The State of the Games: Q4 2013

As we head into the fourth quarter, gaming remains strong and steady. Board gaming has taken an upsurge, but RPGs remain the centerpiece of our work. We’ve added several new video games to complement this, but Wife Co. continues to dominate in this area (especially in the field of Diablo III and Animal Crossing). Two major projects will come to a close this quarter, but we’ve already begun to line up successors.

GAMEMASTERING:

Libri Vidicos: Steampunk Fantasy School (begun 2/07): We’re heading to the third act in this game with most of the plots revealed. We had an excellent showpiece session with the coronation of one of the PC’s brother-in-law. That featured a number of PCs from the previous campaign and ended in the big bad’s plan revealed, a massive vampire fight in a cathedral, and a huge shift in the game world. Since then the characters have been on the move- gathering allies and assembling the last of the clues. They finally made it back to their school through a gauntlet of Shaddai dragon-riders. There they organized and decided on their next course of action. Groups of NPCs- friends and contacts built over the length of the game- headed out to take care of various secondary problems (the Magical Chainers, the Shaddai Coup, the Vampires at Methotos) while they geared up to fight against the major foe, the last true Lords of Ardor, by breaking into the fallen Dwarven fortress-city of Water Hill.

This campaign will wrap before the end of the year. That may take some session shifting, but I’ve spoken to the GMs who run on the opposite weekend. In all we’ll have done almost eight years of play. I have some ideas about what I want to do next with this group if they’re interested. I have a couple of short-run games I’ll like to try with a solid group (particularly DramaSystem) so I hope we can do that. I’d also like to figure out a way to wrap up the Wushu campaign with this group.

Last Fleet: Airship Fantasy riff on BSG (begun 5/11): This group’s also heading for a showdown . They’ve discovered a way out of the devastated world and the war between the two Elven Empires. It requires a transformation and a recreation of the world, a detail they’re keeping mostly to themselves. If the final gods learn about this, they might intervene. In any case, we’ve had some great character stuff at their salvaged city, including Marreg being forced to kill his brother. In the last session the players completely undercut and changed plans at the last minute. They’d originally devised a kidnapping and battle to get the resources they needed. Instead, at the last minute they zigged. They brought all of their social skills to bear and enlisted a hated enemy to join them, promising him the destruction on an foe he hates even more. The group has a complex plan- subject to all kinds of possible failures, but they know where they’re headed at least.

We’ll also finish this campaign by December. Keep in mind I’doriginally planned to run it only one year. We’ll take a break and then come back in January after the holidays. We have several possibilities. Assuming one player in particular returns, I have a mini-campaign I promised him. It’s an Iron Man-style M&M game.

The House of Shimasu: Homebrew Legend of the Five Rings (begun 11/12): I remained pleased with this campaign and happy with the adaptation of Action Cards to the setting. We’ve done two full seasons worth of adventures and are about to go into Autumn and the next round of seasonal actions. I’ve put the bigger plot seeds into play and we’ll see how those develop. Everyone seems to have figured out a little more about their offices (Spymaster, Magistrate, Ritual Master, etc). I need to develop the NPCs more, but I like the pacing. Each season, the daimyo assigns them a few tasks which they can carry out as they see fit. The players choose their direction and methods. The campaign has legs, but we will lose one player in the summer when she heads off to graduate school.

Changeling Lost Vegas: CtL Classic Online (begun 12/12): We skipped several sessions in Q3 due to schedules (especially Gen Con). We then had a transition of players, with two leaving and one returning. I’m taking advantage of the opportunity to switch games systems, moving from World of Darkness to a version of FATE. That’s a test and we’ll see how well it works. We’ve had one orientation session which IMHO went really well. They’re three strong and enthusiastic players with dynamite characters. They’re also willing to go along with the experiment in system mechanics. We’re going to test out a few sessions and then we’ll think about recruiting a new player or two. In game, the Motley has completed their tasks to gain entry into the Freehold, but no one has yet committed to the Court. That opens up a world of possibilities. Their next task is putting on a party for their fellow Changelings.

First Wave: Year One: Mutants and Masterminds 2e Online (begun 6/12): We completed the second arc of this campaign (17 sessions IIRC) with the group fighting off the forces of Hell as well as several gargantuan monsters (including Fin Fam Foom) sweeping over New York. I managed to bring many threads together, with the allies and friends they’d made during the campaign reappearing to lend them aid. I enjoyed the campaign which had great character development. The group’s come together in a striking way, with classic characters given a new spin (especially the group’s leader: a heroic version of Mr. Freeze). We will return to this campaign for the third and final arc in January 2014. That will (I hope) be my riff on the classic big scale stories of the comics, a cosmic tale with some play on my favorite concepts.

PLAYING:

Legend/13th Age: Derek Stoelting has been running a striking fantasy game with a world he created. He clearly has a strong sense of what he wants- a little of the feel of AGOT with more high fantasy elements. We’ve started to get a solid sense of place, especially with the main city we venture out from. We originally began the game using the Legend rules. We gave it a good try, but it didn’t quite work for our group. I’m not sure if it was balance, resolution oddities, or the strange initiative/action sequence. Derek picked up 13th Age at Gen Con and liked it- and I do too. It has a more open feel than Legend, but beyond that I dig the way the game plays. We’ve only had two sessions with the new system, but I’m excited to play more.

BOARDGAMING:

Tabletop Deathmatch: I haven’t heard anything more about the status of this competition. They’ve putup a teaser video, but I’m not sure when the episodes will drop and what kind of timetable we’re looking at. I’m really hoping to get some solid feedback out of the process. That would be useful. I’m less excited about watching myself on video in a documentary looking like a goofy.

SECONDARY GAMES

I should also mention the other games happening in our greater group. In total we have about fifteen people locally. Besides my games, we have two happening I’m not involved with, but have overlapping members. One of my players, Scott, is running a Pathfinder campaign. Another, Kenny, is running a fantasy campaign using the Action Cards rules. I’ve had other GMs run using the homebrew I came up with, but in both cases I was actually at the table. It’s wild to see it run completely independently. I look forward to sitting down and talking to Kenny about his experience afterwards. As well the online M&M is playing a sci-fi campaign run by Fabian. He’s going to wrap his present arc at the end of the year. By all accounts that’s going great guns and I expect they’ll return to that.

The Place of Dead Games: Play on Target Podcast Ep. 18

This week the Play on Target podcast takes a look at games we no longer play- why and what took their place. We stop playing games for many reasons, not all of them a judgment on the games themselves. At least in my case there’s been a shift over time as I come to understand what I like about systems. That learning process lands people and groups in different places- from those who want a throwback to the games of their earlier days, to those looking for a game that puts story first, to gear-heads who want to play with the inner workings of the mechanics. Once again we hit on questions of system (which we address directly next episode). I think system has an impact and shapes experience. Learning to recognize and assess how those factors mix with the groups I play with pushed some game migrations. I think you can get useful info by looking back at fallen games and figuring out why they dropped dead for your group.

GAMES WE NO LONGER PLAY

Play on Target Episode Roundup

BOULEVARD OF EMPTY GAMES

In preparation for this episode dropping I put together three posts looking at  major systems I’d “buried.”

• The Place of Dead Games: Rolemaster
• The Place of Dead Games: Champions
• The Place of Dead Games: GURPS

Of course all of the systems are alive and kicking, with companies still producing material for them. You can't define a game as dead even if the company’s dead- people can still play it. I like to imagine groups out there right now running SPI’s Universe, Avalon Hill’s Powers & Perils, or even Mongoose Publishing’s Starship Troopers. I mentioned those games because I played them and loved them. In each case I played or ran multiple campaigns using them, logging in at least a couple hundred hours of table play for each (and likely more). But my tastes have shifted over the years- the crunch, detail, granularity, and numbers I once loved aren’t as appealing  anymore.

BUT IF YOU’RE PLAYING AND ENJOYING YOUR GAME THAT IS A GOOD THING.

In a few cases I’ve found other systems to handle the niches those three filled. I like Mutants & Masterminds 2e for supers. It isn’t perfect, but it does what I want a supers game to do. If I want talented normal I’ll use my homebrew or FATE or even tossed together Unisystem. If I want fantasy, I’ll fall back to a homebrew, FATE, or even a system specifically tuned to a particular setting. Of the three I mentioned Rolemaster would likely be the only one I’d want to go back to. I could see playing that again with just the most basic books for out goofy action fantasy.

FOLK HISTORY AND THE COMMON RPG

One interesting exercise would be to trace the oral history of games and gaming within a region. For example, we had a local game store open in 1976 selling minis, D&D and wargames. You had a couple of generations of gamers who flocked there originally: grognards and new punks. My sister and her peers constituted the next generation after that. Then came my friend Art’s group, then came my generation. Eventually the number of gamers grew and diversified so you couldn’t even read things that way. But you could see significant shifts both in terms of what games people played and how they played them. When I worked and managed the store in the late 1980’s and mid 1990’s I could read pretty well the divisions- the White Wolf groups, the Battletech fiends, the Rifts Savants, and the still largest faction, the TSR aficionados.

I love hearing about the different routes people took to come into the hobby and how their group evolved. I know several people who had Traveller as the most important developmental game. That never did anything in any of the game groups I played with. The closest we came to hard sci-fi was Cyberpunk and FASA’s Star Trek. For many groups, D&D began their career and served as the continuing lynch-pin  but not for any of the people I play with. My group has gamed together in one form or another since the late 1980’s and tried many different systems. But Vampire and such only ever served as a slight detour, Call of Cthulhu rarely had sustained power, and stuff like TORG, Warhammer Fantasy, and Deadlands withered on the vine.

GAMES WE NO LONGER PLAY

Play on Target Episode Roundup

If you like RPG Gaming podcasts, I hope you'll check it out. We take a focused approach- tackling a single topic each episode. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes or follow the podcast's page at www.playontarget.com.

The Place of Dead Games: GURPS

Third in a series on games I loved, but no longer play. You can find Part One: Rolemaster here and Part Two: Champions here.

LEAD OR FOLLOW

I fell into Rolemaster and Champions because I followed the games others played. In both cases the slightly older generation of gamers ran with those systems. I tagged along, eventually buying in fully. My friend Jim’s mentioned that he started with Champions and rarely played  anything else. In my case I tried many different games, switching around constantly. I wanted to be the person found a system everyone loved; so I ran Ringworld, Ghostbusters, Paranoia, Stormbringer, and James Bond. I relished new games and I had my ego invested in gaming. But none of those games took off. Then in 1985 Man to Man came out from Steve Jackson. I’d played Melee and Wizard, as well as buying most other SJG micro-games. We had a player in our group who’d loved The Fantasy Trip. He ended up running M2M as an arena fantasy campaign where we fought for our lives, bought our freedom, and then tried to make it as huntsmen in the wilderness. We liked the system for the flexible character creation and the mix of crunch and simplicity to the combat.

The following year, SJG published GURPS which took the M2M combat engine and built a great point-based system around it. I loved it right away. I picked up everything that came out for it in that first run- GURPS Autoduel, Horror, Horseclans, and most of all Fantasy. I ran an Amber-inspired campaign with multiple dimensions, Gamma World-like weirdness, and an 'anything goes' vibe. We got many things wrong in those early days: for example we realize Magery had a limit or that Passive Defense wasn’t always used as an extra defense roll. The campaign I ran was bad, but served as a shakedown cruise. I got out of my system the concept that because you could do anything, you should do everything.

YEARS AND YEARS OF PLAY

My next campaign became the basis for the fantasy world I’ve ended up running since then. In ’87 I ran a GURPS fantasy campaign where players had no character sheets and had to work out what they could do. I run it fully improvised for four sessions. A few months later I decided I wanted a solid and ongoing fantasy campaign using GURPS. I needed a system which I could easily adapt. I used everything I’d spun in that mini-campaign and fleshed out the setting. Then I ran it for the next three years- a campaign that ended up with a dozen and a half players coming and going, and finished with a solid group of seven, two of whom I still play with and one of whom died not that long ago. Running a fantasy campaign with low-powered characters shifted my thinking about gaming. Combats could kill or maim easily. The PCs fought mostly humanoid foes and enhanced beasts. Late in the campaign I unleashed a Beholder on the group, which killed one character and sent another into a fear-induced panic. You didn't kick the door in and fight the dragon; you had to play smart. 

GURPS became our go-to pick-ip game. The older group of gamers didn’t really buy into the system, so we felt like trailblazers. And of course we entered into the inevitable system and edition arguments. When the GURPS 2e arrived, we bought that up. Within our group you could count at least one player owning every supplement. We had three to five GMs at any particular time running Space, Modern Espionage, Conan, The Wheel of Time, Pulp Action, Horror, or Samurai. Supers proved to be the one exception for us. We had Champions or DC Heroes for that. And frankly GURPS Supers was pretty dire. Clunky, rough, and oddly constructed. It felt tacked on.

I ran GURPS through several more fantasy campaigns with my ongoing setting. When I studied in Cairo, I only took the GURPS core book with me and ended up running for a great group. However, over time I began to wonder about the limitless chrome offered by Rolemaster for fantasy. Perhaps my game world suffered because the system kept it so restrained and low-powered? For the next campaign, I used RM. The tonal shift and strange feeling hit right away. It just didn’t work. My world had certain premises- tough heroes fighting against desperate odds to bring down evil. The power creep of RM worked against that. Eventually I relegated that system to another continent of the world and kept the core setting more realistic or at least more reasonable with GURPS. That’s what GURPS does well- really well. It helped define years of fantasy games and shape the feeling of the setting. I ran three parallel three-year campaigns with it and then another several including a four year steampunk/ swashbuckling fantasy game. Everyone knew GURPs and we played the hell out of it- which meant we also saw flaws.

CRACKS SHOWING

For some GM's armor felt weird and we tried a couple of variations on that, including on quite striking ‘piecemail’ approach. We also worked on options to break out Will and Perception. Over time we restricted certain advantages as too potent, or limited them to one player per campaign. We cut out even many disadvantages- those which cause more problems to the rest of the group than the player who’d bought them (anything about being Stubborn, a Loner, Bad Tempered or the like). But we also worked to smooth the game- skipping many of the crunchy bit details about number of seconds to do certain actions, working out ranges for everything, multiple turns to stand up, and basically all of the deeper bits of the combat system. You might call what we ran GURPS Lite Lite. But we hit the most problems with the Magic system.

Just to be clear- I love GURPS 3e. At a conservative estimate, I’ve run 350 sessions of fantasy using GURPS. In the early days, we only had one or two persons in each campaign willing to take on the responsibility of being the magic user. That made them unique and meant I didn’t have to pay all that much attention. But over time I began to see problems with the mechanics. GURPS Magic feels like the designers built it to keep power gamers in check. The effects and mechanics are tight and limited. Unless a spell-caster concentrates on an extremely narrow path, they’re never as effective as a sword-wielder. I heard players complain about this over the years, and I usually dismissed that as a non-issue. Yes, fatigue and mana limited them, but they could buy their skills higher to compensate. Yes, they weren’t as effective in combat, but they had so many more options. Yes, they had multiple rolls and resistances to get through for a modest impact, but hey they did magic. Eventually I began to see the problem for our group- magic  felt unsatisfying and frustrating for those who played it. Even veteran players who knew the system felt tied down. We experimented with several variations, notably Infinite Mana, but those felt like band-aids.

THE NEW THING

Then as we finished up a big multi-year campaign, SJG came out with GURPS 4e. The reaction from our group was a universal meh. Everyone owned and had bought into GURPS 3, but no one except me felt like forking over the money for a new edition. More 3e stuff- sure, but no one wanted a new version. I bought it anyway- the nice collector’s set in the slipcase. And I didn’t care for it. I disliked the layout and I disliked the new and much more complicated approach to character building which felt like second-hand Champions. The few modest changes they had made- to costs for Strength and the method for Passive defense made sense, but little else worked for me. Still, I held out great hope for the revised version of the magic system. Perhaps now we’d get a more flexible, interesting, and less straight-jacketed set of ideas. We didn’t. GURPS Magic 4e ended up bundling together the previous two spell books and only making changes to fit with the core shifts. I even held out hope that the new GURPS Thaumatology would offer other options, but if anything it presented other dense mechanics, equally or more restrictive.

And that was it for us. I suspect everyone still has their copies of GURPS 3, but we haven’t played it in eight years. I don’t see if popping up anytime soon. GURPS offered some of the best low-powered adventuring, but we’ve moved on to other games. Perhaps we might take it up again, but I doubt it. It has likely entered into the graveyard of games for our group. It is recalled fondly and much beloved- and I suspect many of the awesome sourcebooks will stay on our shelves for years. 

PROS (for 3e)

• Highly customizable and easily adaptable 
• Interesting damage mechanics
• Great for lower powered or "normals" games
• Relatively simply character creation mechanics
• Abstracted and loose system for advantages and disadvantages
• Some crunch to the combat
• Many great and rich sourcebooks
• Relatively fast to resolve- easy dice mechanics

CONS

• Weirdly complicated mechanics for some systems (vehicles, Martial Arts)
• Overly detailed combat mechanics, including 1 second rounds (can be stripped out and ignored) 
• Balance Issues (requiring tweaks if you're worried about that)
• Unfun Magic System (to be clear: IMHO and that of our group)
• Math and more math in 4e
• Doesn't handle higher powers as well
• Requires a good deal of hacking to get it into the shape you want (social combat, alternate magic, etc).  

The Place of Dead Games: Champions

Second in a series on games I loved, but no longer play. You can find Part One: Rolemaster here and Part Three: GURPS here.

ZERO HOUR

By 1981 I’d been playing for a few years. Most of that involved TSR products- D&D, AD&D, Top Secret, Boot Hill, Gamma World- they had a lock on things. They had a few multi-line competitors in Chaosium (weird fantasy and Call of Cthulhu), GDW (Traveller if you liked hard sci-fi), and FGU (complex and hard to get games like Space Opera & Aftermath or oddballs like Bunnies and Burrows). Other companies had one-shot games like the first superhero games. That genre kicked off with Superhero 2044, a terrible set of rules that grabbed everyone’s attention. By the time I started “playing” it, the older generation of gamers had already moved on to Villains & Vigilantes first edition. They played V&V the first time I got to sit in on a session of my older sister’s group. She ended up stuck with me at the game shop for some reason. The group was code-named "Duel" and I rolled up a character, Darkcat, with Claws, Darkness Control, and Revivification. I loved superhero stuff and once I tried V&V I switched to that. But then my sister came back from a local convention carrying a new game she’d seen demo’d: Champions. It didn’t look like any other game out there, it didn’t read like any other game out there, and you didn’t make characters like any other game out there. You built characters.

Quickly- and I mean super-quickly- Champions invaded and split the gamers in my neck of the woods. If you’d been playing supers for some time and you liked story, then you probably focused on V&V. But if you liked crunch, simulationism, detailed combat, game balance, and being able to make exactly what you wanted- they you went with Champions. Over time, the latter won out- with V&V remaining on the fringes as a soft option until Marvel Supers and DC Heroes popped up later. It took me a long time to “get” Champions even though I read and played it repeatedly. I wanted to learn the system because I loved supers. That runs a close second behind fantasy as my favorite genre- and I’m good at running it. That may sound aggrandizing, but I know my strengths . Equally I know my weaknesses- sci-fi, 1920’s Call of Cthulhu, Pulp, or any kind of military game.

CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS

Champions became dominant superhero game among the older gamers I looked up to and hung out with. They often ran “Open Combats” when GMs didn’t have a game ready. The apparent balance of the system allowed for arena-style fights without a referee. I tried to get a handle on the mechanics- making up characters and running games for my peers. Mostly I fell back to using the various Enemies sourcebooks. College eventually pulled off most of those older gamers and the seed of my group formed. Around this time we began to see variations on Champions- Super Agents, Strike Force, Golden Age of Champions, Espionage and Danger International. This last game really demonstrated the power of the system and became the basis of a number of reskins and variations. One segment of gamers in our area started the Aegis campaign, which would eventually become one of the longest running in the country. I would play in it for a time years later.

Our group split between Champions and DC Heroes. The former became the basis of many serious campaigns, including a Watchmen style game I ran on and off for years. The later became the fun pick-up game of choice. DC Crisis on Infinite Earths drove many back to reading their comics. Character creation could still be a huge pain, but DC Heroes seemed to have faster combat. Eventually the rapid change-over of editions killed off the game for us. Mayfair focused heavily on modules over sourcebooks, which left many purchasers out in the cold. Champions, on the other hand, remained and expanded.

KINGDOM COME

What really put the stake in the heart of other superhero rpgs around here was Champions 4th Edition. It did everything right. With a bright cover by legendary comic artist George Perez and a new complete approach, it brought in new players and reinvigorated old ones. They fixed problems, retooled elements but mostly kept things intact. Creating a distinct line for HERO system also encourage new people to try out the engine. Where GURPS had led they followed. It helped that Champions 4e also had some excellent supporting material, including Ninja HERO and Dark Champions, both of which spawned multiple campaigns in our area. Champions 4e remains my version of the game. It helps that my late friend Barry helped illustrate it. His drawing of a typical gaming group arguing includes me.

You also can’t underestimate the importance of the Heromaker software in pushing the game forward. Champions 4e came out in 1989, and it did well. In 1993 Heromaker appeared and everyone I knew who played and had a computer bought and used it. Eventually they released a deluxe version bundled together with the core book. Heromaker offered the first truly useful piece of software for gaming. There had been DM assistant programs before, but nothing with this utility. Champions character creation involved math, look-ups, and moving calculations. Heromaker streamlined all of that. It showed what computers could offer at the table- assisting with the most mechanically heavy portion of the game.

Hero System broadly, and Champions in particular, powered many campaigns I ran, played in, or heard about in our area. It competed with GURPS for dominance in our groups. At the same time, I saw less and less talk about that among new players. Superhero games, strangely, took a hit in the 1990s in our neck of the woods, despite the boom cycle in comic books. New players moved to AD&D, White Wolf, Deadlands, or Rifts. Gamers with more eclectic tastes went to On the Edge or Ars Magica. You ended up with old blood clinging to the system and new players ignoring it. Despite fantasy, supers, SWAT, and other games happening in it, Champions lost ground. The d20 explosion only accelerated that process. In 2002, Hero Games released HERO 5. Even those of us who enjoyed the system didn’t pick it up. We’d been happy with 4e.

DAYS OF FUTURE PRESENT

But the edition switch isn’t what pushed me out of Champions. For years we’d joked about how long combats took. When I ran, I wouldn’t start a fight past a certain time because I knew we wouldn’t be done with it for at least two hours, if not longer. As well, I just wasn’t as good at Champions as my players. I never managed to develop the expertise they had in character creation, managing maneuvers, and playing the board. They always wiped the table with balanced adversaries I created. When I crafted overpowered villains, they’d still destroy them, but then spend the last part of the session complaining about how unfair the fight had been. Over time I’d gained mastery of other systems, but Champions always smacked me around. Still it did super-powers so well that I stuck with it. The straw for me came in trying to teach the game to a completely new group of people. They’d played other rpgs, but Champions absolutely left them cold. They had played other faster, easier, and less convoluted systems. Even my wife, a database admin and former math teacher became stumped at the table. Yes, we could have learned the game and perhaps in time it would have felt natural, but it would have been a slog. Why should I do that when other, better options exist? Games with fun combat, faster resolution, and easier character creation.

HERO system and Champions changed and influenced gaming. I think that gets lost when people dismiss it as a math exercise. It offered a new and systematized approach to character creation. Melee and Wizard might have had the first point-buy mechanics, but Champions took that in a completely new direction. It broke down the building blocks and gave players and GMs a construction set, the Legos of gaming. Many, many of my favorite moments in gaming come from HERO system campaigns. But most of that comes from general play- not from combats, not from character creation, and not from session prep. Yet we still have several players in our group with an abiding love for the game. It is a great game, but not a great one for me.

PROS

• Customizable character creation
• Handles super-powers extremely well
• Great mechanics for balancing characters: damage vs. speed
• Granularity to the mechanics make it adaptable to many settings
• Interesting damage division between Body and Stun, Lethal and Killing, Standard and non-Standard effects

CONS

• Complex character creation
• Heavy time investment on the GMs part- really requires GMs stat things out fully
• Extremely long combat resolution time- even with a skilled GM and experienced players
• Intimidating character sheet- not particular intuitive to teach IMHO. I know others have had better success with this
• Crunch emphasis over story emphasis- mechanized (YRMV)
• Handles normals OK, but does better at higher power levels
• Experienced players make starting players’ builds look weak

The Place of Dead Games: Rolemaster

I ALONE TO ROLL MY TALE...

I remember playing Monopoly, Clue, and Life growing up and enjoying them. Until I stopped enjoying them. I played Star Fleet Battles through expansions and editions until I realized I didn’t want to any more. I played Micro-Armor, Napoleonics, and Warhammer 40K but I don’t anymore. And in each of those cases, I don’t have any real feeling of nostalgia- no desire to go back and play it again. It isn’t so much about new games grabbing my attention, but what I got out of those games being less important now. With RPGs, my feeling’s a little different. I can’t think of any rpg I played in the past that I wouldn’t go back and try again- if someone I knew was pushing it. I might do so reluctantly, more in some cases than others. But I don’t have the sense of “Nope, not again” that other games give.

But many things would have to line up to get me to the table for some. I have three game systems I played for years- multiple campaigns, characters, groups, and stories. Then I put them aside. For many people I know D&D would be on this list. But D&D never held on as a solid option. I started with it- learning from the tan box and then moving on to the Holmes box and then AD&D. But I didn’t play anything long term- pick-up games and some modules. I don’t recall ever having a character last for more than a level or two. In high school I ran AD&D briefly, but eventually dropped it in favor of other games and systems. The last time we went back to play it long-term ended up a tongue-in-cheek parody game that lasted for several months.

GENERATIONS

In our area, a split happened pretty early. We had a faction of older gamers who’d come out of the wargames tradition to D&D. They saw it as a strategic game of the GM trying to kill the players. We also had a younger gaggle of players who pretty much bought TSR games. But we also had my sister’s age range- a large cohort who tried new games of all kinds and set some of the tastes for the area. That produced a focus on V&V (and then Champions), Call of Cthulhu, and oddly Rolemaster. RM became the go-to fantasy system for people wanting to do more. Still young, I had the chance to sit in and watch a couple of RM sessions run by a GM named Matt Myers. He blew me away with the level of detail, both in world building and rules. I wanted to be that kind of GM- spinning a world that players talked about after the game, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the setting I’d created. I was in Middle School, so sitting in on a game run by these older players (seniors and college age!) had a huge impact.

Not long after I watched those sessions, I actually got to try out Rolemaster. As a system it had some problems. Early on it had presented itself as a set of options to bolt on to other FRPGs. Spell Law, Campaign Law, and Arms Law came out of the early tradition of third party products trying to expand and offer new options. In some cases, they offered new games which looked like old games (Arduin). In others, they presented generic options which could be tacked on…maybe (The Compleat Alchemist). Rolemaster straddled that line. It stood out in presentation with everything printed on parchment-style paper and some books on heavy cardstock. When I actually first played RM I didn’t like it. At first level I had one spell- "Boil Water," which couldn’t be used to actually hurt anyone.

TO THE TABLES

However in high school the first seeds of the steady group I’d play with for the next decade began to form. We had a mix of players my age and four years older. One GM, Paul Dunivent, made Rolemaster his own. He bought up everything for it- the Vog Mur and Iron Wind modules as well as the newly released Rolemaster Companion. Iron Crown had just redone RM in a more accessible approach- not the later red cover edition, but a reprinting and reorganization that made the game feel complete. Bizarrely, Paul combined the high-power gameplay of Rolemaster with the low-fantasy setting of Harn. Somehow it worked- particularly because Paul mostly used it for place names rather than themes. We played a lot Rolemaster, exploiting loopholes in the system and trying to interpret the rules as best we could. A couple of times I played it at conventions only to discover very different interpretations of the mechanics. Our campaigns for the next several years broke into one of four groups- Rolemaster, Superhero, GURPS, and other weirdness (including AD&D nostalgia). We played every Friday and Saturday night on a weekly basis.

All through high school and college, Rolemaster became more and more complicated. Well, not complicated- because you could really make it as complex as you wanted. Instead ICE kept putting out new options and supplements. We bought all of the Rolemaster Companions, of course. But we also bought the Creatures and Treasures books, War Law, Sea Law, Shadow World, the Alchemy Companion, the Arms Companion, Spell Users Companion, and eventually the power-gamer crazy-assed supplement the Elemental Companion. I ran and played that flavor up through the late 1990’s You had to pick and choose your poison from the system- which classes actually fit, which spell lists didn’t break the game, which skills of the hundreds would actually get used. We had a good time with it over many campaigns.

CLEANING UP

Then we switched over to Rolemaster Standard System, a retooling of the basic engine (also called RM 3e). It consolidated the rules, cleaned up the skill system, and tried to make it feel like a coherent and complete system. It still had optional bits- but the supplements offered more bolt-ons than new approaches to the rules. The switch ended up being fairly painless- except for the price of buying new books. I ran a complete multi-year campaign using it, as well as a reskin to handle Legend of the Five Rings. A couple of other people ran campaigns as well. However the change to something less slap-dash cost Rolemaster something. Before it had been f*cking insane. I mean seriously crazy with all of the bits, bobs, dials. Look at all of the stuff going on in the Rolemaster Companions I-VII plus the others and try to stitch that together. Even basic concepts- like initiative-- could have several parallel complicated and arcane rules versions. And part of the charm of the game lay in that weirdness. When they clean it up it lose some of that magic.

But more importantly, it felt like too much work for what you got out of it. Character creation and advancement became a bear. The power curve as you advanced become silly. Plus I lost some of my appetite for a combat heavy fantasy campaign. I wanted more of a balance- between the low-power fantasy I got in running GURPS 3e (the other big fantasy system I used) and this old-school power game. In the end, I packed up all of my RM stuff and handed them off to another player. They had fond memories of the games and tried it, but eventually ditched in favor of 3.5 and then Pathfinder. Rolemaster hugely influenced my gaming- showing me lots of options and forcing me to really gain system mastery in order to make the game hum. But I don’t think I’ll ever run it again. At times I have nostalgia and consider what it might be like to run from just Character Law, Spell Law, and Arms Law, but I think better of it. I have other game systems I’d requiring less effort to push uphill. These that’s that really important to me: I don’t want to fight with the game system I’m running.

PROS

• Tons of cool chrome including many, many interesting character classes
• Love the concept of classes partially defined by the costs paid for different abilities and skills
• Gonzo world suggested by the mechanical choices
• Combat resolution system- to hit and criticals- remains tremendously flavorful and cool
• Wide ranging magic system

CONS

• Incoherence throughout the system
• Too many skills divided and subdivided
• High randomness
• Too long to make a character
• Many core systems like actions ended up over-complicated
• Multi-page character sheets
• The power of magic at upper levels
• Spells lists often felt samey
• Too many rules in too many different places
• Wealth of options paralyzed as much as it freed
• Had players in the group who absolutely hated it, but no one who absolutely loved it 

First in a series on games I loved, but no longer play. You can find Part Two: Champions here and Part Three: GURPS here. 

Seasonal Events and the Clan Campaign in L5R

BLESSINGS OF THE DRAGON

I haven’t written much about my current L5R campaign, but it continues on quite well. I’ve found a few rules tweaks I need to make to the homebrew system but nothing has broken. The players are members of a new family of the Dragon clan, occupying lands formerly of the Lion. The campaign’s set in the Clan War era, following a version of the Scorpion Clan Coup which didn’t exile them (long story). The group built their family in a collaborative session you can read about here. I’ve also written about how this Clan-based campaign works (and how it borrows liberally from John Wick’s excellent Blood & Honor). The campaign takes place over the course of years with players investing in and developing their region. Each season we do a few sessions of adventures and then transition to the next. In between seasons players make choices. I’ll talk more about those picks in another post. Today I want to talk about how I’ve used those break moments as an opportunity to develop history and get story inspiration.

SEASONAL EVENTS

To add variety I developed a system to add events for each season transition. I began by putting together a list of random events- abstract phrases and descriptions more than anything specific. I own several games (Red Tide, Birthright) with random nation event tables. At first I lifted just from those, resulting in about 200 different items. Then I realized that the Legend of the Five Rings CCG has a massive range of descriptive phrases I could borrow from Event and Action cards. It too some time, but I pulled names from an online card manifest. Then I had to go through to weed out duplicates, change overly specific references, and cull odd ones. I ended up with a list of 1000 random events. Some would be pretty easy to figure out: A Plague Spreads, Bountiful Harvest, Bandit Raids. But most of them would require some serious interpretation. Some examples: A Matter of Honor, I Know That Trick, Living Death.

You can see the full list here.

My reading depend on where the event happens. I decided that each season I would make three sets of three event pulls. The first would be “national” events affecting the Clans or the Imperial House. The second would be “neighbors” affecting the families of the clans directing bordering the players’ province. Last would be the province itself which I broke down into ten areas (N, S, E, W, Center, Main City, Significant Site, Retainer Families, Borderlands, Rumors). These are on random tables. For example in the first season I came up with the following results for the transition from Spring to Summer.

NATIONAL

• Phoenix: Last Line of Defense: Over the years, Shugenja have requested the restoration of the office of the Jade Champion. The Phoenix have always blocked that. Oddly they have recently established a new office within their clan with a mandate much like that of the jade Champion, under the auspice of the Elemental Council. Asako Togama has taken up the role.
• Unicorn: Lean Times: Word has begun to leak out that a series of accidents destroyed a good deal of the Unicorn food stores. Combined with the drop in general production from the heartland (GM’s note- as a result of the war which saw the PC’s family taking over certain Lion regions) the Unicorn have been hard pressed. GM Note: This event has had some direct impact on the game, as the Unicorn represent an important potential ally. The group decided they would quietly work to make sure that Unicorn smuggling would be given more room. The Magistrate PC spoke with the Unicorn trade representative about the matter- gaining some obligations from the clan. That an excellent move that the group came up with quite quickly.
• Dragon: Treachery Exposed: Mirumoto Daini declared Mirumoto Harutane as traitor to the Dragon. He and his two sons have been asked to commit seppuku for their treason. He and his eldest complied, but his youngest son, Mirumoto Mishikado fled with his wife (formerly of the Agasha). Harutane is said to have been carrying on treasonous negotiations with the Unicorn, though what exactly happened remains uncertain outside the Clan Champion’s council.

NEIGHBORS

• Lion: Matsu: Destined Enemies: Matsu Tsuko, Clan Champion and daimyo, clashed with Akodo Kage over leadership within the Lion. This has forced many within the family to take sides.
• Lion: Matsu: Light of the Sun Goddess: A minor shrine to the Sun Goddess experienced a visitation from Ameratsu. She appeared and placed a wakizashi within the shrine which gleams like the sun. The Matsu and Kitsu are currently discussing the nature of the visitation. GM Note: I’ve developed this further with the Emperor intervening and declaring that the Matsu must hold a tournament in order to gift the weapon to a worthy champion. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to maneuver the PCs there- but I have a couple of ideas about that.
• Unicorn: XXXXX XXXXX: Skirmishes continue in the lands between the Scorpion and Unicorn. Infiltrators from both sides continue to fight the war, despite the Imperial edict against open conflict. Rumor has it that the Moto found and raided a significant Scorpion site. GM Note: I don’t want to say what the event was- as some of my players read this, but there’s a secret hidden there.

PROVINCE

• Borderlands: Glimpse of the Unicorn: The north has seen a flurry of Unicorn activity- smugglers, infiltrators, and the like. GM Note: I tied this into the earlier national event, suggesting that this came from desperation on the part of the clan.
• Rumors: Malevolent Creed: Stories have reached the main city of Maru Katei of strange travelling monks within the province. They seem to be agitators, speaking quietly and subtly against the Celestial Order. Some suggest they spread a strangely twisted version of the Tao. Exactly who and what they are remains uncertain.
• Central Region: Demagogue: Abbot Matahei, senior monk of the Monastery at Rekiju has been in at Maru Katei visting the shrines and sites related to his order. His monastery, the most important in the province, is dedicated to Fortunism. (GM Note: The players selected a monastery as one of their provincial resources). Rekiju has two major sites dedicated to Bishamon and Sudako. Matahei has been speaking about the importance of the fortunes in the province. In this he has been quietly suggesting that the common folk avoid adopting the more kami and Taoist tendencies of their new Dragon overlords. While he hasn’t made any direct comment on the new daimyo, he could become an irritant.

GM Note: This ended up inspiring a set of episode for the current season. The group has tried to track these strange monks with no great success. More importantly, they opted not to confront Abbot Matahei directly. Instead while nearby, they paid a call on Rekiju and made a positive impression, albeit one laced with the implication that the monks needed to fall into line. They backed that up by uncovering a Bloodspeaker conspiracy to burn the monastery down and increase tensions in the area.

OVERALL

We’ve only had one seasonal transition so far, but the next is coming up fairly soon. I’m usually not a big one for random tables, but I’m pleased with this. It has given me a number of ideas about plots and events for the campaign. In a superhero campaign, I usually offer “news” briefings with lots of plot possibilities the group can pick through. This has a similar function. It also offers a sense of the broader world as a whole. There’s a freedom for me in letting these events determine Rokugan’s current path. 

Eternal Lies: Trail of Cthulhu Contest Result

Last week I posted a contest. Pelgrane had thoughtfully donated a copy of their new hardcover campaign Eternal Lies for Trail of Cthulhu. I asked those who wanted a shot at it to leave a comment, including a detail to use for an NPC in a ToC campaign. From the comments on my blog and on the G+ thread, I put together a list of names and then used a random number generator to pick one. The winner is:

Jesús Fernández Vallejo

Thanks to everyone who participated and came up with awesome (and often awful) NPC details. I'll put together a post of all those ideas next week. 

Update: 
Update: I have not heard from the winner with 48 hours of announcing. I tried to contact the winner via G+, with no result. Per the rules I set in the contest, I will be generating another result and a new winner. The new winner is: Paul Mitchener. 

Paul, if you could contact me with a mailing address, I can send that out to you this week.