This came out around two weeks ago and I did not see a whole lot of discussion on it ... and I suppose that says a lot about why I think it's a good thing. Presumably there was discussion on the current L5R forums and groups but outside of that I saw one article on EN World and one on Bell of Lost Souls and that was about it. Since then - nothing. L5R doesn't seem to have much buzz at all right now but becoming a part of Fantasy Flight will surely change that. The card game will get a lot more attention, there will undoubtedly be a boardgame or six released in the next few years, and the RPG will get a complete redo, I presume.
Big factor, IMO: FFG's big hitters are licensed - Star Wars, Warhammer, Game of Thrones - all are licensed properties and it's hard to plan for the true long term with a heavy dependency on someone else's universes. With a somewhat known brand & setting - in gaming circles at least - completely owned in-house, FFG can really dig in and take it somewhere without fear of a license change a few years down the road.
For me personally I have a very limited relationship with L5R. I never got into the card game - there were so many when it came out in the initial rush after Magic exploded! I was temp[ted and came very close to picking up the miniatures game but that's one I managed to resist. I do own a copy of the RPG but I've never run or played it. There just is not enough interest in fantastic medieval Japan here to ignite a session, let alone sustain a campaign. I have always thought it was interesting though, and I thought the "roll and keep" system was pretty slick. The 3E D&D Oriental Adventures was a nice book, used the same setting and I thought that might be one way to lure my players in - sadly it was not.
So while I have no real personal stake in the game it is nice to see that it is getting a good home with one of the "good" gaming companies.
Mongoose is working on a 2.0 release for their Traveller line. I thought it seemed a little fast but they released the current version in 2008 so 7 years ago ... I suppose that's alright. I have a couple copies of the core book and a handful of the supporting books but I managed to stop my usual collecting impulse (One that comes up a lot with Traveller in particular) for a couple of reasons:
No one here has been interested in playing a Traveller campaign in ten years, despite my best efforts
The line quickly grew to a _lot_ of books and I just did not need another game to try and "maintain full compliance". Around this time my general RPG policy became "get the core book and maybe an adventure and see if I can get anything going"/
I know Mongoose and in addition to their tendency to crank books out at a rapid pace, they have a track record of publishing books that have problems, pushing them out the door regardless of the state they are in. For examples look into the Conan RPG issues, and the Traveller/Babylon 5 supplement as a start.
Other issues aside I thought the core book was solid and looked like a lot of fun. I just never got anywhere with trying to run it. With our group right now, and particularly the Apprentices, if I bring up "Space RPG" then it's pretty much StarWarsStarWarsStarWars! with a slice of StarTrek! in there too. Even for the other members of my group Traveller has always seemed a little ... dull. Without a personal history with the game, it loses out to all of the other options.
The Beta rulebook is up on DTRPG ... for $20. This recent trend of charging for "beta access" is a thing with me and I will not be a part of it - for them, or FFG, or anyone else. I can sort of see why they are doing it. I think the assumption is that someone who has dropped $20 on it will give real feedback and has some investment in the game versus making it a free download and getting input from anyone who took the time to grab it. I don't necessarily agree with it. Part of me says well, yes, gamers are cheap and putting an up-front price on it probably does weed out some of the griefer types. Another part of me says that $20 investment gives everyone a financial stake in it and is going to open up the entitlement floodgates in a big way. I will say that taking the beta $20 off of the price of the final product is a nice way to handle it and I appreciate that part of it quite a bit.
I never thought the core game had huge mechanical issues so I wondered what they were planning to improve. I haven't seen much about it online but I did find this post over at the Bravo Zulu blog. He looks to be a bigger fan of current Traveller than I am and I do not like much of what he has to say about then changes. I get the copy of advantage/disadvantage but it doesn't really feel all that "Traveller" to me. It looks a lot like change for the sake of change with little concern for backwards compatibility and that's never fun.
So I'll probably wait and see on this one. It can't be as bad as 5th edition Traveller - no I don't like that one at all - but I'm not thrilled with the direction this one is taking either, based on this early report. I'll look up some reviews when it is released and then we will see.
Well, it's out. I don't know much about it, but I'm interested. The blurb:
The villainous resistance of New York City was one of the last to hold out against the alien invasion. The evil v’sori responded by placing the island of Manhattan beneath an unbreakable energy field. Trapped within, the city’s toughest and most cunning super villains must battle it out for food, weapons, resource, and dominance. But they are not alone. A strange creature swarms in the sewers and subways. Powerful gangs rise and raid their rivals. The Black Hand controls a vast black market of scavenged goods. And rumors of a way out are–so far–nothing more than street gossip. Only the strong will survive, and only the most calculating will eventually… …BREAK OUT!
DTRPG link is here.
Additional notes specifically mention going to street-level supers and that's probably smart as a concession to challenging the players. Original NE could get tricky as more super type supplements have been added to the game over the years - but that's part of the fun of running a super-powered game right?
Also setting it in a real place (well, sort of) is a nice change too.
Anyway, I don't have it yet but I likely will soon and I'll have more to share then.
Whether online or tabletop, some conversations happen again and again...
Star Wars: The Old Republic is the current Star Wars online RPG. I've gotten back into it recently and I like it, a lot. The big news for Fall 2015 is the coming expansion "Knights of the Fallen Empire" - trailer below:
It's pretty slick and shakes things up quite a bit by having this new threat dispatch both the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic. There are some controversies though:
There's a time jump of maybe 5 years. In a story-heavy game that's a big gap. There's some concern over how exactly that's going to work.
Companions are a big part of the story and Bioware has said that not all of them will be a part of this new story. With 8 class stories with 5 companions each that's a lot of NPCs running around and I can see that it would be difficult to shoehorn all of them in to a single plotline for all classes. Some people are still upset though.
To encourage new players to join in there will be an option to create a brand new Level 60 character. This is the current max level in the game and the new expansion will raise the limit to 65.
It's the last point that I want to address because it links back nicely to tabletop RPGs: Whats's more important, a character's written background, or a character's actual experiences in play?
For SWTOR, max level characters have played through a lengthy story with 3 chapters spread voer hours and hours of missions, travel, combat, cutscenes, and dialog with NPC's. They've made choices regarding who lives and who dies. They've chosen to follow the light side or the dark side. They may have abandoned old friends to their fate/ They may have romanced others, and may even have married a close companion. They journeyed through this in real time and their character has certain qualities because of it.
The insta-60's will be able to read the official class backstory on the webpage, but they won't be making those choices, meeting those other characters, killing various monsters, or romancing those NPC's, They won't have the titles or the gear or the strongholds or the suite of companions that the played-thru characters will have.
In a tabletop game characters developed in play have reasons for the things they do, the reactions they show, the stuff that they carry, and the relationships they have with various NPC's, often earned through either triumph or tragedy. Characters with 3 pages of background and not hard-won experience may look complex but it's not the same. "My character is the king of Greymoor" means one thing when it's a bullet point on your background story compared to when it's a title you earned by taking it from a usurper in single combat while the rest of the party took on the royal wizard and the elite bodyguards.
Now a lot of people think a deep written background is an important part of a game and I don't really have a huge problem with it. I do think in-game experience trumps it, but using it as a starting point is fine.
SWTOR and the expansion has a problem similar to having a new player join a long-running campaign: If my player characters are 9th level, where do I start the new guy? 1st? That's not really practical. 9th? That seems a little unfair to the existing players who had to work to get here. Recently I've gone with a policy of "current campaign level -1" for my Pathfinder game. I don't know that it's the best solution, but it feels reasonably fair and it works for us for now. A new character has to work a little bit to catch up to the veterans but he's not useless, fragile baggage for multiple sessions. For SWTOR I suppose that would mean insta-55's and making them play through the prior expansion before getting to play the latest one. That's probably not a great approach business-wise in the instant gratification age we live in. Not if you want them to spend money, anyway.
So I understand Bioware's decision, and you won't find me ranting that it's some kind of betrayal. It does seem counter-intuitive and somewhat counter-productive to take a game who's big selling point is "experience a Star Wars story" to encourage players to skip the first 60 "chapters" in a 65 chapter tale. I get the economic realities though. It really is a similar problem to the new tabletop player - I can't run a separate game for the new player to begin at level 1, level up through my "content", and then join the party once they hit level 9, mainly because I'm not a server. I'm also not asking my players for money either.
One note - This is not the first online RPG to do this. Everquest, Everquest II, World of Warcraft, and probably some others have done it too. I think WOW even sells instant max-level characters in their shop. So it's become an accepted thing in the industry to do this.
Still though - In a tabletop game you might not have as many options but online you do and given the choice of "you can play through 60 levels of a great game with multiple story lines" or "here, read this 3-page summary of your back story" I know which path I'm choosing.
This topic from the 2015 RPGaDay event at first seemed kind of shallow to me, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that images do carry a lot of weight for me when it comes to RPGs. In fact, I liked it enough that I think it's a subject worth coming back to on a weekly basis at least. First up: Gamma World
Gamma World - 1st Edition
My thinking is that the cover of a role-playing game should demonstrate what the game is about. This cover does that in a very strong way. Plus I'm a sucker for the ruined modern city, so it gets bonus points for that.I'm sure my thing for tech-ruins was driven by everything from the Planet of the Apes movies to Logan's Run to some episodes of Star Trek, so the visuals play a strong role here. Quite a bit of the focus of Gamma World is on scrounging through ruined cities and buildings looking for high tech gear. I know it's not a particularly modern-looking picture, but when this game was new (circa 1978) it looked pretty good and made a strong impression on me when I first saw it.
Now the interior illustrations are not as evocative as the cover but that is a very strong cover in my opinion and it sold me on the game before I cracked open the box. The picture of the Hoops above does seem to have struck a cord with some people and it does capture some of the feel of Gamma World beyond the "ruined cities and lasers" vibe of the cover.
I've talked about the actual game in other posts (here and here) so I won't repeat all of that but we had a lot of fun with it over a long period of time. I spent a lot more time playing 2nd, 3rd, and 4th edition but my interest started with 1st edition and that wonderful cover picture.
I am still shocked by this whenever I think about it. Rifts is coming to Savage Worlds. A setting I've liked for 25 years is being converted to a system I've liked for 114 or so - ever since they first started discussing it in the wind-down of the original Deadlands. I can't think of a system that will make it more playable. SW is is lightning-quick compared to the massive-hit-point-beat-down of the original system. It's something I thought we would never see - an official, licensed, and approved conversion to another game. Palladium has been notably aggressive in preventing even fan conversions of Rifts to other game systems - now they're going to do it themselves. It's a tremendous about-face.
I'm not terribly interested in speculating on the "why" because in the end it doesn't really matter. It really appears to be happening, and there are good people involved all the way around.
I have to say that when the day comes that we can roll a wild die for our Juicers, Crazys, Dog Boys, Dragon Hatchlings, and yes, even the Glitter Boys, I will be picking that book up and trying to put together a session the very next chance I get.
I mean, the whole thing is a group activity. You have to have other people to have a game. Hopefully people you like. They may start off as "game friends" but over time at least a few of them are bound to turn into just "friends". Fighting monsters, looting treasures, and saving the planet can be an amazing shared experience. Share it with people you like.
Oh please - the slow rise of D-list celebrity gaming is probably my least favorite development of the last few years. I don't care when an otherwise famous person mentions that they have played RPG's. There's nothing wrong with that. I just don't care much for the "celebrity gamer" thing. I like Wil Wheaton's Tabletop show, but I don't care about buying an RPG with his name on it just because his name is on it! I don't care about watching a video of an RPG session because of who is in it. I don't care about the latest OSR kerfluffle about who said what about who. None of it matters to me as a guy who runs and plays games.
If the #1 aspect of something RPG-related is who's name is on it then it's a problem.
If people get all excited because somebody famous "came out" as an RPG player, well ...
I'm sure it stems from D&D and the whole 80's nerd/devil cultist thing that blew up back then. I grew up with it and I don't feel some desperate need to force-legitimize the thing by trying to tie it to some famous person.
