Thursday, 10 April 2014
Support Your Pundit!
Hey guys, this is just a friendly note on this, the Third Day of the Writing of the Book of the Law, where I will fulfill my duty to mankind by sharing the Law.
There, done. And while I have you here, if you like my "real magick in RPGs" stuff, or my Arrows of Indra material, or Lords of Olympus, my RPG Reviews, or my game reports, or Famous Pipe Smokers, or my rants about gaming, politics, or just about anything else, then you could always consider clicking on that Paypal button to your right, and sending some cash, right?
Even if you can't stand me, but find yourself checking the blog every day to get your daily hate-on, that's got to be worth something too, right?
If you can't afford it, or don't give a fuck, then whatever. But I spend not an inconsiderable amount of time each day writing up these blog entries, and generally doing what I do; and if you want to be sure I can keep going with it indefinitely, show your support.
The same goes for any creative type you like, really; if the person in question is true about their art, they're not doing it to get rich (and probably won't get rich, while the Miley Cyruses of the world do), or to seem clever either, or even to be admired and adored. No, motherfuckers! They do it because its a passion; because they can't not do it!
Yes, the true creative type is... well, basically mentally ill. But in a good way! Their obsessive compulsiveness is a fruit-giving tree that freely nourishes the public's hunger for any number of things: beauty, paradigm shifts, lust, mental challenge, whatever. And all because they literally can't just be satisfied with a real job.
So there we have it. I'm doing my Will, you do yours; and if its your Will to regularly read my blog, be a pal and help a brother out by contributing.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Volcano + Gawith's Squadron Leader
Wednesday, 9 April 2014
DCC Campaign Update
This weekend we finally finished the (3rd part of the) adventure at hand. We got a couple of new 1st level characters (from new players in our group), namely an ex-professional-torturess turned mercenary warrior woman, and an ex-astrologer turned wizard (in an already wizard-heavy party).
The party learned:
-The first rule of not getting bored is "don't split up the party".
-The second rule is "don't hang out with four times more NPCs than you have players"!
-Charm person quickly creates little megalomaniacs.
-Said little megalomaniacs can get away with it, at least for a good long while, if they also have some serious magic missile power.
-Some Elves just really, really want to Summon a bear.
-When you're hanging out with a bunch of hired mercenaries, and a bunch of loyal Assassin's Guild assassins, sometimes the best answer is to just let them kill each other.
-A dude with a hoe can occasionally end up surviving to become a hero... but if his name is Olaf, he's also doomed to be called "Hoe-laf" for the rest of his career.
-Ogre Wizards have an excessive love of Color Spray.
-In Arkhome, wealthy parents tell their young children to behave or the halflings will come to eat them.
-Sometimes, the best strategy is to just hide out in a barn full of Giant Snails until the heat is off.
-Sometimes, the best plan is to just sell back the Old Families' children at a bargain price.
-Its not a good idea to start shooting at a non-belligerent Imp when you're surrounded by dozens of mafiosi.
-Imps are tough to assassinate.
-Once in a while, when a gang tries a move to take over the entire city of Arkhome, it may possibly work; but more likely the result will be that instead of two gangs squabbling for control over the city, you end up with six.
-Just because you've been geas-ed to be unable to talk about the Eye Tyrants, doesn't mean they aren't on their way.
-The Snake Witch is alive.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Davidoff 400 series Apple + C&D's Pirate Kake
Tuesday, 8 April 2014
Most Racist Area of North America Kicks Out Most Racist Party (but Keeps Being Racist)
Quick quiz: What is the single most racist mainstream political party in North America; that is, a party that has actual chances in elections?
Think its the Republicans? Not even close.
Tea Party? Not a real party of the kind we're talking about; and even the Tea Party doesn't have the kind of policies the real winner of the title has.
If you're American, you can be forgiven for not knowing the answer, and that's because the party in question in your country.
The most racist party in North America is the Parti Quebecois, who just got their asses handed to them in the Quebec provincial election.
I mean consider this: imagine if some local party in the U.S. got elected into power on multiple occasions over the last 40 years, and in that time they instituted laws that forced all children to receive English-only education, to limit media that wasn't about White American culture, that made it ILLEGAL to put up a sign, engage in advertising, or even have words in menus written in spanish. Imagine if they shut down an Italian restaurant for using the "foreign" word "pasta" on its menu instead of "noodles".
You'd say "shit, those are fucking racists", right?
Now imagine if they had passed a law that forbade the use of religious clothing, mainly to stop muslims from being able to wear the Hijab? This law would oblige all public offices (including schools, hospitals, etc.) to fire anyone (teachers, doctors, public employees, etc) who wear religious headgear or other decorations, including Jewish Kippah/yarmulke, but provided a specific exception to Christian objects (including a huge Cross in the legislature building), citing that these are "cultural heritage". Imagine if the party did nothing to stop people in its own ranks from being virulently anti-muslim AND anti-semitic at the same time?
You'd say "holy shit those guys are MOTHERFUCKING Racists!". Wouldn't you?
Now imagine if on top of that they regularly talked about seceding from the U.S. in order to preserve their "values" and protect themselves from "outsiders". Imagine if people in the party regularly talked about the need to protect the state from "foreigners" and "spanish speakers" who aren't "pure" like they are?
Imagine if they actually went ahead, twice, with referendums for secession? And imagine if when they lost the referendum, the party leader in his first post-vote address to the public stated that the only reason they lost was because of "Money (i.e. Jews), and the Ethnic Vote"?
I would hope by now you'd be frothing at the mouth about these goddamn motherfucking racists, right?
Well, in Canada, that's the Parti Quebecois, except for the language they're enforcing being French, and the languages being oppressed are all others, including English. The "pastagate" story is true, by the way. Look it up.
Most recently, the Parti Quebecois was in government in Quebec for the last 18 months or so. During this time, aside from the "pastagate" scandal, and the fact that they banned English education even for the children of Canadian Armed Forces members temporarily assigned to Canadian military bases in Quebec (even though this would essentially destroy 1-2 years of education for these children, potentially ruining their lives). All this while of course they demand that the rest of Canada offer French public education everywhere, even in areas that literally don't have a single native french-speaker for hundreds of kilometers around.
Then they tried to push forward the "Charter of Values", which is the aforementioned law that bans religious headgear or decorations, unless they're Christian. The law was explicitly created and intended to persecute muslim immigrants to Quebec, who generally did not tend vote for the PQ, but the PQ was also very happy to have the persecution extend to Quebec Jews, who are generally anglophones living in Montreal (and who Jacques Parizeau, their leader in the failed referendum in the 1990s, famously surreptitiously blamed for the secession movement's loss).
Now as of yesterday, the PQ got thrown out on their asses. Great, right? It means Quebec demonstrated some serious basic sanity and replaced them with a sensible party... doesn't it?
No, not really. More importantly, the REASON the PQ decided to call an election after only 18 months in power was that their "Values Charter" proposition was so IMMENSELY POPULAR with the Quebecois majority that it looked like they would win a solid majority. They only lost because they got so cocky they started talking about Separating from Canada again, and that is clearly something the majority of Quebecois no longer want (probably because Quebec receives BILLIONS of dollars in aid money from the rest of Canada to support their ruinous economy... why would anyone want to leave in circumstances like that?).
So to review: they didn't kick out the PQ because of the racist language laws (in fact, there is NO major party in Quebec with the guts to try to oppose, or even suggest a moderation of, the language laws; because the measures are so popular with the very very racist Quebecois people). Nor did they kick out the PQ because of the "Values Charter" (which again, was so immensely popular that even the Liberal party that did win had to promise to keep at least some measures, such as theoretically banning the chador-headscarf for public employees). They only kicked them out because they didn't want to separate from Canada, lose the gravy train, and become the next impoverished banana-republic backwater of the Americas.
So there you have it. I'm very glad that the Parti Quebecois got the electoral ass-raping they so richly deserved, and that the vicious corrupt smarmy self-serving cow who led that party (Pauline Marois, the Sarah Palin of Quebec, who often commented proudly on how she can barely speak a word of English, as if her ignorance was a virtuous proof of her "pure wool" Quebec blood) has effectively had her career ruined. But if anyone thinks that this somehow means that Quebec doesn't have a xenophobic, petty, poisoned society of a kind that would not be tolerated anywhere else in our modern western society (certainly not if it was english-speakers doing it), they're sorely mistaken.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Volcano + H&H's Beverwyck
Think its the Republicans? Not even close.
Tea Party? Not a real party of the kind we're talking about; and even the Tea Party doesn't have the kind of policies the real winner of the title has.
If you're American, you can be forgiven for not knowing the answer, and that's because the party in question in your country.
The most racist party in North America is the Parti Quebecois, who just got their asses handed to them in the Quebec provincial election.
I mean consider this: imagine if some local party in the U.S. got elected into power on multiple occasions over the last 40 years, and in that time they instituted laws that forced all children to receive English-only education, to limit media that wasn't about White American culture, that made it ILLEGAL to put up a sign, engage in advertising, or even have words in menus written in spanish. Imagine if they shut down an Italian restaurant for using the "foreign" word "pasta" on its menu instead of "noodles".
You'd say "shit, those are fucking racists", right?
Now imagine if they had passed a law that forbade the use of religious clothing, mainly to stop muslims from being able to wear the Hijab? This law would oblige all public offices (including schools, hospitals, etc.) to fire anyone (teachers, doctors, public employees, etc) who wear religious headgear or other decorations, including Jewish Kippah/yarmulke, but provided a specific exception to Christian objects (including a huge Cross in the legislature building), citing that these are "cultural heritage". Imagine if the party did nothing to stop people in its own ranks from being virulently anti-muslim AND anti-semitic at the same time?
You'd say "holy shit those guys are MOTHERFUCKING Racists!". Wouldn't you?
Now imagine if on top of that they regularly talked about seceding from the U.S. in order to preserve their "values" and protect themselves from "outsiders". Imagine if people in the party regularly talked about the need to protect the state from "foreigners" and "spanish speakers" who aren't "pure" like they are?
Imagine if they actually went ahead, twice, with referendums for secession? And imagine if when they lost the referendum, the party leader in his first post-vote address to the public stated that the only reason they lost was because of "Money (i.e. Jews), and the Ethnic Vote"?
I would hope by now you'd be frothing at the mouth about these goddamn motherfucking racists, right?
Well, in Canada, that's the Parti Quebecois, except for the language they're enforcing being French, and the languages being oppressed are all others, including English. The "pastagate" story is true, by the way. Look it up.
Most recently, the Parti Quebecois was in government in Quebec for the last 18 months or so. During this time, aside from the "pastagate" scandal, and the fact that they banned English education even for the children of Canadian Armed Forces members temporarily assigned to Canadian military bases in Quebec (even though this would essentially destroy 1-2 years of education for these children, potentially ruining their lives). All this while of course they demand that the rest of Canada offer French public education everywhere, even in areas that literally don't have a single native french-speaker for hundreds of kilometers around.
Then they tried to push forward the "Charter of Values", which is the aforementioned law that bans religious headgear or decorations, unless they're Christian. The law was explicitly created and intended to persecute muslim immigrants to Quebec, who generally did not tend vote for the PQ, but the PQ was also very happy to have the persecution extend to Quebec Jews, who are generally anglophones living in Montreal (and who Jacques Parizeau, their leader in the failed referendum in the 1990s, famously surreptitiously blamed for the secession movement's loss).
Now as of yesterday, the PQ got thrown out on their asses. Great, right? It means Quebec demonstrated some serious basic sanity and replaced them with a sensible party... doesn't it?
No, not really. More importantly, the REASON the PQ decided to call an election after only 18 months in power was that their "Values Charter" proposition was so IMMENSELY POPULAR with the Quebecois majority that it looked like they would win a solid majority. They only lost because they got so cocky they started talking about Separating from Canada again, and that is clearly something the majority of Quebecois no longer want (probably because Quebec receives BILLIONS of dollars in aid money from the rest of Canada to support their ruinous economy... why would anyone want to leave in circumstances like that?).
So to review: they didn't kick out the PQ because of the racist language laws (in fact, there is NO major party in Quebec with the guts to try to oppose, or even suggest a moderation of, the language laws; because the measures are so popular with the very very racist Quebecois people). Nor did they kick out the PQ because of the "Values Charter" (which again, was so immensely popular that even the Liberal party that did win had to promise to keep at least some measures, such as theoretically banning the chador-headscarf for public employees). They only kicked them out because they didn't want to separate from Canada, lose the gravy train, and become the next impoverished banana-republic backwater of the Americas.
So there you have it. I'm very glad that the Parti Quebecois got the electoral ass-raping they so richly deserved, and that the vicious corrupt smarmy self-serving cow who led that party (Pauline Marois, the Sarah Palin of Quebec, who often commented proudly on how she can barely speak a word of English, as if her ignorance was a virtuous proof of her "pure wool" Quebec blood) has effectively had her career ruined. But if anyone thinks that this somehow means that Quebec doesn't have a xenophobic, petty, poisoned society of a kind that would not be tolerated anywhere else in our modern western society (certainly not if it was english-speakers doing it), they're sorely mistaken.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Volcano + H&H's Beverwyck
Monday, 7 April 2014
UnCracked Monday
Today, in an internet full of fanatical climate alarmists with an anti-civilization anti-innovation mentality on one side, and know-nothing religiously-motivated reactionary climate-deniers on the other, I've finally managed to find, for the first time in a very long while, an article on climate change and its associated problems (and actual, intelligent consideration of what to do about it) that is actually thoughtful rather than fanatical.
Its also noteworthy in its recognition of the way the problem of the Media Circus (the need to always have attention-grabbing headlines) combined with eco-activists (rather than actual scientists) who are low on expertise but high on fanaticism (like oh so many on Facebook and G+) ends up utterly warping the discussion of a real situation. Let me give you a hint: if you accept that climate change is happening (regardless of what causes it or what have you), and you want us to work out ways that will help make things better, then the guys who go around screaming that the world will catch fire next Tuesday are NOT YOUR FRIENDS. They help turn public opinion against you, they encourage apathy because their utterly partisan demands about what 'must be done' (that have much more to do with insane political agendas than any solid thinking) make people think that there is no reasonable path to making things better and thus its best to just give up.
What the environment desperately needs is one or more intelligent (rather than zealous), optimistic (without being in denial), encouraging (without encouraging complacency), and inclusive (rather than seeking to lay blame and to wish punishment on those who have "defiled mother gaia") promoters of bringing people together to find innovative solutions for (rather than against) our civilization when it comes to confronting the potential dangers of climate change.
And as the article points out, the ultimate solution is not (as so many eco-activists either openly desire, or must be assumed to ultimately desire as the logical conclusion of their proposals) a return to a pre-industrial pre-historic back-to-the-cave primitivism (along with the death of 90% of humanity, and our ultimate inevitable extinction), but rather to move FORWARD to the point where we will be capable of controlling our world's climate and our own evolution as a species.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Moretti Rhodesian + Gawith's Squadron Leader
Sunday, 6 April 2014
Did 'Game of Thrones' Start as a GURPS campaign?
(In honor of today being Game of Thrones day, I'm reposting this relatively recent post, which was surprisingly popular. If you haven't read it before, enjoy!)
Gentlemen, I present you the evidence: first of all, we know for an absolute fact that George R.R. Martin is a gamer, and that his favorite game in the world is GURPS. We know that some of his other novels began as direct inspiration/play-report from one of his campaigns.
Now, I haven't actually seen any direct confirmation from Martin (or a reliable source of some kind) that "A Game of Thrones" started out as a GURPS campaign. One person I discussed the matter with recently decried the notion that GoT might have started as an RPG game as "wishful thinking".
We do know for a fact that Martin was influenced by the War of the Roses. And we know you can make the War of the Roses into an RPG setting: I've done it, with my "Dark Albion" campaign/ free setting. But its true that it might be too much to hope for that one of the most popular franchises of recent years has direct RPG-roots.
Maybe so, but at the same time as an historian I'm trained to study text for historical clues. And I think I've discovered something everyone else has missed.
First, presume that IF Martin had started Game of Thrones as a campaign, it would have been with GURPS. Second, we know that characters created with different systems sometimes have a different look. In GURPS' case, it is heavily affected by its being a point-buy system for people that love radical "character optimization". Random-roll old-school it ain't.
With those two points in mind, something fascinating reveals itself: pretty much with every character in Thrones you can see them as GURPS Fantasy guys complete with having seriously minmaxed on their disadvantages. Consider:
"I want to be the best fucking swordsman in the world.. shit.. better take 'incestuous relationship with sister' and 'murdered the last king'"
"I want to be even better at swordplay than that other guy! Damn.. i better take "excessively tall", "social disadvantage: female", and "flaw: falls in love with idiots""
"I want to be crazy smart and really socially competent... ah well, 'midget' here I come"
"I want my character to be King! Damn.. I'll have to take the 'complete asshole' disadvantage"
"I want to have 'contender for the throne' and be the only player who didn't pay it off with 'complete moron'. Yeah, I know I'll need to pay it off somehow.. how about 'sold his soul to a religious cult'?"
"I'm the badass strong mean knight.. fuck, well, "facial burns" and 'phobia: fire' it is.."
"I want dragons!! You're saying I'll have to take what?? And that's still not enough? I'd also need to.. shit. Oh.. well.. ok!"
"I want to be the most awesome character in this or any other campaign ever. I'll have to take 'little girl'?? But I did that exact same thing already in the 'Kick-Ass Supers' campaign! Well, whatever..."
...And then the guy playing Littlefinger doesn't char-op at all and ends up running circles around everyone else anyways by sheer Roleplay, because he's used to playing Amber instead of GURPS. Which is why the char-opers all despise him.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Ben Wade Canadian + Image Latakia
Saturday, 5 April 2014
RPGPundit Reviews: Stark City
RPGPundit Reviews: Stark City Campaign Setting & City Building Toolset
This is the review of the Stark City Campaign Setting & City Building Toolset, a setting/sourcebook for the ICONS RPG. Stark City is written by Mike Lafferty and a host of other people, and published simultaneously by Fainting Goat Games and Stark City Games, which I suspect are in essence the same entity.
If this matters to you, the game has a stamp on it that says "ICONS Compatible", and it has a foreword by Steve Kenson.
The book itself is about 185 pages long, softcover, full colour cover, full colour interior. It has a great deal of fairly good art in the comic-book style, a less cartoony and more Marvel/DC style than the art in the ICONS game itself, which is a blessing. The art here is actually quite good, though I doubt it will win any Eisner awards; but in some sense this only adds to the sense of not-quite-rightness that I'm going to talk about below.
First of all, I'll explain that this book is pretty much what it advertises: it presents a very detailed and complete city-guide to an (imaginary) city for Superhero campaigns, along the lines of Metropolis, Gotham, Coast City, Central City, etc. In this case, Stark City is a city that has had a very long history of superhero involvement, which is a choice that has both its advantages and disadvantages.
Really, it would have been pretty pointless to make a superhero city that didn't already have superheroes in it; otherwise why not just use a normal city? But on the other hand, having a city full of a pantheon of supers and a long background story of the same creates a steep memory curve for players. It ties into another problem I've already talked about before when it comes to these kinds of products.
I myself never use Supers sourcebooks created for supers RPGs; they all suffer from one important problem: they can't be DC or Marvel superheroes. This means they have to react to this legal limitation in one of two ways. They can, in the first instance, try to create a setting that feels more or less like the DC or Marvel universes (which, in spite of the important differences that I'm sure comic-nerds will be coming along any second now to remind me about in the comments below, are really not that large), having characters that are vaguely familiar: the pseudo-superman, pseudo-captain-america, pseudo-batman, pseudo-wolverine, pseudo-spider-man. Or, in the other instance, they could try to make something radically different, a universe that feels nothing like the DC/Marvel type of supers settings.
Either way, the result is unsatisfying. In the first case, you are left feeling like what you've got is a bunch of cheap copies, sufficiently different that you aren't able to quickly familiarize yourself for play, but similar enough that you're left thinking they're a faded xerox of the real thing. Meanwhile in the second case, your big problem is that you're not actually playing a game that feels sufficiently "Supers" in terms of common tropes. Sometimes you might want the latter, if the idea is cool enough and you don't mind that what you're playing is far from the hallmark of typical super-heroing. You almost never want the xerox-heroes options, though.
In the case of Stark City, what you have is a xerox-heroes scenario. And the setting, the book, the characters, all are clearly both a labour of love and created with attention to detail and a keen focus on playability. There are tons of interesting locations, organizations and characters. Unfortunately, none of them are actually Wolverine or Spider-man; instead we get near-copies like the "Sable Lynx" and "Frogger". What we do get, though, is a complex continuity and set of pre-existing history ("canon", you could say) that no one in your gaming group will actually know. So if you're the GM, you're either going to have to constantly tell them things they'll need to know, and they'll all have to pretend as though "The Sentinel" is a hero they already knew and cared deeply about the way one might care about Captain America, or they're going to have to read through the book themselves to get all the details about an imaginary city they had never heard of, unlike, say, Gotham, that they'd been reading about all their lives.
To me, the cost is just too great. The result, just not enough. The publishers of ICONS books can't set their material in Gotham or Metropolis, or use Batman or Wolverine, but players certainly can, so why would they bother with a knock-off? It seems like a book like Stark City is competing with the greatest RPG Supers-setting ever written: 70 years of Comics History.
This is my way of thinking about it; but I'm willing to concede that maybe there will be someone out there who will prefer to play in Stark City rather than Central City (or just setting his game in Baltimore or wherever he's from, which is another popular option), and use the Sable Lynx instead of Wolverine (or their own tough-guy hero with claws). Alternately, there might always be gamers interested in taking a scalpel to Star City and slicing it up for ideas.
In that sense, there will be plenty of interesting ideas to be found in Stark City. Yes, there's some very imitative material and characters, but there's also some very interesting details. For a start, the city itself and the way its laid out: we're provided with maps, neighbourhood details (even a flier at the end that looks like a real municipal promotional pamphlet), all the stuff you'd find in a tourist guide (entertainment venues, museums, places to eat), and dozens of specific adventure-setting-type locales organized by neighbourhood. You even have an underground area with a paved-over street and sealed-up subway tunnels. Part of what makes the city work in the sense of being credible as a city is that the authors were smart enough not to just try to invent it from nothing: the city is clearly inspired by the layout and style of Chicago. By taking the basic background of a real-world metropolis (pardon the pun) they were able to make it have an air of credibility or authenticity that they'd never have gotten designing it from total scratch.
The various locales in the book are constructed along a set of what the authors call "ICONIC Setting Rules", though they seem more "guidelines" than rules to me. These rules involve thinking up a setting, giving a number of descriptive traits that help explain the setting, providing a theme for that setting (a phrase that summarizes what the place is all about), then having players create places of significance with concepts that create connections between the locations and the overall theme, as well as qualities that could be tagged. These rules suggest that places should have purpose, should be useful in some way to the richness of the setting. Places should have hooks and their own aspects, and ought to have specific people associated with the place. "Settings" can be built along different scales; a neighbourhood, a city, a nation, a world, a universe, or a whole dimension.
Place aspects can be tagged just like any other aspect, and places can have challenges that can be compelled by a GM.
I can see how these guidelines might prove helpful to certain GMs. For my own part, I find them un-necessarily detailed. Of course, by default I'm more of an old-school random-tables type of guy; and the idea of players creating the setting, though not exactly something outside the limits of what can be considered regularity in RPGs, does not sit well with me. In any case, this doesn't add anything to me in terms of utility. But again, other people might need more structure and less improv in their lives; you can't all be the Pundit.
There are even a few ideas so amusing or clever that I had to give the authors credit for thinking of them. For example, the "Teslacracy": a league of Alternate-universe Nikola Teslases (is "Teslases" the plural of "Tesla"?) who are bent on conquering the entire multivese. Likewise, that a cross-dimensional invasion wiped out or caused the disappearance of most of the significant heroes of the city some time back; plus left behind some unusual characters (including "The Monarch", a kind of villainous version of Iron Man who's actually a prince from the other reality). Then there's the ruthless CEO who's actually a werewolf.
Finally, I'll note that one particularly good point in this setting's defense is that it presumes the heroes will be the foremost super-team in Stark City; there won't be a group of NPCs that make their very existence redundant. Just a huge load of backstory for the players to try to process and pretend they care about.
To conclude: this is a book with great production values, clever layout (even some ersatz versions of the old "hostess twinkies" ads in the back of old comics; though this too only reinforces that sense of being asked to care about an imitation), and dedicated attention to detail in the writing. I just can't find any use for it, personally. What I can say is that IF you are running an ICONS (or possibly other supers rpg) game, and IF you are not interested for some reason in using the canonical DC or Marvel universes or any of the various lesser universes from the comics themselves, and IF you nevertheless want something similar and not radically different from those types of universes, and IF you also don't want to try to make such a setting yourself and would rather rely on someone else's attempt at it, then this book could be for you. But that's quite a lot of "ifs" (four "ifs", in fact). Otherwise, you may still want to get this book just to mine for ideas. Within a genre of RPG writing that I think is just one step above "Volo's Guide to the Realms' Best Fishing Spots" in terms of pointlessness, its a particularly good exemplar of quality.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Oversize + H&H's Beverwyck
This is the review of the Stark City Campaign Setting & City Building Toolset, a setting/sourcebook for the ICONS RPG. Stark City is written by Mike Lafferty and a host of other people, and published simultaneously by Fainting Goat Games and Stark City Games, which I suspect are in essence the same entity.
If this matters to you, the game has a stamp on it that says "ICONS Compatible", and it has a foreword by Steve Kenson.
The book itself is about 185 pages long, softcover, full colour cover, full colour interior. It has a great deal of fairly good art in the comic-book style, a less cartoony and more Marvel/DC style than the art in the ICONS game itself, which is a blessing. The art here is actually quite good, though I doubt it will win any Eisner awards; but in some sense this only adds to the sense of not-quite-rightness that I'm going to talk about below.
First of all, I'll explain that this book is pretty much what it advertises: it presents a very detailed and complete city-guide to an (imaginary) city for Superhero campaigns, along the lines of Metropolis, Gotham, Coast City, Central City, etc. In this case, Stark City is a city that has had a very long history of superhero involvement, which is a choice that has both its advantages and disadvantages.
Really, it would have been pretty pointless to make a superhero city that didn't already have superheroes in it; otherwise why not just use a normal city? But on the other hand, having a city full of a pantheon of supers and a long background story of the same creates a steep memory curve for players. It ties into another problem I've already talked about before when it comes to these kinds of products.
I myself never use Supers sourcebooks created for supers RPGs; they all suffer from one important problem: they can't be DC or Marvel superheroes. This means they have to react to this legal limitation in one of two ways. They can, in the first instance, try to create a setting that feels more or less like the DC or Marvel universes (which, in spite of the important differences that I'm sure comic-nerds will be coming along any second now to remind me about in the comments below, are really not that large), having characters that are vaguely familiar: the pseudo-superman, pseudo-captain-america, pseudo-batman, pseudo-wolverine, pseudo-spider-man. Or, in the other instance, they could try to make something radically different, a universe that feels nothing like the DC/Marvel type of supers settings.
Either way, the result is unsatisfying. In the first case, you are left feeling like what you've got is a bunch of cheap copies, sufficiently different that you aren't able to quickly familiarize yourself for play, but similar enough that you're left thinking they're a faded xerox of the real thing. Meanwhile in the second case, your big problem is that you're not actually playing a game that feels sufficiently "Supers" in terms of common tropes. Sometimes you might want the latter, if the idea is cool enough and you don't mind that what you're playing is far from the hallmark of typical super-heroing. You almost never want the xerox-heroes options, though.
In the case of Stark City, what you have is a xerox-heroes scenario. And the setting, the book, the characters, all are clearly both a labour of love and created with attention to detail and a keen focus on playability. There are tons of interesting locations, organizations and characters. Unfortunately, none of them are actually Wolverine or Spider-man; instead we get near-copies like the "Sable Lynx" and "Frogger". What we do get, though, is a complex continuity and set of pre-existing history ("canon", you could say) that no one in your gaming group will actually know. So if you're the GM, you're either going to have to constantly tell them things they'll need to know, and they'll all have to pretend as though "The Sentinel" is a hero they already knew and cared deeply about the way one might care about Captain America, or they're going to have to read through the book themselves to get all the details about an imaginary city they had never heard of, unlike, say, Gotham, that they'd been reading about all their lives.
To me, the cost is just too great. The result, just not enough. The publishers of ICONS books can't set their material in Gotham or Metropolis, or use Batman or Wolverine, but players certainly can, so why would they bother with a knock-off? It seems like a book like Stark City is competing with the greatest RPG Supers-setting ever written: 70 years of Comics History.
This is my way of thinking about it; but I'm willing to concede that maybe there will be someone out there who will prefer to play in Stark City rather than Central City (or just setting his game in Baltimore or wherever he's from, which is another popular option), and use the Sable Lynx instead of Wolverine (or their own tough-guy hero with claws). Alternately, there might always be gamers interested in taking a scalpel to Star City and slicing it up for ideas.
In that sense, there will be plenty of interesting ideas to be found in Stark City. Yes, there's some very imitative material and characters, but there's also some very interesting details. For a start, the city itself and the way its laid out: we're provided with maps, neighbourhood details (even a flier at the end that looks like a real municipal promotional pamphlet), all the stuff you'd find in a tourist guide (entertainment venues, museums, places to eat), and dozens of specific adventure-setting-type locales organized by neighbourhood. You even have an underground area with a paved-over street and sealed-up subway tunnels. Part of what makes the city work in the sense of being credible as a city is that the authors were smart enough not to just try to invent it from nothing: the city is clearly inspired by the layout and style of Chicago. By taking the basic background of a real-world metropolis (pardon the pun) they were able to make it have an air of credibility or authenticity that they'd never have gotten designing it from total scratch.
The various locales in the book are constructed along a set of what the authors call "ICONIC Setting Rules", though they seem more "guidelines" than rules to me. These rules involve thinking up a setting, giving a number of descriptive traits that help explain the setting, providing a theme for that setting (a phrase that summarizes what the place is all about), then having players create places of significance with concepts that create connections between the locations and the overall theme, as well as qualities that could be tagged. These rules suggest that places should have purpose, should be useful in some way to the richness of the setting. Places should have hooks and their own aspects, and ought to have specific people associated with the place. "Settings" can be built along different scales; a neighbourhood, a city, a nation, a world, a universe, or a whole dimension.
Place aspects can be tagged just like any other aspect, and places can have challenges that can be compelled by a GM.
I can see how these guidelines might prove helpful to certain GMs. For my own part, I find them un-necessarily detailed. Of course, by default I'm more of an old-school random-tables type of guy; and the idea of players creating the setting, though not exactly something outside the limits of what can be considered regularity in RPGs, does not sit well with me. In any case, this doesn't add anything to me in terms of utility. But again, other people might need more structure and less improv in their lives; you can't all be the Pundit.
There are even a few ideas so amusing or clever that I had to give the authors credit for thinking of them. For example, the "Teslacracy": a league of Alternate-universe Nikola Teslases (is "Teslases" the plural of "Tesla"?) who are bent on conquering the entire multivese. Likewise, that a cross-dimensional invasion wiped out or caused the disappearance of most of the significant heroes of the city some time back; plus left behind some unusual characters (including "The Monarch", a kind of villainous version of Iron Man who's actually a prince from the other reality). Then there's the ruthless CEO who's actually a werewolf.
Finally, I'll note that one particularly good point in this setting's defense is that it presumes the heroes will be the foremost super-team in Stark City; there won't be a group of NPCs that make their very existence redundant. Just a huge load of backstory for the players to try to process and pretend they care about.
To conclude: this is a book with great production values, clever layout (even some ersatz versions of the old "hostess twinkies" ads in the back of old comics; though this too only reinforces that sense of being asked to care about an imitation), and dedicated attention to detail in the writing. I just can't find any use for it, personally. What I can say is that IF you are running an ICONS (or possibly other supers rpg) game, and IF you are not interested for some reason in using the canonical DC or Marvel universes or any of the various lesser universes from the comics themselves, and IF you nevertheless want something similar and not radically different from those types of universes, and IF you also don't want to try to make such a setting yourself and would rather rely on someone else's attempt at it, then this book could be for you. But that's quite a lot of "ifs" (four "ifs", in fact). Otherwise, you may still want to get this book just to mine for ideas. Within a genre of RPG writing that I think is just one step above "Volo's Guide to the Realms' Best Fishing Spots" in terms of pointlessness, its a particularly good exemplar of quality.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Oversize + H&H's Beverwyck
Friday, 4 April 2014
Arrows of Indra Q&A Update
This is an update of the ongoing Q&A thread for Arrows of Indra on theRPGsite. If YOU have a question for me about AoI, please feel free to write on that thread and I will do my best to answer!
Today we have three questions:
Q: Maybe obvious, but for the sake of exploring the topic, can Yogis use magical mala, staves, robes and bowls? Presumably yes - the book notes that Yogis may change their items for another. The section on magical mala notes the use of mala in general (again) by Yogis (among others). And of course, there are example magical staves and mala in AoI.
A: Yes. A yogi can use any magical mala, staves, robes or bowls, within any other regular limits of their class.
Q:I appreciate the Arrows of Indra is self-contained, pretty easily digestible, and requires "no anthropology, history, theology or linguistics degree".
Might you suggest some follow-up readings for GMs so interested? The introduction of course recommends reading Indian myth outside the book (for those so interested, but not require) … but it's been … let's call it 2 decades … since I personally studied the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita - so I'm a little disconnected from the source myth.
I'd love any recommendations you might have, as the author.
A:Well, its hard for me to give out any specific recommendations, particularly since I don't want to end up sounding too much like saying that added research is essential. There are a number of good (condensed) versions of the Mahabharata, and also the Ramayana out there these days, including in Comic book format if you're very lazy; plus a couple of amusing TV/cinematic versions.
The Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Bhagavata Purana, etc. are available in a number of good modern translations (hint: I would generally stay away from the ISKCON/'Hare Krishna' versions, which I don't think are very good). But these are all mystical texts, of them only the latter contains actual mythology.
I would recommend that you do some google searches for each of those. You can find the Mahabharata for free here. Other important texts for free here.
Q: Another question (or prompt, perhaps). I've read the the Gods and Religion chapter of Arrows of Indra (and groked it, I believe).
I've also read the AoI articles "How to Play a Bharata Kingdoms Indian", "The Importance of Family in Old-School Play", and "Presenting the Familiar", among others. All good stuff.
I think the article on playing a Bharata Kingdoms human is especially insightful re: religion and caste, but in some ways, just scratches at the surface (and no disrespect intended here) - I'm thinking, at the moment, of the likes of old school RuneQuest with their cult descriptions.
While not looking to duplicate those or necessarily have that level of detail (where's my 9 page write-up of the cult of Shiva the Destroyer, darn it!
), I am wondering about additional details for the Bharata religions …
such as additional trappings on Vaishnavite practices vs. Shaivite
practices, etc.
I don't think this is any particular lack in terms of Arrows of Indra completeness, so not a criticism. I'm just looking for any additional insights to bring the players to encourage their specific role-play and provide a little more verisimilitude re: the Kingdoms.
I'm also open to responses of "Yep, make it up - keep a page in your notebook and jot down the times that PC1 says he uses x incense for y rite, that there is a Shiva vengeance spirt, or whatever comes up in play…"
A: Ok, so in the first case, I would point out that most D&D Old-School games don't go into tremendous detail about Clerics' worship. Obviously, Arrows of Indra is not just any old-school RPG when it comes to religion. I plan to post more "AoI articles" talking about the subject.
Yes, of course, you can just make it up! There's nothing to stop GMs from doing that.
You could also do some research, HOWEVER, note that the modern religion of Hinduism and the religion practiced in the time of the Vedas are not really the same thing. Here, in brief, is the history of it: You had this ancient pre-Vedic religion, then the religion of the Rig-Veda (and if you read the Rig-Veda, its very clear just how different that religion is from modern Hinduism, it doesn't even have most of the Gods the average Hindu worships these days, and its utterly devoid of core-concepts in Hinduism, like Karma, Reincarnation, Non-dualism, etc). After that, you had this Brahminist religion, which would have been the religion of the period of the Mahabharata; its a lot more similar to modern Hinduism, but its not the same thing. It had rituals where you slaughtered and ate cows, for example; where you slaughtered horses and had the queen fake sexual congress with the corpse; you start seeing things like karma and reincarnation, but many of the more advanced spiritual concepts are still absent.
So what happened? Well, the next step was Buddhism, which swept over India and almost wiped out the Brahminist religion. Jainism also surged at this time, and had important influence. It was these two movements that refined some of the concepts that had already existed but were in a very basic form in Brahminism: samsara (the (bad) cycle of reincarnation), Moksha (the idea of final liberation from the cycle of reincarnation), non-violence, vegetarianism, etc.
It was only after several hundred years, when the Gupta Dynasty arose, that an upsurge of a new and reformed set of different movements rose up that consolidated as the idea of what in the west we termed Hinduism. It was here that many of the rituals of the Vaishnavite and Shaivite sects came to resemble their modern form; not to mention more mystical or esoteric stuff like Bhakti or Tantra.
So what you really might want to do is look at and read the source texts; the Rig-veda has rituals in it that would be already considered antiquated in most of the Bharata kingdoms by the time of the AoI's base setting. The Ramayana and Mahabharata have descriptions of rituals and religious practices in them that would better reflect what most regions would be into at this time.
In the setting, religion is in transition: Temples and priests are still very important, but the Yogi ascetic movement is gaining ground, and the esoteric schools of various Siddhi philosophers/wizards are rising in popularity; plus the Avatara Krishna is creating a popular Cult of Personality that is bypassing the traditional methods of worship, which are largely based on financially-supported Brahmins performing very complex rituals in temples for you and presenting you with some blessing you are the passive recipient of.
That's it for today, please feel free to send your questions to the Q&A thread, and I'll answer it about once a week!
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Stanwell Compact + Image Latakia
Today we have three questions:
Q: Maybe obvious, but for the sake of exploring the topic, can Yogis use magical mala, staves, robes and bowls? Presumably yes - the book notes that Yogis may change their items for another. The section on magical mala notes the use of mala in general (again) by Yogis (among others). And of course, there are example magical staves and mala in AoI.
A: Yes. A yogi can use any magical mala, staves, robes or bowls, within any other regular limits of their class.
Q:I appreciate the Arrows of Indra is self-contained, pretty easily digestible, and requires "no anthropology, history, theology or linguistics degree".
Might you suggest some follow-up readings for GMs so interested? The introduction of course recommends reading Indian myth outside the book (for those so interested, but not require) … but it's been … let's call it 2 decades … since I personally studied the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita - so I'm a little disconnected from the source myth.
I'd love any recommendations you might have, as the author.
A:Well, its hard for me to give out any specific recommendations, particularly since I don't want to end up sounding too much like saying that added research is essential. There are a number of good (condensed) versions of the Mahabharata, and also the Ramayana out there these days, including in Comic book format if you're very lazy; plus a couple of amusing TV/cinematic versions.
The Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Bhagavata Purana, etc. are available in a number of good modern translations (hint: I would generally stay away from the ISKCON/'Hare Krishna' versions, which I don't think are very good). But these are all mystical texts, of them only the latter contains actual mythology.
I would recommend that you do some google searches for each of those. You can find the Mahabharata for free here. Other important texts for free here.
Q: Another question (or prompt, perhaps). I've read the the Gods and Religion chapter of Arrows of Indra (and groked it, I believe).
I've also read the AoI articles "How to Play a Bharata Kingdoms Indian", "The Importance of Family in Old-School Play", and "Presenting the Familiar", among others. All good stuff.
I think the article on playing a Bharata Kingdoms human is especially insightful re: religion and caste, but in some ways, just scratches at the surface (and no disrespect intended here) - I'm thinking, at the moment, of the likes of old school RuneQuest with their cult descriptions.
While not looking to duplicate those or necessarily have that level of detail (where's my 9 page write-up of the cult of Shiva the Destroyer, darn it!
), I am wondering about additional details for the Bharata religions …
such as additional trappings on Vaishnavite practices vs. Shaivite
practices, etc.I don't think this is any particular lack in terms of Arrows of Indra completeness, so not a criticism. I'm just looking for any additional insights to bring the players to encourage their specific role-play and provide a little more verisimilitude re: the Kingdoms.
I'm also open to responses of "Yep, make it up - keep a page in your notebook and jot down the times that PC1 says he uses x incense for y rite, that there is a Shiva vengeance spirt, or whatever comes up in play…"
A: Ok, so in the first case, I would point out that most D&D Old-School games don't go into tremendous detail about Clerics' worship. Obviously, Arrows of Indra is not just any old-school RPG when it comes to religion. I plan to post more "AoI articles" talking about the subject.
Yes, of course, you can just make it up! There's nothing to stop GMs from doing that.
You could also do some research, HOWEVER, note that the modern religion of Hinduism and the religion practiced in the time of the Vedas are not really the same thing. Here, in brief, is the history of it: You had this ancient pre-Vedic religion, then the religion of the Rig-Veda (and if you read the Rig-Veda, its very clear just how different that religion is from modern Hinduism, it doesn't even have most of the Gods the average Hindu worships these days, and its utterly devoid of core-concepts in Hinduism, like Karma, Reincarnation, Non-dualism, etc). After that, you had this Brahminist religion, which would have been the religion of the period of the Mahabharata; its a lot more similar to modern Hinduism, but its not the same thing. It had rituals where you slaughtered and ate cows, for example; where you slaughtered horses and had the queen fake sexual congress with the corpse; you start seeing things like karma and reincarnation, but many of the more advanced spiritual concepts are still absent.
So what happened? Well, the next step was Buddhism, which swept over India and almost wiped out the Brahminist religion. Jainism also surged at this time, and had important influence. It was these two movements that refined some of the concepts that had already existed but were in a very basic form in Brahminism: samsara (the (bad) cycle of reincarnation), Moksha (the idea of final liberation from the cycle of reincarnation), non-violence, vegetarianism, etc.
It was only after several hundred years, when the Gupta Dynasty arose, that an upsurge of a new and reformed set of different movements rose up that consolidated as the idea of what in the west we termed Hinduism. It was here that many of the rituals of the Vaishnavite and Shaivite sects came to resemble their modern form; not to mention more mystical or esoteric stuff like Bhakti or Tantra.
So what you really might want to do is look at and read the source texts; the Rig-veda has rituals in it that would be already considered antiquated in most of the Bharata kingdoms by the time of the AoI's base setting. The Ramayana and Mahabharata have descriptions of rituals and religious practices in them that would better reflect what most regions would be into at this time.
In the setting, religion is in transition: Temples and priests are still very important, but the Yogi ascetic movement is gaining ground, and the esoteric schools of various Siddhi philosophers/wizards are rising in popularity; plus the Avatara Krishna is creating a popular Cult of Personality that is bypassing the traditional methods of worship, which are largely based on financially-supported Brahmins performing very complex rituals in temples for you and presenting you with some blessing you are the passive recipient of.
That's it for today, please feel free to send your questions to the Q&A thread, and I'll answer it about once a week!
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Stanwell Compact + Image Latakia
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)