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.

Read More

Disastrous Entertainment

If the Coen brothers were to design a roleplaying game, then it might be an awful lot like Fiasco. Then again, Fiasco: A Game of Powerful Ambition & Poor Impulse Control is inspired by two of the Coen brothers’ movies—Blood Simple and Fargo. It is an ‘indie’-style RPG published by Bully Pulpit Games that focusses on establishing and resolving the opposing greeds, fears, and lusts of its protagonists in a narrative that is set up and completed in just three hours. It is designed for three to five players, does not need a GM, and requires no preparation—set-up is part of its play.

Fiasco is played as a three-act structure. In Acts One and Two, each player has two scenes in which to play out his protagonist’s plans and ambitions. Between the two occurs the ‘Tilt’, an event that upsets everyone’s plans, forcing them to desperate acts in Act Two. Following which, everyone’s fate is resolved in the Aftermath.

Beyond the rulebook itself, Fiasco requires two black and two white dice per player, pencils and index cards, and a Playset. The dice are used to randomly determine the elements of a Playset and its aftermath for each of the protagonists, as well as a timing mechanism. The Playset provides the elements and theme for the Fiasco—the relationships between each of the pairs of characters in the game, the needs that they share, plus objects and locations of note. Four such Playsets are included in Fiasco—‘Main Street’ (small town America), ‘Boomtown’ (The Wild West), ‘Tales from Suburbia’, and ‘The Ice’ (McMurdo Station, Antarctica)—more are available from the publisher’s website. The game works better if printouts are available of the playset and the rulebook’s Tilt table.

Before play begins, the players roll the dice and then use them to match the numbers to the categories and their elements in the Playset. This sets up their protagonists’ relationships, their needs, and places and items. Initially the set-up focuses on establishing relationships between each pair of players, but by the end, there should also be one Need, one Object, and one Location as well—though there may be more.

For example, Debbie, James, John-Paul, and Peter sit down with the ‘Pyramid Scheme: The Death of Brandon Madeley’ and roll the dice. Going round the table, Debbie uses a die to open up the ‘Romance’ category from the Relationships table between herself and James; James then opens the ‘Crime’ category between himself and John-Paul; Jon-Paul selects the Friendship between himself and Peter; and Peter chooses the Family category between himself and Debbie. Going round the table again, James defines the ‘Romance’ Relationship between himself and John-Paul with the ‘lovers behind the boss’ back’ element; John-Paul selects the ‘mole and federal investigator’ element for the ‘Crime’ Relationship he has with James; Peter moves and determines that the ‘Family’ Relationship he has with Debbie is that of ‘parent/child or stepchild’; and lastly, Debbie is left to define the Friendship Relationship between John-Paul and Peter. She opts for ‘drug friends’.

Using the rest, the players add an object—an attaché case stuff full of bearer bonds, and a location—the boss’ yacht. Two needs are also added. Peter selects ‘…about his mother’s death’ from the ‘To Get The Truth’ category from the Needs tables, whilst James opts to ‘Get Rich’ by ‘…taking the boss for everything he’s worth’.

Once this is done, the dice are collected up for use during the game’s play and then the players define who their protagonists are. This is broadly done. For example, Debbie defines her character as Angeline Madely, the boss’ second wife, ex-secretary made good, big blonde dressed in the most expensive faux-leopard skin possible, whilst James decides that his character is Boyd Wooten, assistant to Angelina’s husband who might know some of his dirty secrets. As their Relationship suggests, Boyd and Angeline have been having an affair, he behind his boss’ back, she behind her husband’s.

Play proper then begins. In both Acts, each player has two scenes, each scene a chance to put his character in the spotlight and further explore both his needs and relationships. Typically a scene will involve one or more of the characters he has relationships with NPCs handled by those not involved otherwise. There are two possible types of scene—Establish and Resolve. To Establish a scene, the player chooses how it is framed, but the other players will determine its outcome, whereas if he chooses to Resolve, the other players choose how it is framed, but the player determine its outcome. At the end of each scene, the player is given a die, a black die if the outcome is negative, white if it is positive. During Act One, this die is not kept by the player, but given away, whereas during Act Two, the player will keep the die.

With the Establish and Resolve rules, a player can either set the scene up or he can decide its outcome, but he cannot do both. The rules also enforce Fiasco’s collaborative style of play because the other players must have input into the current player’s scene, either to help end it if he chose to Establish, or to set it up if he wanted to Resolve.  Thus they work together throughout to build and create the story of their Fiasco.

For example, on James’ turn, he decides that he wants to Establish a scene between his character, Boyd, and Debbie’s Angeline in which he will find out if she knows where the attaché case stuff full of bearer bonds is. They rendezvous aboard the boss’ yacht and he attempts to woo the information out of her. As they play the scene out, Angeline resists, Boyd gets desperate, and then he threatens to reveal secrets of Angeline’s. At this point, the other players—John-Paul, Peter, and Debbie—determine that this is not going well for Boyd, and hand James a black die…

Between the First and Second Acts, there is the Tilt, which adds the two elements that will have a negative impact on everyone’s plans during the Second Act. The Tilt Table is found in the core book and the elements are determined by the players who rolled the highest result on the black and the white dice.

In our example, James as Boyd and Peter as Johnnie have rolled the highest numbers. Their choices are the ‘death, after an unpleasant struggle’ element from the Tragedy category and the ‘a showdown’ element from the Guilt category. These two elements will somehow figure in the outcome of Act Two.

At game’s end, the players roll the dice they have accumulated over the course of their four scenes subtracting the lower colour total from the higher colour total. The result for each player determines the ultimate outcome for his character—lower totals give worse outcomes than higher ones. During the Aftermath, each player has the chance to narrate what exactly happens to his character after everything that has gone on. From set-up through to the Aftermath, including both Acts should only take about three hours at most.

Fiasco is clearly and simply written, its style of play amply showcased with a lengthy example. If there is an issue with the game, it is that it represents a radical style of play in comparison to that of traditional RPGs. Most RPGs are driven by one narrative and work by having the players influence the game through an impartial player—the Referee—their only job being to concentrate on what their characters do in the world presented by the Referee, who in turn directs the narrative of the game. Storytelling RPGs shift this control to the players, who as the game progresses, create the narrative and the story collaboratively as well as they tell the stories of their characters—typically in short, concentrated sessions. Essentially, they shift their role from just the ‘I’ of their characters to being both the ‘I’ and the world normally narrated by the Referee. It should be pointed out that this is a radical switch to make for many inured in standard roleplaying where the players often have little or no say in the world that their characters are in or in the outcome of what their characters do.

With a framework rather than a set of rules, Fiasco, like many storytelling RPGs, relies heavily upon the input of its players. They have to engage not in a setting that is pre-written for them, but in a setting that they themselves create as they play. In particular, the players need to engage in not just the RPG’s genre—but also the setting, themes, and elements of the Playset selected for the forthcoming game. A good Playset should underpin a good session spent playing Fiasco and a good Playset should provide inspirational elements enough to make it worth using it again and again. A side effect of the choice of genre also makes Fiasco accessible to those new to roleplaying; indeed they have the advantage of having not so preconceived notions about roleplaying garnered from playing more narrative RPGs.

A good storytelling RPG encourages good gaming and good storytelling, and Fiasco epitomises this. It comes as pleasing complete package, its keeps a tight structure around the game, and it forces—in a good way—the players not just to play well, but it forces them to create well too. Playing your desperate plans gone disastrously awry has never been so much fun—Fiasco: A Game of Powerful Ambition & Poor Impulse Control enables you to emulate its genre in exemplary style.

Read More

Once Upon a Card Game

Once Upon a Time: The Storytelling Card Game is twenty years old. Originally published in 1993, AtlasGames released a third edition in 2012 after several years of the game being out of print. This has allowed the game’s designers to tinker a little with the mechanics and Atlas Games to redesign the cards, all the whilst retaining the game’s simple play and theme. As its title suggests, Once Upon a Time is a game about fairy tales, in particular, it is a game about telling fairy tales, one that has both co-operative and competitive elements. Designed to be played by two to six players, Once Upon a Time encourages creativity and collaborative imagination in adults and children alike.

The game consists of three types of cards – Story Cards, Interrupt Story Cards, and Ending Cards. The Story Cards form the basis of each player’s story and each illustrates an element to be found in fairy tales and is further divided into five categories. These five categories are Character – for example, ‘thief’ and ‘child’; Thing – for example, ‘food’ and ‘door’; Place – for example, ‘village’ and ‘garden’; Aspect – for example, ‘disguised’ and ‘frightened’; and Event – for example, ‘fighting’ and ‘falling in love’. The five categories are also colour-coded. Interrupt Story Cards share the same categories and colour coding as the standard Story Cards. Each can be used as a normal Story Card, but each can also be used to interrupt another player’s story when that player plays a story card of the same category and colour coding. Together the Story Cards and Interrupt Story Cards make up the Story Deck. Each Ending Card gives an end to a story, for example, ‘he lived the rest of his life as a beggar … which was perfectly just.’ or ‘the flames rose higher and the wicked place was destroyed.’

At the start of the game each player receives a handful of cards from the Story Deck – the number varying according to the number of players – and a single Ending Card. On his turn each player tells a story, his aim being to mention the elements on his cards and bring them into play. Once a player has brought all of his Story Cards into play, he can play his Ending Card, using its text to complete his story. The first player to do so wins the game.

In the meantime, a storyteller’s fellow players will be listening to the story. If the storyteller mentions an element that another player has a Story Card that matches that element, then he can play it to interrupt the current storyteller and take over. Similarly, a Story Interrupt Card can be played to interject the current storyteller and take over if the category of the Story Card played by the storyteller matches that of the interrupting player’s Story Interrupt Card. A storyteller can also be interrupted when gets stuck, rambles, tells a silly story, fails to properly incorporate the elements on his cards, and so on. A storyteller can also pass the story onto another player, but whenever he passes his story or losses control by other means, he must draw a new card from the Story Deck. 

For example, in a four-player game, each player receives seven cards. Dave receives the Story Cards, ‘beautiful’, ‘window’, ‘book’, ‘key’, and ‘door’, and the Story Interrupt Cards, ‘kitchen’ and ‘treasure’. He also receives the Ending Card, ‘So he told her was a prince and they lived happily ever after.’ Stef receives ‘king’, ‘tree’, ‘making mischief’, ‘sword’, ‘parent’, and ‘journey’, and the Story Interrupt Card, ‘returned’. His Ending Card is ‘and the kingdom at the end of the tyrant’s reign’. Dave begins his story about a girl who is kept locked up by her mother. Dave did not play a Story Card to bring this element into play, but Stef has a Story Card, ‘parent’, which although not an exact match, is a close enough fit to successfully interrupt. Thus Dave not only has to relinquish control of the story, but has to draw another card from the Story Deck. 

Stef’s story is about a tyrant king and towards its end, he tells how the king rushed to get his ‘sword’ in order to defend himself when attacked, but as he plays the ‘sword’ Story Card, Dave interjects with a cry of “Interrupt!” and plays his ‘treasure’ Story Interrupt Card. Thus he regains the control of the story and tells how it was not a sword that the king first ran to when attacked, but his ‘treasure’!

Whenever one player takes over from another as storyteller, he must continue telling the same story. He is free to incorporate new elements from his Story Cards, but he cannot ignore those have already been included as part of the on-going story. This is the game’s collaborative aspect.

Physically, Once Upon a Time is very nicely produced. Everything has been done in full colour, with all of the Story and Story Interrupt Cards each given its own piece of art. The cards are clear to read, as are the rules, which manage to fit everything into four pages, including examples of play and a short discussion of how the game can be included in the classroom. A leaflet available for download from the publisher’s website expands on the information given here. One issue is with the packaging, or rather the lack of internal packaging which means that the cards are left to rattle around in a large box.

It is difficult not to see Once Upon A Time as the spiritual ancestor to co-designer James Wallis’ The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen. In that game, the competitive element has been increased and the theme has been matured and broadened, if not made wholly magnificent. To an extent, Once Upon A Time is also the spiritual ancestor to Gloom, also published by Atlas Games, but while that opts for a darker, if not a maudlin tone, it also opts for greater complexity. Once Upon A Time is a much lighter game, both in terms of tone and mechanics, thus making it suited to all ages, though in an adult group, there is nothing to prevent their incorporating some of the darker elements of the original fairy tales, though they are not supported by the game’s Story Deck. One option there would be to use the Create-Your-Own Storytelling Cards expansion to add such elements. Other expansions available include Enchanting Tales – Tales of Enchantment and Magical Adventure and Seafaring Tales – Tales of Pirates and Seafaring Adventure which take the core game in differently themed directions, whilst the Once Upon a Time Writer's Handbook explores how to turn a tale created using the game’s cards into a piece of fiction.

What is surprising is that despite its age and despite the simplicity of its design, Once Upon a Time has never been re-themed. Perhaps with the release of the third edition, this might be a possibility? In the meantime, Once Upon a Time: The Storytelling Card Game is a thoroughly engaging game that combines the charm of fairy tales with simple, elegant rules and lovely production values that spark the imagination. 

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More