Thursday, September 12, 2013

Islands of Ignorance - TheThird Call of Cthulhu Companion

I kickstarted into this project about six months or so ago.

I happen to be acquainted in a small way with the project leader, Oscar Rios, and was very excited to see what he was planning, and so reversed my "never again" policy as far as game kickstarters go.

I'm ambivalent about Kickstarter and it's imitators. Crowd-sourcing is a very oughties touchy-feely-web-2.0-ey thing that sometimes gives me stomach ache when I see it "abused" by people who have avenues of funding and support that means they don't need to use crowd-sourcing.

However, Rios is Old School Call of Cthulhu enough that I couldn't resist helping out and helping myself to a first edition into the bargain. Besides, I have the other two companions, one of which was the second published accessory to Call of Cthulhu and such a high quality item it (along with Shadows of Yog Sothoth) changed my feelings about after-market publications for RPGs completely.

You'll find me in the backer's list in the publication, when it becomes available, under my web moniker "Roxysteve" (a name chosen during my AOL years when I found my first and last names were an unbelievably common combination in the western world).

If you are in there, shout out.

Visionaries should stick together.


Wednesday, September 11, 2013

FATE Intervenes In My Life Again


The Dresden Files RPG game I ran a couple of years ago was a bit different to all my other prefered games in that the DFRPG character generation system incorporates that tooth-achingly awful part of a GM's life, player backstories, and so the group needs to meet just to get that sorted out1 but there is also a touchy-feely phase where the players get to decide what the world should look like. I see the point but my players then decided they wouldn't share the load of administering it which was counter to the DFRPG rulebook guidelines and a bugger for me to manage due to the information load that had to be acquired just to run the game.

So I came to distrust the FATE system on the basis of what I had experienced. While I believe that FATE can deliver a rich experience for everyone, and that DFRPG in particular may do so in a robust fashion under challenging ground rules3, I never did understand the so-called Fate Point Economy and neither did anyone who tried to explain it to me4.

Fate points are a way in which the GM can intervene in the PC's lives, and by which the players can intervene in the NPCs machinations and intentions. There are various problems for me in this system, chiefly that the way wounds work hinges on players spending Fate Points to make the wounds hurt, and what happens when the players have inflicted grevious wounds on a Bad Guy but have spent all their Fate Points to make that happen? It is now down to my sense of fair play to make a crippling wound actually cripple the antagonist because according to the strict letter of the rules the players cannot switch on the hurty wounds because they lack the coin.

There's an actual example of the set-up to this situation in the DFRPG rulebook, taken from the Dresden Files fiction, in which an insanely powerful Black Court Vampire has been wounded and rendered "extra crispy" (Fate games are powered by adjectives). The example stops there, but should have gone on to discuss the most likely scenario in an actual game in which making the Vampire "extra crispy" had drained the players' Fate Point bank of its last red cent. I should add that every player would get one and only one free "tag" of the "extra crispy" Aspect5 to make the Vampire slow down, limp, go "argh" etc., but once that one round is over Mr V. Ampire straightens up and strides from the room as if unwounded. It's all very counter-intuitive for me, having cut my teeth on systems that have wound management as part of the wounded character's liabilities.


Now obviously I wouldn't allow the baddie to just ignore his crippling wounds like that on a normal day, I'd role play the singédness to the hilt, but what if I'm feeling mean on account of player intransigence and not in the mood to throw them a bone? What if they've been dbleeping around all game and I'm not their friend right now? Where is my incentive to screw with the rules of the game and give 'em a freebie when they've unwisely spent all their Fate Points before the Job Is Done?

Normally I'd just walk away from something for which I have such a demonstrably poor connect, but the thing is I can see how powerful the DFRPG system is (and by extension the FATE system from which it was carved). I want to understand DFRPG's engine, and the people who claim they do are not able to explain it in the context of the rules in the book - which leaves me wondering if they understand it any better than I do. I can just wing it like anyone can, but I don't want to do that because, speaking personally, I like to understand what an author was getting at with a given rule before I toss it6, and this has me going back to the well probably too often. Sometimes you should just walk away.

But then again.

One of the least useful bits of "advice" I've been given with respect to DFRPG has been to "study the FATE core rules"7, which are free to download, or were last time I checked and downloaded them8 just before I read DFRPG. DFRPG may have started as a FATE system, but the various mechanics used to mung physics in Dresden Land bear little resemblance to the parent material. I usually throw anyone who says this into the "parroting Everyone Knows™ but doesn't own or play the game" box.

Harsh, me.

But I was at my LFGS on Sunday9 and spotted my good gaming buddy Will running a game in one of the rooms. Will runs FATE (amongst other indie-heavy game systems) and I saw a rather nice hardback FATE rulebook on the table. I have twice sat in on one of Will's FATE games; one "heist" scenario of his own devising and one DFRPG session, and both were enjoyable experiences (that did nothing to answer my questions, oddly.

Long story short, I picked up a copy of this new FATE rulebook myself. For $25 is was a bargain. Hard covers faced in a robust colored material with an almost rubbery feel to it. Glossy white pages with black printing. Large enough font to read with ease. All in a package about the size of a novel (smaller if you allow for marketing idiocy), about half the frontal form factor of your usual game book. It is rare to get such quality for such a low price these days. This is a book one could tote to games easily and expect it to last for years if you don't let clods who think greasy foods mix with paper products get their pizza-smeared fingers on it. Yes, you can probably still get free versions, but a wad of printed pdf pages does not have the robustness or gravitas of a proper bound book for me.
The contents purport to be a more streamlined version of previous editions.

 Maybe this time's the charm and I'll finally understand what the designers were getting at. Stranger things have happened. If not, well I can sell it or gift it or leave it on the shelf since it is a good-looking product.

If a highly improvisational RP game framework is what you are looking for, you should take a look yourself.
  1. Actually it doesn't. The whole thing can be done over e-mail if the players are adult about it but the one time I tried to get this done in a game in which I had the chance to sit on the other side of the equation I was subjected to whining from the GM who threatened to quit the game he wasn't yet running. I didn't feel that was fair to the others, so I quit, and was then bad-mouthed by this Big Girl's Blouse and another prospective player who has made a habit of bad-mouthing me when I'm not around to hear2
  2. Because he dumped a game of mine without notice and didn't like that I flagged him for doing so in payment for us holding the game for an hour in case he showed up
  3. Namely, that if a player does what Dresden does under the same conditions he does, the same result should be the most likely outcome
  4. Explanations converged on "give out more Fate Points" which means the damned things are worthless rather than a resource that should be valuable, meaning challenge is ever, when you get down to it, challenging
  5. Key FATE word there
  6. Everyone Knows™ that D20 is a system that results in unkillable Godlike PCs, and that even a point blank shot to the head of even a minor character is not a guaranteed kill, except there are rules in the system that make both those things not true. It's just that most people turn those rules off without a second thought - only to start whining six months into their campaign about Godlike characters and ineffective pistols
  7. Both FATE and DFRPG are Evil Hat products
  8. Version 3
  9. For the MM&L character generation session

Monday, September 9, 2013

Metal, Magic and Lore Changes My Game

I loathe character generation sessions and usually the games that require them. If you have to have the group meet and get all touchy-feely about the pusiness of generating a bloody character then chances are the game will feature everything I hate in RPGs: Unkillable characters, negotiable results of actions, whining1.

As a GM I try not to put players into games in which they need to build a "team" in order to win the day. Not always possible, and anyway, I run games in which the players can find themselves outmatched and should, under those circumstances, retreat and gather new resources with which to win the day.

But this day was unique in that I was playing rather than GMing and the Metal, Magic and Lore game system is rather more involved than the systems I usually run and play.

I recommend that anyone looking for the "old school RPG" experience check out Metal, Magic and Lore.

The writers punt MM&L in this way: "If your idea of a perfect RPG is Pathfinder, don't buy MM&L because you'll hate it.

The game is refreshing in that it is unashamedly a Combat System with role playing bolted on. Too many RPG enthusiasts feel that it is somehow a bad thing in that a game has a combat system and that it works, but for me the absence of a feasiible combat system is an indication of sloppy thinking and bendy physics that will end up nerfing something else at the worst possible time. People howl that there is no point in a combat system in a game like Call of Cthulhu because, you know, Cthulhu, but what about the times when the PCs are up against human cultists?

MM&L features believable combat that is leathally dangerous and results in believable wounds when things go wrong. The human body has over thirty hit locations in this system.

But the joy of the system lies in that all the complicated stuff happens during character generation, when simple arithmetic is required and the process can seem intimidatingly long, but really isn't any longer than a D20 build. Once the information is in the character sheet, using it in combat is relatively easy and fast in play. A combat system that results in believable combat that can be played fast enough to enjoy the process. Colour me impressed.

The skill use is a variation on the test against a difficulty mechanic, but one that works by adding four numbers, one of which might be negative and another which may be zero. If you can add you can play this system. The combat works by using the same mechanic to figure out attack and defense values, and the magic system2 uses the same mechanic to cast spells. One mechanic to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.

And it uses the case system throughout the rulebook.

I found the game as a new discovery at RetCon IV, though it has been around since 2007. There is a large community of players worldwide, larger than might be thought for a game that proudly advertises its richness and complexity in a world where gamers shy from games as simple as Kingmaker. It warms my heart that there are still people who don't fear Arithmetic in the gaming world, and that most of them are younger than me.

And I wanted to play it, as opposed to run it.

So how could I resist when Vito, one of he authors of the game, decided to try and run a campaign of MM&L at the Legendary Realms, my local friendly game store? A day after I answered the RSVP I was eagerly reading my nice hardback rulebook and building a backstory in my head. I uncovered a puzzling oversight3 in that there was no information on the longevity of the various races with the exception of Elves in the basic rulebook. Vito said that no-one had ever questioned him on that before, (probably because no-one ever wanted to play a middle-aged Dwarf before).

And that was how I happened to spend a few hours with a bunch of other people in a character generation session, and actually enjoyed the experience.

Now I just need to write my backstory.

  1. Though chances are you'll get lots of this anyway
  2. Actually, three different types of magic
  3. Vito and I disagree over the designation "oversight"