Quote from: Warthur;236235REIGN was robbed.

  The game design is just too 'traditional', and being suited to long term campaigns didn't do it any favors either.

 These are the 'indie' rpg awards, after all.


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I haven't played Grey Ranks though it sounds interesting structurally, but I must admit to being shocked by the number of people online praising it for increasing their knowledge of the Warsaw Uprising. It seems they previously didn't know anything about it.

I mean, Jesus folks. It's one of the more famous incidents of the Holocaust, a recent historical event of some importance.

The Warsaw Uprising technically is on the periphery of the Holocaust. You may be thinking of the Warsaw Ghetto. Have a look at this (and note the disambiguation line at the top).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising

Sorry for any irony in this.

A few Poles don't seem very keen on the game, it's a little too emo-touristy for them. (Caveat: Story-Games link.)

Quote from: Warthur;236235It's nice to know that the same sort of emotional manipulation that wins you an Oscar can also win you an Indie RPG award.

REIGN was robbed.

Man, I am so totally going to design an rpg based on this movie-

The Day the Clown Cried
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Clown_Cried

It's a sure bet to win the next Indie game of the year.  

I might point out that last year the winner featured fighting a gorilla on the wing of a biplane on the cover -- so it's not like any emo genre is inherently a winner.  

To explain - last year the game of the year was a close race between Spirit of the Century, Burning Empires, and The Zorcerer of Zo.  This time Grey Ranks was clearly ahead.  

I haven't read Grey Ranks myself so I can't say much about it.  There were a bunch of people who liked it, though.  I was fond of the author's prior game, The Shab Al-Hiri Roach.  I was surprised that it came in quite poorly last year.

Were there any games that used historical tragedies for their subject last year? I don't think so, unless you include Roanoke.

For light relief I'm writing an RPG about the realities of chronic alcoholism. The boxed set of You're Fucked, Son will be a discursive exploration of the physical, mental and spiritual degredation that accompanies unfettered addiction, and will feature mock interventions, on-site hospital LARPing and boffer headstones for the inevitable funerals.

Players will also down shots for XP.

Quote from: Drew;236345For light relief I'm writing an RPG about the realities of chronic alcoholism. The boxed set of You're Fucked, Son will be a discursive exploration of the physical, mental and spiritual degredation that accompanies unfettered addiction, and will feature mock interventions, on-site hospital LARPing and boffer headstones for the inevitable funerals.

Players will also down shots for XP.

A number of my relatives have been playing that game for years now.

Quote from: mhensley;236352A number of my relatives have been playing that game for years now.

Haha. No kidding. Mine, too.

Quote from: Jaeger;236292The game design is just too 'traditional', and being suited to long term campaigns didn't do it any favors either.

 These are the 'indie' rpg awards, after all.

My favorite small press game of THIS year is In A Wicked Age, which not only supports long term campaigns, if you run it as a one-shot, it kind of breaks down on one of the central game mechanics.

And the winner last year had a GM position and long term campaigns, so I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at anyhow.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;236310The Warsaw Uprising technically is on the periphery of the Holocaust. You may be thinking of the Warsaw Ghetto. Have a look at this (and note the disambiguation line at the top).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising

Oh, weird. Checking RPG.net, it's the '44 one, not the famous '43 one. That wasn't clear at all in the discussions about the game that I've read up until now. It's more understandable now why people are saying they don't know about it.

I must admit, it also makes me more interested in the game, since I was thinking this was misery-porn about the Holocaust.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;236366Oh, weird. Checking RPG.net, it's the '44 one, not the famous '43 one. That wasn't clear at all in the discussions about the game that I've read up until now. It's more understandable now why people are saying they don't know about it.

I must admit, it also makes me more interested in the game, since I was thinking this was misery-porn about the Holocaust.

Oh right, the fact that its just general misery-porn about the suffering of the Polish people makes it so much more acceptable as a topic for an RPG.. :rolleyes:

RPGPundit

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;236338Were there any games that used historical tragedies for their subject last year? I don't think so, unless you include Roanoke.

Pure historical tragedy?  None.  However, there were many games with more serious/emo themes as opposed to pulp action -- like Roanoke, or the cold war paranoia themes in Cold City, or fighting a dystopian system in Perfect.

Quote from: RPGPundit;236373Oh right, the fact that its just general misery-porn about the suffering of the Polish people makes it so much more acceptable as a topic for an RPG.. :rolleyes:

RPGPundit

Misery-tourism is stripping away the agency of the PCs and then subjecting them to horrible events. The Holocaust in RPGs is a good example of this going on, because the PCs normally have to be camp prisoners living under the total control of the system they find themselves in, and lack the ability to undermine or overcome the system in any way. In "We All Had Names" which was discussed here a while ago, for example, PCs basically stood around feeling bad and having bad things done to them.

By contrast, games which are set during historical events that were horrible, but that still give the PCs some agency, are not really misery-tourism. They may be in better or worse taste, they may be better or worse mechanically, but they aren't really "misery-tourism". Grey Ranks does seem to provide the PCs with things to do. Even if the overall political developments are dictated, individual missions can succeed, and each PC has an individual reason they are fighting that can be saved from the coming destruction through their actions.

I see what you're saying, P, but as someone who helped coin the term, I think I can say that nobody really owns it to the degree that they can turn an argument into a definition war.

The Pole(s) over on Story-Games are turned off by the game because it seems shallow and exploitative to them.