RPGPundit Reviews: Gnomemurdered, by the RPGPundit

Yes, its time for another review, and for one of those very special reviews. Special, in the sense that I have to admit that I may have just a tiny bit of bias in my reviewing.

I've never gotten why people think that you cannot review your own product; why not? If you recognize and admit your bias up front, and you are nonetheless attempting to make a fair assessment of the product, I think its quite all right, and that in fact no one will be able to review the product in quite the same way as the person who wrote it.

(Though I'll admit that, certainly, an author-review would not be something I'd take as my one and only source of information before purchasing a product)

Ok, so this is a review of my own Gnomemurdered RPG. Its a softcover, with a very disturbing full-colour illustration of a psychotic Gnome on the front, 101 pages long, published by Precis Intermedia.

I can very fairly say that I had nothing at all to do with either the editing or the art (other than being asked if I liked some of it before printing), but I have to say that this is probably one of the nicest looking books Precis has ever put out. The art is funny and topical, the layout is very easy to read, and each page is bordered by a truly spectacular-looking quasi-victorian woodland-fringe with little gnomish figures.
So yes, nothing but praise for all the parts of the book that I actually had nothing to do with.

Now, on to the part I did: Gnomemurdered is basically two things. Systemwise, its an attempt to create the definitive "simplest RPG" that can actually be called an RPG. It is a kind of response to the rules-lite fanatics that are always trying to out-claim the other's pet system's simplicity.  Nothing is simpler than Gnomemurdered's system, which can be summarized as follows: roll 1d6. If you roll 1-3, you succeed. If you roll 4-6, you are murdered by Gnomes.  The rest of the game is elaboration on that simple solitary rule.

The second thing that Gnomemurdered consists of is a comedic-horror RPG about the evil of Gnomes. You can play up the comedy angle or the horror angle, but I think that the way the game is written, it'd be hard not to have at least a little of each (if nothing other than black humour).

Would a subject like that, with a system like the one named above really have enough going to it to meaningfully fill a 100 page book? I would say the answer is: pretty much.

I suppose you could argue that there is a bit of padding. The first 5 pages after the index are a group of 3 humorous essays about the writing of Gnomemurdered. The last 4 pages of the book contain a 3-page essay and a full page flowchart that are a humorous essay mocking the seriousness of self-styled "indie" games. But really aside from that, its all game.

What do you get in Gnomemurdered? Well, first you get a great deal of material for building on those basic rules. You also get a great deal of guidance in creating adventures and campaigns, advice that puts a great deal of frame-work for this ultralight game.  You get a shitload of setting details, including a LOT of pretty awesome random tables. And finally, you get several full scenarios for playing Gnomemurdered.

A note about the humour in the game: comedic RPGs tend to be pretty hit-and-miss. If a game is just stupid for its own sake, it tends not to be a very good game. Probably the greatest humourous RPG of all time is Paranoia, which I will admit was an inspiration as far as the humourous side of Gnomemurdered is concerned; but Paranoia is also a great example about the difference between a great humour RPG (Paranoia in its earlier editions and the Paranoia XP edition, where the humour was built into the writing and the setting in ways that maintained emulation), and a terribly awful humour RPG (the 5th edition of Paranoia where the humour was of a pointless and infantile variety that didn't maintain emulation very well).  Gnomemurdered is set up so that in actual play, you can run the game as a dead serious RPG of almost any genre, right up until the moment the Gnomes arrive. When they do, everything goes apeshit, but the funny part is essentially in the craziness of the Gnomes and the surrealism of the situation (where Gnomes come out of nowhere and start killing everything in their path, often in funny ways). While the player characters themselves could be silly, that's not how the game is set up to run on default; instead, the pcs are essentially meant to be the "straight men" in the joke, though they may end up finding themselves having to do ridiculous things to survive.

There are basically three kinds of humour in the book itself: the first is the humourous description of the Gnomes and details of the Gnomes and their behaviour in play. The second is parodying of the indie-game mentality (which, I will note, is not particularly pervasive in the book, mockery is not the central purpose of this game).  The third is in the mythology that the book itself has created around Gnomemurdered, writing about the "real" evil of Gnomes, and the book being as a kind of real-life manifesto about the evil of a gnomish conspiracy, coupled with outrageous claims about the game's success and popularity (this Gnomemurdered is officially "Gnomemurdered 2e", the first edition having been the basic rules published in the RPGPundit's Blog, which the book claims was "possibly" the most successful game of all time, read by "possibly" billions of people).

So let's examine the game contents in the fairest way possible; I don't usually do a chapter-by-chapter summary, but I think in this case it might be best:

After the introductions, the first chapter provides the aforementioned "basic rules" mechanic, as well as some alternate optional methods of task resolution. These methods include using a non-die randomizer, an opposed check between player and GM, a physical challenge where the task is resolved positively if the player passes a physical test, a mental challenge which is similar to the former but the test involves knowledge of trivia (or scriptural knowledge, using the King James Bible, which the book describes as "the true holy scriptures as written by Jesus Christ in the original English. Accept no substitutes!"), by narrativist group-determined discussion about what's best "for the story", or by collaborative hippie group therapy.


Chapter 2 provides details for character creation. In Gnomemurdered, characters have no actual numerical stats per se, but in Gnomurdered 2e there are extensive rules for creating characters. Gnomemurdered allows the GM to run almost any genre of play, and the GM must select an appropriate "power level" of play. The "power level" is an important detail because it helps to adjudicate exactly WHEN a D6 roll (ie. a "Gnomemurder Check") should be made. You see, in Gnomemurdered you don't actually roll the die for just anything: anything that a character should normally succeed at will be automatically a success. Anything he couldn't possibly succeed at will automatically be a failure. It is only in that in-between space, where either glory and victory or ignominious defeat are possible, that the Gnomes may strike. So the power level, and the talents and skills of the player characters, are very important guidelines to help the GM to understand just when he should be demanding a check.

Characters determine their background, attributes, and skills. There are no fixed attributes, instead the GM will select whichever he wishes for the game, or may use none at all (in a certain kind of Gnomemurdered scenario he might use Strength, Willpower, etc; in some other "magical talent" might be a good attribute, or even something like "humanity"). Attributes will generally be rated as weak, average, or strong.

Skills will represent the things the character would know based on his background. They are rated as amateur, average, professional, or excellent.
Characters may also have special powers and qualities. Powers might be things like spells or superpowers, while qualities can be things like "millionaire playboy" or "ordained cleric". And finally, you work out significant possessions.

"Power Levels" or levels of play are divided into gritty, heroic, super-heroic, and demigodlike. They essentially are what they sound like, permitting different levels of play within the same genre (ie. a "gritty fantasy game" is going to play fairly different, in terms of risk, than a "super-heroic fantasy" game).

Since there aren't any hard and fast statistics for the character creation process, or for the attributes or skills or powers themselves, a great deal of information is provided acting as guidelines and advice both for how to handle the level of abilities, and how to create characters in general. Ultimately, character creation is very free-form, limited only by the framework the GM wants to establish, and the creativity of the player. You could easily use Gnomemurdered to run Over the Edge, if you wished.

At the end of this section, there's a lengthy script giving an example of a group creating characters. Though it may be helpful, its mainly meant to be humourous to read. There have been some previous reviews of the Gnomemurdered RPG, where they didn't seem to get the joke, ie. who the six players (Bill, Al, George, Dick, Barry, and Hillary) are meant to be, and missed the whole subtext of the humour. I was kind of shocked by this, since I thought that if anything I was being too obvious.  Ah well, even those who didn't get the political humour still thought the section was funny, in that besides the subtext there is also the humour of the six players in the example all fitting (exaggerated?) archetypes of different sorts of slightly or severely challenging players for a GM to handle.

Chapter 3 is all about "running the game". It provides still more information for the GM about making choices on how to handle power levels, and play according to genre. It also gives useful advice for how to handle the "pre-gnome" and "post-gnome" games, which are very different from one another. Examples of "gnomish foreshadowing" are provided which can be introduced before Gnomes actually show up (for example, little gnomish bootmarks found in the soil; or the player character's underpants start going missing).
There are some rules on specifically handling combat, and the nuances of how Gnomes can kill directly or indirectly.
The post-gnome game changes the whole scenario, from being specifically genre-focused to being about surviving the Gnomes (while still following genre-conventions). Once a PC is killed by a Gnome, the Gnomes are now there in the setting, and will be NPCs moving around, causing trouble, and trying to follow some kind of insane gnomish agenda. This chapter assists the GM in handling all of that.
The chapter closes with information about how to handle player character death (a virtual inevitability in any Gnomemurdered scenario).  Different options are provided: the GM may decide to allow players to return immediately with a new character, or the GM might choose to run an "elimination game", where each PC is killed off until only one is left, or run a varying level of "punitive game", where some kind of penalty (of time, or some kind of a dare or service to the group) must be paid before the player can return.
Optional rules are provided for Gnome Resistance Points ("GRIPS"), which are rewarded to survivors of Gnomemurdered scenarios in ongoing games, (slightly) improving their odds of surviving gnomes in the future.

Chapter 4 gets into the meat of the "setting" as it were, with "The Awful Truth About Gnomes". This section is strictly for Gamemasters, and talks more about how to present the Gnomes in different kinds of genres, and how to generate Gnomish groups. Rules are provided to allow the GM to quickly generate a group of random gnomes.  There is a table of "elite Gnomish forces" (which can possibly be generated as the Gnome group), that include such units as the Gnomish Paraglider Kamikazes, Cuddly Death Gnomes, Blinking Lawn Gnomes, and the Dreaded Gnomish Gnu-Riders. Full descriptions are given of each.

Rules are also provided for creating Gnomish Leaders, including a random table to generate names for Gnome leaders.  Examples of Gnomish Leader-names include such colourful characters as Rumpledingis Whistlebottom the Ballkicker of Doom, Cuddlechooz Nobblynabber the Nightmare of the Black Emptiness, or Applesnuffer Whistlestaff the Despoiler of Shattered Torsos.

Tables are also provided for describing the first encounter with Gnomes (after a check is failed), and for the dreaded Gnomish Assassination Style of Gnome-Jitsu, with techniques like "Death wore a little scarf", or the "Gnomish Massage", or the infamous "Raisin Death Trap".
It is of course likely that industrious characters will manage to kill Gnomes, some or even all of them. In that case, like good PCs everywhere, they're going to want to loot the bodies.  Fortunately, extensive material is provided on Gnomish Loot, including information (and side-effects tables) for the dreaded Gnomish Books of Forbidden Lore. Six tables worth of Gnomish loot are provided, ranging from mundane or weird but useless items, to powerful artifacts, to Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. Examples include the dreaded Vorpal Spork, Gnomeberry Wine, the Gnu-skin Cape, Gnome Mutagen, Mjolnir, and of course, underpants.

The chapter contains extensive details on "Gnome Lore", general knowledge about Gnomish culture, tactics, strengths, activities, and weaknesses.  There are guidelines on how the GM should dole out Gnome Lore, what characters are allowed/likely to know, and of course the whole section acts as a field guide on how to run the Gnomes. In this chapter you learn about how Gnomes reproduce (Gnome Eggs!), the truth about Gnomish "tobacco", Gnomish dark magic, the Gnomish obsession with cookies and underwear (profit!), and Gnomish lairs.
Finally, the chapter closes with Gnomish mutation tables (that detail how exposure to Gnomish Goo can cause mysterious and terrible transformations in PCs).  A precious few mutations might be advantageous, most are highly inconvenient, a few are hilariously horrific.

The last 30 pages of the book detail the five Sample Scenarios provided for quick Gnomemurdered play. These are:
Gnome-Warrens of The Northern Wildlands: this scenario makes use of the northlands of "The Setting" (the sword & sorcery fantasy setting I designed for my prior rpg, Forward... to Adventure!).  The setting material is detailed for that region, and the scenario presumes the PCs are a group of adventurers travelling north for loot and glory.

Murder, She Gnomed: a murder-mystery scenario set in the 1930s, with a Marples-esque old-lady detective, a murdered dowager, a large cast of possible suspects, a thunderstorm, and eventually, Gnomes. Extensive profiles are given of each NPC suspect, including their secrets and possible motives for murder. The Scenario is set up so that the GM can choose any of the potential characters (including a PC, if he wants to conspire with one!) to be the murderer, so the scenario can play out differently every time. And of course, the gnomes will be a horrifying wild-card.

Challengers of the Unusual: "The Lost Valley of the Gnomes": This a pulp adventure for a group of Johnny Quest/Challengers of the Unknown-style pulp adventurers in the hip swinging early 60s. The scenario makes use of real life history and politics of the time (including details about the Congo circa 1962). Information is provided for how to create suitable in-genre Pulp heroes, and the Lost Valley is explored. There are intelligent Gorillamen, Dark Gods, and Soviet superspies. And, of course, the Gnomes.

Aliens Vs. Gnomes: A slightly comedic hard sci-fi scenario where the characters are part of the crew of a deep-space starship that unwittingly takes on some murderous alien monsters, and later, some Gnomes. The Aliens are out to kill everything in their path, the Gnomes likewise, and the humans are caught in the middle. Details are given about the ship, the NPC crewmembers, the technology, and the various ranks or roles on board the PCs might occupy.

And finally,
Nine Gnomemurders in Aembar: This is a demigodlike-level scenario, where the players portray members of a superpowerful multiplanar family (Aembarians, beings from the one true Platonic realm). The family is huge and dysfunctional, and a feud is in the works for the throne of Aembar and all the multiverse. Plus, the most powerful of the Gnomes are going to get in on the conflict.  Rules are provided to detail the Aemberians and their powers, the nature of the multiverse, and the war for the throne.  Sound familiar?

Anyways; some people have asked me whether Gnomemurder is actually playable. To which I can only answer: I've played it, and everyone involved had some great fun. Gnomemurder makes an excellent and true "pick up" game. You can get right into the action with a Gnomemurdered scenario in a matter of minutes. Gnomemurdered may not be the material for a years-long weekly campaign, but you can certainly do more than one-shots with it, and the toolkit nature of the game allows for a nearly-limitless variety of scenarios and short campaigns that could be played. Gnomemurdered is certainly not the kind of rules-lite game that will get boring after only a few uses.

I'll refrain from giving this game a specific conclusion as such, save to say that I hope that this gives you a better idea of whether Gnomemurdered is the sort of thing you might want to try out.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Solitario Horn + Altadis' Byzantium

Quote from: RPGPundit;382800I've never gotten why people think that you cannot review your own product; why not? If you recognize and admit your bias up front, and you are nonetheless attempting to make a fair assessment of the product

Doesn't matter. The problem is ethical, in the sense that even though you admit your own bias (everyone has a bias), you are not really reviewing a product, but rather either annotating/commenting on your own work, or trying to advertise for it. It's hard to "miss" the bias in this case, even though everyone has one.

Such a descriptive work on the part of the author is not a "review". It's an "advertisement".

P

Quote from: Benoist;382810Such a descriptive work on the part of the author is not a "review". It's an "advertisement".

It's still a review by definition. I don't mind author reviews because they often provide better insight into the nuances of the game than would a reviewer who's working off one or two reads.

Pundit I think people are right to point out the playability issue. If they are willing to suspend disbelief for the premise, its a lot to ask them to also accept that their character dies roughly every other time they make a roll (50%).  I know it's a parody, but it would be hard for me to convince my players to do that.

Something that occurred to me while reading the review, what if you had a band of gnomes attack every time the characters failed. That way you have a chance of defeating the gnomes (at least this band) and continuing the story, but you also risk summoning more and more gnomes with every failed attack/action during the combat, creating a popcorn ninja effect as gnomes come out of the woodwork, drop down from the ceiling, zoom up in tiny cars, etc.

You could then make gnome archetypes of varying strengths and powers (garden gnomes, forest gnomes, roaming gnomes, etc.).  Or base the gnomes' strength off the strength of the characters.

That probably doesn't go as far to parody Indie games as the current rules but it keeps the absurdity intact nd might make it more appealing to some.

Pete

Note that I'm not saying Pundy doesn't have a right to describe his own game and "review" it to the best of his abilities. He shouldn't be surprised, however, if people object on ethical grounds either, IMO.

That's called "design notes", not a "review", Pundit.

Quote from: pspahn;382819P
Pundit I think people are right to point out the playability issue. If they are willing to suspend disbelief for the premise, its a lot to ask them to also accept that their character dies roughly every other time they make a roll (50%).  I know it's a parody, but it would be hard for me to convince my players to do that.

Something that occurred to me while reading the review, what if you had a band of gnomes attack every time the characters failed. That way you have a chance of defeating the gnomes (at least this band) and continuing the story, but you also risk summoning more and more gnomes with every failed attack/action during the combat, creating a popcorn ninja effect as gnomes come out of the woodwork, drop down from the ceiling, zoom up in tiny cars, etc.

I don't think it'd be hard for you to do that with the game, if that's what you wanted to do.  
Really, remember that you only die if you try to do something that isn't within the average range of your character's abilities (there you just succeed), and isn't impossible either (there you just fail).  So rolls are something special and risky that happen only at crucial moments, for the most part.

Also, its really easy to make new characters.

QuoteYou could then make gnome archetypes of varying strengths and powers (garden gnomes, forest gnomes, roaming gnomes, etc.).  Or base the gnomes' strength off the strength of the characters.

That probably doesn't go as far to parody Indie games as the current rules but it keeps the absurdity intact nd might make it more appealing to some.

Pete

Gnomemurdered does have Gnomes of varying power levels, and varying strengths and types. The Cuddly Death Gnomes are very different from the Heavy Weapons Gnomes, and both are different from Gnu-riders, or your standard "infantry" Gnome, or Gnome Wizards, etc.

RPGPundit