Quote from: S'mon;739668Yeah, typical 'crapsack world' stuff.

Yeah.  At this point, Martin's gritty fantasy has replaced or at least stood up alongside Tolkien's high-fantasy, and this is nothing exceptional from that perspective, if not for the combination of crap-sack world and dualistic magic.  

Where the game is remarkable (in the sense of worthy of discussion) is the larger goals and the mechanical approach.  Setting-wise, the only thing that I find really worth poring over and exploring is how you have this explicitly crappy world caught between two explicitly dualistic and moral powers.  But I don't know if the thing worthy of discussion is whether the resultant adventuring possibilities are interesting, or whether that creates a fatal flaw in the setting.  I dunno.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;739687Where the game is remarkable (in the sense of worthy of discussion) is the larger goals and the mechanical approach.  Setting-wise, the only thing that I find really worth poring over and exploring is how you have this explicitly crappy world caught between two explicitly dualistic and moral powers.  But I don't know if the thing worthy of discussion is whether the resultant adventuring possibilities are interesting, or whether that creates a fatal flaw in the setting.  I dunno.

Yeah, I'm curious to see where he's taking the setting. Some things, such as a human culture that uses both "black" and "white" magic, suggest that there's more to it than endless war in Crapsackia.

System-wise I probably won't care much for the design. Sorcerer was OK, though.

Looks kinda interesting to me. Standard sword and sorcery stuff, which I like... though nothing is really screaming out to me that I need to back the thing.

I read through the playtest version, because I feel like his Sorcerer supplement, Sorcerer and Sword had some pretty interesting things to say about running Swords & Sorcery games.
The rules side of things aren't especially innovative, as far as I can see. It's rules-light, it looks playable. There are a couple of interesting things about how to set up a scenario so it's not railroady. The mechanics for gaining, basically, Light Side and Dark Side points, or Law/Chaos points in the various iterations of Stormbringer are also comparable, are fine, but again, nothing earth-shattering. I suppose the one interesting tweak there is that BOTH the angelic and the demonic hosts are inhumanly extreme, and that the PCs are assumed to use magic from both sides.
It strikes me more like someone's fairly cool homebrew campaign. Not even gameworld really, because there's a specific assumed set-up with the characters being Circle Knights. One other slightly interesting thing there is the sort of "troupe" play that's baked into it, a little like Ars Magica, with assumed back-up crew of torchbearers, guides, and servants, and that each player (and the GM) makes two characters to start, but then you rotate play of them between players. I'm actually not quite sure what this adds to the game. It might be a fun experiment.  

Oh, and the rape thing? There are about three lines in there that say Rape is Something That Happens, in this Grim Grim World. Honestly, I believe that there's no real need to specify this in a somewhat portentous manner, as he does. Surely if you set up a violent and grotty world, one might assume that that's one of the bad things people do to each other, and whether or not it ever is mentioned in play would be purely up to individual groups? It seems like baiting people to react (as the Sandwich Lady did) with outrage, only for Edwards to get the chance to say "No, I'm a huge feminist, and it's done in a very mature and empowering way" or something. Seems like trolling, to be honest.

Quote from: markfitz;739708I read through the playtest version, because I feel like his Sorcerer supplement, Sorcerer and Sword had some pretty interesting things to say about running Swords & Sorcery games.
The rules side of things aren't especially innovative, as far as I can see. It's rules-light, it looks playable. There are a couple of interesting things about how to set up a scenario so it's not railroady. The mechanics for gaining, basically, Light Side and Dark Side points, or Law/Chaos points in the various iterations of Stormbringer are also comparable, are fine, but again, nothing earth-shattering. I suppose the one interesting tweak there is that BOTH the angelic and the demonic hosts are inhumanly extreme, and that the PCs are assumed to use magic from both sides.
It strikes me more like someone's fairly cool homebrew campaign. Not even gameworld really, because there's a specific assumed set-up with the characters being Circle Knights. One other slightly interesting thing there is the sort of "troupe" play that's baked into it, a little like Ars Magica, with assumed back-up crew of torchbearers, guides, and servants, and that each player (and the GM) makes two characters to start, but then you rotate play of them between players. I'm actually not quite sure what this adds to the game. It might be a fun experiment.  

Oh, and the rape thing? There are about three lines in there that say Rape is Something That Happens, in this Grim Grim World. Honestly, I believe that there's no real need to specify this in a somewhat portentous manner, as he does. Surely if you set up a violent and grotty world, one might assume that that's one of the bad things people do to each other, and whether or not it ever is mentioned in play would be purely up to individual groups? It seems like baiting people to react (as the Sandwich Lady did) with outrage, only for Edwards to get the chance to say "No, I'm a huge feminist, and it's done in a very mature and empowering way" or something. Seems like trolling, to be honest.

You sum up my impressions very well. Nothing earth-shattering, some interesting ideas. I am not backing it because I have too many games pending testing and too many campaigns pending runnin', so I am not getting new games at the moment.. This Friday I got Eternal Lies fo Trail of Cthulhu and I am busy having my mind blown by the sheer awesomeness of it.

Quote from: markfitz;739708(...) It seems like baiting people to react (as the Sandwich Lady did) with outrage, only for Edwards to get the chance to say "No, I'm a huge feminist, and it's done in a very mature and empowering way" or something. Seems like trolling, to be honest.

A perfect opportunity for him to demonstrate his obvious superior artistic integrity...

Quote from: markfitz;739708Oh, and the rape thing? There are about three lines in there that say Rape is Something That Happens, in this Grim Grim World. Honestly, I believe that there's no real need to specify this in a somewhat portentous manner, as he does. Surely if you set up a violent and grotty world, one might assume that that's one of the bad things people do to each other, and whether or not it ever is mentioned in play would be purely up to individual groups? It seems like baiting people to react (as the Sandwich Lady did) with outrage, only for Edwards to get the chance to say "No, I'm a huge feminist, and it's done in a very mature and empowering way" or something. Seems like trolling, to be honest.

Maybe it's a publicity-seeking tactic. Yank the Usual Suspects' chain enough to attract some attention and trigger a TBP lynch-thread, then placate everyone. In the meantime, a few more hundred people have become aware of the Kickstarter than would have otherwise.

I'm sure the people who play the game will enjoy themselves with it.  I took a gander at the playtest document and it seemed fine enough.  I think the only issue I have with it is that it doesn't offer a menu of options to players and GMs.  The PCs are these people who opt out of this larger conflict and use power from both sides and that's that.  That's fine and all, but I'm becoming more and more appreciative of games that present lots of options and allow the participants to grab onto elements that interest them.

Not going to participate in the KS as it takes something truly special to get me to buy it in preorder.  I'm loving my RQ/BRP based games right now and can't see a reason why I'd spend session time with this instead.

I'm all about the RQ at the moment too. Reading through Circle of Hands, it occurred to me that it would actually be quite cool as a RuneQuest campaign. He mentions RuneQuest at the end, along with a few other games, and I think you can see a little bit of influence (everyone has experience from a previous realistic profession, social class is important, everyone has some minor magic ...).

Along with Tunnels & Trolls, Runequest is pretty much one of the original "my D&D" type product that Edwards calls a "fantasy heartbreaker" (though I believe he reserves that term for later works than those published in the late 70s or early 80s).  So perhaps this game has some elements of being Ron Edward's tribute to Runequest.

Yeah, but I think that, without going into his whole "fantasy heartbreaker" thing too deeply, the ones that he considers heartbreakers are the ones that failed to demarcate themselves from the D&D that they so clearly wanted to emulate/fix. You could argue that this doesn't apply to RQ because it actually DID manage to demarcate itself from the original, and carve out a niche for itself, though obviously a fairly small one. That said, back in the early 80s, it was one of the big games that all other fantasy games defined themselves against, and it has remained a perpetual choice of those who wanted more detail in cults and cultures and more gritty, realistic combat than default D&D provided ... That, along with all characters more or less participating in a magic ecology of a fully-formed world, makes me agree with you, that this game has elements of tribute to a RQ style of play.

Quote from: markfitz;739786Yeah, but I think that, without going into his whole "fantasy heartbreaker" thing too deeply, the ones that he considers heartbreakers are the ones that failed to demarcate themselves from the D&D that they so clearly wanted to emulate/fix. You could argue that this doesn't apply to RQ because it actually DID manage to demarcate itself from the original, and carve out a niche for itself, though obviously a fairly small one.

That is a very good point.  And in a lot of discussions about why RQ didn't do better, a lot of people can only come up with "it wasn't first to market" although I think the Gygaxian strangeness had also already set the norm for expectations and Runequest was full of Staffordite wierdness instead.

QuoteThat said, back in the early 80s, it was one of the big games that all other fantasy games defined themselves against, and it has remained a perpetual choice of those who wanted more detail in cults and cultures and more gritty, realistic combat than default D&D provided ... That, along with all characters more or less participating in a magic ecology of a fully-formed world, makes me agree with you, that this game has elements of tribute to a RQ style of play.

I'm taking a closer look at the playtest document and while I'm seeing some RQish elements, it's missing probably the most distinct feature of RQ.  A skill system.  

The combat system has some RQish elements in that you hit, determine damage and reduce it by armour, but instead of HP, you damage stats.  And you cannot just kill someone.  You can only ever render them helpless and then intentionally kill them.  So the best possible attack with a big two handed great axe is to render someone helpless*.  Not very RQ at all!

Another strange mechanic is having a direct confrontation or statement of intent is less likely to succeed than if you integrate some sort of action appropriate to social rank or indisputably effective first.  

There's also a strange waving away of sneak attacks or attacking from stealth.  All it does is give you advantage in a clash.  So again, you'll hit the limit of just being able to render someone helpless*.  And it creates a retroactive moment of description.  Whether or not you even snuck up on them won't be established as a fact in play until after you know how successful you were at attacking and then it's a result of interpreting the attack roll and effect rather than any stealth, perception or surprise check related stuff.

*Unless of course the person playing that character decides to narrate their character dying to the attack.  If a character is reduced to 0 in both of their fighty stats, they can declare their character dead rather than just helpless.  I guess that's useful for GM's shortening combat against unimportant characters, but it's definitely a big departure to a "let the rules adjudicate the situation" approach of early D&D and especially RQ.

Characters are super focused as well.  They are Circle knights.  And the central idea of Ron's old heart breaker Grey magick is mandatory.  You're the guys who use both white and black magic to have grey magic.  And as such you're part of this order.  And not just part of it, but veterans committed to the cause.  Any other character concept is not appropriate and completely unsupported.  The game is about being a committed veteran circle knight who uses grey magic in the context of a larger struggle between white and black magic.

There's also a shared pool of characters.  Not just shared, but you can't play the same character twice in a row.  There's nothing wrong with this per se, but it's not necessarily what people are looking for in a game.  People like playing the character they made and not having swapping characters being mandatory.

Adventures don't end based on success, defeating a villain or finishing exploring an area, but on other factors that would be incomplete in a traditional game.  Once there's a sufficiently tense conflict and sufficient characterization, the GM is supposed to go into a wrap up process.

What are my overall impressions of this game?

It is a heartbreaker that wouldn't have gotten funded without the author's name being attached to it and his small following on the internet.  If the game was to be judged on it's own merits relative to other offerings, I don't think it would even beat out free options.  If this exact game was attached to a forum thread where some unknown person was talking about their pet RPG, you'd get a few dowloads, a few questions and a "that's neat" post here and there.

I like people making their "my-D&D" or "my-RQ" and putting it on the net, but I'm not sure Ron Edwards has produced anything of note here.  If you're interested in checking it out, I think the free playtest PDF is the way to go.

That aspect of swapping characters is kind of an interesting experiment... playing the group rather than an individual... but I can't see it surviving for more than a session or two before being ditched for more standard Player to PC relations.
I think Noumenon had some similar blending of the PCs... but in that game they're giant insects wandering a surreal dreamscape, so it was an in-game fact that the PCs weren't entirely discreet from one another.

Regarding this game, it's another fantasy game that I'm not interested in; there are many others.

Quote from: NathanIW;739785Along with Tunnels & Trolls, Runequest is pretty much one of the original "my D&D" type product that Edwards calls a "fantasy heartbreaker" (though I believe he reserves that term for later works than those published in the late 70s or early 80s).  So perhaps this game has some elements of being Ron Edward's tribute to Runequest.

RuneQuest wouldn't be a heartbreaker, though; as per his original essay, heartbreakers define themselves by how they're different to D&D ("It's not like D&D, because..."), but end up just doing all the same things because the authors didn't know better. RuneQuest tries to do something different, and does it. Tunnels and Trolls may have been created because the author wanted to play a fantasy game but didn't have any D&D books, but it does enough things differently to be recognisable as it's own thing.

(OSR games aren't heartbreakers, because they're not trying to define themselves by how they're different to D&D; they're "It's like D&D, but if...".)

Quote from: NathanIW;739838The combat system has some RQish elements in that you hit, determine damage and reduce it by armour, but instead of HP, you damage stats.  And you cannot just kill someone.  You can only ever render them helpless and then intentionally kill them.  So the best possible attack with a big two handed great axe is to render someone helpless*.  Not very RQ at all!

I think that the "rendering helpless and then going on to kill" only applies to non-lethal (at first) unarmed damage, and I think it's an interesting way to handle it.

Other than that, I agree with what you state as the differences, Nathan, but the professonal backgrounds do strike me as a little RuneQuesty, except that instead of skills, the background and the social class are used as skill-umbrellas, much like HeroQuest or the skill system from 13th Age. Not a bad rules light way to go, in my opinion.

Also, the narrow Circle Knight set-up is why it strikes me as a homebrew campaign and not a whole game-world. It's too narrowly focused to be a whole world; but I'm not sure it would break either if you allowed people to play characters who weren't Circle Knights.

As for whether it's worth picking up or backing, I'd say that the playtest document is worth reading, to see how someone put together a quite flavourful campaign idea that feeds into some fairly interesting mechanics decisions, but I'm not sure myself I'd consider paying for it.