Posts tagged with keywords "Spirit-of-the-Century"
On the 8th of the 8th 2008, I managed to get everyone (or at least enough people) to agree to start a new roleplaying game. We choose Spirit of the Century as the first game to play because its, apparently easy to pick up and just play (only one person in our group has played it before and I have a textbook knowledge of how to play it). You’ll be able to read write ups of it here on our roleplaying group’s site (in fact you can see write-ups and characters from all our games on that site).
Unfortunately my wife comes down with the flu the next week and is pretty bad this week too. So I haven’t actually managed to attend any games! Arg. But hopefully there is next week…
An Example Fudge Implementation of “Combat Profiles”
If you don’t have time to read all this, then check out the cut-down version v0.1.1!
What started as some rough ideas and thoughts on the combat experience in roleplaying games, developed in a kind of simplistic theory I called “Combat Profiles”. After some discussion, I put together this system as an example of using these concepts. In fact, putting together this system has helped me scope and define the ideas into something more tangible, but that’s for another day. This system priorities player-experience over strategy or realism but doesn’t try to exclude anything either. I don’t know if it delivers, as I haven’t tested it yet.
It uses Fudge and Story Elements, as I believe they are uniquely suited to “Combat Profiles” compared to the other systems I’ve played (of course I haven’t played every system out there). It is task-based (i.e. not “conflict resolution”), another of my biases I guess. However I believe the general principals can be applied to other systems. It’s geared as a system that can be applied to all settings and all combat situations. The system attempts to define what combat is to understand how to apply it.
This system is in part inspired by the Shadow of Yesterday RPG, Riddle of Steel RPG, Spirit of the Century RPG, Fate System, several Fudge Factor articles and the FudgeList. If you are familiar with these sources, their influence should be obvious.
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With the few indie games that have entered my bookshelf I noticed that there is a scale of player’s narrative power versus GM’s power. Power is probably not the right word, influence? At one end you have something like Universalis that gives all the players GM powers by removing the GM. Then you have something like Shadow of Yesterday gives quite a lot of power to the players to control when and how they enter conflict (conflict resolution) and how their character is pulled along (keys). Then Spirit of the Century where players can “tag” narrative details that they may think are in a scene or story. At the other end of the scale you have the traditional RPGs like White Wolf and D&D.
The belief it would seem is that the more narrative power a player has, the better the game or experience is because the player has more ability to control and determine that. I think thats not completely true. They offer different experiences along the scale certainly. I don’t believe any is lesser than the other and people will be certainly draw to certain points in that scale.
Of course I am speaking a little through my arse as I haven’t played SotC or SoY yet. Planning to but that really doesn’t count. Thankfully I have played Universalis a few times and it is definitely one of my favourite games. But I’d put myself preferring the opposite end of the scale. (Universalis works for me because it’s explicit in it’s power-sharing, you go in with no pre-conceptions about who controls what.)
Part of it this is that, as a player and GM, I prefer long-running games over one-shots or single-adventure games. Universalis works brilliant in a single session however my group has never really got into the idea of running Universalis over several sessions. Don’t get me wrong, you can do it with all games. Yet I think games that give more narrative power to the players give more punch in the short term than games that work better in the long term.
Maybe that’s not complete fair. In economics: all variables in the long term are flexible. Games at the restrictive end of the scale are just as flexible in terms of who has narrative power as games on the other end of the scale, if you talk about the long term. For me it’s about what being GM means. For me as a player and a GM, being GM means giving the players a good experience. Take the narrative powers away from the GM, the GM can no longer guarantee a good experience for the players, the players have to do it more themselves. Thinking about this in the short and long games, if you have a short game and you want everything up and running quickly without much input, then you should probably let the players do it for you. Let them grab what interests them and run with it. In the long term, as a GM you have more freedom. You can present a world to them and you can setup and guide the players as part of that world and see what takes hold over time with them. An engaging long-term story must be evolved from the fusion of players and GM, I think while a short-term game can be just lighting the fuse of the players and watching it explode.
Or perhaps it doesn’t matter and I’m simply getting older and preferring the way “things were done in my day”.
I was re-reading my notes that I had jotted down for the upcoming work on LH and I came across this:
Why Roll?
- Part of the hobby
- A character can “do” what a player can’t
- Resolve a conflict of interest
- Because it’s fun
I wondering how much truth are in those four reasons. What do you think?
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Anyone ever used a system to roleplay a social event (like a ball, court, political gathering, etc.) in a tabletop? My group has played through one or two big social events in our games and it’s always been a little hit and miss.
I was reading Spirit of the Century and it uses a generic system that is meant to be applied to any situation, sorta. But something didn’t sit right about it. Shadow of Yesterday use scene based resolution and I can see how it can be applied to a social event. But if your using a taks based or near-task based resolution… I’m not sure how that works at a social event unless you set it up Pulp-style with a villain that must be countered. Many there is examples further on in the book worth looking into.
So I’m curious if anyone knows of any systems or have used anything for social events?
Or rather: Should I know who Doc Savage is?
In less than 5 seconds I can get answer from the wikipedia pipe, but that’s not really my question. I got my copy of Spirit of the Century (and this is not meant to be a criticism of SOTC, I’ve only flicked through the introduction) which is a roleplaying gaming about “pulp” and specifically “era pulp”. I know what pulp is and I recognise it’s influences. But my first taste as a child was Indiana Jones. What came before that I don’t’ really know anything about. Should I? Have I missed some sci-fi cultural element? Who is Doc Savage, the atypical pulp hero? Am I a sci-fi philistine?
It just occurred to me why, after seeing the cover of White Wolf’s “Adventure!” when it was released, I never bothered to even look at the blurb. I knew what pulp was but I had no interest in it. Likewise SOTC, shrug, yea pulp looks fun but it’s not something I completely get. It’s not part of my… actually is there a word for that? Personal/historical culture/media/history? If it wasn’t for the internet noise (and that it uses Fate, a tangent/brew/derivative/insert-word of Fudge), I probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid about it.
Among them three Fudge books!
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I’m a big fan of the Fudge roleplaying system. Loved it so much I hoping to have my Reboot adventure (now a full setting) published under the Now Playing Fudge derivative and my bigger project LH published as a full Fudge product.
Don’t get me wrong, I like many of the new ideas of Fate system (which is a derivative of Fudge). There are elements I don’t like but I’ll put that aside. I plan even to get my hands on Spirit of the Century at some point. But when I saw this post on the Fudge List, it saddened me:
Sorry, I almost mentioned you. But I’m afraid Starblazer is going to overshadow Ignition both because Fate has more fans than Fudge, and because Starblazer is coming out first. Even if Ignition is a better product, it’s got a huge handicap.
HQ is apparently successful within its niche, but it’s a small niche… if you’re not interested in the genre/medium, no matter how great the revision is it’s not going to appeal.
Fudge Magic may do well, but there again I’m afraid it’s going to do best if you reach they “Heyyyyy, I could use this with *Fate*!” (or “…with SotC!”) crowd. It’s just a bigger market (and a market that doesn’t have the “I deserve all this for FREE!” mindset that much of the Fudge community is burdened with).
I could be wrong. For your sake, and for the future of Fudge-that-isn’t-Fate, I hope so… but I just don’t see it revitalizing the 1995 ruleset to the level of Fate. As far as people outside our dwindling community are concerned, it’s an antique set of rules… even if you did a rewrite at this point (of the text, without changing the rules), I’m afraid you’re going to run into “Hey, you stole that from Fate” – Fate’s simply a far better presentation, even of (or especially of) things that it inherited from Fudge unchanged.
(I just wish I liked the things it *didn’t* inherit from Fudge.)
It’s sad, because she’s probably right. The Fudge Planet that I thought was neat, no longer exists and instead the URLs point to EvilHat (makers of STOC) where they maintain the equivalent of a Fate planet. Not particularly the nicest way to find out tbh, wondering why my posts were appearing the feed and why it was all only STOC.
It’s enough to put me completely off FATE/STOC before I give it a chance. 
Fred Hicks, the guy behind the popular Spirit of the Century RPG (my tag for STOC), posted some advice on how he promotes his games.
Usual stuff about PDFs sales, getting reviews done, etc. But what I found interesting is his how he deals with the online public. I know he’s active in *many* online communities.
Your Worst Defense is a The One They Notice
This principle also means that you must NEVER be defensive. If you feel any negative emotions at all welling up in you when you start to post about your game, STOP IMMEDIATELY AND WALK AWAY. If you don’t, what you’re about to do in the next few minutes will diminish you in the eyes of the people you want believing that your words are worth hearing. I’ll say it again: thank your harshest critics, pay them respect even if they pay you none, and then disengage, untarnished by getting “into it” with them on that same level
Crap. 
The one thing I love about online discussions is that they can be intense and arguments can often be enlightening (well at least for me). I used to post regularly in a briefly-popular Irish gaming forum with nearly the sole purpose of generating discussion, via argument. It worked, I learned a lot and it has helped form many of my thoughts on gaming but in the process I probably made more than a few “enemies” too. From what Fred suggests, I’d have to have two online personas: the one that is willing to “discuss”, the other that is willing to… well… be nice and avoid arguments (thedeadone.net versus theniceone.net….)
The other thing I realised when I read his post is… I do not have enough time in this world. I’m finding it hard enough to get time to just write, let alone roleplay. But to spend enough time to promote a game as well as Fred suggests on top of that? From his previous blog posts, he wasn’t employed for quite a while until he took a position with indiepressrevolutions… I’m afraid I can’t do that now, not with Tristan’s arrival! Tristan = zero time.
I always toyed with the idea of getting a game out there and promoting it myself, so at least now I can put that idea to bed. I’ll go the other route I think. Reboot continues now with Now Playing. Right now I don’t know what it’ll end up looking like (or possible where), but hopefully some thing good. 
I seem to be living in a time lag. It’s been a few days since the blog “fight” over sexism in roleplaying games kind of burned itself out and I’m only getting around to writing about it now. It ended like how all good fights end: nobody really “won”, people ended up limping away and nobody hates each other.
I must say I felt sorry for Matt over at lategaming.com, because he got called names by a feminist blogger and was described as an example of a chauvinist! I also posted on Irish Gaming LiveJournal and it got two responses, which pretty much says it is not an issue. Now, if I had critised a convention, the discussion would have exploded. (Admittedly I could have posted on “igaming” or the “irishgaming.com/forums” but I have to say not much real discussion goes on there any more and I really didn’t feel the need to push the issue that much). I guess it’s typical of our end of the “blogosphere” (that being the Irish online gaming community). People are more concerned with getting out and on with it and having a good time than if the wording of roleplaying books can be interrupted as sexist.
As an extended footnote, Fed Hicks, one of the master-minds behind Evil Hat, makers of Spirit of the Century, commented on my blog to tell me:
Interestingly, it was that whole virtual flare up that (indirectly) lead to Bruce Baugh committing to write a supplement that tackles the issue head-on for Spirit of the Century.
The supplement is called “New Horizons” which you can read about over on Bruce’s LiveJournal page (you can read specifically about New Horizons here). It does sound like an interesting idea for a game, I must admit. I can’t, sadly, imagine getting my group to play it and I’m not sure I’d be mad into it either… but I’d really be tempted to get it anyway. I love those kind of books that full of information, laid out in a way that’s really useful for gaming and writing. Even if you never use it, it ends up inspiring you directly or indirectly. Let’s see how it goes.