#RPGaDay 2015: Day 7 - Free, to do what I want

Prompt: Favourite free RPG

The free edition has a cover that is just a
starfield, but a) all available images are tiny,
and b) with enough time you could count the
stars, making the title inaccurate.

This is a tough one to answer, because I'm not really clued into the sort of gaming networks that would point me to promising free games, and because there are so many of them I don't tend to grab them without that guidance. Time is as limited a resource for me as money. 

The free game I've had most fun with Stars Without Number, but actually while I had the free version, the full game was also sold commercially. SWN is part of the Old School Renaissance, based on the rules of early versions of D&D and their contemporaries, with at least three different resolution mechanics (roll high on d20 attack rolls, roll low on d20 saving throws and roll high on 3d6 + modifier skill rolls,) 3-18 attributes converting to -3 to +3 modifiers and class-based progression, set in a sprawling space opera universe where the once mighty domain of the Mandate has been shattered by the catastrophic loss of much of their technology and infrastructure in an enigmatic event called the Scream. It's a lot of fun, but of course in part that's down to the GM. 

I also had a lot of fun with a one off called Lady Blackbird, which is presented as a free introductory scenario and quick-play rules for a larger game that doesn't exist. The creators, One Seven Design, do a lot of these, and while their replay value is limited, they all look pretty interesting.

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I was going to talk about the OSR in my expanded section of this post, but honestly I know jack about the OSR and other people have already discussed it much better. Besides, I'm now four days behind, having skipped the weekend for gaming away from computers and internets, so let's move on.

#RPGaDay 2015: Day 6 - Core competences

Prompt: Most recent RPG played

Like Feng Shui before it, Fate Core rocks the
appeal of combining gunplay, swordplay, magic and
cyborg apes.

The most recent game I've played is my by-Skype Fate Core game, Operatives of CROSSBOW. If this were the prompt for Monday it would be No Rest for the Wicked. So it goes. I talked about Fate Core a fair bit last year, I think, but what I love most about it is its flexibility. It's designed as a moderately universal system, and it is in terms of content. You can run pretty much any sort of story under Fate Core, which is not to say that it is the only game you'll ever need. It only has one style of play; as crunchy as you might make the skill set, it is fundamentally a collaborative narrativist game and will never be hardcore simulationist or competitive.

The content customisation is vast, however. Permanent and transitory qualities of people, objects and places are described by Aspects, the abilities of animate beings by Skills and special abilities by Stunts. Anything else can be tacked on. I created three magic systems for CROSSBOW in about an hour, although I'd spend longer if they were a major part of the game or if how they worked mattered.

The next game I have planned will likely also run in Fate Core, because I like being able to stat an NPC in seconds and because an 80s action TV inspired game isn't right for Gumshoe.

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So, my broader discussion is on adaptability.

Generally, the simpler a system, the easier it is to adapt. Fate Core is designed for it, and keeps things nice and simple. Skills are trained abilities and give a flat bonus for rolls based on that skill. Aspects define intrinsic properties and can be invoked by spending Fate points or by Creating an Advantage, an action which either creates or exploits an existing Aspect and usually gives free invokes. Stunts either provide a narrow +2 bonus or some means of bending the rules in a specific situation. Stunts can easily be expanded to provide systems of magic and superpowers, and Aspects to include a heroic origin or mystical nature. Skills are tailored to setting.

Power systems are always the most complicated, often requiring substantial front loading (see for example the Dresden Files RPG,) and the one restriction I would tend to go with in any similar game having played The Dresden Files is 'all wizards or no wizards'. They're just too much more complicated, and while an all-wizard group would all know the rules pretty well (we hope) the players of a vampire, a sea monster and a faerie have no cause to learn those rules and you can end up with the wizard's player and GM spending a lot of time referring to the book (seriously, they're complex as hell, and I played Ascension.) I guess you could be more flexible once you were comfortable with the system, but not at first.

Unisystem Lite was my old go-to for conversion, but again it requires a lot of front-loading. My Stargate and Star Wars ports each had a few bits of description and a crap tonne of Qualities and Drawbacks. Still, it worked pretty well. Gumshoe would almost certainly port easily to pretty much any investigative setting, again with a bit of front loading on career profiles.

D20 on the other hand, basically needs a core book to use. You could work from just the basics, but creating and balancing classes is hard to do and pretty much impossible on the fly, and just look how many professionally produced licensed games screwed it up. This is because D20 is complicated. Its simplest iteration is D20 Call of Cthulhu, best described as an interesting experiment, which pares the system to the bones (its classes are 'offence' and 'defence' and are only very slightly different.) D20 works pretty well for a game with a zero to hero ethos, where PCs start off weak and become mighty, facing appropriate enemies all the way up.

Similarly, anything gritty and simulationist is likely to be rules heavy and thus hard to adapt, even though it should be pretty straightforward since its job is to be a simulation engine and thus relatively free of fiddling narrative conventions. The problem is that each setting then requires fixed rules for anything specific to that setting, which are often difficult to develop on the fly.

Ironically, the worst system to approach for adaptation is something like GURPS, which was to all appearances designed to be a universal, largely simulationist game engine and then incorporated a massive corpus of specific exceptions, including rules for simulating narrative conventions such as Anime Hammerspace.

#RPGaDay 2015: Day 5 - ...if they're really out to get you

Prompt: Most recent RPG purchase

Happiness is mandatory. Are you happy?

My most recent RPG purchase is Paranoia, the latest edition of the classic game of Kafkaesque farce and Orwellian pratfalls. This most recent variation was a Kickstarter, so I don't actually have the game yet, but it is the most recent I have bought.

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So, from Paranoia, let's talk about avoiding the obvious.

Paranoia addressed this issue in its XP iteration with three play modes. Zap! was the mode usually fallen into by casual players and GMs, with clones dying left right and centre and the players spending much of their time in literally inescapable death traps and no-win situations. It's fun for an afternoon, but has very little campaign potential. Classic was the intended default, although as noted, default tended to drift easily towards Zap!, and was Paranoia as dark comedy. Straight was Paranoia played, well, straight, as a genuinely dark and moody dystopian setting, with any humour treacle-black.

And most games have an obvious implementation, either stylistically or narratively. D&D and D20 games in general lend themselves to combat (although see James Holloway's Day 4 video,) simply by virtue of having more rules for combat than for anything else. In fact, most games tend towards an action-focus, but this is not to say that they can not be anything other. Especially in later editions, it is perfectly possible to play D&D and broker peace between the goblins and the humans, or to seek a flower by stealth from the heart of a sacred wood, spilling no blood therein.  The key to such a narrative - and the reason you couldn't easily use both of the preceding - lies in defying expectations; in shaking up the PCs and players to see what happens. You change the story and you force the players to act differently, reexamining their goals and priorities and hopefully finding almost a whole new game in the process.

#RPGaDay 2015: Day 4 - Zool motherfucker, Zool!!!

Prompt: Most surprising game

Right; it's a steampunk game set in 19th Century Bavaria with airships and castles and Ludwig II and faeries and magic and Phineas Fogg and Sherlock Holmes and at the same time Conan Doyle and Jules Verne and Wells and all that good shit. Oh hells yeah! Sign me the fuck up!

Castle Falkenstein surprised me; and... not in a good way. It had my name all over it and yet it was just bad.

I think the real killer was the presentation; more than half of the book was fluff fiction about the adventures of some dude who was translated from the real world to the world of Castle Falkenstein and had paradigm-shaping adventures there. Adventures that you can't have, because he's already had them. Sure, you could back hack it, but the assumed setting of the game is that John Carter of Falkenstein has already done loads of cool shit that established the world as it stands and pretty much married the action princess to boot. This also means that the game constantly hangs a lampshade on the fact that authors and their creations exist side-by-side.

To add insult to injury, the game rules are also presented from the perspective of our wanderer in the dimensions, as a pastime he's invented to amuse his friends in between bout of heroism, so in a way the conceit of the game is not that you are playing steampunk adventurers in a magical realm of airships and faeries, but rather a bunch of bored aristocrats in a magical realm of airships and faeries who are in turn playing actual adventurers.

The game itself isn't bad, I just never escaped the image of this smug, imaginary tosser inviting me to pretend I'm as cool as he is.

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So, my broader topic is expectation and disappointment, and how they can completely hammer a game for you. I expected big things of Falkenstein, and of 7th Sea, and it hurt my enjoyment that those expectations weren't met. Falkenstein got so caught up in its unnecessary crossworlds conceit that it completely failed to grip me. If I'm playing a game, I know it's not real, but if said game goes out of its way to add an extra layer of unreality, what's the point? It's as if the World of Warcraft RPG was presented as if simulating a group of gamers playing a MMORPG on their computers.

All of the books have '1668' written at the
bottom, which suggested a historical setting to
me. Mind you, let's take a moment to deal with
that armour. If this were on the core book, I'd
have felt myself forewarned.

In 7th Sea it was the failure of the game to be about the kind of things that interested me in the potential setting. The anachronistic stew of stereotypes (sinister Italians, brutish Irish, stoic Germans etc) wasn't much help, but ultimately it was the existence of a pervasive magic system that really nettled me. Magic feels to me like the antithesis of swashbuckling, which is all about physical refinement and discipline, cunning plans and daring escapes. Magic is more calculating and cerebral. If it is present in swashbuckling it should be in the background, a mysterious force, like fate, against which the heroes struggle to emerge triumphant. It shouldn't be routine, nor a force that the heroes can easily wield.

I don't know if 7th Sea is a good game, because I couldn't get past my initial disappointment. I hear good things, but mostly from people who clearly want something very different from what I want from a swashbuckling game. My ex raved about a campaign in which her PC spent almost all of her time as a cat, which does not feel like swashbuckling to me. A cat can't even carry a buckler (you know, unless you're playing Redwall the RPG.)

And then there was Mage the Awakening. People sometimes talk about games in terms of relationships, well Awakening was my ill-advised rebound game. I could never quite forgive it for not being its predecessor, Mage the Ascension, while still reminding me of it.

In summary: Never expect.

#RPGaDay 2015: Day 3 - It's a new dawn, it's a new game

Prompt: Favourite new game of the last 12 months

This one is tricky, because I don't buy a lot of games, and I've already talked about Goblin Quest. Also, this could be read as specifically new releases, rather than just new to me, in which case... Well, again, it's really just a couple of Kickstarters.

Favourite game that is new to me is No Rest for the Wicked, a Warhammer 40K LARP run by friends with a commercial sensibility. It's interesting, because it's a system in flux. Pretty much every application brings up new issues and there's a lot of revision and rewriting, but without much fuss or complaining about how it's ruined now or how the changes are ruining player X's game; just reasonable critique and comment. It's refreshing to see.

Gratuitous kit shot!

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A little more on topic, and separate from yesterday's discussion of Kickstarters, I'm going to consider what prompts me to buy - or more often these days want to buy - a new game.

I'm a sucker for presentation, I won't lie. It's not just that I want a game to look pretty, I want to be able to find things. Layout and structure matter, and important rules shouldn't be hard to locate. I hated the Ascension LARP core book because it was so badly structured I could barely find anything and I have the same problem with Stars Without Number (although in fairness, that's the free edition, so I don't think it's had the editorial love the full release got.)

I'm interested in system, but not obsessed. Setting is more important to me, and it was - for example - the setting of 7th Sea that turned me off the game, the anachronism stew making for a less satisfying dish - to me - than the more nuanced intrigues and anti-establishment capers that I might hope for from a swashbuckling game. Similarly... but I'll talk about that tomorrow.

#RPGaDay 2015: Day 2 - This is my quest...

Prompt: Kickstarted game you are most pleased you backed

This is a goblin bard, or possibly just a
goblin with what I will charitably call a
lute. I'm not sure there's a difference.

I don't usually schill, but I pushed the Kickstarter campaign for Goblin Quest. I can't imagine I pumped the total more than a few quid, since a lot of people I know are on first name terms with the writer, but it's the principle of the thing. Partly I backed it because I like Grant Howitt as a writer, but the concept appealed to me, and far more than the core game the idea of a flexible party game that could be adapted to oh, okay, I was totally in it for the idea of 'Sean Bean Quest', a rules hack about many incarnations of Sean Bean trying to escape the Bean curse which inevitably kills them before the credits.

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But enough of Goblin Quest, for now at least; let's talk Kickstarters. What do we - or, let's be honest, what do I - want from a Kickstarter?

Well, first up, I want a book. I am very unlikely to back based on a PDF, or even a tonne of PDFs of older material. If I back a game, I want to know I'm going to get something physical, with pages I can turn instead of scrolling. This means that I tend not to back projects that don't have a mid-tier option for the book and more or less just the book, although I may see if someone I know is backing and ask them to add in an extra copy of the book

I'm also more interested in extra game material as stretch goals than extra goodies, and I want a sign that the makers are reasonably aware of their risks and liabilities. I knew that GC risked non release given the number of stretch goals, but was enthused by Grant's openness about having absolutely no idea how he was going to cope with some of the promises, especially Sean Bean Quest.

#RPGaDay 2015: Day 1 - The Shape of Things to Come

Prompt: Forthcoming game you are most looking forward to

The simple answer to this one is the World of Darkness 2nd edition releases in general, and Awakening in particular, because although I will probably never play them it is fascinating to me to see how they address issues which the IoD discovered in play, and how they change the mechanics of the game to clarify the setting.

I don't care how clearly it's a rhomboid jellyfish,
I'm sticking with pyrasquid.

I also find it interesting that they were not originally touted as second editions, but as the [Antagonist] Chronicles. The initial pitch was that these were almost subsets of the main game, assuming certain metapoints in a way that The World of Darkness assiduously didn't. It was clear from The God Machine Chronicle/The World of Darkness Second Edition onwards that the mechanics were being drastically overhauled; not in a way that entirely worked for LARP, but then it wasn't supposed to, and the prospects for TT were good.

Awakening especially impresses me because it seems to be making tangible strides towards a game engine that specifically models the purpose of the game. Routine magical defence no longer inhibits your ability to do other things, because the game is about exploring mysteries, and you can't do that if you're scared all the time. While secrets need work to uncover, you no longer need a significant effort to just see the weirdness around you, because the game is about seeing the weirdness. Routine stuff is no longer allowed to get in the way of the point of the game, is what I'm saying. It's a move away from simulationism - not that WoD was ever hardcore simulationist - towards a more narrative focus. It's there in the very core concept of the new game: You are a mage, and mages investigate mysteries, they don't pussyfoot around wondering if they dare drop their sights or their armour, and the best way to encourage players to just get in there is to make it so that they don't have to.

I strongly suspect that Awakening 2nd edition would be completely impractical for live play, but then I don't play live age anymore.

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New editions are always a thing in gaming; a chance to do something new with an existing property; a chance to correct mistakes, iron out the wrinkles and get rid of that one thing that makes you cringe each time you read it. The original WoD games were pretty rough and ready, and Vampire and Werewolf were being revised even before half the games were in first edition.

What should a 2nd (or later) edition do?

1) Develop substantially on the previous edition.

Seriously; there's no point in producing a new core book for small changes; well, no point except grafting and gamers are hard to squeeze; not because they're canny, but because so many of them are skint. Now that a book comes in at £30-£50 print and £15-£30 PDF, we're careful with our money, so we're not just looking for substantial change, we want development; for the new product to build on the other rather than just having change for change's sake. It should tighten what is loose, clarify what is vague and in all ways address existing concerns to make the game more playable.

2) No exploding metaplot.

White Wolf's new editions laboured under the weight of metaplot. Much of it was ignorable, but later Mage editions in particular were cumbersome with it, to the point of hamstringing a number of factions by incorporating elements which established that in the grand struggle to establish the nature of reality, there were PC splats that were just plain wrong.  It was also unstoppable; there was never anything the PCs could do about the metaplot.

Similarly, the new version of WFRP - not the boxed set; the one before that - revised the Old World setting into line with the current Warhammer Fantasy Battle background; more epic, more heroic*, less grubby. I liked the world grubby. Of course, then they blew the new version up and replaced it with the Age of Sigmar, which is pretty much WFB turned up to 40,000. I doubt that an Age of Sigmar RPG could go much more than a few sessions, although it might be fun while it lasted.

3) Continuity of concept.

Again, coming back to Mage the Ascension, the final edition made traumatic changes to the nature of the underlying ontology that kind of rendered all previous material moot by establishing an objective reality.

4) Lack of repetition.

A big part of the continuity thing is that the new edition should build on, rather than replacing the old. Back compatibility to keep your old books as a worthwhile investment and a live resource does wonders.

So, in summary, a new edition should build on the old, not knock it down and start again or mutate it out of all recognisable shape. It should improve, and should be playable with the older material with no or minimal hacking required. I'm pretty sure that Awakening 2nd doesn't do all these things, being a massive do-over, but c'est la vie. I've never been fond of ideals, I guess.

Look for the hashtag #rpgaday for more RPG a Day thoughts.

* Although saying that, it did massively reduce the number of magical items floating around the world.