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Jun. 6th, 2009 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_fantastic_ms_foxTwo Review of games by Ron Edwards, focusing on mechanics.
"Sorceror:"
Sorceror is the poster child for indie tabletop RPGs. It's written by a guy called Ron Edwards. In sorceror, you play people who summon "demons." These can be aliens, Outer Things, ghosts, or whatever the gaming group agrees that they are. Dealing with them changes you. It's implied that it's not for the better.
There's lots out there written on it. There are many gushing reviews. Story-wise this is often well-deserved.
My only objection to the setting is the implicit association running through this game:
- "alien" equals "different" equals "change" equals bad"
- "human" equals "status quo" equals "good"
But you can challenge it. I found that disputing this core assumption improved my experience of the game. My character, did. Her nonchalance disturbed the other characters and led us to question the above associations.What's so bad about spontaneous mutations caused by an alien symbiote?
Yes, I'm losing the ability to eat anything but raw meat, and, yes, I get headaches around electrical transformers, and any sort of medical report would out me as only semi-terrestrial, but why is that *wrong?*
She could feel electromagnetic fields, never got cold and didn't have to worry about workplace accidents or getting bashed (being largely invulnerable to physical harm). Plus she had a new life-partner in the form of a bloodborne colony of collectively-aware anarobic archaea, and this acted as a spur for her to fix other social-emotional problems in her life.
The mechanics:
One of the reasons most reviews of Sorceror are so favorable is that they gloss over the game's mechanics. Ron Edwards tried to write a game with simple rules, but tried to be clever rather than careful. And in binding a game to rules of probability while apparantly having no knowledge of how probability functions, he accidentally wrote a die-based clusterfuck.
In other words: the rules are simple. They're also really bad.
To resolve challenges, a character rolls a pool of dice against another party who also rolls a pool of dice. This second party can be be a character, or the GM reperesenting abstract difficulty. You then compare dice pools and see how many from pool A beat the highest die of pool B. If the highest are tied, I believe that you see how many dice tie for highest.
The system is clever in that it allows a game group to set the die value before play starts. In theory, the higher the die, the more chaotic and unpredictable the results. Unfortunately, the way he recomendeds dice don't actually work. He recommends anythig up to a 20-sided die, and kind of discourages smaller dice (like 6-sided dice) save for use in a super gritty game. But this system should not be played with anything larger than a d6, preferably a d4 (which he considers to be an extreme choice).
Why? With anything larger than a d6, this system provides a marked advantage based on skill and ability only when the opposition is as low as it can be. If there is a contest of 2 dice (representing average ability) versus 1 die (trivial difficulty) has a fairly clear likleyhood of favouring the 2-die pool. If it's 5 dice versus 10 dice, then you can't really predict who will win. And if one character roles the highest number on a die, unless the dice are really small, the other party is probably out of luck no matter how great the difference in skill (as you have to match the top die once to tie, then have more dice of the same number to have them count as successes).
Another problem is more glaring: the critical success rules make it harder to do outstanding things if you're really good at something - you have to roll all successes to have a critical success, and being good or bad at something is represented by having more or fewer dice to roll with, respectively. Thus, the better you are, the more dice you have, the harder it is to roll a total success.
In Sorceror, characters have a finite amount of humanity. If you lose all of it, you cease to be a player-character. Problem is that you can lose all of it trying to execute a minor magical action. The non-player characters can function just fine without humanity. In fact, it makes them better sorcerors with no upper limit on the number of (obedient) supernatural minions they can have at one time. By trying to create an inverse relationship between humanity and magic, he pegged to your highest non-magical stat. But this means the more balanced your non-magical stats are, the lower your humanity. Which is silly - he could have pegged humanity to the inverse of your magic ability.
Having a high humanity makes your awesome at banishing demons, crap at summoning them, and most importantly, keeps you playable, and allows you to improve your skills. The problem is that having a high humanity often makes you unable to summon anything beyond a hampster's ghost.
To regain your humanity, you have to banish something - usualy involving a mighty contest of wills against an Outer Thing, thus returning our universe to a state of balance. Unfortunately, Edwards designed it so that the smaller the creature you banish, and the higher your humanity, the more likely you are to regain lost humanity. This means that if a seriously compromised person dispels an arch-demon, it will probably have no redeeming quality - you would be better advised to go around exorcising the ghosts of hampsters. But it probably won't do anything. If a moral saint does the same thing, they probably will benefit. So: major redemptive acts are less punchy than trivial ones. And people who have a high humanity may never lose it, but since humanity interferes with sorcery, this means that they can't cast sorcery - something of a problem in a game called "Sorceror."
Edwards is trying to create moral dilemmas, and sees the Humanity stat as central to this. A character is supposed to worry about summoning; feverishly debating whether to take the risk. But characters with high humanity can't summon anything sizable enough to bend them. And characters with low humanity might be powerful sorcerors, but wouldn't use this ability because it's almost certain to put them over the deep end. And they can't exactly regain their humanity either for reasons outlined above. They could go around banishing demons, but having a low humanity makes you poor at banishing.
Add on to this that some of the demon's "powers" provide bonuses that don't actually do anything ("it helps me recover from illness and injury... but not as well as I can without it"), and you have a game that's needs a heavy edit.
Some of the sequel material tries to patch this up, by turning what is umanity into a philosophical discussion, but it never grapples with the problem: the system makes no sense, and is an obstacle to playing the game.
"Trollbabe:"
The setting:
The protagonists are special. They are the only characters whose abilties are written down or measured. They are special in part because in an iron age world populated by humans and trolls, they are the only people who occupy a middle ground betwen the two. They could be the offspring of human and troll, or some sort of magical creation, or whatever you like.
Each is a giant amazon, generally good-looking, with rock star hair and horns growing out of her head. They're called "Trollbabes."
Why? Why? Nothing in the system actually requires people to play horned rockstar amazons. I don't know what Ron Edwards was thinking but I guess that... er.... I think....
Okay. I have no idea. Maybe he dosn't like selling books.
But I've heard of people applying this system to other settings with no problems.
The system:
This game has fewer mechanics than Sorceror, which is good because it gives Edwards less room to fuck them up. You pick a number from 2 to 9. To succeed at magic and intellectual problems, you have to roll over it with a ten-sided die. To succeed at combat and physical problems, you roll under it. To succeed at social problems, you use whichever of the above two options is best.
Sometimes a roll is especailly difficult. Then you add a penalty if you're trying to roll low, or subtract one if you're trying to roll high.
If you fail, you roll again, accepting that the consquences will be worse if you fail twice, and catastrophic if you fail thrice. If you have a really good chance on your first attempt stat, you'll probably succeed on subsequent attempts. If you don't, you're probably screwed.
Sometimes you want to do something that is both magical and physical, or maybe it's social, magical and physical. Then you roll multiple tests at once.
This is an improvement over Sorceror, but again, Ron Edwards is trying to be simple by being clever rather than careful. The social ability has clearly been added as an afterthought. If you're good at either intellectual things or physical things, then you're good at social things. But if you're not good at eathir intellectual or physical things, then you're not.
You don't need to pick "a number." You could just give people a fixed number of points to distribute between physical, mental and social and allocate them as you see fit. Then you wouldn't need to remember whether you add a penalty or subtract one. And being a mediocre mage and swordsbabe wouldn't also dictate that you're socially awkward.
"Sorceror:"
Sorceror is the poster child for indie tabletop RPGs. It's written by a guy called Ron Edwards. In sorceror, you play people who summon "demons." These can be aliens, Outer Things, ghosts, or whatever the gaming group agrees that they are. Dealing with them changes you. It's implied that it's not for the better.
There's lots out there written on it. There are many gushing reviews. Story-wise this is often well-deserved.
My only objection to the setting is the implicit association running through this game:
- "alien" equals "different" equals "change" equals bad"
- "human" equals "status quo" equals "good"
But you can challenge it. I found that disputing this core assumption improved my experience of the game. My character, did. Her nonchalance disturbed the other characters and led us to question the above associations.What's so bad about spontaneous mutations caused by an alien symbiote?
Yes, I'm losing the ability to eat anything but raw meat, and, yes, I get headaches around electrical transformers, and any sort of medical report would out me as only semi-terrestrial, but why is that *wrong?*
She could feel electromagnetic fields, never got cold and didn't have to worry about workplace accidents or getting bashed (being largely invulnerable to physical harm). Plus she had a new life-partner in the form of a bloodborne colony of collectively-aware anarobic archaea, and this acted as a spur for her to fix other social-emotional problems in her life.
The mechanics:
One of the reasons most reviews of Sorceror are so favorable is that they gloss over the game's mechanics. Ron Edwards tried to write a game with simple rules, but tried to be clever rather than careful. And in binding a game to rules of probability while apparantly having no knowledge of how probability functions, he accidentally wrote a die-based clusterfuck.
In other words: the rules are simple. They're also really bad.
To resolve challenges, a character rolls a pool of dice against another party who also rolls a pool of dice. This second party can be be a character, or the GM reperesenting abstract difficulty. You then compare dice pools and see how many from pool A beat the highest die of pool B. If the highest are tied, I believe that you see how many dice tie for highest.
The system is clever in that it allows a game group to set the die value before play starts. In theory, the higher the die, the more chaotic and unpredictable the results. Unfortunately, the way he recomendeds dice don't actually work. He recommends anythig up to a 20-sided die, and kind of discourages smaller dice (like 6-sided dice) save for use in a super gritty game. But this system should not be played with anything larger than a d6, preferably a d4 (which he considers to be an extreme choice).
Why? With anything larger than a d6, this system provides a marked advantage based on skill and ability only when the opposition is as low as it can be. If there is a contest of 2 dice (representing average ability) versus 1 die (trivial difficulty) has a fairly clear likleyhood of favouring the 2-die pool. If it's 5 dice versus 10 dice, then you can't really predict who will win. And if one character roles the highest number on a die, unless the dice are really small, the other party is probably out of luck no matter how great the difference in skill (as you have to match the top die once to tie, then have more dice of the same number to have them count as successes).
Another problem is more glaring: the critical success rules make it harder to do outstanding things if you're really good at something - you have to roll all successes to have a critical success, and being good or bad at something is represented by having more or fewer dice to roll with, respectively. Thus, the better you are, the more dice you have, the harder it is to roll a total success.
In Sorceror, characters have a finite amount of humanity. If you lose all of it, you cease to be a player-character. Problem is that you can lose all of it trying to execute a minor magical action. The non-player characters can function just fine without humanity. In fact, it makes them better sorcerors with no upper limit on the number of (obedient) supernatural minions they can have at one time. By trying to create an inverse relationship between humanity and magic, he pegged to your highest non-magical stat. But this means the more balanced your non-magical stats are, the lower your humanity. Which is silly - he could have pegged humanity to the inverse of your magic ability.
Having a high humanity makes your awesome at banishing demons, crap at summoning them, and most importantly, keeps you playable, and allows you to improve your skills. The problem is that having a high humanity often makes you unable to summon anything beyond a hampster's ghost.
To regain your humanity, you have to banish something - usualy involving a mighty contest of wills against an Outer Thing, thus returning our universe to a state of balance. Unfortunately, Edwards designed it so that the smaller the creature you banish, and the higher your humanity, the more likely you are to regain lost humanity. This means that if a seriously compromised person dispels an arch-demon, it will probably have no redeeming quality - you would be better advised to go around exorcising the ghosts of hampsters. But it probably won't do anything. If a moral saint does the same thing, they probably will benefit. So: major redemptive acts are less punchy than trivial ones. And people who have a high humanity may never lose it, but since humanity interferes with sorcery, this means that they can't cast sorcery - something of a problem in a game called "Sorceror."
Edwards is trying to create moral dilemmas, and sees the Humanity stat as central to this. A character is supposed to worry about summoning; feverishly debating whether to take the risk. But characters with high humanity can't summon anything sizable enough to bend them. And characters with low humanity might be powerful sorcerors, but wouldn't use this ability because it's almost certain to put them over the deep end. And they can't exactly regain their humanity either for reasons outlined above. They could go around banishing demons, but having a low humanity makes you poor at banishing.
Add on to this that some of the demon's "powers" provide bonuses that don't actually do anything ("it helps me recover from illness and injury... but not as well as I can without it"), and you have a game that's needs a heavy edit.
Some of the sequel material tries to patch this up, by turning what is umanity into a philosophical discussion, but it never grapples with the problem: the system makes no sense, and is an obstacle to playing the game.
"Trollbabe:"
The setting:
The protagonists are special. They are the only characters whose abilties are written down or measured. They are special in part because in an iron age world populated by humans and trolls, they are the only people who occupy a middle ground betwen the two. They could be the offspring of human and troll, or some sort of magical creation, or whatever you like.
Each is a giant amazon, generally good-looking, with rock star hair and horns growing out of her head. They're called "Trollbabes."
Why? Why? Nothing in the system actually requires people to play horned rockstar amazons. I don't know what Ron Edwards was thinking but I guess that... er.... I think....
Okay. I have no idea. Maybe he dosn't like selling books.
But I've heard of people applying this system to other settings with no problems.
The system:
This game has fewer mechanics than Sorceror, which is good because it gives Edwards less room to fuck them up. You pick a number from 2 to 9. To succeed at magic and intellectual problems, you have to roll over it with a ten-sided die. To succeed at combat and physical problems, you roll under it. To succeed at social problems, you use whichever of the above two options is best.
Sometimes a roll is especailly difficult. Then you add a penalty if you're trying to roll low, or subtract one if you're trying to roll high.
If you fail, you roll again, accepting that the consquences will be worse if you fail twice, and catastrophic if you fail thrice. If you have a really good chance on your first attempt stat, you'll probably succeed on subsequent attempts. If you don't, you're probably screwed.
Sometimes you want to do something that is both magical and physical, or maybe it's social, magical and physical. Then you roll multiple tests at once.
This is an improvement over Sorceror, but again, Ron Edwards is trying to be simple by being clever rather than careful. The social ability has clearly been added as an afterthought. If you're good at either intellectual things or physical things, then you're good at social things. But if you're not good at eathir intellectual or physical things, then you're not.
You don't need to pick "a number." You could just give people a fixed number of points to distribute between physical, mental and social and allocate them as you see fit. Then you wouldn't need to remember whether you add a penalty or subtract one. And being a mediocre mage and swordsbabe wouldn't also dictate that you're socially awkward.