Robot Zero Tuesday: Game Night

Previous Entry.

“So...” he says as he clears some kind of lingering mucus from his throat I don't even want to think about- and I know he's about to try to get under my casing because I'm up pretty well in this hand and the doubler's been rolling hot this evening. Which is to say I might actually come out ahead from one of these card game nights. But he's been saving up this comment all night- his one stupid little dragonfly wing buzzing and twitching from excitement. It creates an ultra-high frequency than somehow the dog across from me doesn't ever hear, but manages to interfere with my pre-set emotional channels. I keep getting hungry which isn't something I can actually deal with.

“So...” The Assemblymantis repeats to make sure he has the attention of the whole table. Which he does, since it is his play and we can't do anything until he actually lays some freaking cards down. “I'm surprised you're here tonight, Robot ZZZZZZZero...I saw your team on the news just before I left to come over.”

And here it comes.

“I'd already penciled in my time off...”

“Really?” breaks in Pull-Yourself-Together Man. “Jeez...if I could get on a team, I'd be out there fighting the good fight, I mean they're doing something important...something real...” And he looks of wistfully in the distance even as I hear one of his legs drop off and bang against the floor. He's earnest, which might be more irritating that Assemblymantis' wing drone. It helps that I call him Putem for short.

“Tell them what your team's doing, ZZZZZZZero.” I look bug boy in what passes for a face. He's a composite alien, built from several different alien species, but not necessarily the useful parts. Some kind of cosmic intelligence cut and pasted an experiment together. Multron's the better known result, with the spectacular natural talents of each of the seven races, including humanity's cunning. I won't tell you what human part Assemblymantis got, but using it to fight crime might generate a whole level of Rule 34 I don't want to think about.

And Putem's looking to me for an answer, so I tell him.“They're busting up Occupy Peoria. Yes Man hopes Oakland will give us a call after that. It's an audition...”

Assemblymantis lunges at the chance. “Not sure that's going to happen. Chrysalis Archer got in the middle and someone grabbed the quiver off his back. Then all hell broke loose. Someone hit Cyber-tron with a water balloon and Kim Reaper went nuts...”

“So all hell, literally...” This is going to be a mess.

“Ya'll know what I think...” comes the deep southern drawl across from me and all of us groan.

Wrathwolf, the talking dog, who's just to the right of Super-Patriot on the political spectrum. He's got an American flag bandana for a costume and a jaw full of razor sharp teeth and jingoism. Sometimes we actually manage to stay away from politics on these nights...not often, in fact, once...and that was because of an accident with some aerogel. Of course when I say accident, I'm distorting things slightly.

“Hippie-Kibble. Round 'em up and throw up in the ocean and let them swim back to Uzbekasocialistan or wherever they want to feed off other people's labor and effort. Get a job and shut up you ungrateful whiners. You should thank god you live in a country that's going to be back in the right hands in 2012 and ready to fight once more against the Islamo-Marxist menace sneaking across our borders. Damn right they should clear them out- I just wish they'dve used right two-fisted justice instead of godless magic...bust them back to their stupid sand...”

The mummy coming back in from the kitchen brings Wrathwolf's foaming diatribe to a halt. His lumbering form fills the doorway.

“No offense, shiek...” Wrathwolf mutters and noses down at his cards.

Viking Mummy comes back and sits down with his reheated pizza, a little confused. He salts his slice and looks over at me. “I miss something, no?” he says, his thick accent muffled by bandages and helmet. I've to explain to Wrathwolf that Viking Mummy comes from Norway, but he doesn't get it. And mummies aren't even...ugh. My processor reboots slightly.

And I look down at my hand and realize that I've just purged the game-state. I have no idea what card to play.

“I hate this game.” I say to no one in particular.

Which I do...I really do. We could have simply gone with something like Poker- then I could have downloaded an app and be able to keep up with everyone. Instead we played Cubit Red Nine, a game Assemblymantis claims comes from the Bonsuphrax people, a race of calculational telepaths. Mind you, Assemblymantis's only one-seventh Bonsuphrax and that's his left leg. I suspect he'd made it up instead. The rules seemed remarkably flexible owing to the “transtemporal probability bug” built into the cards themselves. That handles the shuffling and every once in a while declares that everyone's lost- at which point the pot vanishes.

But Cubit has a couple of advantages, beyond being difficult to cheat at with powers. For one thing, the cards are made of a difficult to destroy metal. Some of them chew on them...I'm not naming names. For another, they can levitate, which make it playable by some of our less handy members.

Yes, I make that joke every single time.

We're effectively a card game and support group for artificial supers or those sufficiently marginal to be lower than C-List. Wrathwolf had perhaps the most prominent of us (besides me), having briefly being in one of the big league super teams. Then he went off on a Tea Party rant and bit a single mother on welfare. He'd then been summarily rejected by the League of Super Pets because he could actually talk. Pull Yourself Together Man was an animated doll, Viking Mummy was a mummy, and Assemblymantis was a dick who was clearly about to run the table on this hand.

We would see about that.

Combat Complexities

Last Saturday I started the big fight in our game at 11pm.

Your reaction to that will probably say a lot about your age and what kinds of rules you play. This particular group's split pretty evenly between forty and thirty-somethings...older gamers by some reckonings and younger by others. Once upon a time our games regularly ran past midnight, but not so much now. Some games, of course, allow you to run the epic fight from start to finish in under an hours. Some games go the other way- we used to play a lot of Champions, and a fight like the one we had (6 players, 18 mooks, 7 named baddies) would have taken the entire evening. A friend who runs Pathfinder had a big fight the same evening. He started it at the beginning of the session just make sure he could finish it, and he only has four players. My fight used a heavily modified FATE variant with damage rolls and detailed stress tracks it still took a while

LET ME LOOK THAT UP
So today I want to talk around a couple of questions about combat complexity. Obviously system complexity doesn't solely determine how long a conflict takes to resolve- but I suspect it is the major factor.

Let me start with one of the places where I have my real love/hate relationship with combat complexity: martial arts systems. You can see some examples of this in a couple of lists Boot to the Head: Martial Arts Treatments in RPGs and RPG's that feature Fencing (by Bruce McGeorge). Primarily I love the idea that you can create a set of options that give the flavor of a particular 'style' and make different builds of fighters feel distinct. So narrowly, we're talking about MA, but more broadly any system which offers sets of combat maneuvers which players can add to their character.

IT'S A COOKBOOK
What really got me thinking about this again was the game I ran last Sunday (the day after the big fight in the other game). We'd missed a couple of sessions and then we had a couple without fights. That night the players transported into a major bad guy base, facing a dozen+ mooks and eight named adversaries. And the fight felt like molasses. At the start players had to shift around their character sheets, pull out the rules and organize their combat options. Some time back I'd hit on what I thought was a fairly decent idea. I ended up using it as the basis for the Wushu campaign I ran and for the combat system in this fantasy campaign. Basically players learn martial styles- with each style offering elements (like additional damage, defense bonus, grappling bonus, sweep). Players can then mix and match those elements to create new maneuvers with limits based on the styles they know and a separate rank determining how many they can apply. In theory, it works. In practice it works, up to a point. When a player knows one style, they have five elements to play with. Two styles doubles that, still a manageable number. Three styles and above- well, at that point we start to get into serious slowdown. Most of the players have written their options on blank business cards- which means shuffling through those, organizing them and trying to figure out what to put together with what. Some of the problem arises from figuring out the best way to access that information. But the greater problem comes from the base mechanic.

So some of the complexity issue comes from # of distinct choices and another comes from how you ask the players to organize those options. My system hoped to get around the problem of maneuvers all with slightly different parameters- with some choices not optimal. Some of the World of Darkness systems suffer from this. Beyond the "buyable" combat choices, as well, some systems offer a host of options that can be overwhelming. Any game where you have to have reference cards for the basic actions anyone can do seems to me to be problematic. Mutants & Mastermind 2e for example, overwhelms players with choices and discrete resolution systems for those choices. Even with a deck of reference cards printed and distributed to players, most fall back to "I punch him." I've commented on Champions as a slow system, but actually handles this well. All of the basic combat maneuvers and elements appear on the character sheet. You knew what you could do at any point.

WHAT DOES THIS DO?
Of course one major factor in determining combat speed comes from the players' experience with those rules. Hero System and Rolemaster both had a lot of complexity options and decisions in them, but I ran them enough that I was able to get the fights to go fast and smooth. Both systems had stages of resolution. For the former you had declaration, roll to hit, roll damage, calculate final results and apply effects; for the latter declaration, decide ability allocation, roll to hit, check damage, roll for critical, calculate final results, determine reactions, and apply effects. Systems like World of Darkness and FATE reduce these steps, collapsing and doubling up the purposes of rolls. But any of these will be slow playing with new or untrained players.

In the fantasy case I mentioned above, we hadn't gone to combat for several sessions. In effect, the players had to relearn the system and their own abilities. Depending on the campaign, the number of actual combats I have varies. Most games average one combat every other or every third session. Fantasy and superhero games will likely be higher. But rarely do I run more than a single combat in a session. That means, ironically, the games where more narrative weight rests on the combat because it happens less frequently are the same games where players may lose touch with the combat mechanics and options.

That's more true if those mechanics also differ greatly from the other resolution systems in the game. If, when we get to combat, it feels like a very different game, we'll have more of a barrier to player transitions. So some systems, like FATE and Heroquest, resolve everything in pretty much the same fashion: all tested conflicts and results are fairly equivalent. Consider how much space is devoted in the rules you're playing to combat. Then consider how much of the non-combat rules have an significant or exclusive role in combat (like many spells).

GIMMIE THE SPOTLIGHT
Another interesting issue comes up when you want to do something pretty specific with the combat: where you want to simulate a duel. These kinds of showdowns are crucial to Wushu, Samurai and Western games (among others). But they're actually hard to pull off. In systems where you have to wear down an opponent, like games with high HP values, then instead of a real sense of balance and shifts you instead get a weird dice-based race game: with both sides seeing how fast they can wear their opponent down. Introduce risky maneuvers, and the complications mentioned above, and you get more options, but at a cost. The blog Whitehall Paraindustries posted on that this week. Giving players the feeling of a deep one-on-one struggle adds complexity. And how do you balance that against what's going on in a larger scale combat?

Because of course, the difference between the classic duel centerpiece scene and that resolved at the table is that you have multiple protagonists. In films, even when you have a group of heroes, you have one (maybe two) actually fighting a "duel" and then we cut to the rest of the group carrying out supporting actions- like fending off mooks, keeping the castle doors shut, setting up a distraction. You could do that at the table- but you'd need a group with real trust for one another, a belief that if X persons gets the spotlight for this scene, they'll get there's latter. Doing an amazing job as support still comes in behind doing an OK job fighting the big bad. There's a mental calculation there- and if you aren't doing combats every session, then it can take a while for the non-aggressive players to get their "duel."

Then there's the functional part of the showdown duel. How do you best simulate something that happens that quickly- like a fast draw at high noon or the flash of a blade for an iaijustsu duel? L5R and some others use a raise system, with players wagering until we see who goes for the resolution first. Another approach is to have several stages of the conflict: rolls for assessing the opponent, for psyching them out, for maneuvering into just the right position- with those providing a bonus to the strike when resolved. Some systems have skills, advantages and abilities for just those narrow circumstances...which adds more complexity. And how can you integrate those moments into a larger fight or into the actions of the wider group of players?

LAST WORD
I don't know if it is an absolute battle between highly detailed options (feats, maneuvers, advantages) and generic approaches (extra dice, aspects covering everything). The former can mean a slower game and players perhaps left out in the cold. The latter potentially means reducing everything down to sets of +2 bonuses or the like. They might have different names, but when they're absolutely interchangeable, do those names matter? I'm not sure yet, but I do know that we started that combat at 11pm and drove home pretty satisfied, if more than a little wired from caffeine.

Boot to the Head: Martial Arts Treatments in RPGs

I do love combat chrome, and I enjoy tons of options for players- at least in the abstract. When the miniature base hits the table, though, I'm not so sure. Can we have a game system with lots of options, lots of flavor and incredible speed for resolution? Here's a starter list of systems which have more detailed treatments of one colorful aspect of combat, martial arts.

1. Top Secret (1st and 2nd Editions)
I remember Top Secret, the first edition, being the first game where I saw martial arts styles named. IIRC they had a cross-reference chart for the collision of various styles and the effects. It was also the game where I learned the definition for "solar plexus".

2. Danger International
I remember Danger International having groupings of maneuvers together for martial arts. I don't recall if the first incarnation of this game, Espionage, had the same set up. We used this system for a GI Joe (comics) rpg for a while, including ninjas, of course. The elements of DI would eventually form one of the better of the early Martial Arts treatments-- Ninja Hero, which actually provided some interesting material. We used Ninja Hero for some early Wushu games, trying to handle kung-fu movies. Then at some point some of Tony Wong's Jademan comics started to be distributed in the States, like "Oriental Heroes" and "Fist of Buddha's Palm". We spent hours trying to build a set of super-martial arts styles and systems out of a mash-up of Champions and their existing MA system, but I don't think we ever did much with it.

3. GURPS Martial Arts
We played a lot of GURPS up through 3e, but for some reason we never cared for the MA system they presented. It felt too mechanical to us-- or rather the mechanics got in the way of the play, requiring extra rolls and introducing a set of structures for buying martial arts that most of us never liked that much. It has been interesting to see how this has evolved over the years through several incarnations- adding more material and ideas, but becoming more and more simulationist. Not that there's anything wrong with that- I like chrome and detail- and for people who want a detail oriented system, this can be great. However, I like a little more abstraction, and a little less data management.

4. Claw Law
One of the first games that really brought an organized approach to martial arts into fantasy games. I remember the earliest editions had the same martial arts silhouettes I would see in many other games of the years. It had a core engine in the form of IIRC hard and soft martial arts, with ranks of progress and different styles have some slightly different modifiers to the system. I recall Warrior Monks becoming extremely powerful in this system-- especially with the use of the kata options which allowed them to use weapons with their martial arts. I don't recall many people using the actual style breakdowns, however.

5. Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game
I looked at this, but I never picked it up. I've heard some people speak of this game with great reverence. It was among the first to do really wild martial arts- and take that as the core rather than as a set of more outlying options. IIRC it had reference cards for the various actions and maneuvers. The combat sourcebook from the World of Darkness line, WoD: Combat, eventually adapted some of these elements in. That's an interesting book, but I'm not sure that useful within the limits of the Storyteller system and the established powers of the various monsters.

6. Blue Dragon, White Tiger
I never played the original Hong Kong Action Theatre-- but I did pick up this and their wire-fu sourcebook at one point, Swords of the Middle Kingdom. This system uses a discrete set of powers and abilities you purchase IIRC which had some power point costs. SotMK was the first time I'd seen the historic Shaw Brothers movies be given a real simulation. BD, WT is for the edition published by Guardians of Order. It is actually a dynamite book- with tons of great ideas on how to run a wuxia campaign.

7. Feng Shui
Some time after I saw HKAT, Feng Shui came out. I'd played and enjoyed the card game. I like the way FS presents heavily structured styles and with real color to them. The rest of the system I didn't care as much for, but the system presented there has some great options and ideas I'd use in other games. It appraoches combat with an interesting mix of player options and abstract mechanics to allow real narrative control of the flow. This is one of those Grail games I really want to have a chance to play someday.

8. Enter the Zombie
The All-Flesh Must Be Eaten Martial Arts sourcebook. I was really disappointed in this one. The scenarios and ideas we interesting, but the core mechanic left something to be desired. IIRC it revolved around generating chi to do any kind of effects, making it more of a set of spell or supers powers that anything like what I wanted. Even in the various Unisystem games I saw or played in, these ideas got dropped since they didn't fit with the rest of the systems. I know some people have generally criticized Unisystem for that strange imbalance, but to be fair it kind of evolved into a more general system in pieces.

9. Legend of the Five Rings
Here martial arts was presented more abstractly, but by the time we got to The Way of Shinsei they'd added in kiho powers. It didn't treat martial arts per se particularly well- except for some new schools in Way of the Crane and Way of the Dragon. The kiho powers for monks were interesting- various different kinds of channeled powers which could create effects. In retrospect, it isn't that far off from from Enter the Zombie did, but I'm not sure why it worked better for me here. I can say whether the martial arts presented here worked in the context of the L5R system. When I ran L5R I did whole scale adaptations of the material over to Rolemaster the first time (my mistake) and then classic Storyteller. It was pointed out to me that Way of the Open Hand later tried to create a more limited and realistic approach to martial arts, but that was in L5R 2e which mashed together d20 and the standard system.

10. Oriental Adventures
I guess we could talk about Oriental Adventures in two different ways- with the first being the classic AD&D version. But that didn't deal with martial arts in depth- instead things were attached to class bonuses and benefits. The latter OA was the d20 adaptation to L5R. At least it would end up getting developed through the Rokugan supplement. Here we began to see feats given some more organization in order to create martial arts styles and forms. As this adaptation would evolve later books would give more options on this. That "pack of feats" approach would be used by a number of d20 systems for MA's. I picked up this because it related to L5R more than anything else, but I'll admit to not being a d20 person, so I can't judge the coolness or relative success of how it does it. There's a whole branch of d20 feat-pack approaches to martial arts, like Martial Arts Mayhem. I believe Spycraft 2.0 also has a set of structured trees with feats for martial arts styles.

11. Exalted
Another system that uses discrete powers in the form of martial arts charms to simulate effects. I guess I mean that as distinct from the approach of using maneuvers (ala Ninja Hero or GURPS). I've run quite a bit of Exalted 1e, but the martial arts doesn't feel all that different from the rest of the charm powers. Still it does provide a high-flying set of abilities to allow people to do more wushu style stuff. It also gives distinct styles with their own appearance and dramatic flair. I like some of the supplements which have come out expanding those ideas.

12. Weapons of the Gods
Probably my favorite game where the actual mechanics of the system seem beyond what I'm willing to get into. It has great, highly distinctive martial arts-- each form provided a history and a set of visual characteristics. I love so much about this game but it is really hard to read through and get a sense of what is going on. They have an example single combat download on the Eos Press site and just reading through it completely lost me- if a single combat takes that much back and forth and different rolls, I can't even imagine what a larger scale fight would look like. I'm at that point in my game mastering where I want cool things to happen in combat, but at the same time I don't want a fight to take more than an hour of table play. The WotG Companion provides nice rules for developing your own styles, which is a great toolkit for anyone trying to homebrew a martial arts system. Apparently this is going to be revised and republished with a more generic setting.

There's a lot more, but I'll leave this list as a starter for consideration.

RPG Catch Up

So a few observations going into November. First, Robot Zero Tuesday will be back next week with new material. Second, as I head towards the end of the year, I hope to hit my milestone post right at the end. I have a couple of players & friends who have generously offered to do guest posts, so I hope to have a couple of those pop up before 2011 runs out. Third, I'd planned on posting something substantive every day in October, since I wasn't going to be doing a review each day. I came close- ending up with 29 posts. I consider that a victory given that the primary hard drive on my computer died and I lost...well nearly a decade worth of work and notes. I'm still trying to find a solution, but I've set that aside for the moment so I don't make myself crazy.

Towards the end of the year, I'll be putting together an overview of the campaigns, where they stand, where they've been in the last year, and where I see them going. But I'll mention a couple of things that have recently happened in a couple of the games:

*In both the Libri Vidicos and the Pavis High Fantasy games, the players have developed approaches I didn't see coming. Now I expect some of that- you can't predict everything the group will do, but an experienced GM will usually have a range in mind and what the group does will often overlap with that. In Libri Vidicos, the players managed to bring back the apparently dead Headmaster Gravast Direlond, in a pretty epic scene I'd been building towards for the last year and a half. But in some ways that's one of the few things I foresaw and planned for that the PCs have done. They've been cutting deep into the meta-plot and things are, as they say, “getting real.” In the Pavis game, they crossed a bad guy, who killed one of their NPCs. I expected them to deal with that- work around to taking him out and changing up the political situation in the city. Instead, they called on the last favor owed them by a god, and asked to be teleported into the bad guys lair. And then they went to town on the bad guy and his minions. Boom, boom, boom. I might have described it as overkill, but the players saw it as just-right-kill.

*In the Changeling the Lost campaign, I took advantage of a major quest arc wrapping up to make changes to the mechanics of the game. I'm hopeful about that. Essentially, I wanted to add the aspect and tags system from FATE to the game since it had worked well in a couple of the other versions of our house rules. We'll see how that plays out- this last session the group essentially changed the rule sof the game literally and figuratively in the campaign's freehold: establishing their own Court and subverting some agents of the enemy into joining them. Now they have to go and present themselves to the Princes of the city and then go and finish off the Draconic servants of a Keeper.

*In the "Treasure Hunters" campaign, we had a long, long session. I'd say most of our weekend games end by midnight at the latest. Our Thursday and Sunday games end by 11pm at the latest. There's some calculation on the players part, especially regarding elements which refresh from session to session (such as abilities and drama points). On Saturday, the group continued their invasion of the Ninja Fortress. I'd intended the adventure to take one session, but the previous session had been delayed by two players arriving late from a horse-riding accident. So we pressed on- and I watched the players spend their points. It got later- mostly based on bad pacing on my part, but I was determined to wrap the adventure that night, so we started the big epic battle at 11pm. The group faced four times their number in enemies, including seven named and significant adversaries. We wrapped up at 1:30am after a pretty awesome battle. I like doing that every once in a while and it did mean the players had already tapped some of their resources.

Lastly, I wanted to point to an interesting article I found recently. It had apparently been out there in the game blog community for a number of years, but I'd missed it. Five Geek Social Fallacies hits home pretty hard- because I've seen that go on and I've engaged in that apologist behavior over the years. I've been thinking about that recently, because we've seen some 'at table' social bullying: getting angry, threatening, and so on. It bothered me when one player I respect told another that they'd just have to 'give in' to make everything fine. The problem I have is that approach privileges one player over another, and rewards and reinforces bad behavior.

Finally, which I'm guessing comes after lastly, I'd like to point out this miniature:

And this post. I used to play with Tom Anders, M:tG mostly. I found him to be one of the most excellent, generous and personable gamers I've ever known. He is a genuinely good person who shows immense enthusiasm for the games he plays. He's been instrumental in the Blood Bowl (tm) community, as I understand it. And when I say instrumental, I'm completely underselling his role and impact. And of course, because it was a Games Workshop product...well, if you're a gamer you can probably finish that story yourself. Anyway, I'm incredibly pleased to see Tom receiving such a nice gesture.

Ashen Stars: Review & Additional Thoughts

TO THE BRIDGE
Over on Diehard GameFan I have a pretty extensive review of Ashen Stars posted. Bottom line: I'm generally sold on it, with some reservations (some of my other thoughts on GUMSHOE here). I also reviewed separately the adventure collection for Ashen Stars, Dead Rock Seven. In some ways, seeing those cases written out helped me get a handle on what was going in the main game. It took me a while to understand what I liked and didn't like about Ashen Stars and what it was trying to do. Pelgrane's put out an amazing and lovely game- but it may take some work to get new players into it. Players need to have a clear handle on two elements in play. First, the alien races and their natures. They need to know who they are, what they can do, and how that might bear on cases. Some of the races have special abilities, so players need to know those- especially if the GM plans on having any or all of those races present in an investigation. Second, what exactly you can do with each of the abilities. Some are obvious, but some aren't- and a condensed summary of those would be helpful- maybe a two page cheat sheet for the first couple of sessions.

MYSTERIES VS. PROBLEMS
Ashen Stars broadens the structure of investigations. The Lasers are as much problem solvers as they are detectives. They have a secondary set of concerns- beyond figuring out whodunit. They have to enact a solution, they have to do that in a way that causes the least offense, and they have to work to enhance their reputation. The Esoterrorists had a pretty basic line- figure out who was behind an occurrence, stop it and neutralize them. Fear Itself is even narrower- solve the mystery before the mystery kills you. Mutant City Blues and Trail of Cthulhu stick closely to traditions of police procedurals and CoC adventures. But Laws recognizes that most episodic sci-fi is built on a simple structure: problem, investigation, twist and solution. Now that could apply to many genres- but think of how any of the Star Trek franchises operate, early Babylon Five, or Farscape. Character-centered and extended arc stories in space opera represent a relatively recent phenomena (BSG, late B5). Ashen Stars opens things up- it isn't Space Precinct, but instead a rich and diverse sci-fi rpg. It doesn’t necessarily have the classic sci-fi paths of rebellion, trade, exploration, or bug-hunting but what it offers is pretty exciting.

BUYING AND SELLING
That having been said- sci-fi's not something our group's gravitated to. Or rather where we've done sci-fi it has been along pretty tight lines:

1. Science Fantasy: I want to start with the one which is hardest to define. Typically when I think of science fantasy I think of John Carter, Warlord of Mars. That mix of swords & sorcery with a sci-fi backdrop. But I also think of some sci-fi rpgs as being science fantasy as well. For example, Fading Suns and Rogue Trader feel like fantasy with a thin tech veneer on them. Our group played the former and has some interest in the latter (with a number of retired WH40K players among them).

2. Established Settings: For example, Star Wars which rightly ought to fall into the Science Fantasy category above, falls here. It's probably the sci-fi setting people in our group have played most and has the most positive reception. Then there's Star Trek and Firefly, both of which have had their heyday- played in several different versions.

3. Cyberpunk: For many years, this was the go-to sci-fi game of choice. Eventually the couple of people in the group who really enjoyed it moved on to other things. I think other genres have pushed over into what would have been cyberpunk's territory. You see elements from it elsewhere- especially in transhumanist concepts. Ashen Stars notably uses the self-augmentation chrome that I associate with cyberpunk.

4. Superheroes: Depending on the setting, superheroes can be more or less sci-fi. The X-Men, for example have always been much more in touch with that than other superhero groups. Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men for example is strongly sci-fi. The same thing with J. Michael Straczynski's Supreme Power series. We've played a couple of superhero campaigns that have that approach- a singular genetic source for super-powers and the implications of that.

So not so much about classic space opera. In think part of that comes from our gaming DNA. Our groups have never been ones attracted to Traveller. I know a couple of players with some fondess for it, but they're the exception. It never caught on around here as it did elsewhere. Most players among the groups I play with strongly went down the fantasy path. Until I talked to some of them recently, I hadn't realized that some them never bought into Star Trek, for example. I'd always taken that as a geek-given: that everyone had watched ST and had some affection for it.

All of that makes Ashen Stars a tougher sell for my group. I could focus on the diversity of aliens and system spanning travel that make it feel like Star Wars. But SW suggests a certain heroism and epic scale that doesn't quite fit with my conception of Ashen Stars. Star Wars offers a literal black and white conflict, which closes out more ambiguous drama- at least as presented in core materials of the movies. On the flip side, Firefly's pretty popular and "The Bleed" of Ashen Stars does echo the "The Black" of lawless space. But Firefly has more grit and a lot less fantasy- fitting aliens, weird powers and high glint technology into that frame doesn't work.

ALL GAMES ARE LOCAL
Or all of that may be my own hesitation; rationalizing it with our group's history. Space games intimidate me for a pretty specific reason- the question of scale. To actually have a space opera game, the players need to be able to move from location to location quickly. Each case should take place in a new world, with new sights and sounds. And those sights have to be rich, interesting and play into the investigation at hand. Jonathan Lethem said an interesting thing about the detective novel- that those stories are travelogues and explorations of place. That's why he used a mystery structure for his alternate universe exploration, The Yiddish Policemen's Union. [WRONG- Michael Chabon actually wrote YPMU and the point is his from the interview I heard on NPR. Error helpfully pointed out by a commenter.]

Now I'm a lazy GM- or rather I'm a GM who runs enough that my goal is to minimize prep time by maximizing utility. And I'll admit that's part of why I like singular location campaigns: cities and schools for example. The material you develop for those locations don't usually get thrown away because the players move on. These stories build layers of details- with characters and places adding to and informing other stories. And if something or someone doesn't get used, you can repurpose it elsewhere. In those games, when players go "outside" to new places, that's usually for a pretty narrow purpose and I can just worry about surface details and color, rather than having to plot out the depths of those places. I know, really, that the same thing holds true for a system-of-the-week space opera game, but it feels more intimidating. I'm enough of an obsessive and simulationist, that if I build a story with a cool planet or location, I'll probably end up spending too much time planning.

WRITING TO THE TABLE
But that won't be Robin Laws' fault. Ashen Stars has the tool's a GM needs to build things and not worry about the details. This game really cements for me what Laws does better than many other designers. He actually writes for what's getting played at the table. He writes to give gamemasters solid, interesting and quick tools to create a session. He writes for players to show them what they can do in play and how they can manipulate that. Laws offers ideas- dramatic necessity determining results (GUMSHOE, HeroQuest), all conflicts as conflict (HQ), moments as cinematic shots (Feng Shui)- that seem obvious in retrospect. He's watched how games actually play and offers systems that help that process. So in Ashen Stars he gives a planet creation system based purely on what story the GM wants to tell.

That's not to dismiss the cool of system building. I remember those complex systems well from the early days: Traveller, Space Opera, Universe. Each had chunks of rules dedicated to doing that kind of building, but that was something that appeal to me in the abstract. When I actually sat down to do it, it didn't give me the kind of thrill I know it did for other gamers. It's actually why I admire the kinds of approaches of games like Diaspora (or Microscope) where the creation is a collaborative effort. That makes that kind of more detailed process appeal to me. Not that those approaches have the crunch or scientific verisimilitude of hard sci-fi games.

LAST THOUGHT
So bottom line- I like Ashen Stars and I'm considering it for a longer campaign, with some modifications. My one practical concern comes from the number of alien races. My gut tells me that I don't want a party of mostly non-humans. I think having too many in a group potentially dilutes the impact. When I ran Star Wars, I allowed (in a party of six) up to two "alien races"- meaning non-humanoid aliens. I ended up with a droid and a wookie. I've done the same thing in fantasy games- reducing the number of non-humans there such that being one has some story impact, allows the player to own something unique. But then again, I haven't run that much sci-fi, so I don't know if I'm perhaps being too controlling- I probably need to ask other GMs.

The GUMSHOE Companion: RPG Wishes

KEEP REACHING FOR THE STARS?
I just finished about 6500 words on Ashen Stars and its accompanying adventure collection Dead Rock Seven. I hope those will be up next week. I had a strange experience in reading through those rules. I'd pre-ordered them and gotten the nice autographed full-color version. I really enjoy some parts of GUMSHOE and I've reviewed a great deal of the line. My first reaction on reading Ashen Stars, though, was more than a little negative. It felt complicated and overwhelming. It wasn't until I sat down for a serious read that I began to see what Laws & co. aimed at- a distinctive sci-fi game of investigation in the broadest sense with all the possible trappings of the genre. That's a flip from Mutant City Blues which presented superhero mysteries with a heavily defined and limited setting. MCB doesn't simulate superheroes, nor even the comics from which it borrows (TopTen and Gotham Central). Instead, to make mysteries of a particular kind playable it establishes some strict ground rules: all powers from a single source, a precise and mapped order of those powers, and players as police officers with powers investigating those heightened crimes. In some ways, MCB's really the first sci-fi approach for GUMSHOE, but a far cry from the space opera of Ashen Stars.

LOOKING FOR CRACKS
Now I'll admit I love some elements of GUMSHOE. I've heard people dismiss the concept of not rolling for investigation as obvious or simplistic. And yes, perhaps groups had already been working with that mechanic. But GUMSHOE uses that as a starting point. It isn't that you don't roll when investigating, but that the system and mechanics support and promote an interesting and involved investigation. Players have access to other kinds of clues, make choices about where to spend resources in following leads, and gain trust in their GM that the mystery will play out and they have the competency to investigate it. Laws & co offer more ideas about running, planning and even winging mystery games than just about any other resource out there. And they show how that emphasis can be built into the fiber of the game.

On the flip side, I don't like how GUMSHOE handles risk and tension, at least for the kinds of games I want to run. To set this up, I need to give a nod to Ryan Macklin's couple of blog articles on Dice and Risk (here and here). GUMSHOE came out of investigative horror- and in the case of Fear Itself, out of a game where you'd probably be running incompetent characters. For that a system with wonky ranges and the requirement to spend before rolling makes perfect sense. I've run a lot of stripped down Unisystem horror one-shots. That system also pretty much says "You've got a skill rating, that's great...I'm still going to screw you over..." That's perfect for games of limited life-spans and bloody deaths. Dread's probably the best example of this. The only control you might have is desperately arguing that something on your character sheet questionnaire should allow you to skip a pull. But if you're using GUMSHOE for something other than horror, it becomes frustrating. I know that might sound a little backwards- after all you get to spend points and therefore have control over the roll. But you don't have any real sense of expertise, you have a die with an absolute range of 1-6 and so it is very easy to waste a spend.

I say this based on play experience with an espionage skin of the system; a Victoriana version of The Esoterrorists; and Mutant City Blues. There's a strange split in the feeling of personal competency between one side of the mechanics and the other. The response was pretty universal across those groups. I suspect that's the nature of the games our groups have been playing for the last couple of decades- certainly we're move to greater player and narrative control systems. I don't want to harp on these problems too much- GUMSHOE offers so much good stuff for use with that system or adaptable over to other games and mechanics. I'm excited by the idea of a Pathfinder conversion (Lorefinder) in particular because I want to know what Pelgrane sees as the key elements of the system. I'm also excited by the news that Will Hindmarch and Fred Hicks will be putting together a hack. I can't imagine that they're just going to adapt it to FATE rules. Not that that wouldn't be a great thing- it would be an amazing thing (and something that skalchemist gave me advice about).

HAND ME MY TOOLBOX
Which finally brings me to whatever point I have in this post. I want to see Pelgrane put together a GUMSHOE companion. This would be a general book, useful to players across the games in the line and for general GMs of mysteries...maybe, I don't know exactly. I know there's an The Esoterror Fact Book, but what I want to see is something broader. There's a real strength in that Pelgrane has approached each of these games as solid and individual rpgs. They have rich settings- which means that the game presented isn't really a toolkit. I'd like to see something that focuses more on those bits and bolts.

So what do I want to see?

1. Guidelines and ideas for adapting GUMSHOE over into other systems. I think it is great that they're doing a stand-alone product for their PF hack, but perhaps we could have some ideas about conversions for other systems and approaches- perhaps one's that likely won't be worth their own book. For example nWoD, L5R or ORE?

2. Optional systems for handling general abilities. A couple of different flavors of this could be presented. Perhaps one which ditches spends and another which keeps spends but offers more control and choice. Along with that more articulation to the combat system, perhaps? I say that as a person who runs rules-light games. I think options to add more emphasis to that side of the game wouldn't be a bad thing.

3. Revisiting and talking generally about some of the interesting options presented in the later books- like the shop/organization system from Bookhounds of London; stability from Trail of Cthulhu; and character arcs & vessel combat from Ashen Stars.

4. Consolidating and picking out the best GUMSHOE articles Robin Laws and others have presented in See Page XX.

5. Retooling the Quade Diagram to change the organization of powers and perhaps add a few more. My friend Gene Ha in particular has been tinkering with another way to arrange this chart.

6. Another variation on the Quade Diagram- using it for a fantasy setting. In this world spells and schools of magic have particular signatures depending on how they're used. What mages can do starts tightly grouped together at low levels and then radiates outward. For this setting, I imagine the PCs as town guards. So they'd be trying to solve crimes while at the same time dealing with keeping adventurers from burning the city to the ground. I imagine some ideas from Witless Minion! could fit in with that.

7. Discussion of how to handle particular historical genres. You could get an expert on Ancient Rome rpgs like (Chad Bowser) to write up what the ability sets, law enforcement and structures would look like for that period. Any historical period which has been well covered in modern mystery fiction (Feudal Japan, Medieval England) could be treated.

8. Parallel to that- a discussion of how to handle different mystery fiction themes and genres in games. Ideas like corruption, betrayal, unreliable narrators, existential or surreal mysteries could be examined for tabletop play.

9. How to run a game aimed at younger players- with Nancy Drew or Veronica Mars style adventures. Ideas for integrating school life into such games. Perhaps with more rules for relationship mapping as a technique and source of investigation.

10. Running a detective agency- with mechanics for dealing with money, expenses and clients.

11. Building a mystery city- how to excavate and create mysteries which carry on the feeling of a place. How the players can help with that or have more power in the process (as in The Kaiin Players Guide). There are some interesting city books out there that consider the mystery flavor of places (The Naked City and Nameless Streets for example.

12. Further discussion and ideas on how to run improvised mysteries using GUMSHOE.

That's off the top of my head- I have a few other things I'd like to see, but in part I'm waiting to see what Ken Hite's Night's Black Agents (supernatural espionage) and Will Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball's Eternal Lies (post apocalypse) will bring to the table.

Robot Zero Tuesday: Reboots Mean Doom

Previous Entry here.

We got things straightened out and I left my old shell with Prof. Doctor. The last I saw my old self, she was carefully scraping the black gunk off of it. I’m fully expecting to have to fight my evil twin within a year.

So I’m a couple weeks back now and I think I’m ready to destroy the group.

It isn’t anything specific– or rather a whole series of very specific things. The way Yes Man eats a sandwich, that Chrysalis Archer poses before a mirror when he thinks no one is watching, the broken sewer pipe to the base that we can’t get anyone out to fix unless we provide a $100K bond for their workers safety. I have temporarily deactivated my olfactory powers– a procedure much akin to shoving a screwdriver up your nose in search of sinus relief.

But let me go back a bit– just to set the scene and atmosphere for what’s happening right now, again if you’ve looked out your window and seen dinosaurs ravaging your neighbors or are in that part of the country currently under assault by cyborg raccoons, then you know what I’m talking about. If not, give it a minute.

So back at the ‘base’ I went through my favorite part of coming back with a new body– the “accidental” misunderstanding fight between heroes. I landed and headed in when Yes Man came barreling out of security trailer, the sound of a car alarm blaring behind him. He hit me about mid-chest with a maneuver I know he picked up from a wrestling video game. I staggered back and he flopped to the concrete in front of me.

“INTRUDER!…FRONTLINE ASSEMBLE!” I didn’t think his voice could get louder, but it could.

“Don’t say that—they’ve got lawy…” Yes Ass interrupted me with a boot to the head. Now, by all rights I should have been saying stop, but seeing him laying on the ground clutching his head from the bad hit– I was more irritated than worried. I stumbled back and watched Yes Man roll up to his feet, fists flying. He’d apparently learned his fighting moves on a super playground. I grabbed a free hand, twisted and threw him.

Which is how that sewer pipe I mentioned earlier got broken. So maybe I shouldn’t complain about that too much.

“Listen…I’m Robot Ze…” Interrupted again– this time by the gigantic hammer driving me into the ground. This was how I learned that Cyber-tron was a shapechanger…or a steel version of Stretch Armstrong. He was up on me– one arm formed into a ridiculous hammer and the other into gigantic pruning shears. He lunged forward with those to clip my head off. They bounced off my static field, and I powered up.

“Your electric blasts will have no effect on my insulated frame.”

“Yup.” I clicked off my non-lethal safety and launched a ball of plasma into his chest. Robo-Dick knew it was me.

I learned then that a lack of understanding of human emotions doesn’t preclude someone from screaming like a crushed baby. Not that I know what that sounds like. Anyway, Cybertron started flailing around and making high pitched squeals just because I blew his arm off– an arm I now planned to beat him with.

Except I started getting pummeled by ghosts, gothicky ghosts with chains and long wind-blown spooky hair and eyes that were like liquid pools of sorrow. I saw Kim Reaper waving her hands in some pattern and reciting bad poetry.

“Do you even understand what Goth is?” I shouted as her Byron-esque summonings pitched me across the parking lot. I landed at Chrysallis Archer’s feet.

“Great– Archer help me up…” I looked up and saw the cocked bow and an expression that said “I’m not listening.” With a twang the arrow went into my right eye. A subroutine the doctor had installed popped up with a quote for the repairs. She reloaded in one quick motion– this time the arrow had a cartoon bomb on the end. I reached up and pulled the arrow out and jammed it into her foot. More screaming, and as I rolled to my feet I saw Yes Man and Kim Reaper prepping for the next round of beating the crap out of me.

“OK– I think we’re done.” And Meta-Woman inserted a scene-break.

I think I’ve pointed out before how irritating I find reality-alerting powers, but I could handle this. Meta-woman and I were seated at a table in the dining hall. We were apparently in mid-conversation.

“So what I don’t get is why every time we run into each other we end up fighting– misunderstandings, supposed mind control, lack of communication. It’s like meeting new supers drains the collective intelligence in the area.” I found myself saying– I mean I said it, but this ‘in medias res’ crap…whatever.

“Fan appeal– the chance to see their dream fight. New tinder for flame wars.” Meta-Woman said.

“What are you talking about?” I couldn’t follow anything.

“Sorry– my powers.” Meta-Woman focused on her coffee. “Anyway, I figure there’s something big– cosmic crisis, major crossover coming soon.”

“What makes you say that?”

“They gave a crappy character like you a reboot.”

Which of course, turned out to be the case.