Music Journal

Can You Dig It?

I really love music- love listening to new music. A while back, I finally signed up for a trial offer of a service called Qriocity available on the PS3. I’d assumed it was just like Pandora. However, it turned out to be more than that. It is a streaming music service where you can build a library and playlists (on a PC for the latter). But importantly you can save and listen to whole albums. Since I like classical, I really want to be able to hear all of a piece rather than a section or a movement. Qriocity doesn’t have everything- there are some pretty big gaps among pop and rock musicians. Some artists are absent, while others have significant gaps (for example Kansas doesn’t have Leftoverture, Joe Jackson doesn’t have Big World, there’s only a single Neko Case album). But if you’re exploring different kinds of music, it is an amazing service. Right away I was listening to new things and albums I hadn’t heard in years- stuff I used to have on cassette.

Then of course the Playstation network got hacked and went down for four weeks. Then back up and then down again.

It has finally been up for about a solid week now. I’m a little irritated that since I’d only signed up for the trial I won’t be getting extended days back on Qriocity. Still I suspect I will keep up with the service. I’ve started keeping a music journal so I can note what I’ve listened to and what I thought of it. I've been partly inspired by Scott's posts on jazz over at Huge Ruined Pile. I’ve left some things out, but here’s what I’ve listened to recently:

Albums I Used to Have

Midnight Oil Blue Sky Burning and 10, 9, 8, 7…: Both of these hold up for me. I have Red Sails in the Sunset and that’s the album I listened to the most before, I’d forgotten how good these were.

REM Life’s Rich Pageant, Document, Automatic for the People, Orange: I put those in order of enjoyment. I think Life’s Rich Pageant’s a great, greta album but it has a couple of songs that wear on me in relistening.

Sinead O’Connor I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got: Wow. That did not hold up. That was painful to listen to.

New Pop/Rock

Aimee Mann I’m With Stupid, @#%&*! Smilers, Bachelor No. 2, Lost in Space: All great, and I’m going to have to buy those eventually.

Envelopes Demon: Starts out weirdly mixed and compelling. However, the more I listen the less I like. Gets more and more twangy as it goes along. Might have to check other stuff.

Kinky Kinky: Fun and crazy. Not sure how much more I’d want to listen to.

Kathryn Calder Are You My Mother?: Somewhere between Aimee Mann and Neko Case lies this album. Good stuff.

New Crazy Stuff

Makrosoft Stereo Also Playable Mono: 1950’s/60’s lounge remixes of modern songs like “Enter the Sandman” and “Blac Hole Sun”- great fun. I bought the mp3 after listening to it to throw into the Changeling soundtrack.

Various Artists Whipped Cream & Other Delights Re-Whipped: A remix album of the classic Herb Alpert record. Fun, goofy, but fun.

Classical

John Adams Portrait: Chamber music performed by Angele Dubeau and La Pieta…which I assume is her violin’s name. Very chamber-y, but listenable. Seems like later period Adams and I kept thinking of Ravel.

Britten War Requiem: Hadn’t listened to this before. I really like Britten’s orchestral stuff, but his other stuff- voice and chamber leave me cold. I’m not sure why.

John Adams Century Rolls: His Piano concerto, plus a few other really fun pieces. Enjoyed very much- listened to a couple of times.

Ades Violin Concerto: Good, but I’m going to have to hear that a few more times for it to resolve.

Bernstein Candide Overture and others: Who has two thumbs and likes Bernstein’s compositions. Not this guy.

Foerster Violin Concertos: Eminently forgettable. I have no notes by them. I remember having them on and thinking, “You know, I should put on some music…”

Jazz

Medeski, Scofield, Martin and Wood Out Louder: Fun- the extra member kicks things up.

Medeski, Martin and Wood 20 (Part 1), 20 (Part 2): The first good and the second, meh.

Jackie McLean Bluesnik: Classic, solid jazz. Nothing that absolutely grabbed me, though.

Art Blakey A Night in Tunisia: Another nice, but basic album.

John Coltrane Giant Steps: I wish I had a better vocabulary to describe jazz. I’m just starting to listen to it so I feel like I’m reaching for the words. I found this album lovely and evocative, but not one that hooked me. I think I want more energy from my jazz.

Sonny Rollins: Listened to a bunch of his stuff. One of the “Best Of…” albums I found was really, really good. That led me to What’s New? Which I loved- a mix of classic songs and avant garde performance. There’s on annoying song on it- I don’t like voice with my jazz. Saxophone Colossus and Our Man in Jazz also excellent.

Jimmy Smith: Another one that hooked me right away and I listened to several albums by. The Sermon! is great, as is Hobo Flats. Angel Eyes is later period and is just OK. Off the Top feels really 1970’s and kind of lame to me. But the album Damn! is unbelievably great.

Buddy Rich: Blues Caravan and Buddy’s Rock were both good. I have to listen to some more. I like solid jazz percussion and he’s listed several places as one of the best jazz drummers.

Changeling the Lost as a Lens of Horror

I read a blog post a while ago that suggested modern horror, in movies and in games, had rendered some of the classic movie monsters and images less scary. Vampires and werewolves had been made less scary by their co-optation into things like Twilight, various animes and such. This came out of an interview with Alan Moore which talked about the reuse and decline of those images. Essentially horrors had been made more comfortable and palatable, which also hid some of the really rough edges and implications. You can read the essay here. I think a case could certainly be made, in the form of some identification, that some tabletop horror games in which you play the monsters might also create that effect.

On the other hand, things actually become more awful seen through the lens of Changeling the Lost. In Changeling, people are stolen or tricked from the real world into the realm of the Keepers. In these private worlds, the Keepers enact stories involving their new pets- some of these may simply be realms for the adulation and entertainment of the Keeper, but others may have more sinister approaches- subtle, twisted and awful. Think the brutal awfulness on both side in Pan’s Labyrinth. Time under a Keeper in the Hedge is called a durance, and it is that experience which changes and reshapes the changeling. We were watching Coraline the other day, a scary kids film. Watched from the perspective of a changeling, it becomes an even more terrifying film. In some ways it would be the ultimate horror movie as they see the main character break rules and get seduced over. What was just slightly creepy would probably make a changeling catatonic.

With that in mind, I watch some other things that- if imagined to actually be Changeling elements- would be even more awful. On Netflix they had the film Pufnstuf based on the Saturday morning cartoon H.R. Pufnstuf. I watched the first little bit of that film. Basically a young boy whose family has moved him to a new town finds himself isolated and ostracized. He wanders off into the woods. When he throws down his flute because he’s been kicked out of the band, it comes to life and begins talking to him. It promises to be his friend, says that it will show him new places and new adventures. Then it leads him to a lake, where it encourages the boy to board a talking boat which will sail him to a new place where he can have great adventures…

…at that point I stopped watching. I didn’t want to see him sail off into the Hedge, to be chained up and made into some kind of Wizened Musician.

Seemingly innocent video games can also be read as Changeling durances. In Nintendo's Animal Crossing, you find yourself aboard a train with no real memory of the past. You appear to be the only “human” in a land of animals. You arrive in a new town and find yourself immediately put to work by the Overseer Tom Nook. You whole existence then becomes serving Nook, trying to pay off your debt. You have friends in the town, but from time to time, they mysteriously “move away” new to be seen again. New ones arrive and simply move into their houses. Or consider the Harvest Moon video game series, which begins with an amnesiac protagonist arriving at or washing up on the shore of a village. The heroes taken in and put to work- now they must serve at the behest of the Harvest Goddess. In the case of the most recent harvest Moon, the character put find a way to break the seals on five magic bells…for the harvest Goddess cannot truly come into her power until you have done so. She needs you to release her…nothing to worry about, it is just farming, there’s nothing sinister there. Why was she sealed away? Shhhhh…just water your crops and pray for the silence of the night…

Take a moment to think about other stories which could easily actually be Changeling durances with just a little twist...where some arrives without memory or gets told they're special and have to come away or manages to escape from the real world...

Another new contract set:

Contracts of the Urn

Smarts; Affinity--Elementals

The Contracts of the Urn deal primarily with containment for preservation or transformation. Elementals have a strong affinity to these contracts due to their unique understanding of the “stuff” of the world and its boundaries—but the ideals of the Urn hark back to the beginning of agriculture among humankind. The highest level of these contracts are most often used for Hedgespun creations, especially when it is something of the mundane world that needs to be carried into the Hedge intact. Note that the terms substance and contents are used very carefully—substances are single identity homogeneous things like acid, water, or wine (and maybe soup); contents can be anything—a birthday cake complete with candles, a collection of random nuts and bolts, or the components for a slow-acting or triggered chemical reaction.

What Lies Within (•)

Changeling may scribe a universal rune for urn on any container and gain some knowledge of it's contents. The extent of the knowledge gained depends on the Changeling's familiarity with said contents—but the least knowledge gained will be some sensory impression of the contents if used or ingested as intended. All other Changelings who see the rune later will gain similar impressions (appropriate to their own level of familiarity) unless the rune is destroyed. A Changeling inscribing this rune on a container that they themselves have filled has complete recall of the contents and the date and circumstances of it's storing.

Cost: 1 Glamour

Catch: Changeling scribes rune in some permanent manner on a container they themselves are sealing.

The Bounds of Containment (••)

Changeling gains deep insight into the ideal container for the given set of contents, having a near perfect intuition for the materials that are best used, the most effective methods of sealing and the ramifications of any compromises they use. Range of options presented is deeply related to experience, Seeming, talents, skills and available resources—hence over time this contract becomes more effective and more rarefied for any given Changeling.

Cost: 1 Glamour

Catch: Changeling uses the Contract for a substance he/she had previously used it on, but with the intent of reconsidering in light of new resources, experiences or skills.

In Clay and Wax Sealed (•••)

Changeling may alter any vessel to become an airtight, leak-proof container of any mundane substance. This contract may also be used to improve the performance of a container, so that a thermos or cooler, for instance, keep the contents hot or cold indefinitely. So long as the chosen vessel is not purposely opened, it will continue to function in this way. Hence, a Changeling can store a gallon of acid in a folded newspaper, if he cares to. However, substance stored is not protected from effects of temperature or it's own instability unless vessel is inherently capable of this in some manner. Volume of substance stored can be no greater than what the Changeling could carry unassisted.

Cost: 2 Glamour

Catch: Changeling dribbles liquid wax and dust or dirt over vessel.

Hidden Mysteries (••••)

Changeling may speed, slow or halt a natural transformation taking place on the contents of a given container. Perfect preservation, controlled fermentation or even sped up distillation or dessication lie within the demesne of this Contract. The effect may last for up to one cycle of the moon (hence, perfect preservation beyond the first month must be maintained) but will only affect one batch of contents. Container need not be sealed (many transformations require air or other situations that are not amenable to sealing.) Natural transformations are those that would occur over time albeit much more slowly or swiftly or inefficiently if the contents were left in said container in the conditions under which the Contract is invoked.

Cost: 2 Glamour

Catch: Changeling is using an opaque container (one in which he/she cannot see into) that has been used naturally (without this Contract) for this process previously.

The Riddle of the Urn (•••••)

With proper attention to the sympathies and the symbolism of the act, a Changeling may capture and store anything within the appropriate container—even abstract ideas, mystical energies or dream imagery. The logistics of collecting the contents are outside the scope of this Contract, but the ability to contain them, at least for a time, are assured. Thoughtful and extensive use of The Bounds of Containment is highly recommended.

Cost: 3 Glamour

Catch: Changeling is capturing some essence of his own self

Image from the deviantart gallery of James Wolf and can be found here.

James Bond 007: RPGs I Like

Obtain the Coveted "00" Rank:
Your License to Kill
-back cover blurb

Mission Background
Bear with me- I have to do a little mental archaeology. I started with D&D in the brown box, then the blue box, then the other various TSR RPGs (Boot Hill, Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World, Top Secret), then Superhero 2044 followed by V&V and Champions, Tunnels & Trolls, Monsters! Monsters!, Empire of the Petal Throne...so early on I bought a lot of games. But what did I run? D&D, V&V and Top Secret mostly. Let me zoom in on one for a moment- Top Secret was, in its first edition was both cool and a mess. I tried to run it for our grade school group several times, but invariably it ended up like your standard dungeon crawl. Invade the base, kill the guards, look for loot. Investigation was completely out of the question. So I ended up coming up with various agencies and ideas in my head notes which never got played out.

Then James Bond came out in 1983 when I was fourteen. It was a boxed set, including an solo adventure in the book, Dr. No, of course- dice and some character sheets. Later came the GM screen which I loved and used for everything for years until I found a landscapes CoC one. I ran a lot of James Bond- a good deal from the modules, some adapted from other materials (my favorite being TS 005: Operation: Orient Express), and a lot from out of my head. I cringe more than a little when I think back about those games- but they were among the first I ran which were fully investigation and character based. My screw ups and mistakes gave me a foothold to later pull myself up. I enjoyed the game, but I won’t say that I adhered to the rules strictly- even then we ran things pretty loosely. The wound system seemed too deadly, though now it feels tame. The social interaction rules...well, I’m getting ahead of myself James Bond 007 is a game both ahead of its time and amazingly retro. So let’s look at what it offers.

Opening the Briefcase
I’m just reviewing the base book- which is probably the version you’d most likely find these days. A later version of the boxed set came with the Thrilling Locations. 007 came from Victory Games which had been a wargame company, affiliated with Avalon Hill. This was their first foray, and at first I worried that it would be like Powers & Perils released around the same time. The game makes a few interesting choices for its time. It is slightly smaller than the usual books, 8 x 10 ½. Second, it begins by emphasizing the power and skill of the PCs- that they are experts and professionals. While it doesn’t go all the way to a collaborative approach, it does suggest the relation should be one of storytelling rather than competition. Third, it has females in an apparently equal role on the front and back cover- well, close to equal and certainly better than most games of the time. The example of play in the beginning has a female GM and a male player. It does make me curious to check other books from that era to see if they were equally trying to be inclusive of female gamers.
That example of play is an interesting read- as it presents a somewhat clueless player getting irritated with the GM. The GM then has to explain why x and y happened. It may be illustrative of the rules, but it doesn’t make the game sound like a lot of fun. There’s a nice bit in the introduction which does suggest that players should expect that whatever the mission briefing, things will not fall out that way. And they shouldn’t go running back to M whenever any challenge occurs.

Recruiting Your Agent
James Bond has no classes, instead each player build their characters with points. With those points, characters buy the five basic characteristics, skills & skill levels, appearance, height and weight. Various choices affect a character’s Fame which can lead to being spotted- oddly female agents end up with a lower starting fame. The game has a handful of calculated characteristics and some other oddities.

The basic mechanics show their age a little. Basically any Skill has a Primary Chance (PC). That’s equal to the rating to the skill plus a characteristic (or two characteristics/2). The appropriate characteristic varies widely. Any action begins with an Ease Factor of 5. Ease Factor*Primary Chance equals the Success Chance. So a character has a Fire Combat rating of 5, which is based on PERCEPTION+DEXTERITY/2. Let’s say that’s a 5 as well. This gives the character a PC of 10 and with the Ease Factor of 5, a 50% Success Chance. Modifiers affect the Ease Factor, raising or lowering it to a max of 10 and a minimum of ½. Now just rolling under that Success Value isn’t enough. A successful roll is checked on the Quality Results Table. For a 50% Success Chance, the dice results offer: 01-05 Excellent (Quality 1); 06-10 Very Good (2); 11-25 Good (3); and 26+ Acceptable (4). That makes a difference in terms of resistance, time, effect, damage and so on. It takes some calculation and does require the GM to adjudicate each roll in two stages. In practice it actually rolls pretty smoothly.

The Mechanic
The whole game takes a streamlined approach. The emphasis falls on interaction and quick resolution. You have only twenty-four possible skills. Everything else falls under Fields of Experience which aren’t rolled, but just represent the obscure knowledges the agent has picked up. The combat system works pretty simply, with players declaring actions from slowest to fastest and then resolving in reverse order. The only roll for combat is the attack roll, though the defender can affect the ease through movement and circumstance. The Quality of Success for the Attack determines the Wound level done- and there are effectively only a few wound levels: Stunned, Light Wound, Medium Wound, Heavy Wound, Incapacitated, Killed. If a character already has a Wound then the effect will likely increase (based on a chart look up of course). The effects of wounds are pretty deadly- requiring players to make pain resistance checks, getting stunned for multiple rounds and so on.

Other Systems
However PCs do have access to Hero Points- one of the first times I recall that mechanic being in a game as written (rather than being a house rule). Hero Points can be used to modify one’s own Quality Result levels or those of NPCs. Mind you, players have a fairly small pool- given out at the start of a mission. There’s no mechanic for recovering those during a session or gaining them for dramatic action, which feels like a missed opportunity.

The game offers chapters dedicated to some of the other classic aspects of the spy genre. Chases get their own sub-system, with some simple maneuvers and choices. I like chase systems and this one still seems more workable than most (especially compared to the craziness and minutiae of something like Spycraft 2.0). There’s the obligatory weapons and equipment chapter (later expanded with the indispensable Q Manual). There’s a chapter on Gambling, a common element in the Bond stories. Then there’s a chapter just on systems for interacting with NPCs. The game has a little split personality here- on the one hand it wants to be narrative driven, and on the other it wants to have some fall-back crunch. So you get a Seduction system with its own table and five stages of increasing difficulty (ending in the "When and Where?" Stage...Ease Factor 3).

Behind the Scenes
All of the player material takes up the first 90 pages of the 160 of the book.
The next thirty provide some detailed discussion on how to run a game- and in particular how to run a James Bond spy game. That’s a different beast from a Mission Impossible, Bourne, Avengers or the like game. The advice is interesting and useful. It stresses the player involvement. The book them moves to the classic 'bestiary' providing an enemy agency in the form of TAROT- because (as the book mentions) a certain Bond organization was tied up in contractual matters...which seems weird. There’s presentation of the other, classic non SPECTRE characters, and a nice cross section of cities to set adventures in. Finally, you have a solitaire adventure based on the Island of Dr. No.

So What Do I Think?
I have a great fondness for this game. I got many hours of fun out of running and planning for it. No one else in the group ran spy games, that was always in my court. I’ve gone back to look at some other games I liked from this era and they haven’t held up as well. This one has- it presents innovative mechanics tied to the genre it wants to present. There were other spy games around during that time: Espionage! (which became Danger International); Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes; and Top Secret. But all of those had a kind of gun-bunny approach to them- more focusing on Special Ops and the like. At least that was the vibe I got off of them. Bond does what it sets out to do- perhaps a little literally at times. Amusingly, every module (with one exception) was based on a film or book. They all warned that the situations would be changed up so that players would not be able to walk through it- which was pretty much a lie. Live and Let Die, for example, stuck right to the script, right down to the "secret" traitor. Goofy.

On the other hand, the game's more than a little dated. Other systems have come along to handle streamlined mechanics without having to resort to several math stages. The game’s also from the era of no cell phones, bulky computers and the like. In the same way that Casino Royale rebooted the movie franchise, this game would need a serious reboot in equipment and skills.

I should also mention that the game looks great- the graphic design, layout and colors all work really well. It is one of the most accessible and professional looking games from that era. It helps that they chose a single artist, James Talbot, to illustrate everything. That consistency raises the game up a notch.

Overall
Worth buying to play? Perhaps as a resource to do some nostalgia gaming. Worth buying to read or to use as a resource? More likely. I think it is a great game to collect and give at least one read through.

Portability
The James Bond mythos could be ported over to another system pretty easily- and the book does provide some background. However that’s pretty out of date and doesn’t sell itself just for that. You can find other, more recent Bond books to give you the background you might get from this. Could you use this system for other games- probably, but I think there’s a lot of other good stuff out there. For example, I’m looking forward to Ken Hite’s forthcoming application of Gumshoe to the spy genre.

I do love this game- and perhaps this year I’ll track down a module and give it a whirl with a small group.

Mono no aware and the role-player

Any game only lives in our memory.

This last week I watched Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, a documentary on the role of insects in the Japanese cultural landscape. Primarily it focused on collections and the keeping of bugs as pets. I wasn’t aware of the extent of that practice. It also looked at how they figured in culture, in poetry, in art and in Japanese memory in general. It has some really lovely bits following the people who actually go out and find them for the pet industry (including a shot of a Japanese hornet which will lodge firmly in my nightmares for years).

My first reaction was- well that makes sense, they have smaller living spaces- I’m not sure how accurate that is. But then I thought about the fragility of these things- how long would these kinds of pets live? There was a sequence with a collector who had accumulated many varieties of crickets. His house was filled with the sound of them, many different sound patterns interlacing and making a whole new experience. I thought about my own irritation when I had to hunt down a single chirping cricket in the basement.

Then they interview a cultural/art historian who talked about the idea of mono no aware, which Wikipedia describes as:

Mono no aware (物の哀れ mono no aware^?, literally "the pathos of things"), also translated as "an empathy toward things", or "a sensitivity to ephemera", is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of impermanence (Jap. 無常 mujō), or the transience of things, and a gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing.

We had thunderstorms this weekend. Bad ones that nearly rained out our yearly gathering at Kenny’s house. Today we have a wash of humidity. I remember nights back in the late 80’s in high school when we would play out in my garage. After the divorce my mom offered that space to me if I cleaned it up. Garbage had piled up and festered out there for at least a year. It took several days to clean it out, to purge the muck, to remove the bale of hay which had been there since my parents had moved in. We cleared slugs, mice, centipedes, wasps…it was awful. But when it was done, we had a still filthy garage we could set up a ping pong table in and play.

The earwigs writhed out in a horror for that first summer. Finally we managed to supersaturate the wood with enough bug bombs to drive them out- provided you left nothing for them to hide in. It would get insanely humid out there in the summer. We had a fan in the window, but we’d be dripping sweat, playing with the garage door open and watching the moisture condense on the tall, sixteen ounce bottles of pop we’d bought out of the cooler at 7-11. We played AD&D, Rolemaster, DC Heroes and some homebrews out there. Scott Hamlin brought a buddy over one day and rebuilt the tables to make them solid and not the teetering and swaying deck they began as. I remember talking about Crisis on Infinite Earths with the group, I remember giant free-for-fall superhero battles using the room “as is” for the figures with characters lifting and hurling giant dice cups and the like, I remember Art Lyon raiding my fridge without asking and boiling up all the hot dogs I had, I remember coming out after a rainstorm and feeling just absolutely damp out there.

I remember some of the stories from those games. Some we still tell. A couple of people in the group remain from those days. Some remain from the later days when we played in the basement- we’d done that in the winters for a time, but eventually we migrated down there full time.

I’ve played a lot of games- some pretty bad, some only worth it for the people, but some that were great, some that changed my life, some sublime in their execution. They won’t happen again, but when I think on them I can take a bit of that joy and happiness and bring it forward into my memory. I’ve been depressed and in bad places in the past- and often I’ve rewritten those memories to be worse than they were. That’s what depressives do, that’s what I’ve done. I’d forgotten how much I’ve enjoyed those things- until later when I actually remember the little things, the tiny and transient details that made those experiences great. The mist from the river when Gene and I played Bushido down by Century Center, the blessed heat from the furnace every time it kicked in the basement, walking through downtown Cairo at 6 am after an all-night amazing campaign wrapping session.

Embrace the mono no aware of rpg play.

Trader to the Crown: Merchants in RPGs

I like the idea of the "merchant" as a class in an rpg campaign. I think they often get thrown in as lip service when people are putting together collections of classes and the like. But the merchant embodies a kind of goal-oriented character that I can really get behind. And of course, there are many flavors of that at the table. What I’m talking about isn’t the merchant as the con-artist, face-man or used-car salesman. I’m talking about the merchant who actually deals in goods, makes arrangements, and searches for profit.

To that end I’ve put together a Geeklist which assembled some of those games which have that as a key premise. I love the abilitiy to draw together different games across obscure criteria. Anyway, the link for the Geeklist.

Merchants and Manifests: Trade in RPGs

1. MORGAN INDUSTRIES SUCKS
So I love the idea of a trading game more than I probably love the actuality of a trading game. I love trade as a factor in Civilization and Europa Universalis, for example, but I can automate all of those details. I’ve skipped quite few exploration, economics and trade games because the review suggested that things were a little too hands on for my taste (the Annoseries for example). In the same way, I’m attracted to trade and economy as an issue in tabletop games. I’ve read some on that (A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World; The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World; and some economics texts) in the hopes of being able to bring that into the game. But when it comes to the crunch of things- well, I kind of fall down. I mean, I don’t think we’ve tracked money as a factor in campaigns for at least a decade now. We make assumptions about wealth, we deal with the idea as an abstraction. We don’t have price lists which used to be a cool thing we’d pore over at the table.
So the key question: how do I marry those abstract systems to satisfying options for someone who wants to play a merchant.

One thing to figure out is how that ‘trade’ functions in the game. One the one hand, it could be crunchy- with players tracking goods, hunting down items, fulfilling contracts, rising to challenges, and making choices which shape the direction on the business. The other approach takes the mercantile enterprise as a means to an end. They provide a gateway to abstract wealth, contacts, allies, or most often new plots. Legend of the Five Rings, at least in the early editions has to contend with this problem. The Yasuki are among my favorite families in the setting. They’re merchants in a culture which looks down on samurai class involvement in that kind of trade. Other clans (notably the Unicorn and Crane) have families that deal with that but in a less direct way. The Yasuki- in my mind- serve as martyrs to the necessities of trade. But their abilities in the game essentially revolve around the ability to get things and not much beyond that.

2. SETTING UP YOUR STALL
I think one of the most useful and fruitful approaches for these kinds of games is to make the company a shared resource. This is how Bookhounds, InSpectres and even Reign handle things IIRC. Question of businesses as a resource of the players- as a kind of patron of some kinds, but not just as a monolith, but one in which the players have to make an investment. InSpectres and Bookhounds both take this approach- so the group functions as a merchant, rather than a single character having to take that role. I ran into Ken Hite at a con and how much I liked the structure he’d built into Bookhounds. He said that its yet another thing Ars Magica created and that other games have lifted and used. (That would be an interesting Geeklist to see- one looking at the influence of Ars on later games)

This kind of approach can be used in other campaigns as well- building up a set of details and ratings which the players can raise collectively provides a nice bond. In HeroQuest, this is represented by the community rules. In Changeling the Lost, if the players share a single Hollow, they can all pitch in on it. That makes it a more useful refuge for the group. A fantasy campaign might see the players managing a town or a keep. Ars Magica has this in the form of covenants. If you have a science fiction campaign, then the shared resource can be the ship and upgrades to it. That does mean the GM has to have lots of elements ready for the ship- ideally ones which matter to the roles of the party members.

3. HOW MUCH DOES A MAGNETIC MONOPOLE WEIGH?
So one of the obvious things to notice is how much the idea of playing a 'Trader" is a sci-fi rpg trope more than any other. I wonder if that has something to do with the contrast between the civilization and wilderness kinds of adventures. Certainly early D&D and other games focused on heading out into the wilds- whether those be literal wilderness or lost ruins. Urban focused adventures came a little later. There’s a degree of crunch to those representations of trade as well- at least in early Traveller materials. We have detailed and significant systems for the kinds of goods, for space requirements, for the interaction of local laws and bureaucracies, for transport costs, and so on. It’s a spreadsheet game. Later games would tone those aspects done more- hand-wave them or focus on general aspects.

To consider a more recent, sci-fi example, Firefly. Money and trade serve as the backbone and motivation for events, but they’re not the key element. There have to do nearly literal horse-trading, but money’s always in short supply. The nature of the setting means that they can’t get ahead. And that’s worth thinking about- how you keep the players striving for a goal (like material wealth) that they can’t really obtain as that would undercut the premise.

4. BRING DOWN THE MAN!
Of course in Cyberpunk universes (let’s take Cyberpunk and Shadowrun as examples) corporations are essentially large-scale horror factories of crime and villainy. There’s a strange contradiction which comes out as those gamelines roll along. At the beginning, most of the player material seems aimed at making them anti-authority anarchists and punks. But then eventually we get more and more supplements about how to buy in- showing the sexy corporate stuff. Not that they’ve any less evil, but they get sexed up for the setting. Of course Werewolf has Penetex, which I think of as the classic evil corporation. Then there’s stuff like SLA Industries and Corporation which take a more or less dystopian approach to those ideas. There’s a message about capitalism, coming from a game company, which always seems more than a little ill-informed and high-school in its mentality. Mind you most of these presentations don’t really deal with the idea of trade and commerce but of business and control. I can’t imagine anyone deciding to play a Ventrue or a Giovanni in Vampire the Masquerade because they really want to explore the world of business.

5. SELLING A BILL OF GOODS
Of course all of this talk about merchants means that there has to be a couple of agreements at the table. The GM has to be comfortable and ready with the idea of the player actually building something- like a trade network, a series of contacts or a business. If the game’s not going to allow for that, then the GM needs to make that clear to the player. When my wife first got into role-playing, she played in a fantasy campaign which seemed urban focused. The group played around in the city for a long time, with the characters doing things and carrying out operations. She’d made up a merchant character and spent her time building up a business, establishing contacts and essentially developing resources for the group to use. The GM acknowledged that and let her build stuff up and then as she was getting things in place, shifted the group to an entirely different country- essentially jump cut and they’re in a new place. If the GM had made it clear that was going to the shape of the campaign, she would have built differently. And a GM who sees a player investing heavily in something they know is going to come to nothing really owes the player at least some kind of discussion and redirection. Or provide some means where that can explicitly pay off later.

The other agreement is about the level and scope of social interaction at the table. Is trading a series of rolls? Is it actual haggling? How much details will there be and how much room at the table will be allowed for those kinds of social interactions? We play pretty social interaction heavy games generally. So there’s some room. Others don’t. Peter Amthor has some posts on bad play which address the question of how much social interaction/play at the table is enough. My experience is a little different, as I’ve more often seen GMs and some players shut down any attempt at interaction at the table. I’m not talking about the excessive stuff, the narrating everything, the talking to everyone, the wheedling with the store owner stuff- that seems a little like a straw man. Part of the problem comes when very different people come to the table for very different purposes. If the group’s doing that kind of heavy NPC interaction and enjoying themselves, then the player not into that needs to figure out if that’s where they want to be- rather than getting irritated. And the reverse holds true- I just wonder how GMs can communicate and hold to a particular level of social interactions and focus at the game table.

RPG Game Auction

Chad Bowser, author of Cthulhu Invictus, is running a little auction over on RPG Geek to help fund some house repairs. If you have an RPG Geek, Board Game Geek, or Video Game Geek account, you should go over and take a look. He has a lot of amazing stuff up, in most cases without reserve. The auction ends on Friday. The link to the list is below:

cjbowser's House Repair Auction

He has almost too much cool stuff to go through, from Eclipse Phase, to classic D&D, to OpenQuest, Conan, Star Wars, Hackmaster, Marvel and beyond.

Probably the most amazing thing he has is a massive Trail of Cthulhu lot- with just about everything which has been published so far at an amazing price right now.

Go take a look.