RPGs I Like: Scion- Hero

RPG Items I Like: Scion: Hero

I use a little cheat here. As some know I ran a Scion campaign with a fairly complete arc and wrote up a postmortem of that campaign in an earlier post. I thought it would be good to take some of the comments I had on the Scion game and expand them into a longer, more focused review of the game. So a couple of the points here originally appeared in that session report in a modified form.

Scion's Premise
Scion's an unusual line for White Wolf. It isn't set in the World of Darkness and while it does use the mechanical base of Exalted (Second Edition) there's no direct connection. Instead there's a thematic connection in the idea of powerful mythic figures struggle against larger forces, but this time in a modern world. Scion's also a limited series release, there are only five books in the line and apparently no plans for any others. I like that Scion: Hero feels complete. While running my campaign, neither I nor my players felt a real need to go out and buy the later books (although at that point the Scion Companion wasn't out). There's a structure to the series with the first three books: Hero, Demigod, and God, each assuming a ramped up power level from the previous volume.

The premise sells the game pretty well-- characters are half-mortal children of the gods from various pantheons. They've been granted some of the powers and blessings of their divine parent and now must band together to fight against evil and especially the Titans, a generic term for creatures and beings dedicated to the destruction of the world and the downfall of the gods. The game provides nice sections for six different pantheons: Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Voodoo, Japanese, and- interestingly- Aztec. Selecting a parent determines with special abilities and powers will be easiest for the character to buy. The pantheon that parent god fits into also grants a unique set of powers and which virtues the character will have to choose from.

System and Characters
This is a modified version of the Storyteller dice pool system. It is pretty easy easy pick up, especially if you've played other dice pool games. I can't say how closely Scion mirrors the newer version of Exalted, though my understanding is that it is fairly close. Scion does add a couple of elements to the normal ST formula worth commenting on.

Willpower, unlike other ST games, can't be spent for an automatic success. Instead a character must spend a point of Willpower to channel a virtue appropriate to their action, which grants them a number of dice equal to the virtues rating. I like this and the association of different virtue sets with different pantheons helps characters feel different. Characters can buy Epic dots in attributes which grant them an automatic success when attempting an action based on that attribute. Epic attributes in turn grant Knacks which are special abilities like Self-Healing, Center of Attention, and Opening Gambit. Players really liked these abilities, although as the game progressed we started to see some overlap between players. At least at the start a group could have a nice independent mix of these.

Players can also purchase powers from Purviews associated with their divine parent (like Guardian, Earth, Darkness, Justice). These vary pretty greatly in utility. To use a purview power, characters must also have Relics associated with that purview. Players can purchase Relics as backgrounds, creating weapons, armor or other items and associating them with one or more of these Purviews. The game presents loose rules on relic creation and the GM ought to watch that pretty carefully as that system can be exploited. One of the important limitations on all of this is the expensive to purchase Legend rating. The maximum number of Epic Dots and the highest rank of Purview a character may is purchase is one less than their Legend Rank. The square of a person's Legend rank makes a temporary pool of points characters use to power Purviews and get rerolls. Legend's figured into a few other things, but it more often functions as a nice buffer and read on the party's relative power.

Scion's character building system works well. It does create a nice empowering feeling for the PCs. There's some funkiness with the calculations for Legend (as a fixed stat) and Legend (as an expendable resource. But that only got in the way a couple of times. The idea of Epic Attributes providing both an automatic success as well as a special ability worked well. Most players looked to those rather than the Purview abilities. Virtues use helped players players had to take a moment to justify why an action would be associated with a particular virtue- so that's a nice mechanic that reinforces focused play.

There are a couple of weaknesses in character creation. First, as a GM I'm not fond of bought pets or followers, which are two of the four possible birthrights characters can buy. They might fit for some games, but generally for the kind of starting group this game implies they seem problematic. And I don't like having to track those things in play YGMV. The Purview system, set of powers covering the aspects of the various gods, also comes up weak compared to other options. Buying into those associated with your divine parentage costs less. However those abilities seem significantly less potent and useful compared to the Knack system. A character gains a Knack when they buy a dot of an Epic Attribute. Given that the Epic Attributes themselves give benefits, you get more for your money. Most Purviews also require a long action for activation, reducing effectiveness in combat. Then there's the question of balance between the various Purviews. I don't usually need absolute balance, but I do want some parity. Some of the Purviews end up being useful, while many would rarely come up in a game. Even if they did, they ended up weak. I'm of the mind that if something is narrow in scope, you make it a little more potent to compensate. I need to look at those when I run this again and see if there's some small alterations I can make...or if that's even needed.

Other Ideas
Overall players come out feeling pretty potent and powerful, even starting out. That's refreshing given the intent and theme of the game. Even in our first scenes and combats with fresh characters the players found themselves juggling around their abilities and trying out new tricks, especially the various knacks. Scion: Hero establishes a particular power level and tone thematically and then the game actually backs that up.

That sense of the mythic feeds into one of my favorite concepts from the game, the idea of Fatebinding. Essentially when a Scion draws on the power of his Legend around mortals there's a chance of drawing those mortals into his his story, path or destiny. While the book provides some pretty specific mechanics on this, I think it functions better as a loose concept-- otherwise you run the risk of having to constantly check the number and make players really hesitant. As it was my players took seriously the idea of Fate-binding. In the campaign the party recognized that interacting with particular NPCs meant that over time they could become entangled with them. They always recognized the dangers in that, and if someone did get linked up, they made sure to take care of them rather than leaving them out to hang. The concept helps establish something new and different about the characters and supports the mythic tone of the game.

There's other good material presented here-- a decent section talking about how to sustain the idea of the children of the gods walking around on the earth. There's some discussion of what the power level does to the kind of campaign you have to run as well. The game includes stats for various monsters and enemy beings, including fairly full write ups for a rival band of Scions. There's also a fairly lengthy multi-session adventure included as a way to kick-starting a campaign or as a contest later in the PCs career. There's a lot to like here.

Problems With Combat
My one problem with the game came from the combat system and how it played out over time. Old Storyteller has a system for multiple actions that, while a nice idea, often broke down when PCs got to throwing around big dice pools. The Scion system uses some of the old ST dice mechanics but goes in another direction. As I understand it, the new Exalted 2e system uses the same approach. Scion maps initiative and action timing to a circular display with eight sections or wedges called Tics. Players make an "enter battle" roll. The character with the highest number of successes gets placed in Tic 1-- everyone else is placed relative to that based on successes. That does mean that there can be a fairly large number of Tics between the first and last person in the round-- that will be important later.

Each action a player takes has two costs-- a speed cost showing how many tics the action takes and a Defensive Value (DV) showing how much the number to hit them is reduced by. Players can combine two actions on an action but it costs more speed and DV. When a player takes their action, you move their marker on the chart an equal number of tics. When that tic comes up again, everyone in that wedge takes their action simultaneously. At first I really liked this system-- it had an interesting flexibility and made a significant difference in action choices. I bought a metal pizza pan, marked it up and used magnets with labels to track these things.

However after running several combats with the system several things become clear. First, Speed Kills. A character with a faster weapon will be in much, much better shape. They will have several more opportunities to act over the course of a combat, which is to be expected. But since you also reset your DV to normal when you take an action, it could be hard to wear them down to a manageable level. Second, other actions like activating Purviews and such cost more speed than attacks and knacks. That means that if you want to do those things, you're going to be waiting a bit before you get to go again. Third, while I liked the chart, it could get in the way-- and it was difficult to make up markers big enough to be visible to everyone and still have room to fit within each wedge.

Overall the system really showed its weaknesses when we did some really big combats. Players had to make choices between their more interesting abilities and simply going for a swack. The difference in speed costs usually made the latter a better choice. On my side of things we also had the problem of the rapidly rising Defensive Values. In this system, Defense wins-- and more abilities seem to support defensive options. To hit someone you have to beat their DV in successes on your attack roll. Generally that means you have to be throwing a little less than twice their DV in dice to have a decent shot (7+ for successes, 10's count as two successes). Most DVs sat at around 7-8. This meant ordinary characters didn't have a real chance of hitting the PCs unless they coordinated-- an action which cost them time an opportunities. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but their also usually supported by abilities that can take damage as well-- and since players have spent point on those, I want them to be used and matter as well. It took me a while to kind of work through those numbers and get comfortable with them and I suspect I'll have a better handle on them next time I run this.

Summary
I don't think my problem with the combat system is a game breaker. I am a little worried about what that's going to end up looking like at the higher power levels of Scion Demigod and Scion God. Overall I think this is a great game and one which players enjoyed-- both for the system and for the play more than I expected them to. Some people might shy away from it because it isn't an ongoing supported system, but I think that's to its advantage. What White Wolf has published for it supports the concept strongly and in a focused way. If you steer away from White Wolf products because of a perception of angsty goofiness, consider Scion. It combines thunderous abilities with a compelling modern setting-- potentially dark but not self-indulgently so. Here the players are, pretty clearly, the good guys.

Portability
You could easily run Scion with another system given the strength of the key idea. The systems presented (like knacks, birthrights, and purviews) would take some work to port over, but no more than the chrome of any other detail-oriented system. In a more narrative-based game it might be easier to build some parity between the kinds of powers, or that issue might matter less. I can see where Scions might make interesting adversaries in another kind of modern game, but they're pretty powerful and might overwhelm (depending on the game). If nothing else I think the concept and discussion of Fatebinding might be worth borrowing for another game. That's new and fits with the genre, but could work elsewhere.

RPG Supplements I Like: Villainy Amok

A little shorter review in my series today, and a break from my series of reviews on Robin Laws' rpg products. Monday I hope to come back to that with a kind of overview of what I like about what he's done with rpg ideas. I hope to talk more generally about what games play like in that and perhaps some discussion of other game authors I like.

Unfortunately had to cancel my games this week- and probably a good thing we didn't go camping. Ill and still trying to figure out exactly what's going on with that.

RPG Items I Like: Villainy Amok

In general I think Superhero games reverse some of the normal considerations I have when it comes to games. Generally I like sourcebooks for ideas- backgrounds, NPCs, scenes, and details that I can add to my story. For most games I shy away from my mechanics-oriented materials. I'm the opposite with Supers stuff. I want to see adventures, I want the detailed character write ups, I want ideas for new powers, skills and advantages. Something like Freedom City or The Books of Magic for Mutants and Masterminds I would love with another genre, but for Supers they seem kind of useless to me. I'm not sure if that's because I have a fairly good grip on what I want to do setting-wise, if it reflects my uncertainty with games that have more detailed rules, or the nature of these games as more combat-oriented.

That being said, I really like Villainy Amok despite how general it is. If you're running a supers game you ought to buy this. I think it is really as simple as that. Villainy Amok is a collection of plot hooks and ideas, revolving around the most classic kinds of adventures and plots you find in a superhero game.

One of the reasons I think this works is that the genre conventions of superheroes are so well known and accepted. There's a certain amount of reveling in or commenting on those in these kinds of games. I'd like to see this kind of book for other genres of games-- if they were as interesting, well done and full of variations as this volume, that would be something I'd pick up right away.

The book's 176 pages densely packed with material. The art's a mixed bag, ranging from good to really rushed and weak. However that doesn't really detract from the package as a whole. My only quibble would be with the stiffness of the paper and cover. My copy immediately got that odd convex warping that makes holding pages open harder. I find that a little irritating when reading.

While written for the Hero System most of the material here can be used incredibly easily in other superhero games (of all levels of power). There's some reference to the Champions Universe in parts, but that can be adapted or ignored. Each chapter takes the core concept and lays out some of the implications involved, what kinds of NPCs, what kinds of locations, and how you might change up the usual plot hooks. Each includes a slightly more fleshed out scenario discussion and a list of ten unusual versions of the adventure trope-- as well as a nicely detailed random plot generator based on the ideas. .

Four of the seven scenario sections present classic plots which can be used a several times in a campaign in very different ways or can serve as a recurring arc. We begin with "Hands in the Air" covering bank robberies- a real staple of most supers games. Most of the ideas here can be, of course, be used for a variety of robbery situations. "The Threat Beyond" looks at alien invasions. It focuses on 'alien probe' or prelude plot hooks, since the full topic could be a book in itself (and has been in the Invasions: Target Earth book for Champions 3e). While some of the ideas here fall back to the expected, there's enough surprising material here to make it worth it. I can easily see riffing from some of the small ideas for weeks.

Probably my favorite section is "Ask Your Doctor if Metatron is Right for You." It gives a wide range of possible 'super-power drug' scenarios. It presents several different flavors of this plot (Psi-Boosters, Lycanthropy Serums and so on). I especially like the parts which look at running the long term consequences of these plots and how they might change up and recur. "It Came From a Mad Scientist's Lab" is probably the most broadly written section. You get plenty of interesting motivations and styles for your mad scientist villain and a discussion of how to complicate the classic breaking into the villains lair.

A few of the sections cover concepts with a narrower focus. These would probably work once or twice or serve as the backbone to a linked series of adventures. Chapter Four- "Burn, Baby, Burn"- talks about fires and fire-fighting. While a GM could make this the set-piece center to a game it could also be used in conjunction with a disaster relief scenario or any situation where an event or fight causes property damage. This particular chapter has the most mechanical approach, with additional rules and systems for handling fires in the Hero System. Despite that you still get eleven pages of good material and ideas which could be used for other games. Again, I think this is where Villainy Amok shines-- being able to riff a series of plot hooks and ideas from a fairly standard concept. We've seen fires as plot hooks in pop culture supers (The Incredibles, Batman: Year One, and the first Spiderman movie) so players understand some of the conventions.

"Honey, They Shrank the Superheroes" talks about the scenarios involving the tiny heroes, miniature villains and plots centering on this classic sci-fi premise. There's some nice mechanical and non-mechanical discussion of the implications of the smalls sizes to accompany the plot hooks. It also ties in the idea of the 'Bottled City' as a way of getting more than a single scenario out of this trope. "My Big Fat Caped Wedding" does a nice job of examining the various parts of this kind of adventure from pre-Wedding problems, to the ceremony, to the reception and finally the honeymoon. The options provided do a nice job of providing many more plot hooks than you'll ever need-- since you can probably only get away with one wedding per campaign (unless you were perhaps to use that as bookends for one...hmmm...).

The book ends with a lengthy "Plot Gallery". This gives lists of scenario and hook ideas revolving around certain themes. Each entry on the list has at least a paragraph laying out options, so these aren't just throw-away discussions as you get in other products. Instead the book takes time to give some shape and direction to these ideas. You get Campaign Set-Up Plots, Personal Dilemmas, Secret Identity Storylines, and seven others in twenty-one packed pages.

Portability: As I said earlier ideas here could be used in nearly any supers campaign, regardless of the system. I could imagine using it for a modern super-agents, conspiracy or spy game as well. There are mechanics and stats for some adversaries presented, but that's a small fraction of the material and can be easily reworked.

RPGs I Like: HeroQuest, Second Edition

RPG Items I Like: HeroQuest, Second Edition

Caveat
I should get a number of biases and experiences out of the way before this review. I've been a fan of Glorantha for years and I bought the earlier versions of this game: both as Hero Wars (1st edition) and HeroQuest (1st Edition). I'm knowledgeable about Glorantha and competent with rpgs, but I found both versions impenetrable and off-putting. Every time I read them I came away with a different sense of how the game worked. Weirdly my interpretation of some of those concepts would end up subconsciously reworked into our house homebrew system (Action Cards). But as a game itself I didn't like the earlier versions. And I say that as a self-confessed Robin Laws fanboy and a person who enjoys reading novel game mechanics and narrative approaches. Those experiences colored my thinking going into reading this.

I have to note two other things: first, this is a reading review. I think I'm a good judge of games and how they'll play at the table (notwithstanding my experience with The Dying Earth rpg). My plan is to write this review based on the reading and then try to get a group together for at least a one-shot. I'll report back after that. I think seeing if my reactions stay the same should be a useful exercise. I should also note that Issaries offered pdf copies of the game to reviewers. So this review is based on a copy given free of charge from them.

Basics
HeroQuest 2e is a generic engine for running narrative-centered games, primarily written by Robin Laws. You ought to know going in that HQ2 structures itself in nearly all senses around the way stories are presented. It builds from literary forms and conceits. Laws makes a forthright case for considering the needs of the story as shaping the rules and the play. That can be a turn-off for some players, a point he addresses in the GM section-

The narrative style gets a bad rap among some players, who assume that it means an overbearing Narrator will impose on them a pre-determined story, the outcome of which their characters are powerless to alter. These assumptions usually spring from their past bad experiences with uncollaborative Narrators. Address these expectations by allowing the player’s choices to lead your narrative. You might start the game with at least one possible interesting storyline in mind, but should always be willing to abandon it if the players seize the reins and take it in an unexpected direction. Your goal is to move the story toward any thrilling outcome, not a particular endpoint you’ve already envisioned.

For only a 130 pages, the book packs in a lot of ideas, material and more importantly tools for building the kind of campaign you want. The introduction begins by setting up the core idea that HQ2 will be starting from: in dealing with challenges and conflicts, the difficulty depends on the story. Or as Laws states it for the GM- "Pick a resistance, then justify it." He compares standard games to calculate the difficulty of an action you analyze the physical factors, determine range, figure wind speed, and come to a target number (or whatever works in the system). I quote here again because I think it really sets out the logic of the game:

In HeroQuest, you start not with the physical details, but with the proposed action’s position in the storyline. You consider a range of narrative factors, from how entertaining it would be for him to succeed, how much failure would slow the pacing of the current sequence, and how long it has been since Joey last scored a thrilling victory. If, after this, you need further reference points, you draw inspiration more from martial arts movies than the physics of real-life jumps from bridges onto moving hovercrafts. Having decided how difficult the task ought to be dramatically, you then supply the physical details as color, to justify your choice and lend it verisimilitude- the illusion of authenticity that makes us accept fictional incidents as credible on their own terms. If you want Joey to have a high chance of success, you describe the distance between bridge and vehicle as impressive (so it feels exciting if he makes it) but not insurmountable (so it seems believable if he makes it.)

What Laws does here, as he's done elsewhere is make explicit some of the things which GMs often already do, but usually hide. I've seen some criticism of another Laws' design in Gumshoe to the effect it fixes a problem that GMs have already been fixing on the fly. I think the difference here is that laws' openly acknowledges those factors and those things we often hide from our players. He brings them out into the open and builds them into the system.

Character Creation
Players can easily create characters, with the rules providing several different approaches to it. Any character is defined by the abilities he possesses-- there are no stats or other factors (like wounds or willpower). Abilities can be anything-- and options are provided for the GM to set them more or less loosely. For example some might want players to be able to invest and build up sub-abilities, called keywords here. There's no universal ability list, just examples. Some abilities may function as flaws if they drive your character to make bad choices.

Depending on what the GM wants the player might write out a block of text describing their character. The GM and player can then choose and mark abilities from that description (like Sensitive Soul, Throngs of Fans, Piercing Gaze, or Plucky Assistant). Alternately, the player may make a list up of abilities or even come up with abilities as on the fly. In any case the player then assigns ratings to these abilities and the process is done. Later sections of the rules do provide and extend these ideas beyond these basics-- giving example cultural keywords, discussion of how items are handled as abilities, magic and other powers and so on. The books splits the difference well here-- as your reading you don't feel like there's a chunk missing from the discussion. The implication is that all of those systems will be parallel to those the book sets up first. And honestly with that logic in place you have a fairly strong sense of how those mechanics will work.

Players' ability ratings have a number, with a 17 being assigned to your defining ability, and 13 to everything else. You then get a pool of points to raise those values. When an ability hits 21, it shifts and the character gains a mastery. So a character with an effective 23 notes that as 3@ (where @ marks the mastery). With a 33, it would be noted as 3@2- showing two masteries.

Resolving Contests
In play characters roll a d20 against their abilities when presented with a challenge. The book stress that challenges should be reserved for dramatically important moments. In a simple challenge, the players roll and compare to the ability's value. The character's value may be modified by circumstance but those are loosely defined as either a -3 or -6 penalty. Those modification can wipe out masteries if the number drops below the threshold. If they roll their ability or below, they have a success; if they roll a 1 they have a critical success. If they roll above that number they have a failure; if they roll a 20 they have a critical failure. The GM rolls simultaneously with the player for the opposition's resistance.

Now here's where masteries and the side mechanic of Hero Points come into play. If one side has more masteries in the relevant ability than the other, they may bump up their result by one level (i.e. failure to success, success to critical success). You may also spend a hero point to bump up your results after the dice have been rolled. If a character already has a critical result, and extra masteries left over they can also bump down the opponent's result.

The GM compares the results and determines the level of victory for one side or the other (tie, marginal, minor, major, or complete) and narrates the results based on this. For a simple contest, the character simply does one round of exchanges. For more complicated actions, the GM uses an extended contest, with several exchanges and the build up of advantage to one side versus the other. This can be for a debate, a chase sequence, a military raid, or probably most commonly a combat. Two important things come out of this system- first, the players obligation to frame the goal of their contest at the start of it. The question in the drama comes from what the player wants to accomplish by the scene. The other thing is that all conflicts, of all kinds, are functionally equivalent.

This is important in that you can be "killed" or effectively removed from action on any of these fields of conflict. In a simple contest, the loser fails and also suffers a penalty to their relevant ability. Those consequences can be even more severe in an extended contest. If the contest was an economic one, the loser may expend resources or have their control shaken, for an artistic contest the loser may end up debilitated by a shattered confidence, for social contests the injuries may take the form of shame, humiliation, or even loss of community. As an interesting dramatic choice, there's no damage effects in the midst of contests, instead results are tallied and applied at the end of resolution.

Elaborating Mechanics
Most of the rules spends time elaborating these simple mechanics-- exploring the various permutations (like group simple contests, options for representing support abstractly, parting shots, disengaging). Most of these arise logically from the rules and nothing feels out of place. I like several of the mechanics presented here. For example, with a prose-based ability system, some characters will obviously end up defining their abilities broadly. That's well and good for general use, but when they come into contact with other abilities, the more broadly define one suffers a penalty. The first example given compares someone with a Strong ability versus Bar-Room Brawler ability in an arm-wrestling contest. The former suffers a -6 to their ability. But interestingly the penalty applies to the character with the broad skill definition if another player in the group has a narrower and more appropriate ability. For example the Strong character goes to arm-wrestle someone with an equally broad ability. But also in the party is another player with the Professional Arm Wrestler ability who is or isn't at the same scene. The Strong character suffers the penalty to their skill. The goal here, as with some other systems in the rules is to keep players from stealing other's thunder through the use of overly broad abilities and encourage players to develop some niche areas.

The rules stress a practicality about running games. For example, something every GM has probably used- the idea of Mock Contests- where the GM knows the results will be in the players favor but wants to give them the satisfaction of overcoming a challenge. The character development system includes a mechanic to allow players to catch up skills they've let fall to the side over play. The average difficulty of challenges rises over time as the players gain experience. Results and consequences apply differently if you're in the rising action of the story or at the climax. These all represent tools in the GM's toybox, but they're rarely stated or built into the mechanics of the system explicitly. They're tricks a rules-centered person might object to in another game system, but here that kind of player knows ahead of time that might happen and is permitted by the rules.

Ideas and Presentation
The section on devoted to "gamemastering" takes up twenty pages of the rules. Laws' lays out solid and approachable advice in the context of the system. He presents nice discussion of story structures and how consequences and failures can work into the overall arc of the game. For gamemasters familiar with the concepts, it feels confirmatory and clear. For gamemasters less familiar, I think it will be an eye-opening experience- presented in a friendly way.

I never really felt confused reading these rules, a problem I had with earlier versions. The layout's excellent and the illustrations pretty well done. Every time I thought "Gee...I'd like to see an example of that..." the book presented one. The system is pretty different from most games out their but as a whole it remains accessible.

That being said, the book did lose me a little in a couple of place. Some references to other sections aren't as clear as they might be. For example, the idea of community support is mentioned without reference well before the idea is actually discussed. Other things like the sidebar on Extended Contests and Healing Resistances seem placed oddly away from their relevant sections. Then there are a few small places where the writing lost me, for example:

You may improve any ability by 1 point per session, at a cost of 1 hero point. To raise an ability by 2 points at once costs 3 times the cost of raising it by 1 point. 3 points at once costs 6 times as much. To raise it by 4 points at once, which is the maximum per session increase, costs 10 times what it would to raise it by 1.

Um, does that mean it costs 3 points to raise an ability by 2, or 6 points? I'm not sure where stating the special number wouldn't have been easier.

I hesitate to mention these things as they are few and far between. Laws presents the vast majority of the material in a lucid and cogent way. I think that's vital for a core set of rules, especially one which works with a different approach from other games.

Ideas for Community Games
One of my favorite section of the rules covers the idea of players being part of a community. In such a campaign, the community acts as a resource and a backdrop. Players want it to survive and thrive. Challenges to the community have to be met over the course of the game. Various abstract stats are defined for it either by the gamemaster or the player group defining the history. In play, the PCs can try call on support from the community to aid them. However the cost comes in temporarily reducing the community's ability, perhaps significantly if the supported conflict fails. Failure can also reduce the player's ability to interact within the community, as they lose face, gain distrust or earn a bad reputation. Success can mean the growth of the community's abilities and resources over time.

I like mechanism and the structure presented. It is simple, but well defined. It also scales well, both for size and the time intervals of the campaign. I like "building" games so this has a high appeal to me. I can imagine it working at the small scale for something like a Covenant for Ars Magica or at a larger, even national, scale for something like the old TSR Birthright setting. Some years ago Steve Jackson produced GURPS Alpha Centauri which had some great material, but seemed to stay in too narrow a range. I could easily imagine a multi-generational game being done with HeroQuest. I'd also say, for want of an even more obscure reference, that the ambitious intent of something like Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth could be met with this game system.

What About Glorantha?
The book ends with a sixteen page guide to applying the new HeroQuest to Glorantha. It is pretty basic, while at the same time does cover all the bases you'd expect. I suspect by this point those people who want a Glorantha game already have one and this isn't going to sell that setting. If you are a Glorantha player you'll probably find this book a smoother set of core rules, but you won't find any world specific material you don't already have. Having read the earlier versions, both as Hero Wars (1st edition) and HeroQuest (1st Edition), I much prefer this presentation. I hope we support for this line...not a rehash of the Orlanthi Barbarians but more on the Malkioni and the Lunars (Glorantha fanboy mode off).

Summary
Overall I'm really pleased and excited by these rules-- that's refreshing. I too often find myself going "umm...yeah...I don't think so..." when I read new game systems, especially ones with radically new mechanics (for example Don't Rest Your Head). I never got that sense with HeroQuest 2e-- instead I wanted to and really hope to be able to try this out with my group and get their reaction. As I said at the beginning, once I've done that I'll try to report back on the results.

Portability
I think there's two directions to consider this in. First, can mechanisms or ideas here be brought over into other games. I could see borrowing several of these ideas for other, more narrative games. The general ideas on structuring of stories, the mechanisms for handling a community-based game, and the means of creating differences between narrow and broad skill definitions. I especially like how conflict is presented with equivalence-- that loss in realms other than the purely physical can remove opponents- having suffered extreme losses to reputation, resources or other factors, they're forced to withdraw. If you're generally looking for ideas on how to run, this book can be useful.

The other direction is how adaptable would an existing setting be to the mechanisms here. I'm pretty used to adapting published settings I like over to other game systems. Originally I ran Glorantha using Rolemaster and my Changeling: The Lost campaign uses a completely homebrew system. One potential challenge here comes from dealing with the chrome of the previous setting. At first I thought that would be difficult, but the more I think about it, the easier that becomes.

As a concrete example, I love the Legend of the Five Rings setting, but I've never cared for the system (any of the editions or the d20 version). When I ran it I first tried using Rolemaster Fantasy and then did another complete reconversion using Storyteller. There's lots of nice detail and bits in the game I like: kihos, the various clan schools, and the advantages and disadvantages. At first I thought that would be hard to replicate. With more consideration I think it would be pretty easy. Schools could be replicated through the keywords in the genre packs. A duel could be handled with an extended contest in a satisfying way, with the build up to the final stroke. Social influences have an equal footing with combat prowess, perhaps finally bringing courtier characters into parity. The idea of a community basis would ideally tie into the Rokugani sense of clan, family and daimyo fealty. You could use HeroQuest to do a number of things like that easily-- I can think of a number of games where I like the setting but not the game system (Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade and The Black Company for example). I think that I might try converting L5R as an exercise in the future.

RPG Supplements I Like: The Kaiin Players Guide

RPG Items I Like: The Kaiin Players Guide

The Kaiin Players' Guide is a city sourcebook for The Dying Earth rpg (which I talked about yesterday. It is also a strange beast...and one which merits some digression on the idea of cities in games-- some of which I've hit before, but I like the ideas here...

All Places are Equal
There's no real narrative difference between the moment when a character goes up the mountain to visit the wise mentor, across the oceans to find the legendary wizard or goes down the street to buy a loaf of bread. Looking at it from a narrative point of view you begin in a [PLACE] then [TRAVEL] and then arrive at another [PLACE]. And depending on the GM, the sense of the travel time will vary-- perhaps scenes will occur along the road or perhaps we'll get a fast wipe to the end point or an obstacle before it. The key point is that space is defined by the game, by the needs of the narrative. So in terms of this except for scale there's no structural difference between a building, a neighborhood, a city, a nation or a continent.

Mind you there are detail differences that arise from these, and those certainly affect the story. But I've had players who had a hard time visualizing that a fantasy game could be told in one place, like a city. They assumed these places would be worn out-- that they could only create a handful of scenes and that travel was central to the game and required distance.

Part of it is the desire to see different things-- different places. That sight-seeing is often a key experience for players of fantasy rpgs. But the good GM can create those distinctions and differences within the scale or a city or even a castle-- showing off new things and eventually creating a sense of spatial connection. That can be challenging-- the eco-system and interactions of a smaller scale have tighter relations than a larger one. For example, if in a game set in a castle I suddenly have a potent wizard pop up after a number of sessions, the question obviously is: where was he before? How does he interact with the people and parts of the castle the characters have seen before? On the other hand, in a game on the scale of a nation, if I have that character pop up, the players might simply assume they hadn't heard of him before. That's a functional difference between the scales-- that distance creates more room for the GM and less messy threads.

But for the experience of the player the distinction is minimal-- with one exception. In a smaller scale setting, the player has to deal with the consequences of their actions. People they talk to will talk to other people, they'll be more likely to return to old haunts, awful actions not concealed will be revealed and color their future interactions. I've had players who clearly hated this but couldn't (or wouldn't articulate that problem). For them, the spatial limitations spelled out behavioral limitations which impinged on their autonomy. Or more accurately, their ability to dump on whomever they wanted to.

Continuity of Experience
From my point of view as a GM the "institutional memory" of a location provides a benefit. The ability to return easily to a location makes players remember something about that place. It becomes a kind of resource of them. Of course that "return easily" is kind of an illusion. The GM can make the transition between any two places as easily or as difficult as they want to.

Which is part of my fascination with city settings for rpgs. Done right, they have their own feel and their own rhythm. They require digging deeper into the background elements of a place. Since there's no budget for rpgs if players travel from isolated location to isolated location, I can present grand spectacle and high weirdness where ever they go. Like them I'm particular isolated from the implications of my actions. I have less burden to explain the why of the location. Certain genres in gaming have grown up with this as standard convention: space games, post-apocalypse, and classic high fantasy. Interestingly modern fantastic games usually have a more static setting (Werewolf, Vampire, Changeling, and so on) while modern conspiracy games (like Delta Green or Conspiracy X) usually have travel and location switching. Perhaps there's the sense in the latter that a static location would require dealing with the implications of all of the weirdness happening on one place (ala Sunnydale).

Consider how to spell out that institutional memory for players. If the players are outsiders, that's relatively easy as they and their characters learn at the same rate. But what happens over time with players in a location? How to we had expertise over to the players without creating the parrot effect? One of my favorite city books is L-1: City of Lies for the L5R setting. The game assumes players will be investigators or magistrates of some sort (though it can be worked in other ways). They're given a separate player's book about the city with information provided in the voices of several primary sources. That's a good solution, and helps provide clues to certain mysteries in the setting but it does require some translation.

Finally, The Review
The Kaiin Players Guide takes this concept and moves it one step further. It presents a players guide completely for the player. There is no GM guide. Instead the book presents itself as a reference which assumes the players know the city. They know the neighborhoods, they know the people, they know some of the darker details of life, they have a hold of secrets, interactions, and details that in another game would be the sole province of the gamemaster.

This structure has a number of purposes. Obviously it allows the player, with reference, to simulate a knowledgeable inhabitant of the city. But it also encourages the players to craft their options and directions for themselves. If they seek out someone who might be able to tell them about the lost art of "Thurla Grub-Juggling" instead of asking the GM who they should talk to, they can say "I head down to Odkin Prospect to consult with the majesty Dung-Borne Ruby who knows just about everything concerning Thurla Grubs."

Just as GMs often use sourcebook material to riff from for games, this book does the same for players. It gives them a measure of control and allows them to improvise plots and scenes and then ask the GM to join in. There's a reversal of power there that's pretty exciting and in keeping with the narrative flexibility intended in The Dying Earth rpg. In some ways, given how subject the players of that rpg suffer at the hands of fate, this can act as a leveler-- or at least allowing them to have a greater voice in their own downfall.

The book itself is 192 pages. I purchased the pdf version which is really easy to read-- copy and paste are disabled which means you can't easily make up player briefings or the like from parts of it. The layout's excellent, with great maps and decent illustrations (although a chunk of those are Dover clip art).

It begins with a nine page section laying out the concept behind the book and explaining how each chapter will be presented. It gives a couple of examples of how a player might use these things in play. There's little in the way of mechanics here (which continues throughout the book) but some systems on how to handle Contacts and Rumors. The second chapter gives a summary overview of the city with particular attention to the personages in charge, religion and philosophies and (most importantly for this game) how the legal system works.

The nine chapters following average about seventeen pages apiece. Each chapter covers a neighborhood of the city. The material there covers: a first glance, an overview, inhabitants (both contacts and personages), places of interest (commercial and curious), rumors, taglines, and tweaks. I especially like these last three things. The rumors are written to allow the player to grab on and get dragged into the middle of them, for example:

If the PCs have fallen on hard times, Bocchimile is willing to employ them as dogsbodies, carting illicit shrimps and oysters from Canal Town to various eating establishments. The PC's predecessors in this endeavor were recently caught by a wealthy matron who blames a severe gout inflammation on contaminated shellfish. However, Bocchimile himself escaped the attention of authorities, so he is sure no untoward attention will fall on the PCs.

The taglines presented here, one of my favorite parts of The Dying Earth rpg have a nice mix of the fairly generic and those referencing this part of the city. Tweaks are special improvements players can learn in relation to ability from familiarity with a particular neighborhood. The last chapter of the volume contains a set of nice reference lists-- for example a complete list of the commercial establishments presented. It also has two-pages of randomly generated Vancian names.

Overall I really like this book, but I'll admit it fills me with jealous fury. I really love the idea of giving the players a resource that falls between the two poles of First-Person Narratives and Mechanical Sourcebooks (usually with charts, ideas for classes, stats for the various races and so on). The volume has a high utility, and it makes me want to write up the same thing for any city game I do. However emulating this would be require hours of labor-- though the payoff would be great. I did some of that for my Crux Exalted campaign, but only generated perhaps a quarter of the material Robin Laws has crafted here. If you're running a Dying Earth campaign, I'd consider this a must buy. If you run a urban games, I'd say consider picking this up as a model for how information and freedom might be given to your players.

Portability
As a sourcebook for interesting ideas, people and situations for a fantasy city, this is an invaluable resource. However using it that way ironically goes against the original intent of the book. I think it would be difficult to use as originally intended- as a purely players guide- outside the context of the Dying Earth setting. However as a book of things for GMs to steal from it is pretty fabulous. I'd love to see more of this kind of product from other game companies, for other settings and other genres.

Sidenote: There's something to be said for the brilliance of this as an rpg product. Often with city-books you have a GM's guide, which means usually one player out of a group has a need to buy it. This is a generally rules-free supplement (avoiding power escalation or added complexity) which every one in a group could have a reason to buy.

RPGs I Like: The Dying Earth rpg

RPG Items I Like: The Dying Earth rpg

The Dying Earth is my favorite rpg that my players never want to play again.

The game draws from the great work of Jack Vance and is written by Robin Laws (with assist from John Snead and Peter Freeman). Vance is an often forgotten source of some of the original D&D concepts and details. We can see where the lifts from Tolkien came from, but the Vance ideas have been less acknowledged (Ioun Stones, anyone?). Pelgrane's Press's The Dying Earth rpg helps make up for that lack of general recognition in a game that incorporates a related set of Vance's works-- four books-- The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga and Rhialto the Marvelous. I'll focus on the core book for my review here.

Producing a game based on a narrow range of Vance's fantasy work is a brave project. Vance remains one of those important authors in modern fantasy fiction who, while known, hasn't gotten enough attention or credit (like Thomas Burnett Swann). And the game really does delve into the ethos and tone of those stories- getting not only the details but the voice right. Some adaptations manage the former but only a little of the latter. It is really a pity that Pelgrane's license with the Vance estate ran out. I can't imagine any other game company doing a Vance-based game, or managing to do it as well as Pelgrane has. Beyond the core book they produced a number of supplements as well as an infrequent magazine. Compare that to the support and delivery of other licensed games (Stargate, Wheel of Time, Angel, etc).

If you know Vance then it is pretty likely you know this game. For others, this is fantasy world of lassitude, at the end of its days. The general populace accept that there's nothing new other the sun and toil in lives which oddly mix the mundane, the decadent and the apathetic. The tone is hard to convey, a mix of the rich magical wonder of something like Clark Ashton Smith with that of more exhausted version of Candide or Gulliver's Travels

Physically this is a gorgeous product. Beautifully laid out, with plenty of narrative text, quotations, examples and digressions on the nature of this system. It certainly manages to convey the feeling of the setting throughout, accompanied by excellent illustrations. If you collect rpg products, you ought to own a copy of this. I'd say the same thing if you're a student of how complicated rules can be laid out well.

Reading the book is itself a pleasure-- it maintains the wit and language of Vance's particular Dying Earth writing while at the same time no making the rules difficult to read. The language of the writing doesn't obfuscate. That's left to the oddness of the mechanics themselves-- which can throw one off depending on what you were expecting. It appears at first to be heavily mechanically oriented, and there are a number of mechanics there, with odd interactions one has to keep track of. But then you realize you're rolling just a d6 and little actually modifies that. But it certainly isn't a light rules system, and tracking some of the mechanics of its execution can become difficult. As Laws puts it, "The resolution system is designed to waft the characters on the capricious winds of fate."

Dying Earth presents four guidelines for players who have played other rpgs. They're worth paraphrasing here. One-- if you're in a fight, you've made a mistake. This game focuses on avoiding conflict through duplicity, stealth, betrayal, and fast feet. That's a pretty different approach than most games. Two-- all characters are pretty much alike. The goal of the game is about acting out, experiencing the atmosphere and engaging the story. Everyone's fairly much the same, characters of dubious morality attempting to score in the world. Three-- Killing's not a great solution. The atmosphere has casual and brutal violence, but real success comes from inflicting non-lethal humiliations on one's enemies. Four-- Your character will fail and fail often, so get used to it. The mechanics of the game itself make chance often more important than skill. Players can try to influence those results, but it merely means another risky chance rather than a building bonus. The system also includes mechanics for convincing, persuading, and resisting urges which often take control out of a player's hands. That loss of autonomy can be frustrating for some players-- whether they come from a simulationist or narrativist background.

The game understands itself-- or at least understands what a hard sell the concepts may be. At several points the author stops to gently justify those ideas. It suggests how to reassure the players and which places remain likely to throw them off. Reluctantly in parts it suggests some options for those who continue to dislike this system. Mind you it presents the "Overarching Rule of Efficacious Blandishment"- suggesting that players can do anything if they can properly convince the GM. And specifically the game provides armor from criticism with the following suggestion:

When arguing the merits of the Dying Earth roleplaying game in person or on the Internet, respond to individual who complain about certain rules with the standard reply, "Your argument is flawed. The overarching rule of efficacious blandishment lets you disregard the rule about which you complain so bitterly.

A good and funny point, but still leaving us asking exactly what we've paid for.

The system avoids stats, instead characters are built with five key abilities (Persuade, Rebuff, Attack, Defense, and Health) and then a choice of rated secondary abilities (Athletics, Gambling, Imposture, Scuttlebutt, and the like). Characters spend points based on which of the three "power levels" the game is set at. Characters may also pick up a talent in magic-- with limits imposed by the level of game one's playing in. For example, in the lowest level of game characters might have a few cantraps, a few real spells if they're a dedicated user and/or possibly an item of some magic. At the highest level all characters are expected to be arch-magi, with any non-magi being the likely butt of jokes from the other players.

The first four of the key abilities (Persuade, Rebuff, Attack, and Defense) have an interesting mechanic in that players may choose a particular style. For example, Persuasion can be Glib, Eloquent, Obfuscatory, Forthright, Charming, or Intimidating. Each of these styles trumps (and is in turn trumped by) a form of rebuff. This adds an interesting mechanic and distinction, and one which shapes the player's character style. It is a not necessarily intuitive factor, however, to track in the middle of scenes. Attack and Defense likewise have certain trumping styles, with particular weapons associated with the attack styles.

Each of these abilities has a rating which serves as a pool. Players make tests on abilities by rolling a d6. If they roll 1-3, they fail (with the number rolled marking level of failure) and if they roll 4-6 they succeed (with the number marking success level). Nothing is added to the roll.

But here's the trick. If a player is unhappy with their roll, they may spend a point from their pool to reroll the die. They can keep doing this until they succeed. If opposed by an active opponent with a likewise pool of points, that opponent can reroll against the player to best their success. This can continue on until one side or the other concedes. For non-opposed rolls, the player can keep going until the succeed or fail to their satisfaction or until their ability pool runs out.

There are no "difficulties" or modifiers to the die roll in this system. Instead in certain circumstances, for example when trying to persuade someone whose Rebuff ability trumps your own Persaude ability, the player must pay a levy. This levy depends on the circumstance but it means extra points paid from the pool to make rerolls. For example to come back from a "1" rolled on an attempt costs additional points.

Player pools run out-- rolling a 6 on an attempt can restore two points, but otherwise players must "refresh" their pools. For different abilities and styles the means for refreshment varies. For example, a Obfuscatory persuader must spend several hours devising "a theory so complex as to be incomprehensible." Some of these have have a narrative gloss, while other require active action by the character. This system, while interesting is another system which the game singles out as one which players may find difficult or objectionable. In a one-shot this might not be an issue which would come up but for regular play it would certainly happen.

The whole resolution systems intriguing-- very different and intended to capture the feel of the setting.

And my players hated it. I mean really, strenuously hated it. Mind you, the book acknowledges that some groups will find the game difficult to transition to. It breaks so many of the things that are the usual "cookies' for players: success, control, autonomy, deep characterization, and so on. Instead it focuses on a particular flavor of story- where success is fleeting and the situation is a snowball of absurdity and reverses.

Especially if you're been playing other, more conventional games-- regardless of whether they're gamist, narrativist, or simulationist-- your group's likely to suffer some cognitive dissonance. I have a board game analogy that may be a little obscure but actually happened. One New Years Eve we decided to play board games. We played Bohnanza, a game with a winner but one which in which players have to trade with one another in order to get anywhere. There's fun there in the trading and trying to make the most generous offers in order to get a little edge. It is a weirdly fun cooperative game without having a cooperative victory.

Then we played Munchkin.

We ended up with tears from three of the six players and a strong resolution never to play that again.

By this I mean in order to do Dying Earth well you'd have to have a group really ready and on board with the concept. That holds true with most games, but the nature of the game here absolutely requires it. One other criticism I heard from players was that they felt stupid in the face of the game. That they couldn't keep up with the improvisation and quick wits needed to keep up. I think that's a fair criticism and should be taken into account when selecting players.

Mind you, the game does have one mechanic to aid with this problem. I've saved mentioning it until here because it stands out for me as one of the best parts of the game and worth porting over to other games. At the beginning of a session, each player receives three tag-lines written on pieces of paper. The book provides a page of examples drawn from Vance's work and suggests how they can be constructed for particular scenarios (while remaining general enough). Tag-lines are phrases like "What causes such immediate sobriety?", "For me the causality is unconvincing," and "The question regarding hidden valuables again becomes relevant." The goal is to work your lines into your character's dialogue in the course of the session. It is a nice starter for the character to work with and does provide a sense of anticipation. The system also rewards the use of these taglines with Improvement Points. And, other than a pittance for actually showing up, that's the only way to get them.

There's a good deal to like here. The core book includes lengthy discussions for players and GMs. There's a good discussion of what makes a Dying Earth scenario, complete with a nice checklist for building those adventures. You get a lot of good material on the world and background throughout the book and then some nice sections dedicated to that. There's an adventure included as well to finish things out...and always worth mentioning, a useful two-page index.

To sum up, I want to like this game more than I actually do. If I were to run it again, it would be for a one or two shot with a select group of players. Alternately it might be good for a convention game where players might be more open to getting hit in the head with something new and radical.

Portability: I think some elements of this system could be applied elsewhere. The taglines, especially, as a concept would work well in a number of game types (courtly functions, balls, Victorian era games, Pulp Adventures-- anything with a strong sense of genre and catch-phrases). I also like the idea of having varied styles for verbal combat. That's one worth considering for use elsewhere. The Vancian setting might be hard to do as well with another system. Despite the flaws, The Dying Earth rpg simulates the ethos well which may indicate that there's a basic limitation to role-playing that-- you have to accept the vagaries of fate if you're to play there. The surface details and material could be borrowed for another game, but they might end up hollow.

RPGs I Like: Fear Itself

RPG Items I Like: Fear Itself

I already talked about the core system (Gumshoe) for Fear Itself in a previous here-- that's worth reading before hitting this which talks about a particular execution of that system. Fear Itself uses Gumshoe for the "bystanders in peril" type of horror game. Here the untrained, innocent or just plain broken end up caught up in terrifying situations. The choice to follow up The Esoterrorists with another horror focused game for the Gumshoe system is an interesting one. Here we have relatively weaker characters with no support or recourse-- a set up explicitly focused on the the game theme discussion, as opposed to the trained agents of The Esoterrorists. I found myself comparing Fear Itself a little to the previous game- which I reviewed here.

I'll focus on the core book for Fear Itself here. That clocks in at a slim 90 pages, soft bound. I have a first printing copy which has fairly stiff paper and card-stock cover. That's bent pretty quickly, with the odd warping that kind of volume can get. The lamination also peeled back quickly on my cover the back cover. I suspect that Pelgrane's likely fixed this in later printings (they certainly did so for other products). The color cover art's pretty creepy-- to the point where my wife habitually turns it over to the back when she sees it laying out. The interior has generally good black and white illustrations, fitting with the mood.

The game jumps in right away with a discussion of character types- focusing on the archetypes of characters who fit into these kinds of scenarios: the Good Girl, Jock, Brain, Burn Out etc. The system suggests that certain kinds of characters be restricted to a a single instance: the combat/investigator type and the psychic. These are more mechanical definition than the archetypes present but the game rightly points out that players tend to gravitate to these kinds of characters (or at least some players do). The other limiting factor here is that taking either of these types requires taking on a lot of extra baggage-- the combat/investigator type is cut off from any usual resources (a disgraced detective no one trusts, a bumbling novice no one listens to, a weirdo who has alienated everyone) and probably has some other problems that call his skills into question. The psychic's even more at risk, in that such powers are by their nature unreliable and may open the character up to the machinations of the supernatural.

I like this set up- we have a brief discussion of the premise and then get to the point-- that the characters will be at the center of the story and will have to be designed within the limits of the genre. It does a good job of reinforcing the atmosphere and establish how different this will be than your usual horror game.

The character creation discussion also adds a few other new elements for the Gumshoe system. Risk Factors for characters serve as the motivations that keep the characters running into danger. If the audience is screaming "Just Get Out of There!" these are why the characters don't listen. They include things like Greedy, Oblivious, Vengeful and of course the ever popular Horny. The game also asks players to define "the worst thing they ever did" for their characters-- a tool for the GM to play on themes of guilt and fear. Both of these elements provide a nice structure for reinforcing the genre with the system.

If keeping with that feeling characters end up built on a fairly small pool of points. fear Itself presents a much smaller set of Investigative Abilities than The Esoterrorists. Most of the highly specialized or academic ones get bundled together into a more general ability. The game also 'caps' some abilities. For example, the player who has taken the combat person for the game sets the bar for things like Shooting. If they have it at X, any other player can only buy it up to ½ X. The game adds about five pages of discussion for Psychic Powers (of six flavors). Some work like General Abilities which means players have a limited pool of points to spend to bump rolls. Other have their own mechanics. I'm generally in favor of having some symmetry in rules within a rules group, but given the small number of powers available this doesn't really bother me.

Fear Itself includes some further discussion of the concept of Stability, which functions as a General ability. Think of this as Sanity in Call of Cthulhu (or Humanity or the like in other systems). Characters tie their Stability into ideas or things which keep them sane. They complement this with a "personal goal". While presented in the section with the Stability rules, these goals function more as a general motivation for the character in play. Lastly, Fear Itself has some optional rules on Affinities and Enmities, where the character talks to the other players about how that character is likely to be seen by others.

Character creation and general discussion takes up about the first thirty pages of the volume. The rules, mechanics and structure of play take up the next eighteen pages. The rules remain fairly light and general. Weapons, for example, pretty much range in damage modifier from -2 to +1-- that's it. That's appropriate for the genre-- where physical confrontation and action can be risky and often ineffective. The rules present the ideas well, with plenty of examples and sidebars to help flesh things out.

The GM section which follows again focuses on what makes this game fit with this genre. It begins with a fairly lengthy sidebar comparing the horror presented here to that of the previous game, The Esoterrorists. If I keep referencing that distinction, in part that comes from the game doing that as well. You get about four pages of monsters/adversaries with less in the way of mechanics of stats. Again that's deliberate. There's a suggestion that another Pelgrane product The Book of Unremitting Horror would serve as a good companion book for the GM. About six pages of GM advice talk about how to keep the authorities away from the players, the idea of floating core clues which can be picked up in any scene and how to make the horror personal for the characters.

After an oddly placed section of tips for players (coming after the GM section), we get a pretty lengthy scenario for Fear Itself (23 pages). While this could be played in a single session, it still feels like it would more comfortably fit over two or three game nights, depending on the group. The length and detail of the scenario is pretty deliberate. Laws takes to time to provide pretty concrete answers and advice to how a GM might handle problem situations. It contains a great example of how one might structure these kinds of games.

Overall, I like Fear Itself-- but it is for a group willing to play the relatively powerless which may not fit for some players. One of the posters on rpggeek made a point to me that this game by its nature has less combat and other incidents which means that it relies on the General Ability resolution mechanic less than The Esoterrorists does. That's a point in the favor of this game, given (as I said in my Gumshoe system review) the weakness of that part of the game system.

I guess one of the important questions for gamers would be, if you want to see the Gumshoe system, which book should you pick up. If you want to run a mystery horror game-- I'd suggest Fear Itself as it does have more discussion of character-centered problems and stability. However if you're just looking to use Gumshoe to simulate general mysteries, I'd say The Esoterrorists is a cleaner presentation of the base system.

Small Sidebar Point: One of the small things that bothers me in the presentation of the material is that it does seem to focus on certain Western tropes. It states that it echoes slasher films and other straight horror where there's some mystery to be solved (for example some of the 1970's Satanic conspiracy films, The Unborn, Witchboard). However what I think this game would be great for simulatingome of the more interesting Asian horror films (Ju-On, Uzamaki, Ringu, The Eye, One Missed Call, Audition and the like). I'd have like to have seen some reference to those movies and ideas.

Portability: How portable are the ideas here for other games? The Gumshoe investigative system is probably the best and most easily ported system from this game. The other materials are interesting and might give a GM of horror some good general ideas, but less in the way of specific plot hooks or stories. In other words, it isn't a sourcebook. The adventure at the end is strong and could be adapted over to other systems.

RPGs I Like: The Esoterrorists

I talked about the Gumshoe rpg system yesterday, so I'd like to look at a couple of games that actually put that into application. I should note this is part of my look at games and supplements by one of my favorite designers, Robin Laws. I'll kind of come back to that point, and some notes about game design style at the end of the series.

RPG Items I Like: The Esoterrorists

The Gumshoe system first appeared in The Esoterorists from Pelgrane Press. This game uses that engine for campaigns revolving around an the Ordo Veritas, an organization dedicated to fighting supernatural conspiracies around the world. It echoes a darker version of the X-Files, closer to Millennium in tone. In terms of other rpgs it comes close to the material of Conspiracy X or Delta Green.

The book itself is a slim 88-page soft cover. The first printing I purchased of it had a real stiffness to the cover and paper, resulting in odd bending and inflexibility. A later version (Edition 1.3) took care of that problem with a more flexible card stock for the cover and less stiff pages. It has a nice full color cover, decent black and white illustrations, and (huzzah!) a proper index. The only defect presentation-wise lies in the glossy cover which uses a laminate. That has a tendency to bend and bubble, especially along the spine and it can peel away at the edges. That's a minor problem, but if your copy gets regular use expect it to happen.

While the premise has been done by other games, The Esoterrorists has some nice twists on that formula. There's the namesake organization itself-- a loose cabal of occultists and lunatics who have banded together to share power and create chaos. There's something refreshing about your adversaries being not a monolithic and powerful organization, but a scattered group trying to push an agenda. The game uses of the word “terrorist” literally-- in that the organization wants to spread fear, terror and uncertainty to power their occult plans. Panic, rumor and hysteria feed these powers and also create new monsters and fiends. The game draws from another Pelgrane volume, The Book of Unremitting Horror, for these concepts. Originally developed for d20 they have since published a version for the Gumshoe system to tie into the links they made here.

As befits a modern game, you have a pretty extensive list of Investigative Abilities (Art History and Astronomy for more obscure examples). You have thirteen General Abilities, including two that represent your current status: Health and Stability. The game assumes competency on the part of the investigators-- they're trained, aware of the situation and (hopefully) prepared to face the opposition. Ordo Veritas provides logistical support, money and so on, but in the field you're often on your own. They can help get characters out of some jams, but severe problems (like a witnessed murder) can't be brushed under the carpet. Unlike other games of the genre, there's little to suggest an alternate agenda for the organization here- they're pretty clearly the good guys.

The mechanics for the system take up about half of the book-- interspersed with some discussion of the Ordo Veritas and other campaign details. As with most horror games it includes a mechanic for tracking fear and mental breakdown, here represented through the Stability ability. The rules spend about three pages on this and handle it well without getting too bogged down. Players can pick up a kind of PTSD from the beings and events they witness. Laws' provides a disclaimer to clarify that this version of mental illness draws from 'pop culture' rather than reality.

The game provides a couple of nice sections talking about what makes Gumshoe different and what makes an investigative scenario run-- it provides good examples to illustrate this. That comes to twelves pages between the player and GM portions. The book only devotes about six pages+ to establishing the background of the setting. However the material paints the broad strokes and GMs familiar with the genre conventions can easily paint those in. It only presents the mechanics for a couple of supernatural foes, but directs the reader to the Book of Unremitting Horror if they need more ideas (or really have to have established stat blocks).

Finally, the length and depth of the scenario presented threw me at first. I'm used to game books with a few pages of plot hooks and then an easy one-shot to get people playing. Instead you get a deeply developed investigation which will probably take a couple of sessions to resolve. Laws' uses this adventure to illustrate how an investigation is created. Each scene has significant detail on the clues available and how those connect with the whole of the mystery. That's a great device, but can be overwhelming at first.

I like the Gumshoe system and I think that The Esoterrorists presents it well. I've run modern occult games and I suspect if I do so again, I'll use this for the system. I'm also curious about how something like InSpectres would fit with this. That's a modern game with a focus on the idea of corporate supernatural hunters. If you're interested in the genre or curious about the Gumshoe system, I'd recommend picking up this game. If it has a flaw (beyond my dislike of the Action resolution system which I mentioned in my Gumshoe system review) it is that I'd like to see more examples and discussion of how to craft these scenarios. Pelgrane does have available a series of columns by Laws talking about that process...which can be purchased as a pdf.