#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.

GUMSHOE One Sheet!

Pech Merle caves - horror of the natural world!

I have an entry in the RPG Geek GUMSHOE One Sheet contest! It's a little thing about alien squid beasts in French caves, and troglodytes playing the role of landlocked Deep Ones.

I'm quite pleased with myself, not necessarily because I think it's a winner, but for getting it done and posted.

Infernal Relics

Shit be getting mystical, yo.

I think it's fair to say that the longer any comic remains in publication, the weirder it gets. It's not surprising then that the second big expansion for the Sentinels of the Multiverse computer game is... a bit out there, even by Sentinels standards. As with 'Rook City', the 'Infernal Relics' DLC brings in all of the new cards from the expansion box of the same name: in this case 2 hero decks, 4 villains and 2 environments.

The heroes are the Argent Adept, a magical musician (or musical magician) and Nightmist, a sorceress made of fog. AA has unfortunate initials and a deck built around combos. He has some one-shots, but mostly his cards are Instruments (a specialised form of Equipment) or Ongoing cards of one of three types, Rhythm, Harmony and Melody. His intrinsic power is used only to activate the powers of the musical cards, while the instruments allow him to kick off multiple musical effects. Nightmist meanwhile has a very particular and fiddly card set. She has a number of powerful Relics, but the bulk of her repertoire is Spells. Each of her cards has a sparkly red icon with a number; when Spells are played, the top card of her deck is revealed and its number determines the magnitude of the Spell effect; and usually the damage she inflicts on herself to use it. Potentially incredibly powerful, there are a lot of gambles in playing Nightmist.

Each of these heroes brings their own nemesis to the table. AA's is Akash'bhuta, an insane extradimensional earth mother goddess determined to destroy all existence and opposed by the Virtuosi of the Void. Her deck builds 'Primal Limbs' which do her attacking, but damage her once destroyed. If that sounds easy, you should note that she has a stonking 200 health to deplete. Nightmist's archenemy is also an outsider to the universe; Gloomweaver, a demonic loa worshipped by degenerate voodoo cults. Gloomweaver rocks a combination of Zombies, Cultists (who are swapped with trashed zombies when destroyed), Relics and Voodoo Pins, a nasty new card type that attach to a Hero card and do horrible things each turn. He is nowhere near as tough as Akash'bhuta, but like the Chairman/Operative he quickly generates a wall of mooks, so you spend a lot of time riding herd.

The remaining villains pair up with heroes from the basic set. Fanatic's nemesis is Apostate, a black-winged, long-haired, shirtless angel-dude ripped from the fevered imaginings of a thousand anime fangirls. Many of his cards are Relics mirroring Fanatics, in particular his personal sword, but he also has a demon horde to call on. Finally, the Ennead is a set of nine villains, of whom only five (or possibly one per hero) are played each time. Each member of the group is a human possessed by one of the Heliopolitan Ennead, and each has an effect that triggers when certain cards are played from their deck, which can lead to quite painful chains of extra plays and damage effects (or healing; they heal a lot, so everyone jumping on one of them at a time is a good strategy.) Beside the Ennead themselves, they lack ongoing cards, and play mostly one-shots.

The environments are Gloomweaver's Realm of Discord, which plays Distortions to change the rules of the game, and the Tomb of Anubis, an Ancient Egyptian complex full of traps and tests and killer mummies.

There's a lot to get to grips with in terms of alternate mechanics in 'Infernal Relics', but overall the new challenges aren't as horrific as those of 'Rook City' and variety more than difficulty is the selling point. This makes it a better addition for a casual gamer like me, although perhaps less satisfying for those who find the game as is lacks bite.

Impressively, the drive for increased complexity and variation has not affected the strengths of the game, and the four-colour artwork and thematic deck construction remains excellent.