A Shared Fate

The truth is that generic RPGs are not exactly interesting to review. They lack flavour, they lack the substance of a background that is usually the reason to buy into a RPG, and mechanics are never the most enticing thing to write or read about. Well, okay, but what you are reviewing when it comes to the generic RPG is its tone, the type of game it supports, and of course, its mechanics. So Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS is a mechanically detailed game with a realistic tone whereas Savage Worlds from Pinnacle Entertainment Group is broader in terms of tone and mechanics that particularly supports pulp action. Both are traditional RPGs in that they require a GM who creates the world and serves as the gatekeeper through which the players act and learn about the world. So what then of FATE Core, a more recent generic RPG?

Published by Evil Hat Games, FATE came to prominence in 2006 with the publication of the pulp action RPG, Spirit of the Century. It is a storytelling style RPG in which the player characters are competent and capable, and above all lead dramatic lives. The default game—other FATE-powered RPGs with their own settings do not necessarily require this—involves shared world building duties between the players and the GM. This is part of character generation, done through the creation of Aspects, the equivalent in FATE of advantages and disadvantages. Play is similarly collaborative, as players and GM alike can invoke and compel everyone’s Aspects to bring drama to the game. Above all, the task of both GM and players alike is to “make everyone around look awesome.”

The latest iteration of the game, the ENNIE Award-winning FATE Core was funded via Kickstarter and comes as a handsome digest-sized hardback. It is well-written, the content is clear and easy to understand, and it is engagingly illustrated. The illustrations primarily consist of kung-fu cyber-gorillas, magic cops, and the trio of characters—Landon (swordsman and ‘Discipline of the Ivory Shroud’), Cynere (‘An honorable thief with a fast blade’), and Zird the Arcane (‘Wizard for Hire’)—that together with their setting form the basis of the examples throughout the book. 

In honour of this artwork, our sample character is a combination of the magic cop and the kung-fu gorilla. Archibald  ‘Mourning Archie’ Maugham is a cop with the New Orleans police department, in a world where there is magic and there are intelligent gorillas and monkeys. 

Archibald  ‘Mourning Archie’ Maugham
High Concept (Aspect): Magic-Monkey on a Mission
Trouble (Aspect): Monkey in a man’s world
Aspects: Manners maketh the monkey, Should a monkey meddle in magic?, An eye for the ladies
Stunts: A good gorilla is hard to keep down, A gorilla’s grip, Just the facts, ma’am
Skills: Physique (Great +4); Investigate, Contacts (Good +3); Fight, Magic, Notice (Fair +2); Athletics, Rapport, Shoot, Will (Average +1)
Physical Stress (Physique): 1 2 3 4
Mental Stress (Will): 1 2 3
Refresh Rate: 3 Fate Points: 3

As can be seen by this example, characters are defined by their Aspects, Skills, and Stunts. Aspects describe elements of a character and to work effectively, they need to be double-edged, that is, each should be both an advantage or a disadvantage. For example, the Aspect ‘An eye for the ladies’ could be used as an Advantage to spot a particular woman in a crowd or a bonus to seduction attempts, but as a Disadvantage, it would mean that the character would be easily distracted in female company. In play, an Aspect is Invoked by the player to gain an advantageous bonus or a reroll, but Compelled to trigger its disadvantageous elements. It costs a player a Fate point to Invoke an Aspect, but he will gain a Fate point if the Aspect is Compelled. (A Compel can be resisted by a player, but this costs him a Fate point).

So for example, Archie is chasing Flyss the dip, a well-known pickpocket who frequents high class joints. With a flash of his badge he gets into the Cat’s Pajamas, a nightspot where Flyss is sometimes seen. He scans the crowd and will use his Notice skill of +2 (Fair) to spot the miscreant, but the GM knows that Flyss knows how to work the crowd and sets the difficulty at +3 (Good). This is not an easy roll, so Archie’s player Invokes one of his Aspects—‘An eye for the ladies’—to gain a +2 on the roll.

Conversely, instead of Archie’s player Invoking ‘An eye for the ladies’, the GM could Compel the Aspect. Were this to happen, Archie would charge into the Cat’s Pajamas and get distracted by the other pretty ladies in the joint so he fails to see Flyss slip out of the back door. In this, ‘An eye for the ladies’ has worked as a disadvantage, so why would Archie’s player let this happen? Well, for two reasons. First, because it earns Archie a Fate point, and second, because it is interesting and it contributes towards the drama.

Stunts provide advantages or bonuses under certain circumstances, usually to skills. Skills simply provide a bonus to skill rolls, there being a limited number of broad skills in the game. Where a character lacks a skill, he simply has it at Mediocre or +0.

Mechanically, whenever a player wants to undertake an action, he selects a skill and rolls four Fudge dice—FATE having originally been derived from the Fudge RPG mechanics—special six-sided dice, each of which has two faces marked with a ‘+’ symbol, two faces marked with a ‘–’ symbol, and two faces left blank. The ‘+’ and ‘–’ symbols cancel each out and the blank faces add nothing, so the results range simply between +4 and –4. The result is added to the player’s skill, aim being to beat a target set by the GM, an Average target being +1, a Fair target being +2, and so on, the targets matching the skill values in terms of progression. Should a player’s result match the target, then he succeeds at a cost; if the result is one or two points or shifts above the target, he simply succeeds; and if the result is three or more  shifts, he succeeds with style. In combat, shifts usually represent damage inflicted upon a target, but should a character succeed with style, then he can place a temporary Aspect in play, that can either be used once and then it is lost, or used once for free with subsequent uses requiring a Fate point to be expended.

For example, Archie has finally tracked down Flyss to her apartment, only to find that it is alight and burning furiously. He charges in to get his quarry out, only to discover that Flyss does not live alone. Now he not only has to rescue her, but also her roommates! As the building collapses around him, Archie’s player makes a Physique check against a difficulty of +2 (Fair) to hold up a support long enough for the girls to get out. He rolls ‘+’, ‘+’, ‘+’, and ‘–’ for a total of +3, which when added to his Physique gives a result of +7, which when compared to the target grants Archer five shifts! Archie’s player gets to set up two advantages at a cost of two shifts each. First, he buys ‘No-one gutsier than a gorilla’, essentially a temporary reputation, but second, he buys ‘I pulled your ass from the fire’, which he plans to Invoke when he interrogates Flyss.

Aspects like this can be set up on locations, objects, on NPCs, and on player characters, and then during play both the players and the GM can interact with them, Invoking and Compelling as necessary. Similarly, the GM can design and create places, people, and things all with the simple use of Aspects that get to the core of anything that he designs and creates, and again these can be Invoked or Compelled as part of FATE Core collaborative play. This collaborative element of the game begins before character creation, indeed it starts with the players sitting down with the GM and working together to create the world in which they want to play. This includes the genre, the campaign name, issues for the characters to face and deal with, and then locations and NPCs. From this the players can get an idea of their characters’ place in the world and what each wants to do before character generation. This in part is also collaborative, the players tying some of their character’s Aspects into previous experiences with each other. Should the players and GM know what they want, then it would be quite possible to create a world, characters, and the basis for a campaign just by sitting round the table and talking.

Further, Aspects are mutable. They can change as a game progresses and its events affect each of the players. Typically they come after a Milestone has been reached in a campaign, perhaps revealing thwarting the plot of a campaign’s villain, the greater the Milestone, the more that a player can change about his character. So for example, over the course of a campaign, Archie’s relationship with Flyss goes from cop and snitch to cop and contact to gorilla and girl, so perhaps the Aspect, ‘An eye for the ladies’ might become something like, ‘A girl for the gorilla’. In general though, FATE Core involves little in the way of character progression, skill improvement in particular, being slow and steady. The focus in FATE Core is the play and the drama, not gaining Experience Points, but a great touch is that alongside discussing player character progression, FATE Core looks at world progression, the idea being that both should go hand-in-hand. When you think about it, this is obvious, but it makes sense in as dramatic an RPG as FATE, that it should be an explicit point.

Mechanically, FATE Core is straightforward and not particularly complex—especially for the players. For the GM it is a slightly more complex game, but again not overly so. There is solid discussion of the mechanics and their nuts and bolts, of creating and running scenarios, and of designing and creating ‘Extras’, the elements that support a game, whether that is magic, cyberware, vehicles, and so on. This discussion of the rules and the mechanics is also supported by a discussion of how to run the game, but what it comes down to is a simple question, “What matters in this scene?” Answering this question should be dramatic and interesting—and it should have scope for equally dramatic and interesting failure.

In addition, it is easy to take FATE Core and use its mechanics to adapt the game, setting, film, book, or television series of your choice. Evil Hate Games has already done this with its The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game, but the simplicity of the game’s skills and the adaptability of its Aspects and stunts make this mechanically easy. 

Now this is all great, and FATE Core is a very readable set of rules, but FATE has a problem. It is not a fault intrinsic to FATE itself, but rather with what FATE is—a storytelling RPG. Arguably, every RPG involves storytelling, but FATE Core focuses on it in particular by shifting narrative control. For a quarter of a century, the RPG has followed the model mentioned at the beginning of the review, that is, a GM or DM serving as the gatekeeper for the world through which the player characters learn about and interact with said world. Coming out of the Indie School movement, FATE Core takes ‘aspects’ of the narrative away from the GM and hands them to the players and their characters. This can be seen at first in the collaborative process of creating the world, but shows most obviously in the use and application of Aspects. It further shows in the move away from the ‘yes/no’ binary mechanics of older non-narrative games, to mechanics where the mechanics not only give the ‘success/failure’ binary results, but also the results ‘succeed, but with consequences’ and ‘fail interestingly’. This is a shift in both play style and thinking. It takes adjustment.

In no way is this problem insurmountable and in no way is it an impediment to playing FATE. It is certainly not the fault of FATE itself, but of decades an ingrained play style, and for the players it is a matter of adjusting to thinking about how their characters interact with the world. It helps that FATE Core is well written and gives plenty of examples. It helps that FATE requires a GM, that it is not a wholly GM-less, narrative storytelling game, the distinction being that someone is still in charge, presenting the world, but that someone is someone the players interact with rather than work through. It helps even further that Evil Hat Games makes available FATE Accelerated, a much condensed, but still very playable version of the rules for the pocket-friendly sum of $5. Arguably worth each player having a copy.

At the beginning of the review, I stated that the generic RPG is all about its tone, the type of of game it supports, and its mechanics. FATE Core is light in tone, though like most generic RPGs the tone can be made much darker, depending upon the genre. Mechanically, FATE Core is definitely light and broad rather than detailed, veering towards the cinematic in style. The detail in FATE Core though is in the drama that comes out of its play with the use of Aspects. Its combination of a GM and narrative play elements, primarily its Aspects,that enable player input, arguably place FATE Core in between the traditional RPG and the GMless, narrative storytelling RPG, making it a highly accessible bridge between the two.

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Steampunk Soldiery Spotter's Guide

After the Great Meteor Shower of 1862, the world would never be the same. For the meteorites contained a substance that turned out to be an incredible energy source—Hephaestium. Its discovery and refinement would lead to unprecedented technological development and innovation, each of the Great Powers harnessing both Hephaestium and the technological advances to their own ends. In particular, to protecting their empires! Thus Great Britain enhanced its railway network with the Ulster Bridge and Shetland Run, built the first circumnavigation cruisers, and of course, strengthened her Royal Navy. Bismark fielded first Prussia’s and then Germany’s new armoured Sturmtruppen and Kaiser-class armoured infantry in a lightening series of wars that saw him cow Denmark and then in turn defeat each of the little Germanic kingdoms, princedoms, duchies, and so on. While her domestic armies were often mutinous, France had great success in her colonies, for example, the Peugeot-built steam-powered exoskeleton-equipped Foreign Legion units lived up to their ‘March or die!’ motto in driving the Chinese out of Indochina in a counterattack that would be followed by an invasion of China in 1876. Russia experimented with both the chemical properties of Hephaestium and submarines, the Ottoman Empire with automatons derived from German designs, the Austro-Hungarian Empire lured Nicolai Tesla back to develop a variety of Hephaestium-powered electro-weapons, while Italy, with no access to the precious meteorite, became Europe’s rogue state. Its intelligence services have stolen blue prints and prototypes, sabotaged others, and kidnapped scientists—they may be perfidious, but they are extremely capable. Perhaps the most radically changed country is the USA where at the height of its Civil War, General Lee’s land ironclads forced back the Union forces and held them to a stalemate until hostilities ceased in 1869. Thus North America has remained divided between the USA, the Confederate States of America, and Canada ever since…

This is the background against which the forgotten British artist, Miles Vandercroft travelled the sketching and painting the soldiery of the age. This artwork has been rediscovered and brought together in a handsome book published by Osprey Books under its Osprey Adventures line, Steampunk Soldiers: Uniforms & Weapons from the Age of Steam. It purports to be a guide to the vivid and striking uniforms worn by the armies and the steam-powered weaponry and equipment fielded by these armies in the years between the fall of the meteors and the Great War of the Worlds. The descriptions of these uniforms, the arms and armour, and the units and the battles they fought, do much to capture some of the period’s pageantry and both honour and dishonour!

Of course, Steampunk Soldiers: Uniforms & Weapons from the Age of Steam is anything but this. It is not a pictorial guide to the past, but a past that never was. A Steampunk Age of fantastic invention, intrigue, and warfare that is captured in this collection of gorgeous colour plates each accompanied by an intriguing description. For example, where did the 24th Regiment of Foot disappear to from Portsmouth in 1886? What brought Austria and France to war in which the French 6th Engineers used steam-powered drills to break into the supposedly impregnable Austrian castle of Hochosterwitz? There are hints and mentions of events like this throughout the book.

In places the authors have their tongues firmly ensconced in cheeks. For example, the be-kilted Highlander Battlesuits worn by the members of The Black Watch not only comes with a claymore sword, but automatic bagpipes that play Scotland the Brave! One interesting aside about the artwork in Steampunk Soldiers is that it has a certain familiarity to it. Many of the art is posed in a similar fashion to pieces used in a range of other Osprey Books.

There is an undoubted pleasure to be had in reading through the pages of Steampunk Soldiers, but its intriguing nature irks as much as it delights. For the reader is very much left wanting more; if not necessarily more images and more descriptions, but very much more background, more backstory, more detail. The implied background of this new Age of Steam begs for a second book, one with more explicit history. For what Steampunk Soldiers begs for is something that can be gamed—either as roleplaying or a wargaming setting. Naturally, there is nothing to stop a gamer from building such a setting from the material and background included, but it will take no little effort. (Of course, it is a pity that no suggestions are given as what games might be used to this end, but that would break conceit at the heart of Steampunk Soldiers.)

Ultimately, this is one book whose content is something that you want to a read a little more about. Easy to dip into and peruse for ideas, Steampunk Soldiers: Uniforms & Weapons from the Age of Steam is a charming and engaging book that begs for a sequel or more information.

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If you ain't got that...

An alternative title to Agents of S.W.I.N.G. from Postmortem Studios might be The Avengers RPG – and by that we do not mean the American comic series, but rather the iconic British television series, The Avengers, in which the umbrella swinging, bowler hatted John Steed investigated an array of Cold War, criminal, science fictional, and supernatural threats with a pretty and capable assistant by his side. Similarly, an alternative title to Agents of S.W.I.N.G. from Postmortem Studios might be the I.TC. TV RPG. For those of you not in the know, I.T.C. was a British television company headed by Lew Grade that during the 1960s and 1970s produced some of the United Kingdom’s most iconic television series and sold them worldwide. The Saint, Danger Man, The Prisoner, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Department S, The Persuaders! , The Champions, and Jason King to name but a few. What these series had in common, including The Avengers, was their genre and the fact that they were “Cool.” Their genre was that of the “Adventure Series” or “Spy-Fi” and their Coolness was borne not just of the fact that they were good shows, but also that they were British and the 1960s, Britishness was cool and London was swinging…!

In Agents of S.W.I.N.G., you get to be cool, suave, and sophisticated, working as an agent for S.W.I.N.G. – “Supreme World Intelligence Network Group,” an international espionage and counter-espionage organisation that deals with threats to world peace and security above, beyond, and below the global obsession with the West versus East of the Cold War. Just like The Avengers, the agents will be investigating an array of threats and mysteries, but Agents of S.W.I.N.G. has the capacity to push further at the envelope of its genres in a number of ways. First, it draws upon the equally as cool action films of the period, most notably the James Bond films, thus moving more towards the “Spy Fi” genre. Second, it follows both the Adventure Series and I.T.C.’s output out of the 1960s and into the grimmer, more cynical decade of the 1970s, best typified by series such as The Sweeney and The Professionals, so shifting towards the crime genre. Third, it can shift towards the supernatural and the outré with series such as Doctor Who and Sapphire & Steel, neither of are necessarily produced or distributed by, but are nevertheless both Adventure Series and thus not only part of the genre, but also cool. Fourth, it can do the Science Fiction Adventure Serial such as Thunderbirds or Joe 90.

If this seems like a lot of genres for Agents of S.W.I.N.G. to encompass, it probably is, but its actual genre is not many but one – the Adventure Series – and that genre can include elements of many other genres. It is up to the game’s GM or Control to decide how far he wants to go with any one genre with his Agents of S.W.I.N.G. game.

For its mechanics, Agents of S.W.I.N.G. uses the FATE 3 engine. First seen in Evil Hat Production’s superb pulp action RPG, Spirit of the Century, the Fate system is a Fudge variant, one in which Fate Points play a major role. Just as in many other RPGs they can be spent to gain a bonus to a roll, but here they have a greater versatility. Like many “Indie” style games, a player can spend them to create and bring small elements into the game, what is known as “dramatic editing,” but under the Fate system, Fate Points can do a whole lot more. They can be spent to invoke a character Aspect and bring it into play, to tag another character or location related Aspect to bring it into play, to power a Stunt, or to make a Declaration, adding some small element to the story. The Fate system also ditches traditional attributes, instead defining characters by Skills, Aspects, and Stunts. It plays fast and easy – the player rolls two six-sided dice, each of a different colour, and deducts one from the other to a number from +5 down to -5. This number is added to any bonuses derived from Skills, Aspects, or Stunts to try and beat a target number, or to roll higher than an opponent in a contested roll. In a contested roll, the amount by which one side beats the other determines the amount of damage or Stress inflicted, whether Physical, Composure (mental), or Social Stress.

Sometimes though, a player will need a third die – a “SWING die.” Whenever a player rolls well, he earns one of these dice and gets to keep it in front of him. Later on in the game, the player can choose to use his “Swing die” to substitute the negative or the positive die in order to get a better result.

For example, the S.W.I.N.G. agents want to get a pass from an enemy agent, Gustav Zimmerman, which would give them access to a high security laboratory. They have followed Zimmerman to a masque ball where Claudia Romanov will engage the agent on the dance floor and attempt to distract him whilst slipping the pass out of his pocket. Control decides that this will be an opposed roll against Zimmerman’s Mental rating of +2. Claudia’s player decides to use her skill of +3 (Solid) Sleight of Hand and spends a Fate point to trigger Bump and Grind Aspect. Control agrees and allows her a +2 bonus to her roll. Control rolls +3 and -6 to get a total modifier of -3, which reduces Zimmerman’s +2 Mental down to -1 Bent. This gives an excellent target for Claudia to beat and her player’s roll of +6 and -3 gives a modifier of +3, which when added to her current Sleight of Hand skill gives a total result of +8 or Atsonishing. Since this is 3 higher than the target, Control awards Claudia a Swing Die to use later. Control also rules that Zimmerman was so oblivious that he will be delayed getting to the laboratory himself whilst he looks for it!

Characters are defined by their Skills, Stunts, and Aspects. Skills are areas in which a character is trained in, his knowledge and expertise; his Stunts are related to his Skills and grant a character small bonuses or permissions within the game; while Aspects define the character in some way, such as “You won’t break me” or “Champagne Charlie” and are the more interactive elements within the game. Sample skills might be +1 (Cool) Guns or +4 (Neat) Science, while possible typical stunts include abilities like Architect of Death and Hide in Plain Sight or possessions such as Custom Ride gives you a favoured vehicle that you have added a gadget to (tied to the Drive skill). Most Stunts do not require the expenditure of Fate Points, but those that do are slightly more powerful. A Fate Point can be spent to Invoke one of a character’s Aspects and so gain a bonus, but if Compelled by Control and brought into play, so developing complications and driving the story along, then the character earns a Fate Point. Lastly, Aspects belonging to another character, or to an object, place, or a scene can be Tagged by another character, again by paying out Fate Points. When choosing Aspects for a character, the designer’s advice is that they should never be boring and it should always be possible to view an Aspect in both a positive and a negative light. Otherwise, a character cannot participate in the game’s Fate Point economy – bring negative Aspects into the game and letting it act as a story hook, gets a character more Fate Points to spend in his favour.

At its most basic, character creation is simply a matter of choosing Skills, Stunts, and Aspects. A quick method of creating characters is provided, but of course, the game wants a little more than that from its players, asking them to create a simple background and tying Aspects to their character’s Section (the department that they work for in S.W.I.N.G.), past, and cover identity before being given a free choice of another five. A player has twenty points to assign to Skills, these ranging from +1 (Cool) and +2 (Hip) up to +7 (Far Out) and +8 (Out of Sight); four Stunts to choose; and lastly some equipment to take. It should be made clear that although Agents of S.W.I.N.G. gives detailed lists of Skills and Stunts, players are expected to create their Aspects, tying them into their agents’ concepts.

The first of our two sample characters is based on a character that I originally played in a friend’s James Bond 007 RPG campaign. She is of an impoverished White Russian noble family, who followed her father into his elicit trade of theft and burglary, stealing from the rich to support the family. She worked the high society scene around the world before being caught by a S.W.I.N.G. agent into whose room she had broken. Now she commits burglary as a S.W.I.N.G. agent herself.

Name: Claudia Romanov
Concept: Reformed Jewel Thief
Section: Section 10 – Acquisition
Cover: High Flying Photographer

Section: “In and Out Without a Trace”
Past: Nobility in Reduced Circumstances
Cover: “My camera gets me in everywhere…”
Aspects: “Looks can be deceiving…”, Takes a thief to catch a thief, Like good Russian vodka, Always dressed the part, “I did complete finishing school”
Skills: +5 (Groovy) Burglary; +3 (Solid) Sleight of Hand, Stealth; +2 (Hip) Academics (French, Russian), Photography, Social Standing; +1 (Cool) Contacts, Deceit, Fists
Stunts: Acrobatics, Bump and Grind, Network of Contacts, Unruffled

Stress
Physical Stress OOOOO Composure OOOOO Social OOOOOOO

Our second example character is based upon a friend of mine who happens to be a fan of the Adventure Series genre and uses elements of characters that he has played in the past. Doctor Exton was kidnapped whilst working in Nepal and when he returned, found that he had developed strange abilities. These were detected by other members of Section 8 who recruited him into S.W.I.N.G.

Name: Doctor Simon Exton
Concept: Psychic Doctor
Section: Section 8 – Uncanny Affairs
Cover: Consultant Toxicologist

Section: “I know your body, I know your mind”
Past: It was a strange holiday
Cover: Let me through, I’m a Doctor!
Aspects: “My, that does look painful”, It’s just a scratch, Sardonic Wit, I have just the thing for that in my bag, I sense that there is more to this
Skills: +6 (Fab) Science; +4 (Neat) Academics; +3 (Solid) Fists; +2 (Hip) Empathy, Intimidation; +1 (Cool) Contacts, Mysteries, Resolve
Stunts: Cold Read, Developed Immunities, Psychic Telepathy, Sixth Sense

Stress
Physical Stress OOOOO Composure OOOOOO Social OOOOO

The setting and genre is supported with rules for equipment and gadgets, organisations, a year by year breakdown of events of the setting’s timeframe – the 1960s and 1970s, along with some notes on Superscience! and the Supernatural. If Control wants to push his game in either of those latter two directions, he might find the guidance somewhat light. Then again, both usually figure as elements within the Adventure Series genre rather than serve as its mainstay or focus. Further, the primary genre for Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is “Spy-Fi.”

Advice for Control on running Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is well done, but essentially boils down to keep the game light, keep it moving, and take your cues from the players and their agents. Agents of S.W.I.N.G. do not come with a scenario as such. Instead it includes a detailed outline that can be used as scenario, all but ready to play.

Perhaps where its Adventure Series genre is best displayed in Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is in its chapter of SWINGers. Or rather, its chapter of some thirty or so S.W.I.N.G. agents, each of them drawn from the various television series that are the inspiration for the RPG. If you know your I.T.C. and other series, then there will be certain pleasure in recognising who Cobalt and Iron, John Chain, Agent Crimson Saul Metford, Andrew Bowie and Richard Foyle, Jackson Queen, and John Swan are, and which television series that they come from. That said, there is no explicitly given use for these characters, whether as sample player agents or NPCs. The given sample “Villainous Schemers,” which include a Chinese criminal organisation, an extremist Left wing revolutionary movement, and a American neo-Nazi movement, are of more immediate and useful use, providing something iniquitous for the player agents to investigate and interdict.

Physically, Agents of S.W.I.N.G. comes as a three-hundred-and-fifty-six page black and white digest sized book. The layout is done as if from a series of report files, illustrated with silhouettes of ladies in various action poses, sometimes armed, sometimes not, but either way, reminiscent of the opening film credits of the James Bond series. The only other artwork in the book is the illustrations of the sample characters. Unfortunately, whilst Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is readable, both layout of the book and its editing are at best wanting. Some of the book could have been better organised, and whilst the choice of fount, Courier New, is perfectly in keeping with the book’s genre, its size is too large, often leading to ragged paragraphs because the column width is too short. As to the editing, the book just needed another polish, preferably from another pair of eyes than those of the author’s.

There is one last issue with Agents of S.W.I.N.G. and that is Mike Myers. Much like a game of Pendragon threatens to tip into absurdity a la the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a game of Agents of S.W.I.N.G. can easily lurch into a parody of its genre, the Austin Powers trilogy of films. Given the title of the RPG, there is certain inevitability to this, but it is certainly within the purview of both the players and Control to rein any such tendencies to “schwing” that way in their Agents of S.W.I.N.G..

Being a “Spy-Fi” or Adventure Series RPG, Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is anything other than a serious treatment of the espionage genre. Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is not Ron Edwards’ SPIONE: STORY NOW in Cold War Berlin or even Crafty Games’ SpyCraft, but is rather a light, almost coy take upon the espionage genre, whilst also serving as a toolkit to do other light, almost fantastical genres. So for example, whilst Agents of S.W.I.N.G. will do The Avengers or even The Man from U.N.C.L.E. with a wink, a tip of the bowler hat, and even a cocked eyebrow, with a little effort upon the part of Control, it would also do Thunderbirds, U.F.O. , or even The Six Million Dollar Man. Overall, despite lacking something of the flair its genre calls for in terms of its production value Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is a pleasingly light version of the FATE engine that demands just enough from the players to do its genre justice.

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The Generic Grit RPG

The CORTEX System Role Playing Game is a set of generic rules first seen in the Serenity RPG, and since used in the Battlestar Galactica, Demon Hunter, and Supernatural RPGs. It comes complete, bar the dice, and is designed to handle most genres short of the more fantastic – so no high fantasy, no superheroes, and no ultra-tech. What it can do is fantasy with magic, science fiction with psionics and cyberware, and more modern set and near future set games, all with a gritty edge. The book also includes some decent GM advice, three sample settings, and even an index.

There are numerous sets of generic rules for roleplaying currently available and the difference between one and any other, comes down to the level of detail it provides, the lightness of its rules, and quite simply the feel of the game. The CORTEX System Role Playing Game compares well with any of its competitors, sitting at the low end of the detail spectrum, its rules being moderately light, and possessing a feel that is grittier and grainier than other “light” generic rules. The core rules are slightly let down by their window dressing – more “pick ‘n’ play” elements could have been included to get a game set in a specific genre going faster, and the sample settings do undersell themselves. Nevertheless, the CORTEX System Role Playing Game is a good package for the GM who wants a light, gritty rules set with which to create his own games.

The system is relatively straight forward. Attributes, skills, and traits – assets and complications (or advantages and disadvantages), for characters, monsters, and vehicles are measured by dice type: two, four, six, eight, ten, and twelve-sided dice, with a rating of d6 being considered as average. Attributes – Agility, Strength, Vitality, Alertness, Intelligence, and Willpower; and Traits – Assets and Complications such as “Rank and Privilege” and “Traumatic Flashbacks” are measured by just a single die type, whereas skills work slightly differently. Above a rating of d6, all skills must have a speciality. So a character can have a skill in Drive of d2, d4, or d6, but beyond that he needs to specialise in Bus, Car, Truck, or something similar, in which he would have a rating of d8 or more. This would be expressed as Drive d6, Truck d8 and the character could easily buy specialities beyond that.

To do anything a character rolls against a target difficulty, three for easy, seven for average, right up to 31 for impossible. Any result of seven or more above this target is counted as an extraordinary success. Skill checks involve both an attribute and the skill, but the attribute will vary depending upon circumstances. For example, to successfully strike a target a character would roll his Agility and his Unarmed Combat d6, Tae Kwon Do d10, but to analyse and assess his opponent’s skill, he would roll his Intelligence and his Unarmed Combat d6, Tae Kwon Do d10. Rolls involving attributes either mean rolling it twice, for example, when making a strength check to force open a door, or two different attributes.

A character also receives Plot Points, used to modify his skill rolls, to reduce damage suffered, and to manipulate the game in small ways in his favour. He earns them not just for good roleplaying and achieving goals, but also for bringing his Complications into play.

Character creation uses a standard point buy method. A player is given points to spend on his character’s attributes, skills, and traits, the amount varying according to how experienced or how heroic the GM wants his player characters to be. The book also includes bundles that a player can buy, packages of attributes, skills, and traits representing racial or experience backgrounds, such as (UFO) Abductee or Elf. There are only a few sample such Bundles, and while it is easy enough to create more, it would have been nice to have been given a few more, perhaps categorised by genre so that a GM and his players could just pick and play.

The system is well supported with solid rules for handling combat and vehicles – anything from a minivan to a scout starship, and a decent equipment list that includes robots and androids (with rules to play both). The GM is given advice on creating and running games, with attention paid to the genres supported elsewhere in the book – crime, fantasy, and galactic fantasy.

Part of the problem with the CORTEX System Role Playing Game is that it draws strong comparison with the Savage Worlds RPG, primarily because the mechanics of both look vaguely similar and cater to not dissimilar markets. There are plenty of differences and similarities though. Both are quick games, but CORTEX is more straight forward in play compared with the slightly more complex Savage Worlds with its use of cards; CORTEX is a grittier, grainier game than the pulpier, more heroic in feel Savage Worlds; and lastly CORTEX gives the GM and player alike something less proscriptive to work with in terms of its mechanics and character advancement when compared to the tight framework of Savage Worlds. The other advantage that Savage Worlds has is that gives access to a wide range of settings (and it handles miniatures skirmish games better, but CORTEX was not written with that in mind), but CORTEX is better toolkit in terms of mechanics for the GM to create his own setting or game. That said, the similarities are enough that you could run a Savage Worlds setting with relatively little difficulty using the CORTEX System.

The other problem that the CORTEX System Role Playing Game has is in its choice of window dressings and sample settings. The primary window dressing elements provided are magic, cybernetics, and psionics, each including just about enough samples to show the reader how they work and then leave you really wanting more. The other piece of window dressing is a set of mechanics describing how the U.S. court procedure works, which seems an odd choice that only makes sense when you discover that one of the three sample setting is a cop show.

The first of the three sample settings is “Star of the Guardians,” a Star Wars-like space opera based on the books by Margaret Weis (whose company, Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd. publishes this book), in which the Guardians, members of the genetically bred Blood Royal who are trained to use the Bloodsword energy weapons and other technology, feud over the fate of the galactic Republic and the safety of the heir to the monarchy that the Republic overthrew. The second is “Trace,” a contemporary set police procedural inspired by the C.S.I. and Law & Order franchises that suggests that the players take multiple roles, from investigative to support to technical, and play troupe style. The third of the settings is “Arcady,” based in a southern gothic novel by Michael Williams about a family and their house, both of which are capable of slipping through the Borders into a dream-like world.

Of the three, “Star of the Guardians” and “Arcady” suffer from a lack of information and if the reader is not familiar with nor a fan of the books that they are based on, the likelihood is that the reader is not going to be grabbed by either. “Trace” has the advantage of familiarity – how many of us have not seen a police procedural? It also benefits from the fact that the CORTEX System is designed to handle exactly this kind of genre, the rules being an easy match, whereas in the other settings, the GM only receives sample window dressings to use with them.

Physically, the CORTEX System Role Playing Game is neatly laid out, lightly illustrated (with the silhouettes actually being better than some of the artwork), and clearly written. Its coverage of the possible genres is perhaps a little too cursory, but these rules are not really aimed at the inexperienced GM.

So the question is, do I like the CORTEX System Role Playing Game? The answer is, yes I do. I would probably turn to Savage Worlds for its settings – too many good ones to mention here – but the CORTEX System Role Playing Game is there for when I want something with a slightly harder edge.

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Roll Me A Story

Rory’s Story Cubes is a set of dice that, as the game’s title suggests, can be used to tell stories. Created by The Creativity Hub and published most places by Gamewright, the set is designed to spur a roller’s imagination by giving him a set of elements to include in his story. As a game, it is at best “rules lite,” coming more with guidelines than actual rules, such that it might be better classed as a tool or a toy.

Rory’s Story Cubes comes in a sturdy little box that opens up to reveal nine cubes or dice. Each die is a chunky 19mm to a side and contains six images, such as an “Apple,” an “Evil Shadow,” a “House,” a “Lightning Strike,” a “Lock,” a “Parachute,” a “Question Mark,” a “Tower,” and a “Wand.” None of the symbols are replicated, so with nine dice in the set, there are a total of fifty-four symbols to roll, which promises several million different combinations. The idea is to do “Once Upon a time” with these symbols, incorporating them into a story as the roller fancies. So for example, I roll an “Abacus,” “Flames,” “Happiness,” a “Magnifying Glass,” a “Mobile Telephone,” a “Parachute,” “Sleeping,” a “Tepee,” and a “Tower.” So my story might go like this…

Once upon a time, there lived a man called Dave, who could never get a full night’s sleep. He had a really dull job that involved him using an “Abacus” and never gave him time to examine how dull his life was. News that his life was to change came with a call on his “Mobile Telephone” and a dull monotone voice explaining how both the job and the ivory “Tower” of a life he had built around his job had gone up in “Flames.” This gave him the opportunity to examine his life using a “Magnifying Glass” and thus decide to use a “Parachute” to jump from the top of the “Tower.” Dave did. Now Dave does not have an “Abacus,” a dull job, a “Mobile Telephone,” or the need to visit an ivory “Tower.” Instead, every night he can be found “Sleeping” in a “Teepee.” Dave has found “Happiness.”

Now doubtless, you can do better. And you are welcome to try with your own set of Rory’s Story Cubes. How you do that is entirely up to you, as the extent of the rules in the “game” merely suggest that the stories can either be told solitaire or co-operatively. The problem with this is that it means that as a game, Rory’s Story Cubes lacks the structure that would make it game, because this is essentially not only “use the dice to make up the stories you want,” but also “make up the rules to how you tell those stories.” Arguably then, not sufficient enough to make it a game given its need for further input from the participants. Plus, the clue is in the title – Rory’s Story Cubes, not Rory’s Story Dice. After all, “Dice” infers a game, whereas “Cubes” do not.

As a tool or a toy, Rory’s Story Cubes is much better. The images on the dice are large, friendly, and universal. Although due to their size, the dice feel a bit too much to all together fit in the hand, they possess a satisfying weight and heft. They would work well as an educational tool, whether that is in an education establishment, or simply as a means to spur your child’s imagination and thinking.

There is much to like about Rory’s Story Cubes. The dice are themselves physically pleasing and the concept sound. More rules would have made them even more pleasing, but as long as the users or players are happy to agree on the rules as to how they can tell their stories, then they are ready to roll their imaginations with Rory’s Story Cubes.

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Quest for a Story

The traditional generic or multi-genre RPG is an attempt to provide an all-encompassing set of rules and mechanics that allow a GM to create and run, and the players to play, a roleplaying scenario or campaign in a setting of their choice. It can be set in any time, any place, and any genre, and the rules will often reflect this. This is either by trying to cover every detail or by trying to cover everything in broad swathes; the former approach often threatening to overwhelm the game in those details, whilst the latter can lose flavour as the details are glossed over. HeroQuest is a generic RPG with a difference. Published by Moon Design Publications, its approach is anything other than traditional, for it does not approach roleplaying in any genre mechanically, but instead approaches it narratively. At its heart is not the question,”Can I roleplay in this genre or setting?” Rather it is, “Can I tell a story through roleplay in this genre or setting?”

Designed by Robin D. Laws, HeroQuest originally appeared as Hero Wars and then HeroQuest, each in their own way strongly tied to the Glorantha of the RuneQuest setting. Indeed, this version of HeroQuest continues this association by including a “genre pack” for Glorantha – a genre pack being an information kit for the players about the setting or world that they will be gaming in – as an example. For the most part, this version of HeroQuest is divorced from Glorantha to give a generic set of rules, or as the rules state explicitly, a set of tools to tell a story.

HeroQuest’s primary means of approaching storytelling is changing how everything is defined. Although numbers do play a part of this definition, they only come after the important aspects of a character, a thing, or other part of the world is described in words. Just about anything can be described in this way and not necessarily in absolute terms, as in HeroQuest a player is encouraged to be more imaginative in terms of what his hero can do. So instead of “Fight with Sword,” a hero might have “Flashing Blade” or “My surroundings are my weapon.” During the game, the player is free to use the abilities however he wants if his GM accepts that his suggested use is applicable. So instead of the player saying, “I hit him with my sword,” he might instead say, “I try to impress Lady Beatrice by defeating Captain Raymond with a display of swordsmanship that humiliates him rather than hurts him, using my Flashing Blade ability.”

Also important here is the fact that the player explicitly states what he wants to achieve before his character attempts the action. This can be as simple as climbing up a rock face, as lengthy of setting out to woo the governor’s daughter, or as complex as “banging the bodyguards’ heads together before drawing their guns and emptying each weapon into their gangland boss.” All can be settled with a roll of the dice that quickly help both GM and player determine the outcome and move on. Relatively slight steps up in terms of complexity enables both GM and player to determine the degree of failure or success in Simple Contests and then Extended Contests, the latter actually a series of Simple Contests.

Once a player has set his objective, he decides upon the ability he will use and the GM will choose what will resist it. Both player and GM will each roll a twenty-sided die and compare the results to their respective abilities, results of 20 being a fumble and 1 being a critical success. For example, Gordon is playing “Delaware” Miller, archaeological adventurer, who is chasing his rival, the Belgian treasure hunter, Bernard Monami, and got aboard his lorry. Next he wants to reach around to the cab, pull open Monami’s door, and sock it to the Belgian across his smug jaw. “Delaware” is using his ability of “Determined Action” 3W – actually an ability rating of 23, but each point above 20 represents a level of Mastery – whilst the GM, Stef, decides that Bernard’s ability of “Escape the Clutches…” 1W is suited to the situation.

Both Gordon and Stef roll the dice. “Delaware” Miller gets a result of 5 and Stef a result of 11. Both rolled Successes, but although neither rolled a 1, “Delaware” Miller rolled lower than his rival and thus achieved a marginal victory. With this result, the GM could say that although has managed to swing into the cab, he did not land his wanted blow on Monami. Such a result is not good enough for “Delaware” and so Gordon brings into play the levels of Mastery that “Delaware” has in “Determined Action” 3W. Since Bernard also has a level of Mastery in “Escape the Clutches…” it cancels a level of Mastery that “Delaware” Miller has in “Determined Action,” reducing it to “Determined Action” 2W.

With the first level of Mastery, Gordon raises his result from a Success to a Critical Success, but with the second, he lowers Bernard’s Success to a Failure. With that result, the GM agrees that “Delaware” Miller has achieved his aim and narrates that into the story. Similarly, a character can use Hero Points to alter contest results in the same fashion.

If this was an Extended Contest, then this might just have been the first exchange, the aim for both “Delaware” and Bernard being to take control of the lorry and drive off with the artefact. In this case, Successes and more would gain each participant Resolution Points, the exchanges continuing until one side had acquired five or more and won the Extended Contest. As a general rule, the more interesting a contest is and the greater its importance as part of the story or scenario, the more the need for the more complex contests.

As in any RPG, in HeroQuest the loser in a Contest takes damage. It is usually expressed as levels of Impairment, and depending upon the nature of the Contest, this Impairment can be physical, mental, and social. Impairment can also affect a character’s relationships, whether that is romantic, business, political, criminal, and so on. Further, Impairment can have an effect on not just the relationship that a character has with his Community, but with the Community itself. HeroQuest goes into some detail about the creation and running of Communities, the creation process usually being conducted by the players collectively. Primarily, a Community is a resource that the characters can add to and draw upon, but it has a life of its own and if the characters use its resources badly, the characters can fall out of favour and have to find their way back into its good graces.

So far, so good. HeroQuest is clearly geared towards both imaginative play and players, and this continues with character generation. Three methods of character generation are given: Prose, List, and “As you go,” each one being easier than the former. Under the Prose method, a player writes a hundred word statement and underlines his character’s abilities and keywords; under the List method, the player chooses his character’s keywords and abilities; and with “As you go,” the player adds keywords as play progresses.

Of his character’s starting Abilities, a player choses one as his best and assigns it a score of 17, with the rest being set at 13. A player can then divide further 20 points between these abilities. It is possible to raise an ability’s rating above 20. In doing so, for each point above 20, the ability gains a level of mastery, represented by a notation using an orthogonal “W.” In fact, this symbol is the Mastery Rune from Glorantha. So if a player gave his character the ability Flashing Blade 23, he would actually have Flashing Blade 3W.

Our sample character is my current one from the Legends of the Five Rings campaign I am playing in, called The Silken Knot. To give you some comparison, I include his Legends of the Five Rings stats for comparison.

Yasuki Kiosho, Crab Courtier
Air: 3 (Awareness 3, Reflexes 3), Earth: 3 (Stamina 3, Willpower 3)
Fire: 2 (Intelligence, Agility), Water: 3 (Strength 3, Perception 3), Void: 2
Honour: 2.3, Status: 0.8, Glory: 1.0, Infamy 1.0 (Mantis), Insight: 157
School/Rank: Crab Courtier, Rank 2
Advantages: Clear Thinker (3), Forbidden Lore: (Cult of Ruhmal) (5), Inner Gift: Empathy (7), Language: (Rhuumal) (1), Seven Fortunes’ Blessing: Daikoku’s Blessing (4) Disadvantages: Black Sheep: Crab Clan (3), Black Sheep: Mantis Clan (3), Hostage (3), Lechery (3), Lost Love (3), Pyrophobia (1)
Skills: Art: Painting 1, Athletics 1, Calligraphy 1 (Crab Cipher), Commerce 3 (Appraisal), Courtier 3 (Manipulation), Defense 3, Etiquette 2, Intimidation 2 (Control), Investigation 1, Jiujitsu 1, Knives 1 (Kukri), Lore: Ivory Kingdoms 1, Lore: Mantis Clan 1, Lore: Cult of Ruhmal 1, Lore: Underworld 1, Sailing 1, Sincerity 2 (Deceit), Temptation 1 (Seduction)

As part of the campaign set up, it was necessary to create a background that in part explained his current situation. Some of this is implied in the character’s advantages and disadvantages, but to make it more explicit and to get his keywords and abilities for HeroQuest, I describe him in exactly one hundred words. As part of the process I underline the important aspects of him, thusly:

Yasuki Kiosho, Crab Clan courtier, is a mannered, but wily, sharp tongued and perceptive merchant. A Mantis Clan hostage, he sailed to the Ivory Kingdoms, there learning to use the flexible steel sword, the Urumi, and the Kukri knife to defend himself, and of the evil Cult of Ruhmal, a new threat to Rokugan. Back home, his lechery almost dishonoured him and Sayomi, his host, Yoritomo Chikao’s daughter, resulting in his being cast out. Now he works the underworld as a smuggler and hunts for the cult to redeem himself. Sometimes controlling, he can easily lie or spot a lie.

From this I derive his abilities and assign the points as described above. His key ability is “perceptive merchant,” which is set at 23 or 3W. The remaining fourteen points are distributed to reflect what the player feels to be important about Kiosho.

Yasuki Kiosho
The Job: mannered Crab Clan courtier 1W
Doing Stuff: perceptive merchant 3W, sailed to the Ivory Kingdoms 13, works the underworld 15, hunts for the cult 13, can easily lie or spot a lie 15, redeem himself 13
Social: Mantis Clan hostage 13, smuggler 13, lechery 13, almost dishonoured 13
Knowing Stuff: evil Cult of Ruhmal 13, Rokugan 13, Sometimes controlling 13, wily & sharp-tongued 13
Stuff I Own: flexible steel sword, the Urumi 13, Kukri knife to defend himself 15
People: Yoritomo Chikao 13 and Kisosho’s lost love daughter Sayomi 13

Despite HeroQuest’s simplicity, the rules that support that simplicity are explored in some depth. Whether this examining how modifiers work with character abilities, how healing works, or how to bring relationships into a game, the rules never really stray from helping the reader how they affect both the core Contest mechanic and the story. In fact, the author and thus HeroQuest is at its best when it discusses how the game should be played and how it should be narrated.

What HeroQuest does is make clear the differences between the story found in literature and that found in roleplaying. With a single controlling author, the story in literature rarely veers away from being a direct series of obstacles that the protagonists either overcome or fail to overcome. Whereas because the story in roleplaying has several authors, in other words, the fickle players, and because the use of dice to resolve obstacles, it can split away from the direct series of obstacles into branches of them. To counter the fickle nature, HeroQuest suggests adjusting the difficulty of the Contests according to the number that the characters have overcome so far. So the more Contests that they fail, the easier the GM needs to set the difficulty of the next Contest.

The concept that the story in roleplaying has multiple authors is continued in HeroQuest’s approach to narration. As is traditional in storytelling games – traditional in the sense that they have been around for more than a decade – HeroQuest suggests that narration should be a collaborative process involving the players as well as the GM. He is encouraged to look for opportunities to involve his players to the point of actually leaving gaps in the story so that the characters can pursue their own agendas. The advice takes a further step in suggesting that the GM be prepared to break the narration to rewind and re-interpret the outcome of a Contest if the players are unhappy with it. This is possibly narrative roleplaying at its more radical, and it is open to abuse by a domineering player. Still, as a means of re-writing the outcome of overcoming an obstacle is in keeping with the story based nature of HeroQuest.

Unfortunately, for a generic or multi-genre RPG, HeroQuest is disappointing in its treatment of actual genres. It discusses how to create the technical elements that would go into a genre pack for any setting, the ones that you would find in many roleplaying settings – occupations, creatures, cultures, magic, powers, religions, species, technologies, and so on. This is done through keywords, under which can be grouped a number of abilities. Keywords can also be used during character generation if the GM allows players to select cultures, occupations, and species. In each case, a fully worked sample is provided. Powers and magic require extra explanation for each genre pack, this explanation being organised into a framework that neatly sums the origins, limitations, and requirements of each power or type of magic. Whilst this is all technically useful, it still does not address any one particular genre.

Similarly, when it comes to the Glorantha genre pack, HeroQuest comes up short. The problem is that it focuses entirely on the magic of Glorantha and how the runes associated with that magic are interpreted along with a description of the various deities in Glorantha’s pantheons. Since many inhabitants of Glorantha understand these runes and many of them can cast magic, this is useful. Yet it does not offer any information beyond this. Which for an information kit that a genre pack is meant to be is decidedly disappointing.

The reason for the inclusion of the the Glorantha genre pack is to provide a means for players of Hero Wars and the previous edition of HeroQuest, which were both specifically tied to the Glorantha setting, to convert their games to the new edition and thus the more recent HeroQuest sourcebooks for Glorantha. Which is laudable, but it does not offer any information beyond this and that means that the last thing that anyone can do with this genre pack is start playing.

And the fact that neither the GM nor the players can get playing very quickly with a copy of HeroQuest is its main problem. For a generic or multi-genre RPG, the lack of sample genre packs that showcase how the game can do various genres seems an odd omission. Whilst HeroQuest has an abundance of examples throughout its pages, fully worked up genre packs in say the Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction genres would have helped cap all of those examples for the GM and given him something that he could have worked with right away.

Physically, HeroQuest is well written and in general, simply and clearly laid out. If there is a problem with the presentation it is in that some of the artwork is disappointing. Still, it is the writing that shines and that is profusely supported with innumerable and always useful examples.

At the heart of HeroQuest is the art of telling stories, an art that it supports with simple rules and mechanics that are illustrated with copious illuminating examples. In return, it asks more of both GM and players alike, not just in the act of telling a story, but also in trusting each other when the focus of the game is the narrative rather than absolute numbers. In removing those absolute numbers, HeroQuest is more flexible and more encompassing in the genres that it could tackle, and even though the genre support in this rulebook is itself weak, the rules themselves are pleasingly clear and easy to grasp. HeroQuest gives you the rules to which you only need to add your imagination to roleplay the story that you want to play.

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