Quote from: markfitz;739877Also, 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.

Yeah.  I'm sure you could make it work.  But good insight on the homebrew campaign idea.  I suppose in a way 1974 D&D was the same sort of game.  It assumed you were dungeon delvers looking for loot and that was that.  You had classes to differentiate things a bit, but it wasn't until people started paying more attention to the adventurer's lives outside of the dungeons than did more variety really open up.  I think this is even more narrow than 0D&D though as it doesn't leave the particulars undefined.

QuoteAs 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.

I'm probably going to borrow and modify the situation generating process as I think it has merit.

One thing I like about all these KS projects is that it shows you just how small you can be and still get an RPG published and in the hands of those who want it.  For example, here's River of Heaven, a sci-fi game based off of OpenQuest2:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/645319106/river-of-heaven-sf-rpg

A few hundred people, the printing and shipping costs are covered and the designer gets to be partially compensated for the design work that was going to get done anyway as it's for the designer's use in play and sharing it is a bonus.

This game is going to outdo River of Heaven in the KS as Ron has a larger internet fan base than Newt does and the story-game crowd is currently finding games with older sensibilities to be fashionable again.  It's going to be a nice small print run paid for by the KS and that'll be fine.

This game is an RPG in the traditional sense and will probably work great for people who like it's narrow focus.  I find the narrow focus to be a bit too much like a cliched elevator movie pitch.  "Imagine a world where the forces of black magic and the forces of white magic are at war.  And then there are these people who refuse to pick a side in the war and they use both!  Imagine grey magick!"

So yeah, totally not for me.

I looks like a giant blob of "meh" to me, frankly.  A pretty generic pitch, with a bunch of hyperbolic text about why it's awesome, and nothing to back that up.

I may plunk down $12 just to see how his theory actually plays out after all these years in terms of real design.

Quote from: robiswrong;739933I looks like a giant blob of "meh" to me, frankly.  A pretty generic pitch, with a bunch of hyperbolic text about why it's awesome, and nothing to back that up.

I may plunk down $12 just to see how his theory actually plays out after all these years in terms of real design.

Why bother?  The playtest version is free as a PDF:

http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/Circle-Playtest-Draft.pdf

Quote from: Dodger;739760Maybe 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.

So it's getting some attention on the larger feminist blogosphere, so you might be on to something.

Here's what Ron Edwards had to say in an email exchange with such a blogger:

Quote from: Ron EdwardsBriefly, the setting is not offering the “way I think it ought to be.” This is an illustration of the problem: that social justice does not exist and that the setting doesn’t feature solutions. Frankly, I think modern life isn’t much better, and my fantasy setting calls that shit out. Or it should, in its final form.

:rolleyes: Oh good.  A game that's about calling out the lack of social justice in real life.  That sounds like so much fun.   I was just thinking I'd add the matter-of-fact issue of child slavery on cocoa bean plantations to my campaign.  Calling that shit out in a game will make everything better right?  And it'll help my game be more accepted by certain bloggers.:rolleyes:

Ugh.

And the concluding thoughts by the feminist blogger:

Quote from: Anna KreiderDo I agree with everything that Ron is saying? No. And I’m still not likely to ever play Circle of Hands. But it’s nice to know that my concerns were heard and taken seriously, and I can be hopeful that the final version will be something that is ultimately not harmful. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

emphasis mine

Thank you, Anna Kreider, for stepping in and making sure your concerns were heard and taken seriously for a game that you have no intention of actually playing! :rolleyes:

From here:
http://gomakemeasandwich.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/a-conversation-with-ron-edwards-about-circle-of-hands-and-rape-long/

The real joke lost so far is that the man who first coined the term "heartbreaker" as a semi - insult is now trying to reform it's meaning and is riding his own nostalgia craze as he constructs an RQ/Warhammer heartbreaker.

Quote from: markfitz;739877Also, 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.

To be fair - it's not the first time. L5R somewhat expects you'll be playing a nobleman, same for basic Pendragon with it's assumption of being a knight/courier for Uther and then Arthur's court. That's off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are more examples.

Quote from: NathanIW;740360So it's getting some attention on the larger feminist blogosphere, so you might be on to something.

Here's what Ron Edwards had to say in an email exchange with such a blogger:



:rolleyes: Oh good.  A game that's about calling out the lack of social justice in real life.  That sounds like so much fun.   I was just thinking I'd add the matter-of-fact issue of child slavery on cocoa bean plantations to my campaign.  Calling that shit out in a game will make everything better right?  And it'll help my game be more accepted by certain bloggers.:rolleyes:

Ugh.

And the concluding thoughts by the feminist blogger:


emphasis mine

Thank you, Anna Kreider, for stepping in and making sure your concerns were heard and taken seriously for a game that you have no intention of actually playing! :rolleyes:

From here:
http://gomakemeasandwich.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/a-conversation-with-ron-edwards-about-circle-of-hands-and-rape-long/

Power Word: Rape in action.

Also, "Frankly, I think modern life isn’t much better." If you're reading this, Ron - stop thinking. You just don't have the brain for it, I'm afraid.

I really, really, really hate this comparative shit. "Yeah, women who try to go to school in Pakistan or Afghanistan are having acid thrown in their faces, but over here women get cat - called, so who are we to judge?"

Quote from: Rincewind1;740388Power Word: Rape

It's an amazing feat of propaganda.  The technique of attaching of "rape culture" to everything so that if someone questions anything these people are saying, that person is just doing so as a hapless misogynist product of "rape culture."

QuoteAlso, "Frankly, I think modern life isn't much better." If you're reading this, Ron - stop thinking. You just don't have the brain for it, I'm afraid.

A gander at infant mortality rates since the advent of modern medicine and germ theory would be a place he could start.

What's the point of this game?

Quote from: Ron EdwardsIn 1990, I wanted fantasy role-playing and it just was not happening.
 
I wanted monsters and cosmic magic, certainly, but I really wanted human evil and human pain. I wanted combat that felt like fighting, with fear and desperation just ahead of effective tactics. I wanted damage not merely to tick down a fuel tank, or even just to penalize, but to hurt. I wanted a knife to be a deadly weapon, as dangerous as a great-axe in the right time and place. I wanted a reason to fight which made sense to me. I wanted wizards to be physically tough. I wanted scary, raw, scarring spells that visibly sprayed and spattered. I wanted shocking powerful magic that wasn't limited in multiple stifling directions. I wanted characters to be vivid at the start, but also to be unfinished, to have somewhere to go. I wanted all of us playing to care about the characters. I wanted to get to know the party, experience the events that would become its collective memories, see its members develop and the whole membership change. I wanted to see things happen in adventures, not because "the GM says if you get the silver widget, the realm is secure," but because some player decided to do something and made it happen. I wanted players to decide for themselves whom they wanted to kill. I wanted awesome cosmic forces in opposition, but characters who were not pawns. I wanted stuff to happen in our very first session, and never to let up. I wanted to look back on a game with grim pride, remembering moments of breaking-points, fury, tragedy, and shared joy at the table.

Sounds good.  I think he should shoulder the blame of why he didn't get any of that out of the 80's or 90's, because I sure did, but I'll accept him at his word, that no existing game was doing it for him.

So what do we have?

• Pretentious Chapter Titles ripped off from Burning Wheel...
• Narrow Theme - Being gray in a world that is black and white...
• Narrow Focus - You are a member of the circle...
• Weird Ass Social Crap forcing non-Traditional IC-POV - Everyone makes up two characters, you play any of the characters each time, even other people's and you never play the same ones twice...
• Framing the social structure of the world to force character moral conflict - Rape is Real!, You can beat someone to death by wearing them down after they are already helpless.  It's the Dark Ages, the world is covered in shit!  There's absolute Good and absolute Evil but you aren't allied with either one.

Does the game system governing actual actions by the characters meet the expectations of that opening paragraph?  Who knows?  I don't know if I can struggle through all the typical Forge player-focused bullshit to actually see what the characters do.

Cue all the "100% traditional old-school play" comments.

Quote from: CRKrueger;740406

Quote from: Ron EdwardsIn 1990, I wanted fantasy role-playing and it just was not happening.

I wanted monsters and cosmic magic, certainly, but I really wanted human evil and human pain. I wanted combat that felt like fighting, with fear and desperation just ahead of effective tactics. I wanted damage not merely to tick down a fuel tank, or even just to penalize, but to hurt. I wanted a knife to be a deadly weapon, as dangerous as a great-axe in the right time and place. I wanted a reason to fight which made sense to me. I wanted wizards to be physically tough. I wanted scary, raw, scarring spells that visibly sprayed and spattered. I wanted shocking powerful magic that wasn't limited in multiple stifling directions. I wanted characters to be vivid at the start, but also to be unfinished, to have somewhere to go. I wanted all of us playing to care about the characters. I wanted to get to know the party, experience the events that would become its collective memories, see its members develop and the whole membership change. I wanted to see things happen in adventures, not because "the GM says if you get the silver widget, the realm is secure," but because some player decided to do something and made it happen. I wanted players to decide for themselves whom they wanted to kill. I wanted awesome cosmic forces in opposition, but characters who were not pawns. I wanted stuff to happen in our very first session, and never to let up. I wanted to look back on a game with grim pride, remembering moments of breaking-points, fury, tragedy, and shared joy at the table.

Dude should've just bought Runequest and saved himself a world of trouble.

Well, this is in the wrong area, clearly.

Quote from: The Butcher;740453Dude should've just bought Runequest and saved himself a world of trouble.

Pretty much.