My Craving for an Unorthodox Roleplaying Experience

Not much roleplaying during the summer months as you might have noticed. With all the vacation trips and country house visits we simply didn't have time for it. However as autumn draws ever closer the long dark Swedish nights just calls out for some roleplaying!

We have our ongoing WFRP3 campaign of course, but since my friend Anders have stepped up to take the GM position in that (at least for a couple of sessions) I've been looking at other games. I'm really dying to try something different and I think a few one-session or at least short scenarios might be in order. Naturally my first instinct is to go for Diaspora as we have still only managed the cluster creation part of our budding game. However, there are so many other alluring RPGs out there.

3:16 - Carnage Among the Stars - I think this is what we might try next as it is such an easy game to setup and run on the fly. However it is fairly limited in scope and I don't see it developing to a long running campaign for us. When talking a bit about it with a few in my group they seemed intrigued by the Strength/Weakness mechanic as well as the subject matter. Perhaps I will bring it instead of a board game for our next general gaming night.

Mouse Guard - I started reading The Burning Wheel last year and was fascinated by it but also felt that it was a bit too radical for our current gaming group. I did try to incorporate parts of the mechanics in our WFRP gaming (Beliefs and Instincts to be precise) but it never really took off. Now, Mouse Guard uses a streamlined version of the Burning Wheel system that I think would be more accessible to our group. At first I simply thought to use the system in a different setting, perhaps the Olde World again, but the more I read the more interested I became in the actual Mouse Guard setting. I even ordered the first two Mouse Guard volumes by David Petersen to get the full backstory. I think using the pre-generated characters and simply running the sample mission and see how everyone reacts is the way to go. Just like with FATE I think people might be a bit confused by the non-traditional aspects of the system but hopefully it will provide an enhanced experience in the end.

Rogue Trader - Here I backtrack a bit rules-wise but the scope of Rogue Trader is so different that I think it fits in this article anyway. Commanding a kilometres long starship with a crew numbering in the tenths of thousands is certainly a step away from the dishevelled adventurers that has been around since the dawn of roleplaying time. Being able afford anything, go anywhere and decide the fate of entire planets I think will provide a play experience that we simply have never even approached before. Rogue Trader, with its Endeavour mechanic, also seems much more open to less structured, more player-driven adventures than its sister games Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader and this is also one of the main draws for me. Using more of a sandbox approach to gaming where the players create just as much of the adventures as I would. One thing that makes this approach harder though is the fairly clunky rules system that I think might interfere with creating stuff on the fly.

The One Ring - Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild - Quite a mouthfull isn't it?! I just started reading this the other day and it is what made me sit down and write this article. It seems to me (from what I've read so far) that it combines elements from both newer and older games and it brilliantly evokes the setting of Middle-Earth! I thought Decipher's stab at a Lord of the Rings RPG was pretty good (although a right mess in many ways) but the feeling you get from The One Ring is definitely superior. Leading up to its launch I remember reading a lot of critical voices from people who didn't like the time period (five years after the Battle of Five Armies), didn't like what they had heard of the mechanics (too much indie RPG) or didn't like the fact that the creators were some unknown Italians! For me it was the complete opposite though, it seems logical to me to use that period as it's reasonably free of large "canon" events, I like "indie" mechanics and most important of all Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitelli are the creators of the absolutely excellent War of the Ring board game. War of the Ring is not only a great game from a mechanics standpoint it's also impressive how much of the setting it evokes, indeed far more so than FFG's later release Middle-Eart Quest even though that is meant to be more of a thematic adventure experience. Anyway, the simple fact that it was the same authors put my mind to rest - these guys get Middle-Earth. This is another game I'd like to run a session or two just to see how our group would take to it.

Diaspora - I'll just put it here for a sense of completeness. I've talked a lot about Diaspora in the past and it always hovers in the background, waiting to get played. I've also thought about introducing FATE in other games and we've started experimenting with Aspects in our WFRP campaign. It's going well, but I'd like to play some pure FATE just so that people really can get a hang of it. The idea of intertwined character creation is also something I think I'll start using pretty much anywhere from now on. It's simply such a good way to create a dynamic group. Rogue Trader touches upon it slightly with it's Origin Paths, but it's really only a bleak shadow next to the original FATE version. For more about integrating FATE into other roleplaying games have a look at this excellent article by Tourq Stevens over at Stuffer Shack.




Project W - I would like to try something different with this and how it's introduced to the players so won't go into details, but again it's meant for a couple of sessions and I have a feeling that our group would love it as it's a bit of a callback to our gaming roots.


Naturally there are other RPG's that I want to play (Dragon Age being high on the list) but I think these are the more non-traditional games making most noise in my mind at the moment. If you have played any of these and have any hints or advice, or perhaps some other interesting game to recommend (been looking at Fiasco recently) let me know in the comments!

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Find a crew, find a job, keep flying.

In our gaming group we have more or less decided that the new 3rd edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay will be our default roleplaying game and something that we aim to keep alive for a long time. We haven’t actually tried the system yet, but barring some extreme misconceptions from reading about it I think it’ll suit our playstyle quite well.

However, there are many other games I’d like to try. In particular I’d like to have something that could be run as a backup when it turns out that someone can’t make it and also work as a kind of secondary campaign for when we want a change of pace for a while. And since we have the fantasy aspect covered I think this should be a sci-fi game. Specifically a sci-fi game where the characters have their own space ship…

I’ve wanted to run (or play in!) a campaign based around a space ship crew for as long as I can remember, but aside from a short stint a long, long time ago GMing WEG’s old Star Wars game I never have. I’m now determined to change this and am considering different game alternatives and their respective pros and cons. I've narrowed it down to these three:

Rogue Trader

Rogue Trader is the second roleplaying game taking place in the Warhammer 40,000 universe after the original Dark Heresy. In this game you take on the roles of the command crew on a rogue trader vessel, exploring space in the name of the Holy God-Emperor for huge profit!

Pros:

• Well established setting. The 40k universe has been around for a long time and I think most people in our group are fairly familiar with it. Although I’m not sure they’re familiar enough to really take initative within it.

• Awesome scope! In RT you’re not portraying just some rag-tag bands of smugglers in a transport, but a multi-megaton starship with crews ranging in tens of thousands! There’s a whole meta-game built in called Endevours giving the players all kinds of opportunities or adventures as well as allowing them to shape their own fate.

Cons:

• Going clunk in the night. The game system of RT and its older brother Dark Heresy is rather old fashioned. It’s certainly not a bad system per se, but compared to many of the more modern alternatives (see below) it feels a bit clunky and formulaic.
  

• Maybe too awesome. This is not really a con for Rogue Trader as a whole but more because of the kind of campaign I’ve had in mind. Originally I envisioned something smaller and more personal like like Han and Chewie on the Millenium Falcon, Spike and Jet on Cowboy Bebop or the crew on Serenity - and commanding 60,000 souls and row after row of macro cannon batteries might take away from that intimate underdog feeling...

Diaspora

Diaspora is a recently released independently produced hard sci-fi game using the Fate mechanics introduced in Spirit of the Century. I haven’t actually got the book quite yet (it’s being printed by Lulu as we speak) so I can’t go into much detail. But I think an apt description would be character driven hard sci-fi. (Note that the picture is from Atomic Rocket).

Pros:

• Aspects of characters! The Fate system is simply one of the coolest systems I’ve come across. It’s very elegant and really rewards roleplaying as well as getting more personally involved in creating the story from the players perspective. Yet, the makers of Diaspora has still managed to retain the feeling of a hard sci-fi universe (without getting bogged down in crunch I mean).
  

• Shake and bake worlds. There is no default star system in Diaspora but instead this is rolled up as a part of character creation and the whole group collaborate to create an interesting solar system. It’s a very simple process, rolling FUDGE dice to determine a planet's characteristics as well as intra system relations, but also very elegant in how it provides you with a lot of ideas and hooks for future adventuring. Have a look at this or this for examples of generated systems.
  

• Hard as wurtzite boron nitride! Like I said, I haven’t actually read the book yet, but as far as I can tell the authors really have gone to great lengths to try to keep the universe grounded in reality. For example, some one was wondering why ships werent bigger than they are and it turns out the authors have done extensive calculations which told them that the added reaction mass you’d need to lug around to propell larger and larger ships would outstrip the added storage space. Basically it’s a case of diminishing returns where ships over a certain size simply aren’t realistically viable. Anyway, this pro is more of a personal desire to play a physically realistic game.
  

• Pick up and play. Yepp, one of the corner stones of Fate is that it’s designed for speed and idea generation. Just creating your character in and of itself suggests numerous adventuring hooks which makes pick up and play possible even if you’re completely unprepared as a GM. This is definitely an attractive prospect as what I’m looking for would partly be a backup for when we’re too few or I’m unprepared or whatever else could happen.

Cons:

• Aspects of characters! It’s a great system, but it’s also very different from anything my group has played before. Roleplaying games in Sweden (and Europe in general I believe) has traditionally had quite a heavy simulationist slant with a preference for the Basic Roleplaying (ie percentile) system. So it might feel unfamiliar to change to a system like Fate where things are much more fluid and almost anything can be done via Aspects. Now, the members of my group aren’t stupid (except for that one guy. You know who you are!) but it might be a jarring experience when starting up at least.
  

• Shake and bake worlds. I’m personally looking forward to rolling up my very own star system and figure out its different quirks and secrets. But I can also see how, for some people, not having an established setting might make it more difficult to get into, at least in the beginning. This very much is connected to the system and way of play though. If the players get used to the new system and starts taking initative in storytelling as well as roleplaying I don’t think it’d be a problem.

Serenity

The game based on Joss Whedons Firefly/Serenity-verse. The default mode of play is as a crew of a small vessel like a Firefly who try to eke out a living in the black. After waiting a long time after the initial release of the core book for more material, it now seems like the wheels are rolling steadily. Not to mention the enormous amount of fan material available!

Pros

• Here’s how it is. The setting is well known and if someone is not familiar with it all you have to do is lend her or him your Firefly DVDs and you’re good to go. Being familiar with things I think will help the players take the initiative and feel more in “control” of their surroundings.
  

• Just right. The Cortex system used (and originally created) for Serenity is maybe not as big a departure from traditional systems as Fate, but it is miles ahead of Rogue Trader. I think it might be a perfect middle of the road alternative that could also lead up to an introduction to Fate as both systems share some similare concepts, like being very much character driven and using plot/fate points.
  

• Lots of consumables. In my group I’m usually the guy with the books and the idea that is common among many other groups for everyone to own a copy of the most critical books just didn’t take root with us. The problem with this is that whenever I try to introduce a gameworld that is unfamiliar to my players I have to explain everything about it and kind of “hold their hands” until they get more familiar with it. However, with the amount of commercial support available for Firefly in a non-gaming capacity I don’t think I’d ever have to do that, which is nice.

Cons:

• Hmm… I actually have a hard time coming up with something here.

There are of course other games I’ve been considering as well, from GURPS Transhuman Space to its darker cousin Eclipse Phase* to DP9’s Jovian Chronicles to the old classic Traveller. But in the end I think the three alternatives I’ve narrowed down best represents what I’m looking for: a crew and their ship. As an aside, I have an idea for a more militarily themed campaign in the vein of a Peter F Hamilton book for either Transhuman Space or Eclipse Phase and think that it might be more fun to actually play through the Odyssey in Jovian Chronicles.

I’m personally very keen to sink my teeth into Diaspora, especially as Fate was originally constructed with pick-up-and-play capability in mind, but maybe Serenity would be better as a first step. If we go the Serenity route there’s definitely some things from Fate that I will transplant over into the Cortex system (like compelling Complications etc).

So I suppose in the end I’m leaning towards Serenity, although naturally it’s not my decision alone but our gaming group as a whole. If you have played any of these games and have ideas, suggestions or comments feel free to fire away. Maybe I missed something, or missunderstood or maybe I’m simply plain wrong.


 * Catalyst Game Labs who made Eclipse Phase has been rather progressive and made the book available as a free PDF from various torrent sites (like here and here). It's perfectly legal and I really recommend it! Then if you like it why not get yourself a hard copy. I know I will.

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