Re-Write Pendragon? Ridiculous

My original plan for today's post was going to be something like "Young Turks and Old Fools" and discuss the condensed timeline I've been working on since Friday or so. See, in Pendragon (at least, in the 3rd edition...the version I'm using for this Crowns of Blood thang) TIME is very important. Not in the Gygaxian, old school AD&D way (where every second, minute, and game day counts towards your character's eventual collapse), but in way of the saga, of significance of time passing, of continuity.

Okay...that probably doesn't make much sense. Let me scratch it a little bit.

Pendragon is a game set in Arthurian (i.e. King Arthur) fantasy England. It contains a timeline beginning in 495 CE (with Uther's death) and chronicling the major events up through 565 CE (the battle of Camlann when Arthur is mortally wounded by Mordred and removed to Avalon). It is meant to encompass the entirety of Arthur's mortal life, from his birth (presumably from the year Uther is slain, since Arthur is Uther's son) until his own end...and the end of the fantasy time about which som many myths and legends and stories have been written. It may not be explicitly written, but the gist I get from reading the rules is that the game is supposed to be folded upon reaching 565...it's a hard end date for the campaign/saga.

Since each game session begins with a new year (the player characters only have one adventure per year), this sets a finite number of game sessions to advance, develop, and play the characters you've created. What's more, it drives home characters' mortality, as they age and (eventually) die, leaving their legacy to be carried on by their children. Building a family and 'passing the torch' are big components of the game.

70 sessions (70 years of adventure) may not seem like a lot (if your group plays weekly or more often) but the finite limit is actually even less than that. While Arthur's timeline extends back to 495, the player characters all begin play in 531, shortly before the Age of Apogee begins, which really only leaves you with one-half of the timeline to explore. By the time your knights come of age, the Round Table has already been established, the King's married Gwen, and Lancelot has established himself as Arthur's greatest knight. Sure, your characters (or their kids) will be witness to the closing tragedies of the story, but mostly you'll be left with roaming around the countryside on knightly adventures, fighting magical beasties and kicking Saxon ass. You don't have to worry about helping unify the kingdom or anything because that all happened while your character was a kid growing up.

Which is fine, because Pendragon's a game about being a knight, not about playing out a company-produced story arc. The set events (Lance and Gwen's adultery, Mordred's betrayal/villainy) aren't anything you can change, but that's not your characters' objective, anyway. Your objective...the objective of all knights...is the pursuit of Glory. Gaining glory (becoming famous for your deeds) is the road to power and prestige. It's the method by which your characters measure their accomplishments; it's the method by which they develop their abilities beyond ordinary levels. Glory is how knights rank themselves against each other...and it is what is passed on to their children.

[well, one-tenth of Glory earned is passed on, anyway]

The Pendragon timeline provides a frame in which to pursue the knightly quest of gaining glory, while the setting provides the justification. And it's a neat little system.

A Song of Ice and Fire, the setting basis for Crowns of Blood, is NOT about winning glory.

In the timeline of the Seven Kingdoms, there's nearly three centuries from the time the continent is united by their dragon-riding conquerors and the "current events" portrayed in the books and television series. Lots of neat things happen in those 300 years. There are rebellions and battles. There are religious wars and religious persecution. There's a war of succession between competing claimants fighting each other on dragon-back...and that's all within the first 150 years. The last Targaryen dragon on Westeross died in in 153 (as they count time); the events of the books begin circa 298. If I really wanted to emulate the scope of Pendragon play, there's a lot of "35 year periods" from which to choose, with plenty of interesting events. But game play is not about "interesting events" in Pendragon...game play is about giving players a lot of leeway (in a specific fantasy setting), allowing them the freedom to develop interesting characters, distinct from each other even while sharing the same class and (basic) background.

That's what I want to do with Crowns of Blood.

Dragons in medieval warfare = grossly unfair.

The problem...well, ONE of the problems...is that the time periods I'm looking at in Martin's setting don't offer the same thing that Pendragon does: namely, a chance to win glory and adventure in a magical land. I want the game to be set in a time period when there ain't no dragons, because I want the play to be about the struggles between rival lords armed and clad in steel. It's still a setting of high passions and extreme personalities and loyalty and family (all themes of Pendragon)...but is that enough to make it compelling? Is it enough to compel players to want to immerse themselves in the game? Because immersion is one of the key objectives of Pendragon. Not exploring dark dungeons or fighting Morgan Le Fay or stopping Mordred from partnering up with the Saxons. It's about living the life of a (romanticized) knight for half-a-year's worth of game sessions.

I'm starting to feel like my initial impressions of Pendragon's suitability for the setting were mistaken. I'm not sure people want to immerse themselves in a world of so much madness and sorrow and death and cynicism. When you're not about winning capital-G Glory, and there's no orcs to pillage for gold, what are you left with? Armored warriors trying to walk a path of honor, but being driven to acts of atrocity and brutality?

So, then, what to do...well, I can't really PLAY anything at the moment anyway (duh) being in Paraguay, but the Game of Thrones marathon continues on the cable, and the project is still interesting. I suppose I have a couple-three options here:

1. Rewrite Martin's setting material to be more more romantically Arthurian (but, then, why not simply play Pendragon?).
2. Rewrite Pendragon to provide some "winning criteria" besides acquiring Glory to make it more true to the setting material.
3. Just "force it." Leave the Pendragon system as is (minor tweaks and setting changes aside), and try to place it in a time period that seems at least "semi-Arthurian."

Of the three, Option 2 would probably be the "best" option...but I'm not going to f'ing rewrite Pendragon. That is a ridiculous idea. You're talking an overhaul, design-wise, and this was something I wanted to do for a one-off campaign...not a book I intend to publish. Even if it WAS something I wanted to publish, I couldn't since the rights to Martin's material are already owned (and being used) by someone else...the best I could do would be to knock-off the setting AND the system. And that's a LOT more work than I want to do.

Hmmm...

After not-very-careful consideration, I think I'll just "keep on keeping on" with Option 3, but brainstorm a little on how to tweak the system mechanic. Maybe give myself a week to mull on it? Sure. If I can't come up with something by next Monday, I'll just table the project indefinitely.

Wargames, RPGs, and Hybrids

I have very little time at the moment, and I may be nursing a bit of a hangover (it's hard to tell...it may just be too little sleep added to stress and subpar nutrition), so this is going to be a shorty of a post.

Ever since dipping my brain back into wargaming (thanks to watching Chirine's videos...see this prior post), I've been in a weird mental space when it comes to the games I'm designing/working on/brainstorming.

You see there's this assumption that I've been living under for awhile that is (I'm starting to think) is not just fallacious, but A Pretty Bad Idea. Namely that these things we call RPGs (like D&D and its different genre'd ilk), while descended from wargaming roots, have evolved beyond those roots into Role-Playing Games which (by my definition) are games that allow one to role-play, that is:

The act of matching the player's objectives to the objectives of the player's character.

Now, some folks may not remember that a few months back I wrote an eleven (or twelve) post essay called On Role-Playing, that wasn't really "on role-playing" so much as a discussion of the particular instructions for role-playing that are found (or rather, NOT found) in various editions of Dungeons & Dragons. The startling thing I discovered was that there was so little instruction to be had on a topic that is so immensely important to the game itself...the thing that makes an RPG so markedly different from other forms of entertainment. At the time, my knee-jerk reaction to this was "bad on you, D&D" as in, it's a bad game that doesn't offer proper instruction for play.

However, I was operating under that aforementioned assumption...an assumption that D&D had crossed a bridge and was no longer a "war-game," but this new, Promised Land Thing of a role-playing game...just a poor one when considering the objectives of role-playing. And like I said, I'm now starting to think that whole assumption is fraudulent. D&D never "crossed the bridge." D&D IS "the bridge."

In other words the game (and many self-identified RPGs like it) are HYBRIDS. They are not true role-playing games, they are not war-games, they are something in between.

[okay, so just FYI...it looks like I have some more time to devote to this post after all...yay!]

The "action" of the game isn't solely confined to an imaginary space, despite the implicit language of the rules. The concrete, numerical ranges of the game require real measurements, even in virtual space. These ranges include movement, they include distance for combats (both melee and missile), they include the effective range and area of spells and special monster attacks (like dragon breath); they include the measurements of dungeon maps. The inclusion of these ranges prevents the game from being a product solely of the imagination, because they have to be taken into consideration, rather than used only in the abstract.

What would it mean to be "in the abstract?" Well (for example) why not simply say, "the opponent is in missile range" or not? Why not simply say, "I cast charm person at the ogre," as opposed to checking range. Why is granularity important to speed, when you could simply say "you're walking or running" and roll dice (with or without adjustment) to see if you can evade pursuers?

Come to think of it, using real world scale for TIME (ten minute "turns," ten second/one minute "rounds") likewise adds real world considerations (and therefore restraints) on the virtual world. Why not simply have turns and/or rounds and not worry about the time consideration?

The reason, of course, is that the game still has one foot stuck in its wargaming roots.

Now please, this doesn't mean that role-playing can't happen in a game of D&D (even if instruction is a bit inadequate). As I said, these games are hybrids. But the only reason for keeping real time and real distance in the game (as opposed to letting them slide into the abstract) is to preserve the strategy and tactics associated with them. As Gygax says on the subject (paraphrasing the 1E DMG), some folks are going to waste their time, while the 'superior' player will make good use of it.

Players lacking in wargaming roots may simply choose to ignore things like weapon versus AC or length of weapon or speed factor (1st edition PHB), instead simply taking the weapon with the biggest damage die affordable and useable by their character. I can remember my early days of AD&D when the only melee weapons being selected were two-handed swords, long swords, and bastard swords...depending on whether or not you wanted to wear a shield. Later on, we started incorporating things like speed factor and weapon class versus AC to spice things up (especially as more and more of our opponents became high level NPCs, i.e. spell-casters and other weapon/armor users). But as an adult, returning to the D&D game for its role-playing aspects, I found the B/X lack of intricacy to be preferable...after all, if I wanted to play a war-game, I'd play something like Warhammer or Mordheim. Give me optional encumbrance, abstract weapon damage, and a wider latitude for my gaming pleasure.

[before I go any further with this thing, I should probably explain why "real" time and distance are kind of antithesis to "true role-playing." To be brief, having to account for these things mean a certain degree of metagaming, which can take one OUT of the mode of "playing in character," thus hindering the ability to role-play by definition. Except for those with real military (or perhaps architectural) training, we don't usually measure actual distances and times without tape measures and time pieces...things unavailable to your average fantasy adventurer]

SO....having said all that, I should say that I'm NOT faulting D&D (or its many imitators, shared genre or no) with being a "hybrid" game....I'm not disparaging hybrids for being hybrids, in other words. What I'm doing here is ACKNOWLEDGING that this third type of fantasy game exists in place where I used to think there existed only two. I'm adding a category (for my benefit if no one else's) to the general heading of games where people use their imagination and a set of rules for the creation of stories.

[yes, even war games create stories...the end result of a skirmish or battle can be described as "this is what happened" as if an actual event had taken place when, in reality, the only thing that happened is that a game was played. As I've written before, even the basest D&D game creates a story, just not necessarily one that is particularly good, dramatic, or emotionally impactful. Games focused on addressing premise and designed to facilitate story creation...like several indie "Story Now" games...can create fantasies of higher "quality," but the escapism and imagination present in these games (from war-game to RPG) is what links them. At least in my mind]

And so we come to this weird mental space I was talking about, waaaay back at the beginning of this post. As I sit down to write a couple-five, D&D-style games (i.e. "hybrids") I find myself wanting to include rules that push the game either one way or the other...i.e. more "wargamey" or less, rather than split the difference. I find that all the "little adjustments" and "tweaks" that I would give to the D&D system (in hopes of making a "better game") simply - instead - push it more deeply into this weird hybrid realm that I really don't want to spend time in. Because, of course, I like quick-paced games and detest bullet-counting and range-finding in general. Hell, wilderness travel in B/X is so terribly, terribly slow (to play out) that I've tried to find ways to circumvent it completely since...well, since I was ten years old or so. The version in Five Ancient Kingdoms was just one more stab at it, but most likely I'd still "hand wave" travel if I were running a 5AK game in the wilderness. Probably.

But let's not digress too much...here's the thing: one thing people like in their games (including me) is more specificity. Just look at that giant chart of weapons in the 1st edition PHB (or even the 3rd edition PHB)! People love the customization that comes with feats and skills and minor adjustments to characters to get little in-game advantages....and I've tried (in my games) to give folks this, too, while still keeping games streamlined and simple-ish.

HOWEVER, this kind of thing is really only useful in a hybrid game!

In a wargame...even a skirmish-scale one like Mordheim, you want to cut down on excessive characterization in order to keep the game moving. The original Warhammer 40K provided extreme detail and individual characterization, and you can see GW's move away from this with every successive edition (it's just too unwieldy otherwise to play out a battle).  And yet for a game of "pure" role-playing that forgoes actual measurements of time and distance...well, most of these little "extras" are designed to specifically address these measurements (or make an impact through these measurables)!

Okay, now my time really has run out; I've got a kid's birthday party that I've got to get ready for. I'll consider posting some specific examples later (like tomorrow) using an actual game or two I'm in the process of writing up.

Till then.
; )