Skyraiders of the Floating Realms</i>. Don't know exactly what I'm going to do with it, but a lighter, more streamlined version of Newt's <i>OpenQuest</i> sounds very enticing to me!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0