Orbice

 

Every time I say I am not going to do another dice review, I end up doing another dice review. Don't get me wrong, I am not particularly obsessed with random number generators; I do at least make half an effort to chat about interesting things. Whilst there have been some amazing dice implementations it will always be that case that artists will keep generating fascinating and beautiful artifacts. Behold then the Orbice. Three dimensional circles of fate and finely sculpted themed spheres for those who are geometrically challenged and have grown weary of the usual boxy clatter. I have historically remarked on the D30 and single D100 before now which approach the pure surface from a sort of calculus angle by systematically cutting off edges although an infinite sided dice will remain a kickstarter goal for now I feel. I do note that in this case with a target of roughly 20k they have raised nearly one third of a million dollars so I think we can promote this obsession into an industry now.

In fact I will raise an important point for those who do not want their dice mis gendered as technically speaking they may not be dice at all, the etymology indicating that for late fourteenth century use 'Dice, Dyce or Dyse' refers to 'cutting into cubes' but as our six sided friends have been witth us for thousands of years the true origin of the word obscures the provenance.

Perhaps the pursuit of spherical solutions to problems has more deep seated roots in some peoples psychology and I would always recommend facing ones fears rather than running from them no matter how futile it seems. Either way, I wont be doing another dice review.

Awfully Cheerful

 

I suspect that after our Star Trek concludes, albeit in a long long time ahead in a galaxy very very close, I would be up for something a little more light hearted. There are a few parody's around that provide a relief from the stark universe of Starfleet protocols and whilst there are classics such as Space 1889 and Paranioa there are also some new systems brewing. Among them is the Awfully Cheery Engine (ACE!) which is "an irreverent, affectionate parody of pop-culture tropes and a love-letter to 80s roleplaying games."

Looking at the team that put it together, this is not surprising: Russ Morrisey, who began his career at the age of 14 has been hugely proliferate in the industry and the surrounding media over the last 30 years including systems such as Judge Dredd as well as running the EN world RPG website and podcasts. Dave Chapman is the author of the Star Trek Adventures core rulebook that we are currently playing as well as the lead writer of the Dr Who RPG. Marc Langworthy is the third collaborator on ACE also co authored the recent Judge Dredd with Russ Morrisey as well as the Hellboy RPG. AS much as some kickstarters seem to be good ideas shoddily thrown together, this team have a heritage that will stand it in good stead.

ACE! is D6 based and has the narrative structure of a film production akin to It came from the Late Late show where fast cinematic action and comedy set the tone. Each player has a hero bar the GM who is the Director and there are a number of cliche adventures packaged along with the core rules. A bit like the zones in the Crystal Maze each adventure is a take on the classics: Spirits of Manhatten is the crossover for Ghostbusters, Montanna Drones & the Raiders of the Cutty Sark is clearly the missing film in the Indianna Jones frachise, Strange Science parallels the film Weird Science where fitness freaks do a lot of body snatching and of course Beam me Up charts the voyages of the starship Brazen on its highly illogical adventures.

Basically if you were around in the 80s you can be around in the 80s again.

Winning your Bottle

 

We were a captain short for our Trek last Saturday as it seems that Phage vaccinations have been issued across the entire quadrant and as per orders she was confined to quarters for the episode. We are a short game already that occasionally requires us to play two characters which always makes me feel like I am managing rather than playing although the Trek is designed to have supporting characters which offers a somewhat forgiving experience. My main issue in such situations is plot block where we exhaust possibilities but are not seeing the solution to a situation or a way forward - with enough players or specifically brains on a problem someone tends to come up with either a fix or work around but with just two players there was a concern that we would get exhausted in a situation with limited options.

However the session went quickly (pros to GM Jon of course) and as the system is designed with episodic narratives in mind we decided to have a flashback bottle episode with the doctor and myself embarking from space dock at Earth on a transport before our commissioning on the Lyonesse.  I say transport but it was more like a flying bucket of bolts sprinkled over a warp core - it seems that Starfleet internal mail is pretty much identical to the staff transfer process.

Nevertheless we won our mini adventure and saved the passengers from opportunistic pirates posing as passengers and exposed the compromised crew who were conspiring with them - it was the cook of course, I suspect mainly because the cheaper Starfleet ships don't have butlers. There was also a Kzinti being transferred in cryo by an undercover Vulcan but thankfully we talked the GM out of time to release it which did help expedite matters. Flashback episodes can be a fun break from a main plot but there is no reason actually why a GM couldn't drop clues and back fill important events into such sessions but it would have to be crafted carefully as certain events and outcomes are already committed in the timeline. Ultimately I wonder if its possible to run an adventure entirely backwards from the conclusion to the outset.

Home Brews

 

In the creative cauldrons of our pastime there has always been a simmering of artistic ingredients. A bit like Buddhists there are those who task themselves with the constant rewriting of systems chipping away at previously undiscovered roleplaying nuggets and perspectives for repackaging an experience that is either more highly tuned or more narratively relevant than a previous incarnation. I am unsure as to whether there is a fashion apparent here as that would imply the coming and going of familiar rule sets and I get more the impression that its an iterative process at work. Certainly there are more formal editions of a system and I would hesitate to guess which product line has the highest version - perhaps Cthulu in its seventh would outrank D&D in its 5th but lets not forget the noble and single minded Astartes than now stride across 9th edition terrain. To be fair though, the fantasy specific adaption is somewhat younger that the formal wargame so perhaps we wouldn't count board games as such.

Certainly Kisckstarters abound with new games as well as revised takes on older systems and the creative juices that bring people into the somewhat armature dramatic hobby also fuel its development as an art form in its own right. But my question is whether its a matter of appeal or whether there is actually value in many of these reimaginings. This is not to rain on anyone's passion but as there is real authenticity in critiquing art I do wonder how we should judge new offerings. 

I have an old friend for example who has a passion for the philosophy of religion and is bursting with ideas for a new system based around the deification of alien artifacts. Without going into too much detail, an alien mother ship crash landed on a world thousands of years ago devastating civilization at the time. The alien survivors from different crew divisions went their separate ways and using the technologies relevant to their division established power bases and religious followings in that regard - command created warriors, navigation created rangers, security created rogues, medical created clerics and engineering created mages. Its s simple backdrop but in creating effectively a technological pantheon mythos, as millennia rolled by with access to occasional 'magic' technology, narrative quickly writes itself. So the question is whether this is just a re-hash of old ideas or is it an original and exciting new perspective ? I am unsure how to critique it an unlike a pure art, much of the answer lies in the play of course but perhaps roleplaying is something more personal as its not art created by one person but an emergent experience created by many players, the system being just the paintbrush.

In one sense I don't like to judge but when it comes to playtesting and investing time in a campaign there are only so many hours in the day so there is a choice. I wonder whether we are headed to a sort of MasterChef critique as our sector matures - or perhaps something more like the on line Steam game management systems - perhaps we have so much fun these days we only have time for speaking in emoticons.

Traumatics

 

RPG systems are dimly aware of the early development of characters and a lot of them include apprenticeship mechanics. Going back to the days of Naval enlistment children below the age of 15 would often be caught up in the Admiralty's net and Victorian chimney sweeps and the factory mills took their own tragic toll of the younger generations. The point is that although most systems derive skills from professional experience and stats from genetic markers, child development is often overlooked for expedience but is in fact the prime time period when most of our character traits and socialisation are established.

This is not a matter of preference for the child of course as they are completely dependent on their guardians and environment and there are always a fair share of babies that get the rough end of the stick in each generation. Loss of parents either through death or separation determine outcomes as an adult to an enormous degree. On the other extreme if a child isn't socialised by about two years old then its is likely that there will be long term aggression issues that can settle  into the mid to late twenties and even then only with consistent therapy; this is the route to psychopathy of course.

So there is a sort of clash between character generation in most systems that comes across as a sort of shopping list when compared to reality where we are mostly defined by our child development. Whilst I have not envisioned any sort of system that would fit more accurately, it would be interesting to see if there is a system out there that does. This perhaps would strain the pick and mix mechanics of skills but would likely enrich the roleplaying side of the character and I suspect be a better gateway in to roleplaying for the beginner rather than the usual  puzzle solving grind it would at first appear to be. But of course all this is in the context of human development - what happens to the child when the parents of an elf with cyber implants separate is a little more of an existential issue - if only you could just change the chips in a child's head sometimes... lazy parenting with Disney plus is one thing but getting your game cartridges mixed up when plugging things directly into a child's cortex could literally be a no brainer.

Starstuff

 

Hollywood continues to cast its net over casting spells in the roleplaying industry and of late it seems that Jeff Goldblum has now joined the genre in an upcoming Darkdice podcast set for the 12th May. Whilst I have never been a huge podcast fan technically I am pod listening briefly if I fall asleep in front of a youtube video. In the case of the Darkdice, the podcasts are of actual play and draw from the improvisation skills of professional actors and the site boasts a more immersive and authentic feel as a result. This particular adventure is entitled 'The Long March' and charts a quest for revenge following a failed attempt to save the world by another player controlled team. Ironically for a podcast, Goldblum's character is perused by someone called 'The Silent One', although it steals the voices and faces of others - a sort of evil reverse ventriloquist I would suspect.

Dark Dice is another husband and wife team somewhat akin to Dragonlance and goes by the company name of Fool and Scholar Productions. Its good to see that small roleplaying initiatives can still have a big impact as the industry expands under corporate oversight - small publishing houses should be able to keep the big players on their toes as with many of the on line based services fortunes can turn dramatically on any scale.

On a similar take filming has now finally begun in Northern Ireland for the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie. I say finally as its been in discussions since 2013 but its a difficult discussion where there isnt a particular narrative - I suspect that you either have to pick a realm or take the piss. I think that they have gone parody rather then Planescape  this time round but it could capture a wide audience if handled well. But there will always remain the tantalizing challenge of doing something authentic but if cracked then the sequels alone if not the world building would be worth a dragons hoard.

Xenolution

I have been wondering of late if we have reached some sort of evolutionary dead end as a roleplaying club. Somewhat like a charity that works extremely hard for its own obsolescence there may have been natural forces at work over the years that may have revealed a sociological rule perhaps. As a public facing club the membership has always had a gentle rotation of people - this is natural and whilst we mourn the loss of an adventurer, new characters emerge through the doors. Gently though we have hit a capacity of three games and on occasion pushed the limits by starting a fourth game in the bar space of the club which whilst not ideal with all the other activates, has been possible; a healthy club by many accounts.

But like the Roman empire we may have become decadent and inward looking as our capacity seems to have finally stabilized as a sort of natural iteration - we have a full compliment of people that are generally speaking always regular. There has been a new phase I feel where people have got to know each other and as friendships formed and personal roleplaying preferences have emerged, some will play in certain gaming combinations and not others - a sort of collection of home games. Natural patterns have formed that stress the balance of personal preference versus group activity. Its a tough on gamers like us - when roleplaying there is for some a commitment to see it through whilst for others its a mater of choice- the former behavior though, only supports the latter which is only sustainable to a point. For the most part you suck it and see as broadly speaking almost all games complete and rotate in good order.

As with our discord being both covid essential as well as digitally divisive there are some for whom its a no brainer necessity and others who rarely if ever interact with it. The digital divide has I believe also created a board gaming divide with some members dominating our social space necessarily at the exclusion of others who have to negotiate a conversation at their backs. Interestingly the Craft Beer club dealt with this issue early on and separated the boardgamers from the roleplayers by simply having two separate nights, one for each, and seem to have a much healthier atmosphere. At some point we will have to address our physical return to club but as for myself it may be time to trial spreading membership across two evenings now as we have discussed this as a solution to our capacity problem before. Its our Game of Thrones moment when the wheel turns full circle and its time to raise new dragons from new eggs.

Self Destruct

 

The adventures of the USS Lyonesse continue on as we had another episodes this last weekend of our Star Trek Adventures that currently has us in close orbit of a wormhole or possibly black hole whilst we attempt to rescue a time dilated SS Atlantis from the NX pre federation era. It's going to be a fun section of the adventure as the crew have been there for many years relative to the rest of the universe and have seemingly gone feral - looks like there are factions between command and at least one other division. Add to this that we are from the 'future' and have already diffused one phaser fight but far from convincingly as the npcs ran away from us. It will be interesting to see the patience of our captain being stretched here as although we are on a rescue mission, if people don't want to be rescued then what exactly are you supposed to do? I am amused that the whole problem could disappear down a black hole so to a less responsible captain the paperwork could be quite short on this one but I am sure that the doctor will expect nothing less that a full prescription of rescue protocols.

Prior to the game I did come across an amusing ten minute video of all of the self destruct sequences from Trek together with the cancellation protocols and to my surprise they vary considerably. It does make me wonder under what circumstances we would do this in our Trek. Players would avoid the scenario as much as possible to the point its not really a consideration but I have always said, good players can let go of their characters and there is no reason why we couldn't in principal divert play to another ship, but this would be undermining the principal of the game of course. Its just that in the series the destruct sequence was both used as a bluff and also very effectively as a  trap and I can envisage this as a dire but plausible action under extreme circumstances.

To be fair the ship will have a set of emergency escape pods and an evacuation procedure so severe courses of action are potentially viable without losing characters but I would want to cause a medical emergency for our GM as the existing deck plans have been lovingly created. Ultimately our first loyalty is to the ship, its one of us (and literally from the supportive dice rolls we get from it) and I think would buy it a drink in ten forward.

Project Black Hole

 

Despite its heritage and many amusing recollections over cheap beer we have yet to run a single game of Paranioa. To be fair there are a lot of roleplaying games in the world and we are getting through them. In a sense a Paranioa experience can come with a number of expectations as there are so many memories people have given that the game is such an old classic. This tends to mean that there is a lot for a GM to live up to in a sense and it has to come with a certain type of humour - its is the land between supreme irony and slapstick. Its possible that with a well thought out scenario that content will begin to generate itself but I remember my first Paranioa game where I got thoroughly confused and scared to touch anything whilst desperately trying to keep out of trouble. The point is, like trying to hold onto your sanity in Cthulhu, you just have to go with it and given that you are replaced with a timely, if not slightly malfunctional, backup clone, you have nothing to lose. Except your security rating of course. 

Everyone is loyal and everyone is a traitor - no one sane survives in Apha Complex so the only hope is to ride the constant wave of adrenaline as you fight for survival and root out heretics whilst hiding your own treachery. Whilst I have mentioned Paranoia on occasion before its a timey article as Mongoose publishing have release a number of sourcebooks under the Project Infinite Hole boxset designed to unravel physics for keen troubleshooters. As the title would imply The Computer has decided that the introduction of a black hole into Alpha Complex is just what is need to enhance the already blissful and fulfilling lives of its inhabitants. Its a sort of R&D nightmare bundle including The Happy Testing Catalogue and an R&D Mission Book and Service Book for GMs. There is also an R&D deck for handing out items and situations to players although this may be a back end attempt to engage customers in the other card auxiliary bundles.

It may be a case of when the time is right as I don't think I could run a whole campaign; its just too much like watching 20 episodes of the Simpsons al in one go - the humour gland can just get completely squeezed out after a while but I may well be happy to run one as a gap game to fulfill that nagging need need to betray your friends and fiddle with extremely dangerous things you are not authorized to touch.

Easter Access

 

Our long walk through the Cursed Earth is approaching its end and we have had the first tweet from Dice Saloon regarding their re-opening. The 12th of April appears to be the first thawing of our cryogenic incarceration and it is my understanding that the Dice Saloon is opening for limited hours with part time staff initially. Despite a return to normality this will not be a return to normality as the post covid world will be devastated by consumer confidence and businesses that are but a shadow of their former selves. DS are of course asking for patron support and we do have at least on game that was left hanging from a routine visit and an number of our other members are active boargamers.

For our part the financial mysteries of our local social club will determine where we are as a group of players. It does seem that the long standing and short staffed institution has been slightly busy in the past year and redecorated at least one room so perhaps our immune systems will no longer have to fight off the mysterious moulds that have long dwelled in the Belmont dungeons. To be fair of course only the oldies have had the jab and even then there will be a lot of hesitancy before national analytics will reveal exactly how safe it will be to sit around a table but it may be time to pop in and see what the current membership routine is as certainly mine has lapsed.

The online play has been keeping us barely alive but has been very far from optimal and I sense we have shed some players in this regard but its worth tolling the bell to announce that we are basically half way through this round of games with the Deadlands, D&D and Eclipse Phase still in play. Its way to early to discuss the next round of offerings but its worth considering whether any of them will be around a physical table as it will mean defaulting to next January before we review again. Post covid roleplaying is a thing then and possibly a step closer to post apocalyptic gaming - a round of Judge Dredd, Fallout and Gamma World may be the appropriate way to go.

Niggles

Sometimes the big picture is about the little things. As I am a GM at the moment I am constantly reminded there are those ever present gripes that are still pursuing me for which I have come to develop a thick skin but never really turned and faced. That is not to say that I am exactly the same when I am playing of course but the familiar tweets of "surely we would have known this" or "we would have packed this item" or "we wouldn't have done that" still drift across the table. There are many GMs that take a hard line on this sort of back talk but I think these are fair questions to a degree in general, but when there is a critical event or a plot turning point then it can be an awkward moment for a GM particularly if one has to revise a round or briefly step back in time. For my part I tend to play it by ear which is what most GMs do I think but there is a slippery slope.

Just like spoilt children , if a culture of presumption becomes engrained then you start to get asked questions like "why aren't we doing max damage?",  "how did he know that ?" "that's not possible". This is more of the point of the article as some players who know a system very well will naturally have an instinct to police the GM but if you add this to a personality that has tended to whine until they get what they want then things can get out of hand pretty quickly although I have only really encountered this with teenagers. It can help to respond as neutrally as possible I think such as "I cannot answer that question" or "who are you directing you question to ?" which is a very gentle reminder that players have crossed a line from in game to out of game questions.

Broadly speaking there is the unwritten contract of social norms and I certainly don't mind perspectives from a characters point of view but the first signs of nit picking must be clamped down on but equally it will be useful for the GM to throw out the odd bone in an even handed context such as the discovery that the party is being spied on, or the party's weapons have been interfered with etc etc. To be fair to the players if they have been used to hack and slay adventures for too long then the intrigue of a city environment may be lost on them. Its also worth noting that players can put both of their feet in their mouths on occasion as if they are not consistent with NPC interaction and they quickly forget what they may have said then there can be consequences- basically if you are going to arrest your players in the game the read them their rights first.

24

 

Its always an anniversary which means there is always time for a party depending on any given pandemic. This year marks the tipping of the scales for WIzards of the Coast who have now owned D&D for longer than TSR being in its 24th year as an acquisition. TSR was created in 1974 and purchased in 1997 and as legend would have it Gary Gygax gave his two year old a list of names to brand the game and she chose Dungeons and Dragons. We could have ended up with Castles and Crusades or The Fantasy Game but thankfully her marketing instincts were way ahead of the time.

Whilst the game had early controversy from Bible Belt evangelists concerned with spreading occult rituals it was the suicide of Lee Pulling back in 1982 which cast a shadow over the genre with his mother convinced that D&D was to blame. It was the same year that the Tom Hanks film Mazes and Monsters portrayed a vulnerable college student struggling with his mental health and retreating into a fantasy world inspired by his RPG participation. What is less well known is that the D&D continues to be debated, in the US at least. In 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld a ban on D&D by the Waupun Correctional Institution. Captain Muraski, the institution's gang specialist, testified that D&D can "foster an inmate's obsession with escaping from the real life, correctional environment, fostering hostility, violence and escape behavior"

But the battle has been won now by sheer force of numbers, corporate sponsorship and popular culture. Zeitgeist has changed and we have drifted a long way down the mainstream but its fascinating to see how attitudes have changed over alifetime although it should come as no surprise really. Somewhat like Modiphius characters we have encountered events that have changed our values and we are, of course, better people.

Seriously

 

Its well known in quality narratives that the darkest and most reflective moments can be found in the best comedy. There is something about the juxtaposition of hilarity and pain that offers a stark contrast that captures attention and which drives home the poignancy of a situation. There are classics such as Blackadder Goes Fourth that retain all the dark humour and absurdity needed to convey the horror of trench warfare without actually showing you a single dead body. I am strangely reminded of the first Alien movie where the presence of the creature was enhanced by its scarcity; in the same way humour distracts from the true reality of a situation by veiling the inevitable death and destruction. Whilst we are all familiar with using humour to cope in difficult times its more that the mind is opened up to a wide emotional range between laughter and horror that gives us the experience of having been on a journey. This is a challenge to bring to the table top as its more interactive so humour can tend to flow down slapstick veins.

Irony and sarcasm  however are somewhat different beasts and as high forms of wit are more naturally at play in our games. There are systems specifically cut out for it such as Space 1889 and not forgetting the increasingly relevant Paranoia. In recent media there was the somewhat light hearted Knights of Basassdom as a nod the genre and the upcoming D&D Movie has confirmed the casting of the evil villain as non other than Hugh Grant. This is not someone who instills fear not exudes malevolence in my opinion so I have to presume that this will be another tongue in cheek adventure, which could work I guess but difficult to see how they will make a series out of it.

More interestingly I note that there is a Terminator RPG in development and whilst the the film was a classic by the time we got onto the Sarah Connor Chronicles it was becoming farcical and once you realize its not taking itself seriously then you can just follow along. From a GMs perspective I think its likely better to let a group express themselves comically speaking as everyone is different and dead jokes are as popular as dead characters in RPGs.

Action

 

There are specific approaches to game design that are not so much a narrative as pretty much scripted. I am thinking of such classics as It came from the Late Late Show (Stellar Games 1989) where you play actors playing roles in a budget pulp horror/sci fi production. Its deliciously satirical and can boarder on the farcical as each player can call a timeout when their actor can throw a tantrum and walk off set in order to get a one off change to sway the outcome of a scene - basically you can successfully argue with the writers in order to change the outcome. In the case of the Late Late Show this is the very reason to play the game but when it comes to more serious games based on a TV series there has to be a tacit agreement between the players and the GM that there is a format and scene progression. Whilst this applies to scenarios in general as opposed to a sandbox approach, specific shows will have a much more formulaic and episodic basis for the context.

The current Star Trek run by GM Jon is a case in point. Whilst it is accepted that the show has fixed scenes, the joy, like the Late Late Show is in the actors interaction and development and the game is constructed in this regard from the bottom up as character experience is expressed more through a change in values not an increase in capability although the prior will influence the latter - a lazy lieutenant may let himself or his crewmates down but encounters and challenges may well shock him into a more sobering personality without particularly adding to his skill set.

Like most things in life one has to approach any given situation with the right frame of mind and as a more seasoned role-player I have no idea whether TV based games are the right systems to recommend to a beginner - expert game designers may well end up making games for other connoisseurs but if a brand is strong enough then of course people are invested before a game is even invented.

Brute Force

 

What do you do when a character starts to brute force a game ? This is often not deliberate but in the case of something like a half Giant or Orc or indeed our resident Warforged in the D&D it is very much in vein of character to approach the opening of a fine wine by smashing it over its own head; if its in a casket well then so much the better. Notably Warforged do not consume food or drink but to be honest I dont think this would make any difference to its approach to any form of consumables but neither at the moment is it differentiating its approach to anything.

What is advantageous for impetuous characters is that they tend to keep a game moving forward at pace which is often appreciated. I have lost count of the amount of time players waste discussing plans at great length only to realise that one of their presumptions was wrong and begin the exhausting spiral once again. However, expedience that is not tempered by a player or by other members of the party will eventually have consequences. I dont like to consider that players should have unwritten rules or an implicit contract with a GM, indeed I much more enjoy free form and open world games but there is a contradiction between a violent character and the fact that it has survived.

At the end of the day if a player enjoys the physicality of a game then they will have to make peace with their inner orc when they surfer or die as a result and if other npcs refuse to moderate then reputational damage will follow and plot objectives will start failing. There is a natural order to things in my view and the weight of fate can be used very effectively but a GM to balance the scales.