Had our second installment in our series of “lets try these games we’ve always wondered about.” This time I was behind the GM’s screen running a game that’s always rated high on my list: Fading Suns. For this run we used the 2nd edition version of the rules which came out in 1999.
Have an assortment of things that I’ve been mulling around regarding roleplaying games. Let’s see how many I get through, huh?
I’ve been noodling around a bigger post about possible house rules for Shadowrun in order to neuter some of the aspects of it I’m not fond of. I don’t know that I’d actually use any of these rules, but maybe someone would find a use for them.
But that post, combined with having picked up Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy last night (a game I’ve been, in a way, waiting almost 15 years for), I’ve been mulling around aspects of game design that persist in staying around. For some of them it’s probably a matter of target audience. For others, it may just be a matter of design by committee. (As I’m fond of saying, a camel is a horse designed by committee.)
I mean, I can kind of understand why some games having keep track of your individual bits of currency. Shadowrun is all about your gear and using your gear to do missions. Okay, sure. But 7th Sea has a mechanic like that, when it’s supposed to be about buckling your swash and stuff. I think Fading Suns also has that as well, which makes a little bit of sense, but not entirely. As does Dark Heresy. You work for the church, but you have to keep track of how much Throne Gelt you have. I’m a big fan of abstract resource systems, like they have in assorted Storytelling games. I can see why that wouldn’t be a good fit for some groups, but I find it interesting what sort of games persist in treating money that way.
Random elements in character creation continue to survive. Dark Heresy doesn’t have any sort of sissified point-buy system. No sir, they have a hard core “you get one re-roll per stat if you want it, but you gotta keep the new result, n00b” attitude.
And then there’s the dungeon crawl. You can’t seem to have a fantasy game of any sort without having the option of going into ancient ruins and looking for cool swag. 7th Sea and Fading Suns both have options for that built into their cosmology. The one time I played in a canned adventure for Legend of the Five Rings, we went through a dungeon in the big finale. Even Exalted has it. In Exalted you are supposed to be larger-than-life demigods that will change the world. Their sample adventure that they’ve used for both editions? “The Tomb of Five Corners,” in which you put your characters through a very basic dungeon.
Now, there are of course many games that don’t have this aspect to them. But I find this lurking around the edges more than I’d expect. Especially in games where I wouldn’t expect it. I’m certain that there’s a marketing reason behind these choices. But I wonder how much of it is just due to inertia.
Anyway, I need to skedaddle, but I thought I’d at least toss this out there since I haven’t posted on here in a bit.
I’m not sure how many Sandman fans read this, but for several years now I’ve been trying to figure out how to adapt the storyline from “World’s End” to a one-shot. The basic shtick is that an odd band of people from different times and realities all end up in an inn as reality is torn assunder about them. To pass the time, they tell stories. Each of the stories revolves around the character Dream in some fashion.
That’s always seemed like a great parallel to the giant Shadow storm in Courts of Chaos and so I’ve wondered how I could adapt it to Amber in some fashion.
My first attempt had revolved around players having standard Amber characters basically playing Baron Munchausen, while also trying to obtain from the other characters something that their character required but was in the possession of another character. I did a trial run of it locally, and it sucked pretty hard. It could have been re-worked, but it was pretty iffy to begin with so I shelved the whole thing.
Today it occured to me that it may work if each player were to essentially run a mini-game, each about an hour at length. So, each player would present the game as the story their character is telling, but the other players would play out the story themselves. I started to scratch that idea, since getting people to offer to GM is a pain in the ass in the first place. Getting people to sign up for a game where they would be expected to GM would be a failure from the get-go.
But then a devil on my shoulder cleared his throat and said, “Well, what if each player just had to come up with a concept, perhaps even at the game itself, and then the other players may just have to come up with simple, easily defined characters and the whole game was some player-narrated story-game?”
And that is when I knew there was no God.
Now I have to see if I have the patience or stomach to come up with a simple story-game mechanic. I could probably use something poached from InSpectres or PTA, but ultimately I’d want something that would allow players to come up with a broadly defined character in under a minute.
The earliest I could probably run this is ACUS, which would give me several months to try and do a trial run of it.
I just wrapped up a six-session Amber campaign. (It was intentionally six sessions. It wasn’t a matter of me just snapping, deciding I hate everyone and just killing the game. I’ve only done that a couple times. Really.) It had involved a good chunk of experimentation with blending in elements of a few other games, including Apects from FATE/Spirit of the Century. I had mixed experiences with the mechanical portion of the game, so I thought I’d share what I dragged into this game, how I felt about it and then wrap it all up with a broader discussion on the concept of resource management and how I fail with it.
Following up from this earlier post, I spoke with the wife a bit more about what it is she liked about Tim Power’s Last Call. With it comes the question of, “How do you pull this off in a traditional RPG?”
I’ve had a bunch of half-developed ideas for posts, involving social contracts, factions in roleplaying groups, story share vs. mechanical balance, etc. But I haven’t finished any of those posts. And this one isn’t one of those. I’m mainly posting this because I don’t have time to finish the others and this is more of a question than a commentary.
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I’ve been poking through Spirit of the Century again. johnpaul613 has been talking about using FATE-style Aspects in Amber and it’s made me want to give them a second look. I was hesitant to just toss them in with out much experience with FATE, but now I’m feeling jazzed about the idea. (I’ve managed to temporarily get my gag reflex regarding FUDGE under control.)
While looking at the book I wondered, “How do they handle advancement with this?” So I flip to the back and read through it a bit, and noticed this chunk:
Player characters should always receive the same amount of on-sheet rewards, in order to make sure that everyone remains a peer of one another. Giving out advancement only to those who manage to attend one or more sessions means you’re penalizing those players who may have busier schedules. It’s impolite; don’t do it. The game will benefit when the characters are mutual peers. No one should come back from a playing hiatus to discover he’s become the sidekick.
This is something I’ve struggled with over several campaigns, and something I was planning on dealing with a bit more strictly in future games. So this paragraph gave me pause.
My thoughts behind the cut.
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I’ve been mulling around the idea of sparklypoo GMing lately. Also, it has occured to me that I don’t think I’ve ever explained my sparklypoo theory at any length outside of my private blog, and even then only in the comments of a post. So here are assorted sparklypoo thoughts.
Since ACNW ’07, Amber has been on my mind a lot lately. I’ve also started re-reading the Amber series. I’m in the early part of Guns of Avalon as of this morning. I’ve been thinking about what I’d want the next Amber campaign I run to be like. It’s also prompted me to look up some of the old maxims that people have posted over the years, such as those posted by Arref and Sol.
Assorted thoughts behind the cut.
