There are some anime type rules for Savage Worlds I'd kicked around a few months ago. The idea is to provide a plot point campaign as well as a rule set that allows for anime type fighting. That could mean a lot of things, but I'll try to get across a few.
Powerful: Anime characters have good fights when it's against a main character, but extras are REALLY extras. Savage Worlds is good for this since there are extra rules inherent, but a few more power moves and Edges to speed up minion clean up and create truly large scale battles seem appropriate. This part was easy, represented by a set of edges that are there to allow for characters to destroy multiple minions with one spell, as well as objects.
This also includes a sort of uber arcane background that, while using multiple skills much like super powers, provides more power points, as well as a penalty for rolling ones. It's more powerful than the average AB, but it 1) fits an anime setting style better and 2) is available for everyone to use during the game, for free at character creation.
One Upping: A lot of anime fights are a series one upping the other person- a new technique is broken out to overcome the last technique used, over and over again, until somebody ends up on top. These techniques may be secret or spur of the moment, or even just a sheer moment of Willpower overcoming the character and pushing them past their limits, but it's the way things tend to go.
A One Upping system has been discussed, an advantage that is passed around between characters as they bust out new powers, each time the advantage growing until it will almost certainly lead to characters being knocked out or killed from it's use with one side victorious.
The current system gives a lot of options for how this advantage is passed around and what it does for people, but I'm starting to realize that the list, while allowing a lot of flexibility, isn't necessarily fast, furious, or fun. So I think I'll change it from being a flexible list into something characters pick from, like a Limit Break from FF VII, maybe picking a single 'one up' advantage and one up taking technique per rank.
Vets and Youths: I kind of want a way to distinguish this in a way that feels 'fair'. I've been thinking about allowing Vet's to gain all the starting advantages but the special arcane background, instead getting a more focused, but less powerful arcane BG- they would be far more skilled and powerful starting off, but weaker in the long run. Probably, they'd have less power points, but a single controlling skill, and less powers over all. It would make them very GOOD with the power they had though. Just not having as much potential as the youth, which is the usual route of such things.
A Flexible Setting: Anime runs a gamut of genre's so no setting can be appropriate for everything. I think of things like Tenchi Muyo when I think broad- there's space, aliens, demons, magic, super powers, a little of everything. But it's not Savage at all, it's far too fluffy. Savage makes me think of Berserk, but that's just low fantasy. I'd love for a game to really fit things like Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Gunsword X, and a few other types of shows with a nice ensemble cast.
My first try was the idea of a school that trained Earth's next generation of superhuman children after the Power Wars (a war fought with superpowers) destroyed most of Earth's infrastructure, leaving a large underground population of children, who are growing into teenagers, as the largest superhuman population in the world. Hijinks, calamity, and world saving ensue from the various Battle Schools.
The second idea I tried to throw around was one where a Colony Ship has flown away from a wrecked Earth to establish a new home on a colony world. Only the colony world seems to be on the rocks when they get there, small patches of lawless human civilization, lots of monsters, superhuman gangsters, etc. The young Colonial Troopers, using the disciplines of Martial Arts, Super Science, and Magic, must work to save this wrecked world and discover the hidden evil that plagues it. Kind of a Space Exalted feel.
No third idea at this point, but I really do want to figure out what would be better. The first seems more ready for some light hearted antics, while the second feels a little too close to the Phantasy Star series.
Really, my biggest obstacle is setting. I may post on this elsewhere to find some opinions.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
How Can We Judge an RPG?
So, I've been running into a very interesting attitude of late due to all the game reviews we've been doing, best summarized as the following.
"The game is fun if you ignore the setting and change the rules."
I'll let that sink in a moment.
It's a true statement, in that if you make a game into another game that you like, you will like it. It's also an awfully idiotic statement in whether or not this evaluates a game as good.
What can we rate an RPG on and how can we justify it? Games run different ways- some are deadly, some are forgiving, some are detailed and slow, while others are lite and fast. To say which approach is right is sort of a cost benefit analysis combined with an identification if the System matches the Setting.
For a Quick List of Traits of a Good Game, I would Probably List:
-Balance
-System Supporting Setting
-Effort to Play
Balance:
Balance means fairness, generally an equal footing with the player standing next to me at character creation. If we're playing a squad of monsters in a game meant for it, my werewolf should be equally useful to his mummy. The paragon of game balance is the HERO system. Years of tinkering and toiling have been spent to try and create a system in which 'you get what you pay for'. Guidelines as to what makes something too powerful, warning stickers on potentially broken powers, and other safeguards and balances work to make HERO one of the most fair systems ever.
There are lots of examples of poor balance out there, but I think one of the easiest is early model RPGs where rolled stats reward people more for rolling well. As if winning wasn't enough, you can win more, so you can win more, before the game even starts.
System Supporting Setting:
Take Seventh Sea, for example. It's a game of swashbuckling adventure, more or less. There are fights, epic virtues and vices, plots based around character, larger than life characters, rules to have awesome duels as well as cut a swath through lesser foes. These are all useful features for a game about this kind of adventure. The rules reinforce the tone and action of the setting and this is what makes it a good game. It has it's rough points, but thats why a lot of games get new editions to sand those out.
Effort to Play:
There is work in playing games- making characters, reading setting, learning rules, rolling dice to get results, etc. The more effort this takes, the more pay off you should get for it. Savage worlds is probably a paragon of bang for your buck gaming: you can make characters quickly, use the book and grab NPCs to run them, and it has a low handling time for rolls made. It's quick to get the basics down and just start playing if you have a GM willing to create a game on the fly.
Hackmaster may be the height of effort to play problems. Big book full of rules, long character gen, complicated charts- we've heard the game is fun, but we've never had the gumption to make it through all the effort required to actually play it.
While more opinion and less quantifiable, I would also List:
-Setting Appeal
-Style
-Engagement
Setting Appeal:
Some people like apples, some like oranges- there is no way to please everyone. However, there are some steps you can take to make a game fun for more people, which means making it accessible to everyone. This means making the setting something that doesn't exclude people based on race, religion, orientation, or gender. Thankfully this is not an issue in most games, even the alternate history ones, which make allowances for those characters who would otherwise be discriminated against in less enlightened times.
Style:
There are little widgets to a system that make it fun. Sometimes it's a single feature, like Cthulhu's sanity system or the Spiritual traits of Riddle of Steel. Sometimes, it's the ability to build each power with the same care you would build a small character, like in HERO. Some games come out so bland you can't really latch on to it or do more than shrug and say 'It works'. I like games that have a bit of quirk that fits the system and does something cool.
Engagement:
A good system should keep you caring about whats going on, keep you engaged. This can vary a great deal between game styles- rule's lite RP intensive systems may accomplish this with a low handling time and fast results, while a more tactically intensive mini's based game may have very heavily engaging combat rules. This goes right along with System Supporting Setting. To summarize, a good combat keeps me on my seat, paying attention and planning what I will do next- a bad combat makes me read a book and wait to roll for my swing at the baddie.
"The game is fun if you ignore the setting and change the rules."
I'll let that sink in a moment.
It's a true statement, in that if you make a game into another game that you like, you will like it. It's also an awfully idiotic statement in whether or not this evaluates a game as good.
What can we rate an RPG on and how can we justify it? Games run different ways- some are deadly, some are forgiving, some are detailed and slow, while others are lite and fast. To say which approach is right is sort of a cost benefit analysis combined with an identification if the System matches the Setting.
For a Quick List of Traits of a Good Game, I would Probably List:
-Balance
-System Supporting Setting
-Effort to Play
Balance:
Balance means fairness, generally an equal footing with the player standing next to me at character creation. If we're playing a squad of monsters in a game meant for it, my werewolf should be equally useful to his mummy. The paragon of game balance is the HERO system. Years of tinkering and toiling have been spent to try and create a system in which 'you get what you pay for'. Guidelines as to what makes something too powerful, warning stickers on potentially broken powers, and other safeguards and balances work to make HERO one of the most fair systems ever.
There are lots of examples of poor balance out there, but I think one of the easiest is early model RPGs where rolled stats reward people more for rolling well. As if winning wasn't enough, you can win more, so you can win more, before the game even starts.
System Supporting Setting:
Take Seventh Sea, for example. It's a game of swashbuckling adventure, more or less. There are fights, epic virtues and vices, plots based around character, larger than life characters, rules to have awesome duels as well as cut a swath through lesser foes. These are all useful features for a game about this kind of adventure. The rules reinforce the tone and action of the setting and this is what makes it a good game. It has it's rough points, but thats why a lot of games get new editions to sand those out.
Effort to Play:
There is work in playing games- making characters, reading setting, learning rules, rolling dice to get results, etc. The more effort this takes, the more pay off you should get for it. Savage worlds is probably a paragon of bang for your buck gaming: you can make characters quickly, use the book and grab NPCs to run them, and it has a low handling time for rolls made. It's quick to get the basics down and just start playing if you have a GM willing to create a game on the fly.
Hackmaster may be the height of effort to play problems. Big book full of rules, long character gen, complicated charts- we've heard the game is fun, but we've never had the gumption to make it through all the effort required to actually play it.
While more opinion and less quantifiable, I would also List:
-Setting Appeal
-Style
-Engagement
Setting Appeal:
Some people like apples, some like oranges- there is no way to please everyone. However, there are some steps you can take to make a game fun for more people, which means making it accessible to everyone. This means making the setting something that doesn't exclude people based on race, religion, orientation, or gender. Thankfully this is not an issue in most games, even the alternate history ones, which make allowances for those characters who would otherwise be discriminated against in less enlightened times.
Style:
There are little widgets to a system that make it fun. Sometimes it's a single feature, like Cthulhu's sanity system or the Spiritual traits of Riddle of Steel. Sometimes, it's the ability to build each power with the same care you would build a small character, like in HERO. Some games come out so bland you can't really latch on to it or do more than shrug and say 'It works'. I like games that have a bit of quirk that fits the system and does something cool.
Engagement:
A good system should keep you caring about whats going on, keep you engaged. This can vary a great deal between game styles- rule's lite RP intensive systems may accomplish this with a low handling time and fast results, while a more tactically intensive mini's based game may have very heavily engaging combat rules. This goes right along with System Supporting Setting. To summarize, a good combat keeps me on my seat, paying attention and planning what I will do next- a bad combat makes me read a book and wait to roll for my swing at the baddie.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
And Then Life Happened: And Then There Were Superheroes
So, been getting back to doing some Twenty Weeks of Hell. Been doing Vampire LARPing. Moved out of my house. Moved in with friends. Did some fiction writing with hopes of publishing. Etc. And then Champions Online came out.
The first couple days it was like I'd discovered crack and didn't realize how bad it was. The Beta was a blitz of gaming and I find myself diving head first into playing it way more than was healthy. It was the usual high I get when I feel life in my veins- I sleep a few scant hours and awake jazzed and ready for more.
We actually created a contract to control our behavior upon buying the game and so far it's worked- I make sure to do an hour of useful work every day before playing.
So, the game itself is like a really long Beta in many ways. Some powers are unfairly advantageous, some are completely useless, and a few are just right. The basic gameplay is fun, fast paced, and way more interesting than that other superhero MMO. At a quick glance, the game is wonderful, but there are many ugly little pimples to find.
Big Pimples Include:
A content gap
Power Balance
Few Reasons to Team
Not Enough End Game Content
Despite all those, I love this game. This game is heroically geared. A lot of the missions involve saving people, few of the missions are just about beating guys up, you fight a lot of supervillains instead of just thugs, and the personal nemesis stuff, while campy, is still pretty awesome.
The make or break for this game will really be the Blood Moon event in my opinion. They continue to work on problems, and one of the biggest is the content- little end game, and a content gap. If this next expansion can either occlude that or patch it up, then it should all be gravy. But without end game and 40 achievable well within a month... it needs end game content really, really badly. Otherwise, people are just going to lose interest and do something else after getting all 8 character slots to 40. Hard, but not impossible by any stretch.
The first couple days it was like I'd discovered crack and didn't realize how bad it was. The Beta was a blitz of gaming and I find myself diving head first into playing it way more than was healthy. It was the usual high I get when I feel life in my veins- I sleep a few scant hours and awake jazzed and ready for more.
We actually created a contract to control our behavior upon buying the game and so far it's worked- I make sure to do an hour of useful work every day before playing.
So, the game itself is like a really long Beta in many ways. Some powers are unfairly advantageous, some are completely useless, and a few are just right. The basic gameplay is fun, fast paced, and way more interesting than that other superhero MMO. At a quick glance, the game is wonderful, but there are many ugly little pimples to find.
Big Pimples Include:
A content gap
Power Balance
Few Reasons to Team
Not Enough End Game Content
Despite all those, I love this game. This game is heroically geared. A lot of the missions involve saving people, few of the missions are just about beating guys up, you fight a lot of supervillains instead of just thugs, and the personal nemesis stuff, while campy, is still pretty awesome.
The make or break for this game will really be the Blood Moon event in my opinion. They continue to work on problems, and one of the biggest is the content- little end game, and a content gap. If this next expansion can either occlude that or patch it up, then it should all be gravy. But without end game and 40 achievable well within a month... it needs end game content really, really badly. Otherwise, people are just going to lose interest and do something else after getting all 8 character slots to 40. Hard, but not impossible by any stretch.
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