RPGaDay 2015 #4 Most Surprising Game

It's kind of hard to think of a game as surprising. I mean, sure, somewhere in all of that D&D merchandising back in the 80's there must have been a pop-up book with monsters that jump out at you. But a regular old game book?

Well, maybe a few things have surprised me.

I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed reading Monsterhearts. While I don't know that I could really go for the PVP/teen drama style of play, I liked how it encouraged thinking about supernatural powers as a metaphor for puberty, queerness, or both. Being the awkward kid who didn't fit in at school when I was younger, that resonated with me.

Diaspora was another game that surprised me. It's a small book that is mostly rules, but nearly everything about it is brilliant. The overall setting is very broad, with relatively few hard facts. Because of how the FTL drive of the setting works, civilization is divided into clusters, groups of solar systems that are connected by hyperspace links. The play group is assumed to create their own cluster, randomly rolling the stats for each system and deciding exactly what that collection of stats looks like.

It offers spaceship combat and tactical squad combat that work in the FATE milieu and are playable as separate minigames if you want to. But the real kicker is the social combat system. Most other social combat systems I've seen are not very different from the game's physical combat system. But Diaspora's social combat is more about positioning and maneuvering. The result feels much more like a system where you're trying to change someone's mind rather than just whacking away at their resistance to doing what you want.

Your Oz, Your Price

I know I haven't posted much lately, and with news like this, you're probably disappointed that I didn't mention it sooner, but life has a way of biting me in the butt.

Earlier this month, OneBookShelf, the guys who operate RPGNow and DriveThruRPG, implemented Pay What You Want pricing on both sites. This is mostly in response to Evil Hat, who wanted their Fate Core products available on that basis. But they did allow other publishers to use the feature.

So I decided to give it a try. After a couple of hiccups, I finally got it rolling on Tuesday. I wound up having to set up a new product, because PWYW didn't want to work on a product with a print option. Which means that at least part of the uptick in activity that I've noticed over the last few days has been because I've gotten back onto the front page again.

And what sort of activity am I getting? Well, a lot of people are grabbing it for free. That's to be expected since Pay What You Want can mean paying $0.00. But at least some people are paying for it. Some are paying 5 cents, others 5 dollars. It will be interesting to see how this plays out long term.

Here's a link to the Pay What You Want edition of Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road.

Cubicle 7 Beats The House

(This is basically just me geeking out, which is why it's not part of my regularly scheduled posting).

I just made an interesting realization about Cubicle 7, one of the hottest up-and-coming game publishers. The secret to their up-and-coming-ness is that they don't have a house system.

Now, a little background: Most RPG publishers have what is known as a "house system." That is, a ruleset that is used for most, if not all, of their games. This has a number of advantages.

For one thing, it saves a lot of effort in making games. The basic rules already exist, so you can focus on things that make a given property or setting unique. Magic spells, elves and dwarves for a fantasy world. Spaceships and laser guns for a science fiction setting.

You also have the advantage that some players will already know the rules. If they bought your horror game, they already know the basic rules behind your steampunk game and are more likely to buy it.

The downside is that not all systems represent all settings equally well. If your system is tuned towards gritty realism, it's going to fail at representing a world of whimsical fantasy.

Cubicle 7 has managed to acquire all the benefits of using a house system and dodge the downside. How did they do this? By licensing other game systems.

Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space uses Eden Studios' Unisystem, which was used in such popular games as the Buffy The Vampire Slayer RPG and Witchcraft. Just a few tweaks to the existing engine and you have a system that does Doctor Who very well, I'm told.

Starblazer Adventures is based on the Starblazer comics and uses Evil Hat's FATE system (the same one used in Spirit of the Century) to represent a much more two-fisted "rock and roll" ruleset than Unisystem was.

When Cubicle 7 announced that they were doing a game based on Charles Stross' Laundry series, they also announced that they were using Chaosium's Basic Role Playing system, most famous as the rules behind the Lovecraftian horror RPG Call of Cthulhu. The amount of potential (and very easy) cross-pollination is simply staggering.

So Cubicle 7 continues to beat the house. Good luck to them.

The Indie Jones

No, not that Indy Jones.

Just about everyone has heard of indie films, movies made on small budgets by unknown companies that manage to be a little more daring and avant-garde in their stories. But not many people know about the indie RPG scene. Like those indie filmmakers, indie RPG publishers push the boundaries of what makes a game.

While opinions differ (significantly in some cases, so be careful out there!), my understanding is that "traditional" games focus on representing the world, providing "reality models", much like the physics engine in a video game. They vary widely in how much resolution the system provides. Some of try to stay very close to reality, like GURPS, while most feature some level of "cinematic" or action movie-style realism, like the HERO system or Fuzion. The main advantage of a system like this is that it can be applied to a wide variety of worlds because the rules are generally applicable.

Indie games have rules that emphasize story and character over the world.

FATE and Burning Wheel are both excellent games that focus on characters. Both reward players for making decisions that are "in-character" even if it isn't the most practical or effective decision. While White Wolf is one of the major players in the RPG industry, it was one of the pioneers of this methodology, as characters in their game Vampire: The Masquerade had a Humanity score that would rise and fall based on the things that the character was forced to do to maintain their vampiric existence.

The games that focus on story tend toward telling a certain story with near-endless variation. My Life With Master gives players the roles of minions to a cruel and wicked Master (Suddenly, I'm thinking of running this game with the players being Winged Monkeys and the Master is the Wicked Witch of the West). The players then direct their characters through the process of discovering that not everyone is cruel and eventually overthrowing and escaping from the Master.

Adventures in Oz fits my definition of an indie game. For one, it is very much a one man show (me) with a minimal budget. For another, the game is designed from the ground up to tell Ozzy stories. If I had to define the archetypal Oz story in a sentence, it would be "Exploring Oz with your friends." The exploration aspect is covered in the extensive section on the Land of Oz, along with tips on making your own Ozzy locations to explore. The friendship angle is covered with the Oz Point/Friends List mechanic. Making new friends or helping friends that you already have earn Oz Points, which can then be used to get a favor from a friend on your list.

What's your definition of "indie"? What's you're favorite indie game?