Rpgs

Last time, I looked at Emotional Types and Stats, and gave myself quite a bit of things to think about. Today, I’d like to go back to the two “stats” I had come up with earlier: Bond and Tier. Tier is akin to level in Pokémon, while Bond is closer to Friendship.

Okay, but what does that mean?

Emotions are tumultuous things. Narratively, our culture is rife of stories about how people lose control of themselves, their emotions getting the better of them, and similar turns of phrase.

If Manifestations are embodied emotions, then the idea of a spectrum between “controlled” and “powerful” makes sense. Bond is a representation of how attuned you are to the emotion, how in-control of the Manifestation you are. Tier is representational of its core “power,” its strength and maximum power output.

Does this mean it makes more sense to have Bond and Tier as a spectrum stat, or as two separate numbers? Or, Bond could be a spectrum while Tier is a static number?

Last time, I broke down a few of the requirements that a Manifestation could have in game. I also decided on four “Types” of emotional Manifestations.

So, going off of the basic four Emotions of Fear, Anger, Delight, and Grief…how do they interact?

Working with the assumption that an Anger Manifestation is fundamentally different than a Grief Manifestation, how deep do those differences go? They could be as simple as limiting some of the available actions/abilities a Manifestation has, or as complex as having completely different rules for rolling dice and taking actions.

Last time, I came up with a setting for this RPG, and took a quick look at what Manifestations might look like. Now, I’d like to take a closer look at some options for these Manifestations. What do they need, mechanically?

In gen 1, Pokémon had four stats, HP, a Level, a Type, four moves, and a name. More was added in later gens, but gen 1 started the whole fad, so it can’t be the worst place to start. we also need to keep things simple if there are going to be up to six fighting at once, so we don’t get out over our skies.

That said…

Last time, I figured out a narrative lynchpin for my game: Monsters wander the earth, manifestations of powerful emotions. This time, I’d like to solidify the setting a bit more.

I’d also like to bite something in the bud right now: “My Game” is a dumb name for an RPG, so I have decided to give the game the working title of Manifest. The name centers on the fact that the core of this game is these Manifestations of emotion. The rest of the game could be anything, use any mechanics, be OSR, Narrative, be Powered by the Apocalypse or use d20 Modern, but the Manifestations are the unique aspect of the system that requires a concrete and cohesive system.

Okay, so I’ve decided to make an RPG.

Now what?

First steps are always the hardest, because you have a blank sheet of paper with nothing on it. When you try to think of anything, nothing is always the first thing you think of.

Pearls need sand, trees need seeds, every journey starts with a single step.

Well, I’ve done it. I’ve decided to put my theory to the practice.

Woe to all who step down this dark path.

There’s a longstanding cliche about the separation betweeen theory and practice. Some people think about things, other people do things. “Those who can’t do, teach.” The bigotry and condescention between the two groups is just as longstanding; get a chemist or mathemetician talking about the differences between the “theoretical” and “applied” branches of their field, and watch the sparks fly.

Okay, let me first take a step back and say this unequivocally: I don’t think Errant Challenger is a bad game. This is a rhetorical device, yeah? Just go with it for a second.

Errant Challenger, by Fauix, is still in its Beta at time of writing. It’s a fairly straightforward system, easily graspable by most anyone familiar with RPGs.

It’s a bad RPG.

I mean, look at it! It’s not so much a rule-book as it is a word document exported to PDF. The cover is poorly structured AI mush. There’s no real setting, just a chunk of fantasy pablum. The system itself doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done twenty time over in different systems.

Against the Apocalypse, designed by Oleander Garden, is a game about war, last stands, isolation, and death. It is a game where the players are soldiers in a war against the Demiurge, who sends their hollowmen every Sunday in an attempt to kill the players. They have little in the way of supplies or hope, and the game will end the way all wars must, in death.

The game is, in a single (compound) word, Anti-narrative.

Divided into two parts — the fighting and the downtime — the game encourages the players to unfold their character’s lives in the manner things would happen, not should or could. The book asks players to be honest with both themselves and their imagined world: the goal is not to tell a story, but to simulate life.

Errant, published by Kill Jester, is a, quote: “rules light, procedure heavy, classic fantasy role-playing game in the vein of the first few editions of that role-playing game and its many imitators and descendants.”

Another one?

Not to complain, but the RPG medium is rife with OSR D&D-likes. Rife, I say. What is there to be gained with breaking down yet another one, when we could be talking about interesting games like Rosewood Abbey, LORDSWORN, Pine Shallows, Lumen Ryder Core, Edelweiss, The Long Shift, or All the While?

What is to be gained, I think, is purely an excuse to talk about that first line in the description: Rules-light, Procedure-heavy.

Iron Halberd, by Level2janitor, is a medium weight OSR Fantasy RPG. Recognizing the variety of definitions in the world, the game clarifies OSR to mean that the game is deadly, the story is player-driven, resource management is important, and the system itself is compatible with most other OSR resources.

Anyone familiar with OSR systems will be quickly familiar with most of Iron Halberd’s offerings. Stats are randomly generated, the world is deadly, and the focus of the story is on the player’s actions, rather than the GM’s Mary-Sue villains. Inspired by Dungeon Crawl Classics, Knave, and 13th Age; the system has rules for warbands, strongholds, crafting, hirelings, and long-travel.

But what does “medium weight” mean?