(I only say "Alpha" because I was present for it, and that's how I categorize them).
I just got done playtesting Parsec, with me present, for only the third time. This isn't a game that needs a lot of playtesting - I'm not doing anything revolutionary with the system, I'm just using existing tools in a few ways I've never seen before, and using them in usual ways that I think are better than I've seem some of them used before. There's also a lot of it that is just "Yeah, its a rules-lite science fiction game".
The playtest was designed to test the ship-to-ship combat system, and frankly, it went really well. The system came through about 90% unscathed - and in talking it out with the players afterward, I think I found all of the problems and also found fixes for them. I'll want to test those a little, but I really feel like it succeeded in multiple areas.
We had two walk-ins to the game who had no idea what they were sitting down for, and they both learned the system in about...maybe ten minutes. It is really simple, which is exactly what it should be. This is being handed pre-gen characters (I'm confident about character creation already, so didn't need to test that again) and having no backround whatsoever with the system (thought both were experienced gamers).
I also had two other game-designers from the area, one who created an Eberron version of Spirit of the Century and the other who is designing a game and is apparently talking to Palladium. The important thing is - they both seemed to be having fun, and they both quickly figured out exactly what they had to do.
I was very nervous (only my wife could tell) and it had some slow spots (of course) but it was fun and it worked. The wheels didn't fall off and nothing shorted out. It just sputtered a bit - basically, the system needs a tune-up, and I feel confident about what I have to do going forward.
So that's really good.
My God I might actually finish this thing (it's been a year of work in earnest).
One kid, one of the walk-ins, told me that he would keep an eye out for the game, and said flat out that when it comes out, he's buying it. And that's a walk-in. Just one kid? Yeah, I know. But when a playtester who walked in off the street says "I will buy this game", that's a fucking score in my book.
I feel really good about it. It helps balance out the infinite weight of the work I know I still have to do.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
Ashcan Review Part 1: How We Came to Live Here
I've been reading through Brennan Taylor's ashcan of How We Came to Live Here, which he has posted for download. This is fortunate, because this year conventions aren't happening, so I unfortunately won't be able to get any of these ashcans in person.
I have long been of the opinion, particularly after doing my undergraduate work in religious studies, that the vast majority of rpg magic systems are horrendously awful. Magic is basically nothing more than someone else's religion. So often, magic systems are put out there which are entirely devoid of color and particularity, or their color and particularity are completely arbitrary and uninteresting.
I thought of this persona rant while reading How We Came to Live Here because it is so incredibly strong in this area for a lot of reasons, the most important of which might be that the magic system he presents is not a magic system at all - it is a life system. Unbelieveable! That what amounts to "magic" would just be people's beliefs about how the world works and how they interact with that world and with each other! This is one of the only instances in fantasy in general, and in rpgs in particular, when the magic system has been anywhere near as interesting as the religions and occult practices here on planet Earth. ::Applause:: Like a good anthropologist, Taylor gives us an inside view of this culture which is different from, well, my culture at least, as well as his - an inside view which is affirmative. These things are true because they are true for the People. What you're sort of swept into is this holistic system of life that is presented, where supernatural and mundane things are all caught up in the same over-arching system.
In effect, I think, a good "magic system" is one where there is not any "magic" at all, if by "magic" you mean something separate from the life of a particular people at a particular time. It always bothers me when Elves and Orcs approach magic like Enlightenment philosophers, relegating everything to its hermetically-sealed category, casting spells that have no real meaning in their lives, which aren't based in anything important, which are essentially flashy-but-arbitrary shortcuts.
In contrast, the strength of HWCtLH in this regard comes from Brenna's stated goal of representing, faithfully, a fantasy setting that is based on a culture that is not his own - that of the southwest American natives whom he lived near growing up and whose beliefs and practices he also studied in college. He describes his game as a king of fantasy setting for the Anasazi people rather than for northern Europeans. I think it is this change in viewpoint that enables him to make this excellent presentation of a "magic system" that is actually interesting and evocative, even compelling.
I will try to put together a playtest of this game. Right now, I'm jealously trying to finish Parsec so that I can move on with the lessons I've learned from my first foray into rpg publishing, and I'm also running a Spirit of Eberron game, but hopefully I can put something together so that I can give him some more concrete feedback on this game.
I can't speak about the mechanics of the game so far - they seem like they'll work on paper, but I'll have to put that playtest together to actually figure them out. But I'm loving reading this book for its own sake, which hasn't happened in a long time for me when it comes to rpg books. You can really tell that this is a labor of love, something that Taylor feels passionate about. It shows through even in his relatively simple, straightforward text. I look forward to test-driving it.
This was Part 1 - Part 2 will come when, and if, I get to run the game. Even if I don't, I'll probably have more to say about how I think it'll work when dice hit table...
I have long been of the opinion, particularly after doing my undergraduate work in religious studies, that the vast majority of rpg magic systems are horrendously awful. Magic is basically nothing more than someone else's religion. So often, magic systems are put out there which are entirely devoid of color and particularity, or their color and particularity are completely arbitrary and uninteresting.
I thought of this persona rant while reading How We Came to Live Here because it is so incredibly strong in this area for a lot of reasons, the most important of which might be that the magic system he presents is not a magic system at all - it is a life system. Unbelieveable! That what amounts to "magic" would just be people's beliefs about how the world works and how they interact with that world and with each other! This is one of the only instances in fantasy in general, and in rpgs in particular, when the magic system has been anywhere near as interesting as the religions and occult practices here on planet Earth. ::Applause:: Like a good anthropologist, Taylor gives us an inside view of this culture which is different from, well, my culture at least, as well as his - an inside view which is affirmative. These things are true because they are true for the People. What you're sort of swept into is this holistic system of life that is presented, where supernatural and mundane things are all caught up in the same over-arching system.
In effect, I think, a good "magic system" is one where there is not any "magic" at all, if by "magic" you mean something separate from the life of a particular people at a particular time. It always bothers me when Elves and Orcs approach magic like Enlightenment philosophers, relegating everything to its hermetically-sealed category, casting spells that have no real meaning in their lives, which aren't based in anything important, which are essentially flashy-but-arbitrary shortcuts.
In contrast, the strength of HWCtLH in this regard comes from Brenna's stated goal of representing, faithfully, a fantasy setting that is based on a culture that is not his own - that of the southwest American natives whom he lived near growing up and whose beliefs and practices he also studied in college. He describes his game as a king of fantasy setting for the Anasazi people rather than for northern Europeans. I think it is this change in viewpoint that enables him to make this excellent presentation of a "magic system" that is actually interesting and evocative, even compelling.
I will try to put together a playtest of this game. Right now, I'm jealously trying to finish Parsec so that I can move on with the lessons I've learned from my first foray into rpg publishing, and I'm also running a Spirit of Eberron game, but hopefully I can put something together so that I can give him some more concrete feedback on this game.
I can't speak about the mechanics of the game so far - they seem like they'll work on paper, but I'll have to put that playtest together to actually figure them out. But I'm loving reading this book for its own sake, which hasn't happened in a long time for me when it comes to rpg books. You can really tell that this is a labor of love, something that Taylor feels passionate about. It shows through even in his relatively simple, straightforward text. I look forward to test-driving it.
This was Part 1 - Part 2 will come when, and if, I get to run the game. Even if I don't, I'll probably have more to say about how I think it'll work when dice hit table...
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Parsec: Functionless Attributes
Now that I'm down to just three jobs, I remember that one of those jobs is writing Parsec, so I'm trying to buckle down and work on it in a more disciplined way.
As I go through the text once again, I have re-habilitated my rules on Status, which is basically a measurement of your social and economic standing in the setting. The thing about Status is that there are almost no actual rules attached to it. It is sort of a measurement, a note about your character like the place of their birth (but more important, I hope, for a game).
The reason I decided to bring Status back after I cut it out is that I want Parsec games to have a strong sense of economic realities of the setting injected into them. I don't want Star-Trekkish homogeneity because I think that's less plausible than faster-than-light travel. I think we're going to have phasers and warp drives before we have an economy without scarcity, without wealth on the one hand and the poverty on which wealth depends on the other.
But it does feel odd to put something forward as important when it won't be involved in spending points or rolling dice or doing the other things that attributes usually do in an RPG. Maybe its just that I don't want to tell players how Status must function, only that they have to take it into account in some way.
What do you think about something on your character sheet that doesn't really have rules attached? Should I give it leverage in the system or drop it, or is it not a problem?
As I go through the text once again, I have re-habilitated my rules on Status, which is basically a measurement of your social and economic standing in the setting. The thing about Status is that there are almost no actual rules attached to it. It is sort of a measurement, a note about your character like the place of their birth (but more important, I hope, for a game).
The reason I decided to bring Status back after I cut it out is that I want Parsec games to have a strong sense of economic realities of the setting injected into them. I don't want Star-Trekkish homogeneity because I think that's less plausible than faster-than-light travel. I think we're going to have phasers and warp drives before we have an economy without scarcity, without wealth on the one hand and the poverty on which wealth depends on the other.
But it does feel odd to put something forward as important when it won't be involved in spending points or rolling dice or doing the other things that attributes usually do in an RPG. Maybe its just that I don't want to tell players how Status must function, only that they have to take it into account in some way.
What do you think about something on your character sheet that doesn't really have rules attached? Should I give it leverage in the system or drop it, or is it not a problem?
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