Fast and Loose

Ran the current version of DMI (superheroes) again yesterday. It worked fine...worked well, in fact...and gave us a session that reached a satisfying conclusion, not much different from what one might expect in a single, standalone issue of your favorite comic book. 

At least, a comic book from "back in the day" (something from my own past: the 70s and early 80s). 

Which, unfortunately, isn't quite what I want. I was hoping for something more cinematic (or serial) in nature, but the only thing "cinematic" was the gusto of violence my players brought to the thing...which isn't terribly unexpected seeing as how that's what they see in cinema hero films. 

In the hands of more serious role-players could this game be turned into something more than a beer-and-pretzels one-off? Mmm...I don't know. The thing worked best running fast-and-loose, with me using my card power (as the GM) to keep a firm hand on the direction we were steering the game. Even so, the narrative control allowed the players had us going in unexpected directions that required a lot of "rolling with it." That might end up being the same even with older, more experienced gamers and is a general pitfall (or feature) of games that share narrative responsibility.

Of course, that's how I designed it to run. Maybe I just don't dig that style of play as much as I thought I did.

The kids DID enjoy the game (which isn't nothing) and they DO like it, but they also told me (unsolicited) that they still prefer D&D. Which, absurdly, still makes me happy for some reason. I guess because it goes to show that AD&D is still "king," and (for me) I like having some consistency in this ever-changing world of ours. Makes me feel comfortable.

So anyway...I think it's time to put down the hero design for a little bit. I'll still tinker with the text/system on the side, but I think it's time I got back to some more "serious" gaming.

It was a nice interlude.

; )

Hammering Away

Mm-mm-mmm.  

Despite what I wrote Sunday, yesterday (Tuesday) was the first opportunity I had to play-test the new game...and that was just fine. I mean, the weather hereabouts has been beautiful and we decided to go on a nature hike instead of gaming (and, yes, actually it was my idea. I'm not worried...it will eventually rain again in Seattle!).

And yesterday was just as nice, but the kids had nothing go on in the afternoon and we were able to hang out on the freshly mowed grass in the sunshine and play. Which was just about perfect (the only issue being the wind which was a constant hazard to our deck of cards).

SO...good testing. Problems were found immediately when we went through the character creation process, but those were quickly ironed out. Procedurally, there were quite a few issues, both in terms of system and...surprisingly...terminology (appears I need to develop some specific definitions for the game's vocabulary in order to make the thing clear in use).  

BUT (in general) play proceeded more-or-less as I imagined, if not exactly as smoothly as I'd hoped. The scene creation/shared narrative thing worked very well, the kids adapting to it quickly, and even my youngest was able to set up a scene that resolved the story/session in decent fashion. Though both kids ended up turning evil and joining the villain (that was unexpected). Neither particularly liked this outcome, but both enjoyed the game and want to play again.

I begin to see now how it was that Gygax developed D&D using his children and their friends. I see why some things were emphasized and others weren't and how various systems changed (to the Advanced version of the game) as the original players grew older. EGG, of course, wrote for (and played with) adults as well, but there's something about developing a game in the crucible fire of your kids' delight that is both inspiring and limiting (in the sense of "boundary setting") that is quite different from simply theory-bashing or doing design with/for adults/peers.

Anyway. More later. This is yet another "placeholder post" and not meant to be particularly profound. Stuff happening.

Revisiting Old Haunts

Sunday. Our last day of Easter vacation (kids are going back to school tomorrow) and I, for one, am a little sad for it to be coming to an end. It's been enjoyable for the whole family, despite not really doing much of anything...I think the kids really needed a break from the "grind" of clock-punching for school. All of us are a little more slack these days...the wife even said she's not looking forward to her office reopening (she's been working from home since last February), and I'd imagine there are a lot of folks who feel the same after adapting to the amorphous Covid-induced limbo of "shelter-in-place."

One thing we didn't get to, though, was much gaming. Sad but true...the boy had a full schedule of sports this week (soccer Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday; baseball on Wednesday; and then both a baseball game AND a soccer game yesterday).  Today he's sleeping in...giving those poor legs a rest...but the last couple weeks of the soccer season look to be equally as busy as it continues to overlap with the Little League (and my daughter's first season of LL is slated to start in a week as well). Seems he may have finally been "called up" to a higher tier in soccer (that's the reason for the extra practices)...just as he was getting ready to chuck the thing in frustration. For me, I'm just happy I can watch my kids play in sunny weather. Yesterday was a beaut of a day (and the boy went 3 for 4 with two runs and an RBI as the leadoff hitter...what a stud!).

D&D. I think we'll be playing some D&D today. Need to exercise the "mind muscles," too.

However, while I have the minute to type, I wanted to blog a few words on my superhero side project. Even though I haven't been gaming this week, I have been designing like a bit of a madman. Even done a bit of writing, though most of that's going to need changes. Thing is, I've been tweaking my whole concept, and while I still like the idea of a game focused on the "superteam" I find I need something altogether different for play-testing. Because the fact is, I don't HAVE a "team" of players to draw upon.

But it's not just that. This week, I've found myself going back to an old well that I abandoned far too soon. Specifically I've been revisiting my old DMI (Deal Me In) game system and Legendary Might (my supers version of DMI). Last tinkered with circa 2015, there were a lot of reasons I set the thing aside:

• a lack of "robustness" in game play and character generation
• lack of system for incorporating human elements to contrast with super slugfests
• need for a modified card play mechanic to allow character effectiveness without "breaking the bank"
• need for a more abstract combat system, incorporating power usage and comics/film "violence"
• need for procedural systems that create more than just fight scenes

A lot of these things are interrelated (duh) and while I had ideas for them, they also represented a lot of work (brain sweat) that I just couldn't put together back in 2015, mainly because I was dealing with the upended life and culture shock of moving to Paraguay (not to mention a new baby). Game design in general (for yours truly) was being "backburnered" in those days, and it's not all that surprising I let the thing get all dusty and forgotten on Ye Old Laptop's hard drive.

Stuff happens.

Welp, I've cracked it out of storage and started hammering away again. And with the steady diet of superhero fare we've been ingesting this week (old X-Men films, the Falcon/Winter Soldier series, the old Fantastic Four movies, Guardians of the Galaxy, the entire two seasons of Agent Carter)...well, it's no wonder really. I've got heroes on the brain.

And, astounding as it might seem, it feels like I'm making actual progress (at least, from a design perspective). Much as I was enjoying my MSH-HU mashup of design, the system was feeling far too wargamey for the genre...and the more I wrote, the more I found myself filing off...or amputating altogether...systems that were too specific, and not abstract-y enough.

Because...well, look. When you try to model comics with reality-based specificity (say, something like GURPS, or Champions, or DC Heroes), you find yourself running into all sorts of problems because neither comic books, nor films, give a rip about emulating "reality" UNLESS it is in service of storytelling. How fast is the Flash? As fast as he needs to be. How strong is the Hulk? As strong as is necessary. "Reality" only matters when it makes a decent plot point (like Flash vaporizing himself by pushing past the lightspeed barrier). The laws of physics have never applied to Superman's abilities...only the laws of a "good story."

Yet we know that not all superhuman abilities are created equally. Spider-Man and Luke Cage are plenty strong, but they can't do what Thor or the Hulk can do. Many comic book characters have an agility the equivalent of an "Olympic gymnast;" but even in gymnastics, some Olympians are better than others on a given day (that's why they give out medals). There are super soldiers and there are super soldiers but there's only one Captain America, and it's not really about the shield and costume. 

Going psychotic...as predicted.

Trying to model these things with specificity in a game is a fool's errand. Which is why games like Jeff Grubb's original MSH and Simon Washbourne's Supers! do such a great job: they embrace the abstraction inherent in the genre. Of the two, I think Grubb has the better design, but it still falls down in three areas for me:

• too much randomness/lack of coherence in character generation
• too much procedural fiat rather than direction in adventure design
• too much "wargame" inherent in the game's logistics (in some ways more "board game" than RPG)

[although the last is somewhat corrected in the Advanced MSH system (doing away with the "area" system) it ends up falling prey to the too much specificity pitfall inherent in other games of the genre]

And it's still a pretty darn good game...probably the best for its genre of any I've read/played. At least, so far as system design is concerned. Which, of course, is why I was looking at a streamlined version of MSH for my own system as recently as a couple weeks back.  It just does a lot of things right.

But Legendary Might, especially in its current incarnation, has (I believe) great potential. And its design is all mine, for a change...not drawing from (or knocking off) some other designer's hard work. That has immense appeal to me, a dude who's made most of his money piggy-backing off concepts pioneered 40+ years ago. For that reason alone, I'd like to make the thing work. No, I'm not the first person to use playing cards as a randomizer, nor am I the first to use cards in conjunction with narrative structure...ain't saying that. But the Deal Me In system is still mine, and the way I'm using it NOW in this game...well, it's kind of exciting. 

I kind of want to play-test it. Sooner rather than later. Maybe today, instead of D&D. Maybe.

Happy Sunday to you all. Hope everyone has a good week going forward. Thanks for taking the time to read!

: )

Of Altered Humans and Hi-Tech Wonders

I've written many times over the years of my love-hate relationship with superhero RPGs. I love them because...well, because the superhero genre appeals to that same part of me that the whole "fantasy role-playing" thing does. I hate them because I've so often been frustrated with the actual products.

Yet the list of supers games I've purchased over the years has continued to expand. I've owned the first two editions of Mutants & Masterminds, as well as Green Ronin's DC Adventures. I've re-purchased Heroes Unlimited Revised and picked up Ninjas and Super-Spies as well. And in edition to the hardcopy of Supers! and Supers! Revised Edition, I've picked up a number of PDFs: Champions for 5th edition HERO, Hero High for M&M, Bulletproof Blues, John Stater's Mystery Men, Barak Blackburn's Capes, Cowls, and Villains Foul...even tracked down  copy of Dragon 47 for Dave Cook's Crimefighters game. This in addition to fat hardcovers of Wild Talents, Mutant City Blues, Champions 4E, and all the many other books I mentioned back in 2010. Oh, yeah, and some other random ones like the original Villains & Vigilantes and "for free" stuff pulled off the internet (one was a 286 page book that's still not worth mentioning by name).

All of which, BTW, are nothing but a small handful of all the superhero RPGs (and material) that have been released over the years. Lowell Francis over at Age of Ravens has a great series of posts reviewing all the superhero RPGs published from 1978-2014 (presumably, his review of 2015 games will come out sometime this year). Certainly recommended reading for anyone interested in the genre (either as a player or designer)...but there's a LOT of ground to cover.

However, most of the ground covered is pretty similar. Aside from the specific settings some of them have, most supers RPGs come in a fairly general package. Characters show up as a set of human-ish attributes (abilities, skills, whatnot), and then have powers added (from a provided list), with an attached system for modeling the kind of comic book antics one expects from a superhero RPG. Similar to the superhero genre of film, character is the main facet/draw of the game (exploration of what the character can do in relationship to the adventure/scenario/story the GM crafts)...however, the amount of character development that occurs varies wildly from game to game, from glacially slow (Marvel Superheroes) to ridiculously fast (Mutants & Masterminds).

That being said, of the variations that do help to distinguish RPGs from system to system, the one that most interests me is the one least often seen within the genre: class-based archetypes. Most supers RPGs eschew any type of D&D-style class system (even the D20-derived M&M) in favor of an open-ended system of character creation. I'm not exactly sure why this is, though I know that a lot of the genre's fans also happen to be folks who HATE class-based systems in RPG design (Barking Alien, I'm looking at you!). Maybe it's because so many (comic book) heroes over the years have defied being pigeon-holed by type? Maybe because there IS only "one type" of superhero: the kind that resolves conflict with (super powered) violence?

[to the fighter class, every problem that arises looks like a combat encounter, yeah?]

Honestly, I don't know. I suppose (putting on My Designer Hat for the moment) that having character classes in an RPG helps distinguish one player's imaginary avatar from another...and such is unnecessary when characters are readily distinct based on their various power suites. That being said, it's certainly possible to categorize power suites by archetype, and certain games have done this...City of Heroes (yes, there was a tabletop RPG based on the MMORPG) and Capes incorporate such categories explicitly in their design, while Mutants & Masterminds did it by way of sample, playable archetypes.

These particular categorizations, however...and simpler categorizations like the original Marvel Super Heroes RPG's "origins" (Altered Human, Mutant, Alien, Robot, and Hi-Tech Wonder)...ignores one of the best benefits of class-based RPG play: variation in play style. Consider D&D as a well-known example: playing a fighter is very much different from playing a magic-user and both are very different from playing a thief or cleric. Each class emphasizes different game systems, requiring different sets of rule mastery AND providing different play experiences. Play in MSH doesn't differ from character to character (you are taking an ability or power, rolling on a chart, and trying to get a good "color" result...probably using your best trait, i.e. "the one that will do the most damage" and/or "has the best probability of a good color result"). Capes (as another example) is even more pronounced in its lack of distinction...the systems function exactly the same for each character (regardless of whether or not you are a Brick or a Shooter or an "Animal Avatar"), only the narration differs. The game (like many story-first games) is about how you use the system; the system doesn't offer any variation in form/style of play.

Of the superhero RPGs I've seen, the only one that comes close to delivering class-based play variation on the same level as D&D (or Gamma World or Adventure! or Vampire: The Masquerade or...) is Kevin Simebieda's Heroes Unlimited. And, no, I don't think this is due to any particular forethought or genius of design; instead, it is almost certainly due to the haphazard fashion in which he throws the thing together, marrying different systems that model various comic book tropes while lacking any coherent, unified vision (other than the system for combat). Regardless, the variations in class allow for widely different styles of play...even wildly different styles of chargen!...possibly explaining the longevity of a system that has taken a beating from so many critics of games and design over the years.

Accidental genius? Does it matter?

If it isn't evident from the slant of this post, I should be clear that I am a big fan of class-based design.  It's not the ONLY way to do RPGs...and it's not the only way I design games!...but I think it's under appreciated for what it (potentially) offers. In fact, I should probably write "under appreciated, even by me" because of the three superhero RPGs currently on my design table, two do not utilize class at all, and the one that does does no more than categorize characters by types similar to MSH (normal, mutant, altered human, and non-human). For the first two (both of which are limited in terms of scope and duration), that's okay. For the third, though, I'm thinking I should really reconsider my approach to the thing.

Anyway, I am (as usual) running long on word count and short on time, so I'm going to have to cut off here. However, I do want to leave you with one last thought from my head (which I hope to come back to...perhaps tomorrow). Consider for a moment how the Marvel Cinematic Universe does not own the rights to the X-Men and their associated characters, and how this has influenced the way characters in the MCU are portrayed: there are no mutants. Comic book mutants are a long-running staple of the superhero RPG genre (some RPGs feature them as the ONLY type of character one may play...see Aberrant, Wild Talents, etc.). Do they need to be? Are they necessary for a decent "superhero" RPG? Was it necessary to make the Maximoffs mutants in the latest Avengers film? Do the MCU films suffer for a lack of mutation or "mutant menace?"

But more on that later.

Counting Coins (Part 1)

I've been wanting to write this post since Friday. Unfortunately, I figured that I should probably write a couple-three other posts first in order to "set the stage" for my ideas. But, well, spending the last two days solid on taxes (just got 'em e-filed at 1am this morning, thank you very much) has pushed back all my posting...and anyway, now I've got money on the brain.

[speaking of push-backed posts: still have returned to the Crowns of Blood series and Game of Thrones just started up again...at least in South America. Haven't had a chance to watch it yet...maybe later today...but I'm sure it'll inspire me to get back to my hack of Pendragon]

One of the things I'm doing these days with my designs is to abstract equipment/items, cutting out that particular "hard aspect" of resource management. This is something that's been evolving for me over the last several years. It started a while back with my B/X play when I created basic equipment lists for each class based on a player's 3D6 roll for "starting gold" (I was kind of tired of low-income characters blowing their wad on plate mail and having nothing left over for standard adventuring equipment). A large part of this was in aid of speeding the chargen process: hand the player a card, cross-reference the number rolled and then note your starting possessions. It worked fairly well.

Later, when working up my DMI (card-based) game system, I was even more abstract...the cards dealt to players determined their "important characteristics" (I think I use a different term in the rules, but I don't want to look it up right now), and diamonds dealt to the character's hand represented any kind of important "resources," including special equipment. It was very non-specific, but (without going into too much detail), say you were playing my DMI "supers" game: a character like the Hulk would probably have no diamonds dealt to him (because the Hulk doesn't use equipment), whereas a Batman-type guy would have lots of diamonds to represent the shtick he pulls out of his bat-belt or his various vehicles and Bat Cave and whatnot. The "items" the diamonds represent might change from session to session (just as the specific gear ol' Batman uses changes from adventure to adventure) but the basis of his powers (lots of goodies/gadgets) doesn't change. A Reed Richards type might have a single (big) diamond in his hand to represent the one Earth-shaking invention Mr. Fantastic pulls out of his stretchy brain every few comics.

ANYway...abstract. But not very Old School.

Cry Dark Future...my B/X-based "Shadowrun" style game (which has since morphed into something much more post-apocalyptic) was a return to B/X gear-counting sensibilities. You had "New Dollars" (or whatever) to spend instead of gold, and you were picking up similar NDs from adventures instead of D&D-type treasure...such ca$h being used to provide all the upgrades to your adventurer that you'd expect in an Old School-type game (instead of magic items you're upgrading your automatic weapons and cybernetic-implants, etc. Spell research remains largely the same). Very resource-based in the traditional sense.

However, a funny thing happened during play-testing: I observed (and other groups, too) that players weren't really interested in "bullet-counting." Or worrying about how many hours of juice was in a particular piece of gear. The resource management of individual equipment items was a real secondary concern (if that!) to the slam-bang action of blazing away in cinematic fashion. As opposed to aiding the immersion, forcing players to track every nuanced resource was breaking their immersive process. Asking a sniper character's player what type of ammunition he was going to use for a long shot, he replied "the best one." The granularity of gear wasn't as important to the action at hand. And away, who am I to say how much a bionic limb costs in a futuristic economy?

Plus chargen for a game like CDF takes a shit-long time if players are buying their own gear...there's simply too much, compared to the short lists of D&D.

So when I started revising CDF I figured a way to abstract gear selection. CDF was reworked as a class-based system (with classes determining the character's available suite of cybernetic gear), and then a choice of equipment based on the character's Intelligence (INT) score, such picks being limited when it comes to "expensive" selections from the gear list.

Because no matter how rich characters get, the kind of "missions" they go on in CDF only allows them to carry so much gear anyway. And tying that gear to INT helps to model a lot of real world "inconveniences" in an abstract fashion. Gear that a person forgot to bring (even though he meant to and even laid it out on the table the night before). Gear that's batteries died, or that suffered a break in transport to the drop site. Gear that hasn't been well-maintained due to laziness or ineptitude. Gear that's been misplaced or stolen or sold for food between adventures. Gear that gets brought along but that the character forgets he has in his pocket/pack. Gear that just mysteriously breaks or stops working because you're living in a post-apocalyptic region where resources are scarce to fix or repair equipment...you've got to prioritize what's important. INT determines the absolute number of "useful" pieces of equipment the character has for a particular session...and yes, the number is modified by the character's level of experience (because experienced adventurers are more prepared...duh).

[characters automatically start with a couple weapons regardless of INT, of course, because those are your livelihood and necessary survival tools and I know you're maintaining those without me having to ask]

The most recent stab at a "new" fantasy heartbreaker (which is currently being revised...see last post) uses a similar "useful item" system, except that it's based on an ability score called Wit (because there are seriously learned wizard-types who are a little too addled/befuddled to remember to pack the tinderbox). Now this was fine when my FHB was about heroic heroes doing heroic things and not worrying about finding treasure (they had a much "grander quest" to accomplish). But with the recent revisions...to one of conquest and colonization in a Brave New World...there's a need to account for coin counting and the collection of goodies. After all, in a fantasy adventure game based on treasure hunting, counting treasure is the way we count points.

"JB, you're losing me," says one of my readers. "I can see simplifying gear selection (maybe), but why does that create any issue with acquiring treasure (and counting it) in the 'normal' fashion? You find 2000 shiny gold doubloons, and you get 2000 XP...no big deal, right?" Um, sure, except there's the little part about encumbrance to consider, another thing I intend to abstract.

[see, this is why I needed to log earlier topics BEFORE starting this one]

While I haven't (yet) written about it, I had all but decided to axe STRENGTH as an ability score from the list of abilities describing characters. The multiple reasons will be dealt with in soon-to-be-forthcoming post. But then I got hipped to this post from GusL (remember me talking about him?) on using a super-simple abstract method of counting encumbrance which, while not perfect, is the perfect complement to my abstract gear-selection-process. Because while "what you remembered to bring along" might be set by the limits of your character's Wit, what you find (and pick up) along the way is not.

But THAT is actually putting the cart before the horse. I've been thinking a lot about treasure lately (being in the presence of a lot of real world treasure does that), and then I stumbled across this year-old post from Alexis...

[I can almost hear him yelling at me to leave him the fuck out of my abstract B.S. schemes. Sorry, pal]

...and its precursor prompt post from John Arendt (just for reference; not nearly as pertinent). It's really not a new gripe...it's something I was blogging about waaaay back in 2010. While Alexis's post points to a different issue (how much treasure monsters have in relation to each other), he rightly points out that the system is fundamentally arbitrary (numbers of value...both for character advancement and for cost of in-world goods...is largely subjective). Combined with this earlier post of his...and, yeah, throw in this excellent one, too, on gemstones...and you start to get an idea of where my brain is headed: abstract treasure accounting.

This one's a fancy piece.

[just BTW, Alexis's posts on gems...see here and here...went a long way towards explaining my befuddlement at the rinky-dinkness of medieval jewelry. I've been to a lot of museums over in Europe...in Bavaria, Prague, Spain, Italy, France...and seen a lot of crowns and tiaras and bracelets and whatnot that looked like so much battered costume jewelry. Granted, many pieces were hundreds of years old, the precious metal bent and dinged, but what really disappointed me were the gemstones set in the pieces. They didn't LOOK like gems (at least, to my UNeducated historical mind) but rather like polished, shiny stones. They were not cut, you see, and were probably plenty valuable for their luster and color and rarity. I was expecting cut gems (like something from, oh say, an illustration in one of my gaming books) rather than colorful smooth circles of what could have been "pretty glass." The lighting in the museums probably didn't help much]

Part of this also has to do with my research into the history of South America's conquest (much of what might have been deemed "treasure hunting" as well). The thing is this: not only is the value of treasure arbitrary and fully modifiable in terms of it's game worth (i.e. what amount of treasure constitutes enough XP to "level up"), but it is of relative value in the game world as well. It doesn't matter that a gemstone is "worth 500 g.p." if my character has no way to determine, nor collect the value. So what if I find a platinum and ruby-studed crown worth 50,000 gold...who will be willing (and able!) to buy such a thing? It's doubtful the local "gem-changer" has 2.5 tons (the D&D weight of 50K coins) of gold sitting in his back room, waiting for such a piece to come along.

It's been an acceptable statement for years that adventurers would much prefer precious items like gems and jewelry over sacks of coins. But sacks of coins are readily spent, easily converted to real goods, easy to divide amongst companions. There's no need to find reliable (competent and honest) appraisers or fences for the loot. There's no need to know kings who MIGHT have access to stacks of coins and be interested in acquiring such items (the wealth of the nobility is mainly tied to their land...and who's to say an unscrupulous lord wouldn't consider treasure found within his domain to be his "by right" and simply take it?). If I want to buy a horse, I can probably get one for a ruby...but I might not get exact change in the bargain.

[and when the local tax man comes a-calling, what are you going to pay him with if all you picked up was a fancy silver bracelet? Your magic boots?]

Treasure is treasure is treasure. Some is more valuable, some is less, but in a primitive society that doesn't have, say, a global economy like ours with auction houses (on-line and off) and plenty of extremely wealthy folks keeping an eye out for desirable stuff...well, you may just be better off with a sack of silver or gold. At least you won't be much worse off than the guy with a sack of "the good stuff."

SO...now we come back to encumbrance. We have three basic containers in D&D, with (per B/X) an extremely easy measure of how much each holds:

Small sack: 20 pounds of treasure
Backpack: 40 pounds of treasure
Large sack: 60 pounds of treasure

Nice easy numbers, which will be the basis for a whole new method of treasure accounting, encumbrance, and (drum roll, please) experience point acquisition and advancement.

All of which will be laid out in Part 2 (since this post is getting long).

Legendary Might (Part 2 of 2)

[continued from here]

No, when I talk about the "human element," I’m talking about the character’s actual humanity as expressed in the way they interact with OTHER humans…their relationships with other people, in other words. Their family, friends, and loved ones. It’s their relationships with the other people in their lives, interactions that aren’t necessarily tied to their “superhero aspects” that make them worth reading.

For example, Tony Stark becoming an alcoholic and ceasing his run as Iron Man isn’t compelling to me: there are lots of people who’ve washed out of privileged or high profile careers based on their substance abuse. To members of my generation (and younger), this is no big deal…it’s just a touch of reality in the comic book universe. What IS compelling, though is Stark’s relationships with his friends, especially James Rhodes and Bethany Cabe, and how his alcoholism (and inability to don his superhero persona) affects them. How does Peter Parker being Spiderman affect Aunt May or Mary Jane or Gwen Stacey? For that matter how does it affect his relationship with best friend/arch-enemy Harry Osborne?

I have never been much of a serial comic book collector, but there are a couple series I used to collect. One, during high school (early 90s), was the re-booted Silver Surfer. The Surfer is a humanish alien who has little in common with a real human (like myself), though he has a neat surfboard and a shit-ton of superpowers. However, what I found compelling were his romantic relationships…first with fellow alien sweetheart Shalla-Bal, then that green-skinned tree-hugging Mantis chick. These relationships were fairly central to the first dozen or so issues of the re-booted series, and it was only after both had left the picture (one due to death, the other due to voluntary celibacy) and Surfer became a simple, wandering (sometimes insane) ass-kicker that I lost interest with the comics and stopped buying them.

Yellowjacket is interesting for a number of reasons (with the exception of his lame-ass superpowers), but without his relationship to Janet Van Dyne (“The Wasp”) he loses the “compelling” aspect and just becomes a jerk…like Wolverine or something. But seeing how his relationship unfolds (or disintegrates) is GRIPPING. Part of you wants him to get his shit together…but if he does, the story will suddenly become a lot less interesting.

And while romantic relationships are by far the usual method of compulsion (good and bad: Daredevil and HIS poor taste in women is in some ways the “anti-Yellowjacket”), it doesn’t have to be. The kid sidekick (Robin, Speedy, Bucky) in many ways mimics the Father-Son dynamic (and shout out to Electra Woman and Dyna Girl for the Mother-Daughter thang); meanwhile, relationships with characters like Rick Jones or Jimmy Olson or “Aunt May” Parker or J.J. Jameson all carry their own special type of drama/baggage that help to humanize the otherwise ridiculous weirdness one finds in comics, whether you’re talking the Microverse or Cain and his House of Weirdness.

[I DO like the romantic relationships though, and many of these provide the most enrichment to otherwise “flat” comic book characters: Daredevil and Elektra, of course, but also Iron Fist and Misty Knight, Dr. Strange and Clea, and Scott Summers-Maddie Pryor-Jean Grey are all examples of romantic relationships transforming pretty darn boring, ho-hum characters…elevating them to a point of interest far more than their “super powers” might merit. Laserbeam eyes? Come on!]

Even in a  television show like Arrow, part of what makes the program so interesting is the interaction between the main character and his sister, or his mother, or his bodyguard/sidekick. Same holds true for less “conventional” superhero shows (I’m thinking of the TV show “Burn Notice” where the super-spy main character may as well be a superhero).

Legendary Might is a decent start for a supers game…it has some neat innovations using the DMI card mechanic that allows players to become more engaged with their characters while:

a)     Not requiring a lot of thought/back story

b)     Providing both description AND freedom of choice

Which is cool, especially considering some of the other neat parts (balancing PC participation without “balancing” character types; providing (I think) neat risk/reward mechanics) that DMI provides to the individual. But what it does NOT do, is it doesn’t tap into that human element.

Which isn’t all that surprising when you think about it…there aren’t many (any?) superhero RPGs that do so.  One that dips a toe into the pool a bit is “With Great Power…”, an indie supers RPG that requires players to put various aspects of their characters “at jeopardy” in order to acquire enough currency to beat the bad guys. In a way, it forces you to have/use relationships in order to endanger them (or yourself)…but looked at another way it’s simply repeating the same rinse-repeat formula over-and-over again. On the other hand, Jeff Grubb’s Marvel RPG is probably the first to have tried to tap into this as an actual game mechanic (and the last to REALLY do it prior to With Great Power…no, Champions’ psychological drawbacks/flaws do not count) using the karma mechanic, but it’s just soooo half-assed – or rather, subject to GM fiat, which to me is a type of “half-assed-ness” – that I find it quite unusable outside of pre-written adventure modules: in my long running MSH game I really don’t remember using karma awards for fulfilling relationship commitments.

So, hey, I provide this info as a CAVEAT for those of you downloading Legendary Might in its current format. Yes, I like how the game design’s looking right now. Yes, it all seems to “work.” But no, it’s NOT quite finished yet…mainly because it doesn’t find a way to incorporate that human element into the game.

And the reason it doesn’t is because I hadn’t had a chance to consider all this until after our play-test. As I noted, we had three player characters in our session. They were:

-        Winsome (Wynsomn? Wind Song?) AKA “The Hat” (hero name coined by other players): a big-headed alien (like a 7’ “gray”) with psychic powers dressed in a trench coat and Cat-in-the-Hat hat. He spent a number of decades on a hippy commune in northern California.

-        Kara Ride AKA “Stout”: a personal trainer in the style of those “Biggest Loser” types that shrinks to a Puck-like (as in Alpha Flight) strongman chick with Farah Fawcett hair. She was in a relationship with another mutant/personal trainer albeit one who was NOT a vigilante superhero and is actively irritated with Kara’s nightly excursions.

-        “Dreadnought”: basically Iron Man except less rich (and if I remember correctly, he did NOT own his own company, but worked for some sort of military-industrial complex). No family/relationships that I can recall.

Now this tiny bit of background info was created on the fly by the players based on a handful of pointed questions by Yours Truly during the chargen process: each player brought their own “stuff” to the table in this regard based on the cards they were dealt and their character concepts; none of it was forced upon them. Consequently, only Stout really had anything like a “human element” (we had the impression that The Hat’s human “family” had kind of been left behind in recent years, living in a secluded commune away from the urban sprawl of Los Angeles). 

As a consequence, the game felt a little “flat” to me…like every encounter was set up simply to get to the next encounter…which is kind of the essence of a lot of “modern” RPGs (unfortunately) but the flatness is emphasized when there’s nothing “human” to grab onto…when characters are just flexing their muscles (physical or mental) to “succeed” and “win.” Sometimes just being the biggest, baddest super on the block isn’t enough.

[ugh…I’m starting to sound like I’m going down the premise-addressing narrativist road! I have nothing against indie-gaming, but that’s not my design objective with LMZ, dammit!]

Okay, okay…this post has gotten long enough (you see now why it took me awhile to get this up on the blog!). For those who want to check out Legendary Might, you can download the one-page micro-version from MediaFire here. I’m more than happy to field any questions about the game, and I’d love to hear feedback from anyone who’s willing to play-test it. I’m going to continue tinkering with it myself, trying to incorporate more of that “human element” but like I said, it’s workable right now.  Hope folks enjoy it!

And now I’ve got some D&D stuff to write…

; )

Legendary Might (Part 1 of 2)

All right, all right…after an inward struggle of whether or not to do this, I’ve decided I would provide my readers with a copy of theone-page micro-game of Legendary Might, my new supers game (currently being tested) which makes use of my DMI (Deal Me In) game engine.

Or perhaps I should write Legendary Might™ and Deal Me In™ instead.

That’s the only real debate I had: not “does the system work?” or “will people like it?” but do I distribute, for FREE, my awesome awesome game system prior to selling it in a published (copyrighted) form for cash-money? However, leaving aside the fact that even a free publication still has a “copyright” associated with it, I’ve come to a couple-three conclusions:

1) There are a lot of pros to freely distributing something in this “bare bones” format, including free publicity and possible feedback from play-testers.

2) The game (and DMI system) still has a few bugs and tweaks to be worked out, so a full-on copy of the game would still generate some interested buyers (if there’s any interest at all) and the micro- might actually drum up some interest.

3) Games were made to be played, not kept in a dusty closet.

4) Stop being so f’ing paranoid already!

Anyway, people could already have “engineered” similar systems using the original (even BARER bones) version of DMI using the one-page micro- for Out of Time. Heck, maybe I should make MDR available, too.

So here’s the skinny: I had the chance to play-testLegendary Might (hereafter abbreviated LMZ…no, the Z doesn’t stand for anything, I just prefer a three-letter abbreviation) last Thursday at Gary’sGames in Greenwood. The three players (Greg, Kayce, and Will) seemed to have a good time with the game and (with a few tweaks from the prior week) were able to get through chargen and rules orientation, as well as accomplish some stuff(i.e. “beat up some bad guys”)…which is more than I got through in the prior week's game.

Yes, the players appeared to have fun and the game “worked”– that is, it appears to do all the things you’d expect a supers RPG to do –but for me (full disclosure time) I was dissatisfied. Not terribly, but dissatisfied nonetheless. And the reason for the dissatisfaction was that “justworking” isn’t good enough for me anymore. Most folks can work up some simple rules for an RPG (see Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, AKA “the most boring RPG ever written”)…but can they make it compelling?

I want my games to be f’ing compelling. I want people to be salivating at the mouth to play it again. Hell, forget other people; I want to be the one slavering to play the damn thing. And I just wasn’t “feelingit” at the end of the evening, despite a lot of good things happening in the session.

[full disclosure #2: my lack of enthusiasm might have been caused by several consecutive nights of less than 4 hours sleep, coupled with a long work day and a copious amount of alcohol]

But allow me to digress for a moment: it’s been several days since the play session, and I’ve had a chance to mull things over (not to mention catch up on my sleep) and I’ve come to a couple thoughts/theories.

Anyone remember a guy named Yellowjacket?

Henry “Hank” Pym is a Marvel superhero, one of the original founders of the Avengers super team (along with Iron Man, Thor, Hulk,and Pym’s wife, The Wasp). Like Iron Man, Pym is an inventor, though his specialties are more genetic engineering and electronics. His powers are derived from his inventions, including chemicals that allow for size shifting(growth and shrinking), and his specialization in insect research. He first came on the scene as Ant Man (having the ability to shrink and communicate with Ants using a cybernetic helmet), but then took on the persona of Giant Man(whose ability to grow big and strong was more about Pym’sinsecurities…comparing himself unfavorably to the likes of Thor and CaptainAmerica…then about the team needing yet another “strong man” type member).After, leaving and rejoining the group a couple times, Pym settled in his persona of “Yellowjacket,” whose only noteworthy abilities seem to be zapping opponents with a bio-electric sting, and being kind of a douche.

My first introduction to the Avengers as a child included Pym as Yellowjacket, and as a kid I thought he was pretty cool. I mean, he had a neat looking costume and he zapped people and he seemed kind of smart and,well, I don’t know he was just INTERESTING to me. Iron Man had kind of a tepid personality (in the Avengers comics), whereas Captain America was always so“goody two-shoes” (not to mention lacking real “superpowers”) and the Wasp…comeon, she shrinks? That’s just lame. Thor always had that stupid Winged hat and I just didn’t relate much to a “thunder god” at the time. Wonder Man was a coward. Tigra seemed worthless (a female replacement of the Beast who was also kind of a throwaway). Hawkeye was cool at first, but he came later (and lost his luster pretty quick).

I don’t know what it was, but I liked Yellowjacket. A lot!

But then as a (young) adult who had the opportunity to read the collected serials of my friends rather than a few scattered issues(not to mention the depth and breadth of history and information available to players of the Marvel Superheroes RPG…these days you can find info on the internet and Wikipedia, but back then RPGs were HUGE resources) I learned what a weenie Yellowjacket really was. Not just with regard to his personality: whiny , insecure, abusive, passive-aggressive, etc. No, as a SUPERHERO he’spretty lame. Tony Stark and even Hank McCoy (“the Beast”) are smarter/better inventors, he’s the weakest fighter of the group (with the possible exception of the Wasp), his size control is limited, unstable, and/or unavailable at any given point, and the extent of his insect control is pretty weak, too. He can’tfly, has no armor/forcefield, no super strength or agility; he seems clumsy and ineffectual in comparison to the other members of the Avengers. No wonder he has issues of inadequacy!

[his MSH stats are also pretty weak: his FASERIP scores are something like 60 total for physical/health and 50 or so for karma. That is totally weak sauce for any Marvel icon]

And then he does dumb-dumb, douchebag stuff: inventing Ultron (who becomes a crazy, indestructible super-villain) might be excusable,but then he puts together a robot menace to attack the Avengers so he can “saveeveryone” and redeem himself…and of course it backfires. What a dumb-dumb.

And it’s obvious that the rest of the universe has a degree of disdain (or apathy) for a character who should be an iconic member of the Marvel stratosphere. Pym’s the guy who gets left out of most (all?)Marvel-based video games, unless he’s showing up as some sort of NPC info-source; I don’t recall ever seeing Yellowjacket as a “playable character”in a video game format…he’d get his ass kicked even by “low-powered” characters like Daredevil. Hell, Misty Knight would probably bitch-slap him…and this is a founding Avenger!

However, having said all that, let me just say that these days I’ve come nearly full circle. No, if given a choice of Marvel characters to play I probably would NOT choose Yellowjacket. But once again I find the character to be both cool and compelling. I find myself looking up old Avengers comics I remember from my childhood, in part because I find Hank Pym to be such a fascinating character. I thought the“updated” version of Pym in the first couple ULTIMATES books was both interesting and dead-on in their presentation: self-serving and insecure, while wanting so desperately to be something more than he is. I mean, not everyonehas the abilities of Captain America or Thor and THAT’S OKAY. We all have our part to play in the real world…we’re all granted certain gifts to be used in this lifetime, and the more important question is HOW you use those gifts, notWHAT gifts you have. Fictional Hank Pym is someone who needs to learn that…andas with most REAL WORLD people, he has a hard time figuring it out. The Ultimates adapted long-running character arcs from the70s and 80s into a handful of issues to drive the point home without stringing out the soap opera.

[as I’ve said before, I’m a big fan of those initial two Ultimates series]

ANYWAY…why do I bring up Yellowjacket and what does the character have to do with my superhero game? Especially considering it is titled Legendary Might and Yellowjacket is anything but “legendary” (unlessyou’re talking about a legendary asshole)? Well, when considering what might be missing from my RPG that would make it truly “compelling” I considered what, if anything, made comic books compelling. I mean, besides the premise (people of our own times with phenomenal abilities), and the beautiful artwork, what is it about the stories that made for compulsory reading?

Because when you take your average comic serial of the Silver or Bronze age with an unbiased eye, the product (story-wise) isn’t great shakes. Every couple issues you have a new costumed villain to beat up. Often the villain has some advantage that must be overcome by the hero’s courage or ingenuity, but in the end the hero generally triumphs and the comic world returns to an idealistic state…until the next issue arrives. If this is ALL we had, even with clever plots and creatively sinister villains, the shtick would get old after a few story lines, REGARDLESS of the neat powers a superhero might exhibit. And some comics DO get old after a few issues (some more, some less), feeling tedious and tired, regardless of the pretty pictures. The conclusion I came to (when mulling this over this weekend) is there’s only ONE thing that can consistently make a hero or serial compelling:

The human element.

And no, I am NOT referring to a character’s human frailty, flaws, and weaknesses (Ha! You thought I was going THERE didn’t you?After all that talk about Yellowjacket’s character flaws). No, whether or not Spiderman is broke, or Tony Stark is an alcoholic, or Yellow Jacket is, well,Yellowjacket…all of that is throwaway character color. I mean, a weakness of that type is an ASPECT of the character (like Superman’s vulnerability to kryptonite), but in and of itself it doesn’t make a character (or a story)COMPELLING. In a vacuum it may be interesting (or depressing) but so is a guy who shoots fire or grows claws…frailty by itself is not enough.

[to be continued]

Missing the Mark

I’m feeling the need for a new micro-game.

[we’ll come back to that in a second]

How O How did I miss the new television show featuring one of my all-time favorite superheroes? That would be Green Arrow, about whomI've blogged before. The new TV program is called ARROW (duh) and is running on the CW (I thought that was the Country-Western channel?), but I couldn’t tell you when it normally airs because I am the parent of a small child…unless shows are running late at night, I’m generally only watching them “On Demand.”

So having newly discovered Arrow, I’ve been trying to catch up on all the shows I’ve missed. It’s not awful (which I feared) and certainly a step up from The Cape…has kind of a J.J. Abram’s feel to it (what with the flashbacks and the mysterious past/hidden agendas and the castaway-island-weirdness stuff) which is generally a good thing, if not terribly original. On the other hand, the casting for Oliver Queen just seems so YOUNG. Though I suppose the idea of the older gentleman, play-boy (read: creepy chauvinist-womanizer) doesn’t work as well in the 21^st century as it might have in the 1960s (see Mad Men). The reinvented Queen is a young Hollywood in the tabloid style of today’s n’er-do-wells (see Paris Hilton, Jack Osborne, etc. for examples).

My how the world turns.

I also like the Longbow Hunters-style archery (of course) and the reinvented “Speedy” (Queen’s crank-snorting younger sister in this show…ha!)…and the hood, too. Warms my heart, it does. I’m not too keen on the green leather jumpsuit and the romantic interest looks like she belongs on one of those WB shows…but otherwise, it’s enjoyable throwaway action-TV and really has some potential to go to some of the dark places worthy of Green Arrow (as opposed to simplistic PSA-style, “One To Grow On” moralizing).

[“Speedy” = crank addict. Ha! Every time I think of it, makes me chuckle]

You know, it’s funny (interesting)…I know there’s a lot about Green Arrow that echoes the Batman character, which isn’t all that surprising as they’re both knock-offs of Zorro (invented 20 years before Batman, thank you very much)…wealthy socialites during the day and grim masked men of justice at night. The secret hide-outs, the gadgets, the M.O., the sidekick, the character-themed vehicles, the acrobatics, etc. all make them seem like mirror image characters, other than the color of their costumes.

However, it’s the minute differences of personality that (for me) makes all the difference in the world, catapulting one onto my Top 5 or Top 3 all-time list. And no, it’s not just the fact that GA has the beard and uses a bow instead of a Batarang. I mean, let’s just draw the clear distinction right here and now:

[and, yes, this will get back to gaming in a moment, really…]

Batman IS an interesting character…as a child I read his comics, watched the old Adam West show, saw the cartoons, saw that first Michael Keaton movie a dozen times or so, and own all the Christian Bale films (for whatever reason, I never got around to watching the in-between films). I owned the whole Jason Todd/Death in the Family series at one point, as well as the Frank Miller post-apoc Dark Knight Returns graphic novel. I like Batman, but after mashing all these sources together, here’s how I see Batman (minus the ninja training):

-          A man with a keen, detective mind; armed with gadgetry purchased by wealth; driven by a childhood trauma, but with an unshakeable resolve regarding preservation of life even with his relentless pursuit of justice.

Compared to Green Arrow who is:

-          A man with the hunting skills developed from his castaway experience; driven by a desire for social justice forged in the years of isolation and contemplation; owing more to the Law of the Wild than the Kantian philosophy of Batman (the issue of wealth and gadgetry varies depending on the GA series/portrayal).

Leave aside the fighting ability both characters possess: “Who’s a better fighter” is a pretty moot point in comic books (and their ilk) when nearly all (male) characters are scrappy and fight-worthy and have as much brawling power as is necessary for the story/plot at hand. Instead look at three things:

1. What motivates the character (origin of their heroic impetus)
2. What is the character’s method (power that sets character apart)
3. What is the line the character won’t cross (self-imposed limitation)

The last is perhaps the MOST important part of a superhero…at least one that is well developed…because while folks are always quoting the “with Great Power comes Great Responsibility” line from Spiderman, the unsaid part about being greater than other mortals is “with Great Power comes Great Temptation.” The question is important because without a line, nothing stops the character from using their abilities for selfish and self-aggrandizing purposes. Doing THAT drops the character from the ranks of what we call “heroes.”

For example: Nothing physically stops the She-Hulk from intimidating the hell out of normal people (she might do so on occasion for a laugh, or because she’s annoyed with someone, but generally she attempts to put people at ease despite her strength and power). Nothing stops Steve Rogers from pursuing a lucrative career as an underwear model and living a life of debauchery with fame and fortune. Nothing prevents Spiderman from becoming the world’s greatest cat-burglar or from Reed Richards using his scratch-built spacecraft to ferry the rich and famous into orbit for a hefty fee.

But the threshold of self-imposed limitation varies from character to character. She-Hulk MIGHT intimidate someone for amusement, but Superman would not despite having the same (or greater) power…at least not while in uniform. Spiderman will happily knock the teeth out of some mugger in a dark alley, but he generally stops short of psychologically scarring and inflicting mental torture on an individual like the Batman will. The line a hero won’t cross comes to define the character as much or more so than anything else…compare Wolverine to his fellow X-Men in the 1980s as a stand-out example.

And while Batman is all about inflicting fear and terror and rough justice on the street criminal, his own code of ethics stops him short of bleeding someone with an edged weapon…unlike Green Arrow. Sure, it’s a fine line but it IS a line: the Bat is perfectly capable of giving some guy a concussion or sending ‘em to the hospital with a rupture, but piercing someone’s femoral artery or spleen runs the risk of putting someone in the MORGUE. That’s a decided difference between the two. GA doesn’t rank in the same category of the Punisher (who sets out to murder criminals in the name of “justice”) but he is one of the more flagrant and reckless of masked vigilantes, judged solely on his methods, at least since the Longbow Hunters.

[compare Green Arrow to non-Ultimate Hawkeye who continues to use non-lethal “trick arrows”]

So while there are superficial similarities between the GA and Batman, for me they are extremely distinct based on the answers to those three questions: motive, method, and limit. And the Arrow’s answers to those questions make him one of my favorite characters while Batman’s answers (respectable though they are) do not.

Okay, so what does all this rigmarole have to do with gaming?

Welp, last night I was back in play-testing mode with the wife back in town from business and BECAUSE of the all the Arrow TV watching and comic book contemplation, I decided to run my Supers game rather than the new Space Opera setting. Longtime readers know how easily my mind wanders from one subject to another with only the vaguest inspiration, so I realize none of you are all that surprised.

The most recent iteration of DMI Supers has quite a few differences from the last version (play-tested with Will a few months back), and this time I even had a pretty serious adventure mapped out for the thing (cribbed from a prior adventure I’d written for Heroes Unlimited). Unfortunately for Greg (the sole player to show up…more on THAT in a separate post), I discovered the fast-and-loose style of DMI does not lend itself well or easily to the “scripted adventure” and we never got past “Chapter 1” nor did the game have the chance to show off its strengths.

ALSO, as with my Lost World game there were serious issues of motivation that just ended up “falling short.” The DMI system provides a versatile, visceral, and expressive system that is not only fun to play, but helps define your character within the play itself…I haven’t found the thing that JUMPSTARTS play. What gets you INTO it…what creates an impetus in players to be PRO-active as opposed to RE-active?

[in case I forgot to mention this in an earlier posting, this proactive player stance is important for a richer role-playing experience, but I don’t want to get off topic just at the moment]

Old school D&D is excellent at this, for example: character advancement is tied to treasure acquisition and the characters are (by definition) treasure hunters by trade. Consequently, players have an impetus to self-motivate in looking for treasure (and being creative in how they recover it), immediately immersing themselves in the game at hand.

The best version of DMI so far (by which I mean, the most EFFECTIVE version) has been my post-apoc-mutant-style game MDR. In MDR, character are presented with an immediate situation and goal (by design and by character definition) and thus have an immediate impetus to “get on it.” But the Lost World game and the Space Opera game and Supers game all have a more “open format” that is supposed to be built and based on the characters’ personal motivations, which is nice in THEORY…but then the players end up sitting back and waiting to REACT (using their proper motivation) to whatever the GM throws at you.

As opposed to being proactive.

SO NOW (going back to the original sentence) I’m starting to think I need to write a new micro-game. It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these one-sheeters and maybe I need to go back to that format, at least briefly, in order to fix some of these issues. The micro- format forces me to be short, sweet, and elegant and really distill down the basic elements of a game…giving me a parsed version that can be elaborated on as necessary (and/or appropriate) if the stripped-down, basic version is at least FUNCTIONAL. I think the last one I completed was, in fact, the first version of DMI (for the Out-Of-Time game)…but that worked well enough that it led to the two-page version of MDR which worked so well that I started incorporating the basic DMI engine into other genre games. But the difference between OOT and MDR and the later versions of DMI is that those earlier games had set, specific victory conditions (so to speak)…and the later versions do not.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve got to return to the basic parameters of DMI first if I want to develop it into a full-blown game engine…and I’ve got a feeling/inkling that (with regard to the Supers game) the key might be to revisit those three distinctions I’ve listed above: the motive, method, and limitation that really differentiates one street-born vigilante from another. That might actually be more important for such a game than the power list I so diligently slaved up.

*whew!* That was pretty random.

; )

Blowing Up Space Ships

Damn, poutine. Just…damn. I LOVE you poutine, my friend.

Gary’s was closed for the evening, so we were back at Ye Old Baranof…they of the stiff drinks and the free seafood stew. However, after a (fairly successful!) play-test session we were off to our new debrief location, The Angry Beaver, for some of their fantastic poutine.

“The Beave” (as I’m going to refer to it for the foreseeable future) is also a Greenwood establishment, having moved into the old Pig & Whistle location. A “traditional Canadian bar” (I assume that means they’ll be broadcasting the NHL all season) their food is a damn sight better than the old P&W (from whom my wife received mild bouts of food poisoning on multiple occasions). And they’re poutine has got to be the tastiest I’ve ever sampled.

I’ve been to the Beave three times since it opened. The poutine has been on my plate every time.

Why am I talking about poutine? Well, probably because I’m hungry this morning. But also because the flavor memory (only a few hours ago) is still in my mind…DAMN that was a good plate! With Beecher’s flagship cheese curds? Come on!

But maybe my experience was colored by the game session (and/or the whiskey sours)…I was extremely pleased with how the game session, picking up a lot of valuable feedback (my own notes and those of the players) on one of the trickiest mothers of the space opera RPG genre:

Starship combat.

Ship-to-ship space combat is a hoary staple of the space opera genre (duh) and it poses multiple design challenges to the dude writing a starfaring RPG. These challenges include:

-          Modeling the genre (like Star Trek and Star Wars) in a genre where the definition of space combat can vary across series…and even across episodes within a series. If you want to model “realism” (accounting for “real world” physics, etc…see the BSG re-boot) that poses additional modeling (and research) challenges.

-          Balancing the “realism” or modeling against ease and facility of game play; the more “crunchy” you add to your rule system, the slower and clunkier and uglier it tends to become.

-          Adapting the abilities of a player character(s) to a system that involves driving a big of metal through space (and I don’t ONLY mean “ability scores,” but whatever passes for mechanical effectiveness in your RPG: abilities, skills, class, level, whatever).

-          Accounting (at least somewhat) for player skill or choice. What I mean is: it’s not just enough to say “roll 2D6 and add your ‘spaceship’ adjustment;” for a role-playing game there has to be some operative, non-mechanical room for player error and/or success. This can be the player’s choice of ship type or armament (how do you configure for success?), or how the party wants to assign gunners or engine room mechanics, or actual choices of maneuver and tactic when engaged in a spaceship battle.

-          Finally, the designer has the challenge of accounting for the general RPG premise of a group or “party” of characters and giving them all “something to do” (or not). How do you involve ALL the PCs…and, in addition, how do your rules adapt to LARGE groups of players versus SMALL (1 or 2) groups of players.

These are all the issues a designer will generally be grappling with…or at least considering…when writing a space opera RPG.

I mean in general…the designers can always just punt as did the Star Frontiers writers (sorry, but making me buy the Knight Hawks “expansion” in order to have rules for starship combat is deferring an essential part of the genre…either out of laziness or a blatant grab at more cash, IMO). But this, I hope you agree, is less than desirable. Tempting, given the enormity of the challenge, but less than desirable.

At least, I think it’s a pretty rough haul, tackled in various ways by various games/designers. I’ll give you a couple examples:

X-Plorers divides space combat into several phases (in addition to “roll for initiative”): Navigation, Engineering, Piloting, and Gunnery. Each phase requires a player to occupy the named role (involving players), requires a skill roll depending on action (related to character’s class and level), and offers several CHOICE of action (accounting for player skill)…for example, the pilot can choose to escape, evade, or move to attack position. All that is a nice, tidy way of involving both the players and their characters; though if there aren’t enough PCs to fill the required roles…or too many PCs for the ship’s crew/gunners… the system is less than optimal.

On the other hand, combat is reduced to “deplete hull points and inflict critical damage” which, like D&D combat itself, is fairly simplistic (and, I should note, is similar to my own “first pass” at a B/X space opera game based on the Expert set naval combat rules). “Simplistic” isn’t a bad thing, but when combat is mainly about attrition with each ship having scores of HPs and only using D6s for damage (and with the normal chances of hitting/missing) there’s the potential for the engagement to be long, drawn out, and boring…especially when you have few tactical options.

[the gripe here is two-fold: 1) you don’t want to spend extended amounts of time on a single system that is not the main portion of the role-playing game, 2) you don’t want a (traditionally exciting) part of a fast-paced space opera game to resemble the word “boring” in the slightest]

Ashen Stars (a game whose review I’m still putting together….sorry, I’m easily distracted!) is quite different in the way it incorporates similar elements. First, each player takes on a different ship-board role from the following choices: pilot, gunner, communications, “stratco” (think Captain Kirk’s job), medic, or “wrench” (engineer). At the outset of an engagement, each ship decides what they want as the goal or outcome of the engagement, things like escape, or scan, or disable and board, or utterly destroy. The goal that is chosen sets the number of successes that must be accumulated over a series of rounds (like your traditional RPG “extended skill test”) in order to accomplish the objective; for example, escape requires six successes while disable & board requires 18 and total destruction requires 21 or thereabouts.

Throughout an engagement the ship is presumed to be doing all sorts of things all the time: maneuvering, shooting, jamming transmissions, etc. However, each round the crew chooses one of four tactics to focus: shooting, maneuvering, comm, or “trickbag.” The choice of tactic determines which player gets to roll to accumulate successes towards the crew’s objective/goal. Since skills in the GUMSHOE system are a degrading resource (and since ship’s take a penalty from simply performing the same tactic over-and-over) the system ensures that the action will pass around the table, giving each PC their “spotlight time.” Meanwhile, the medic runs around patching up the injured while the wrench patches up combat damage that might occur (every time one side gets 3+ successes in a round from a single tactic, the defending ship is “rocked,” degrading the ship’s stat line and having a chance of injuring crew members).

Ashen Stars takes a different approach to meeting the challenge and isn’t especially complex in execution…except that it IS skill based, and so opponent PCs have their own degrading skill pools that need to be tracked and yadda-yadda-yadda. Not to mention, PCs need to nurse their degrading skill resources somewhat for later (unless this is the last big battle of the game session), while the NPCs can simply “go for broke.” I mean, while the PCs are generally more competent than the opposition, it still requires at least some careful handling by the GM not to accidentally over-whelm the players…but maybe that’s just my “gamist” bias.

Oh, yeah…and from reading the example ship combat (in the appendix) it sure seems like even a simple small combat is fairly looooong (13 pages?) to resolve. Like the number of successes to achieve objectives might be set a little too high…although this seems to be the trade-off to balance “everyone gets a chance in the spotlight.”

So anyway…designing starship combat is tricky (and that’s even without worrying about different classes of ship and armament and whatnot). For me, it’s probably the second biggest hurdle in designing a space opera game (the biggest hurdle, of course, is creating an advancement system that does not revolve around counting stormtrooper helmets or spiraling “skill use” or participation ribbons). Add to this challenge the fact that I’ve recently (well, in the last year) changed over my “BX-based” system to the DMI system and I found myself wondering how the hell can I do this without being completely disconnected from the card counting part of the game?

And after wracking my brain a bit, I found some ideas to test and they worked well!

Last night’s session revolved around Will (“space prince”) and Josh (“wealthy space Sinbad”) wanted fugitives of the Imperial Family of the Golden Empire (said Empire being founded centuries ago when the Chinese achieved space travel and left the nuked Earth behind, establishing a new Galactic Dynasty in the stars). Their small craft picked up a distress signal from a damaged and drifting colony ship and executed a boarding action to pick up survivors. Turned out they’d been ravaged by Lathiter, lizardman-like humanoids with multi-faceted eyes and a penchant for slavery for fun and profit (they’re also meat-eaters but I decided not to include cannibalism in the space opera game at this time).

The PCs had already decided to track the pirates to see if they could rescue the colonists when the Lathiters showed up themselves, trying to cripple the heroes’ craft. Fortunately, some deft maneuvering and active card play allowed the PCs to come out on top in a most satisfying fashion (the lizards surrendered and were disarmed, the colonists were all rescued and towed back to civilization in their damaged ship, and the PCs didn’t take any critical damage to their own vessel). They also were awarded with 5 “victory bennies” (I have yet to rename or reinterpret the reward mechanic for the game…all I know is that this was a pretty good success!).

[remember me saying how reward mechanics were tough for a space opera game? Duh]

So a good evening of play, with lots of good stuff to work on and tighten down (screw-wise). I really did have a good time, especially with my own card playing part of the DMI equation. The combat felt a bit more fast and furious (and I suspect it will become moreso as I tweek it) and the expenditure of cards tied well both to the in-game action and the feeling of being diminished through effort (both visually and tactilely more satisfying...to me...than keeping track of diminished hull points or "degraded stat lines").

 

Anyhoo, looking forward to next week's session, when I hope to do some more dog-fighting type stuff. And poutine...gotta' get my fix of that particular num-num.

; )