A Couple of (Longwinded) Thoughts
Apropos of nothing and in no particular order...
= = = = =
Of all the kerfuffles in the hobby right now, there are two that make less than no sense to me. There's the rather curious bulldada about inclusion (read: having people of color in illustrations and women wearing something that isn't bikini battle armor) that leaves me scratching my noggin, touched on in earlier posts now and again. Of late, this has been joined by some odd feud between OSR and 'story' gaming, which is really odd...and over which I have ceased following certain people simply because the rhetoric employed got a bit too excessive.
Let me sum up. I am very fond of OSR. It's part nostalgia, since if you tell me that a game has 6 stats generated by rolling 3d6 for each, uses a d20 to hit, and has Armor Class involved, I have a fair idea of how this is gonna play out. There's something comforting in knowing that I can enjoy this without having to dedicate what free time I have to learning Yet Another Darn Game System. If you will, OSR is the five card draw poker of role-playing. This is my main reason for supporting Kevin Crawford's line of excellent games, by the by, as well as Basic Fantasy. I'm greatly looking forward to Stars Without Number 2nd Edition, which I hope will take some of the further refinements he's developed over the course of Other Dust, Spears of the Dawn, and Silent Legions and apply it to SWN. I'm really rusty with the whole dungeon-crawl thing, but it's a bit like riding a bicycle.
But. OSR is rooted in fantasy miniature wargaming. It is, at core, a combat system with other stuff bolted on. That is perfectly okay--it is what it says on the box, and it does not pretend to be anything else. It isn't good for everything. It doesn't fit all tastes, nor should it. If you want a good slog through a minion-filled dungeon where death is your constant companion and you can look back after hacking the boss monster to kibble with a sense of achievement, it's pretty much perfect.
So on the other side of things, we have 'story' games which are a whole 'nother ball of wax. I'm not even going to summarize the diversity available here, but these tend to favor shared creative input, a less complicated set of rules (when one is not trying to model reality to the nth decimal place, one can get away without heavy crunch), and usually a setting that is more evocative than comprehensive. Your distance may vary. And I tend to like these very much because they cater to my general preferences. I am, at core, someone who got into the hobby for the storytelling, not the body count.
But. These games are also pretty 'squishy' and fluid, and someone used to the overarching legalism that is D&D 3.x or (shudder) RoleMaster or GURPS may be forgiven their confusion and difficulty in adjusting from a well-defined, clearly outlined world to a sandbox with less clearly marked parameters. One of my favorite RPGs of all time is Over the Edge, and I lost count of people who got hung up on char-gen because being given so much creative freedom induced mental paralysis. I have good friends who recoil at the level of abstraction used in, say, any PbtA game because they LIKE tracking every last coin and bullet.
Thus and so, we have this...argument? Mutual temper tantrum? Debate? Something's going around, and the people involved all seem to be really mad about it, and in all candor I am at my closest on the fringes. What I hear reminds me of the Star Trek/Star Wars thing...rather like listening to a couple of die hard sports fans arguing over whether baseball or football is the 'true' American sport. Or whether Coke or Pepsi is the one true cola. Or whether Advanced Squad Leader or World in Flames is the one true WWII board wargame system.
I get that this is very, very important to some people. I get that there have been harsh words thrown hither and yon. I understand that feelings have been hurt, lines in the sand have been crossed, and much agonizing has been passed around the table a few times. I don't really feel like I have a dog in this fight except insofar as people I know and respect have caught some of the shrapnel.
= = = = =
So I'm watching a couple of youtube video walkthroughs of newer Assassin's Creed games (because I don't have anything newer than ACIII), and it suddenly strikes me that there's something odd going on. Now, don't get me wrong. I really like AC. The music is just plain eight kinds of awesome (my favorite OST hands down, is AC Unity followed shortly by ACIV, ACIII, and the delightful rearrangement for AC Chronicles China). Start to finish, this is just plain cool stuff. Yes, it kind of falls down in places, and every so often the promise doesn't quite deliver to spec, but that's okay. Perfect being the enemy of good and all that, failure to properly exploit certain potential happens, yadda yadda yadda.
So. AC Syndicate and the equal opportunity asskicking that is Evie Frye. Much fun. So neat. Woman parkour and lethal application of a gentleman's walking stick for the win. (cough) Anyway, leaving aside the surprisingly high percentage of female NPCs wandering around Victorian London in trousers...
I may be remembering this incorrectly, but in earlier variations it was a good idea not to just haul off and sputch someone in broad daylight because bystanders would respond with shock and alarm. Panic. Screaming. A hue and cry for the watch or equivalent. That, at any rate, is what's in my noggin. This is a game that's supposed to be stealthy, isn't it?
And then Jacob drops down on a heavy right in front of a couple of factory workers, kills the baddie, leaves him bleeding out...right in front of a couple of factory workers. And just walks off. No attempt at all to hide. Said workers, who have just seen a mystery man drop out of the sky and ruthlessly murder one of the factory's security personnel? Do nothing. Just another day on the job, man. Dead guard? Groovy, baby. Blood? What blood? Never liked that bloke anyway.
I gotta be misremembering. I just gotta be.
I can understand why innocent bystanders might have been converted to a less responsive mobile terrain type (don't wanna know how complicated it'd be to actually program all that and the processors only have so many cycles to go 'round) but it does sort of break immersion a little bit.
= = = = =
Okay, now I'm off to convert Aledys to 7th Sea 2nd Edition. Huzzah.
= = = = =
Of all the kerfuffles in the hobby right now, there are two that make less than no sense to me. There's the rather curious bulldada about inclusion (read: having people of color in illustrations and women wearing something that isn't bikini battle armor) that leaves me scratching my noggin, touched on in earlier posts now and again. Of late, this has been joined by some odd feud between OSR and 'story' gaming, which is really odd...and over which I have ceased following certain people simply because the rhetoric employed got a bit too excessive.
Let me sum up. I am very fond of OSR. It's part nostalgia, since if you tell me that a game has 6 stats generated by rolling 3d6 for each, uses a d20 to hit, and has Armor Class involved, I have a fair idea of how this is gonna play out. There's something comforting in knowing that I can enjoy this without having to dedicate what free time I have to learning Yet Another Darn Game System. If you will, OSR is the five card draw poker of role-playing. This is my main reason for supporting Kevin Crawford's line of excellent games, by the by, as well as Basic Fantasy. I'm greatly looking forward to Stars Without Number 2nd Edition, which I hope will take some of the further refinements he's developed over the course of Other Dust, Spears of the Dawn, and Silent Legions and apply it to SWN. I'm really rusty with the whole dungeon-crawl thing, but it's a bit like riding a bicycle.
But. OSR is rooted in fantasy miniature wargaming. It is, at core, a combat system with other stuff bolted on. That is perfectly okay--it is what it says on the box, and it does not pretend to be anything else. It isn't good for everything. It doesn't fit all tastes, nor should it. If you want a good slog through a minion-filled dungeon where death is your constant companion and you can look back after hacking the boss monster to kibble with a sense of achievement, it's pretty much perfect.
So on the other side of things, we have 'story' games which are a whole 'nother ball of wax. I'm not even going to summarize the diversity available here, but these tend to favor shared creative input, a less complicated set of rules (when one is not trying to model reality to the nth decimal place, one can get away without heavy crunch), and usually a setting that is more evocative than comprehensive. Your distance may vary. And I tend to like these very much because they cater to my general preferences. I am, at core, someone who got into the hobby for the storytelling, not the body count.
But. These games are also pretty 'squishy' and fluid, and someone used to the overarching legalism that is D&D 3.x or (shudder) RoleMaster or GURPS may be forgiven their confusion and difficulty in adjusting from a well-defined, clearly outlined world to a sandbox with less clearly marked parameters. One of my favorite RPGs of all time is Over the Edge, and I lost count of people who got hung up on char-gen because being given so much creative freedom induced mental paralysis. I have good friends who recoil at the level of abstraction used in, say, any PbtA game because they LIKE tracking every last coin and bullet.
Thus and so, we have this...argument? Mutual temper tantrum? Debate? Something's going around, and the people involved all seem to be really mad about it, and in all candor I am at my closest on the fringes. What I hear reminds me of the Star Trek/Star Wars thing...rather like listening to a couple of die hard sports fans arguing over whether baseball or football is the 'true' American sport. Or whether Coke or Pepsi is the one true cola. Or whether Advanced Squad Leader or World in Flames is the one true WWII board wargame system.
I get that this is very, very important to some people. I get that there have been harsh words thrown hither and yon. I understand that feelings have been hurt, lines in the sand have been crossed, and much agonizing has been passed around the table a few times. I don't really feel like I have a dog in this fight except insofar as people I know and respect have caught some of the shrapnel.
= = = = =
So I'm watching a couple of youtube video walkthroughs of newer Assassin's Creed games (because I don't have anything newer than ACIII), and it suddenly strikes me that there's something odd going on. Now, don't get me wrong. I really like AC. The music is just plain eight kinds of awesome (my favorite OST hands down, is AC Unity followed shortly by ACIV, ACIII, and the delightful rearrangement for AC Chronicles China). Start to finish, this is just plain cool stuff. Yes, it kind of falls down in places, and every so often the promise doesn't quite deliver to spec, but that's okay. Perfect being the enemy of good and all that, failure to properly exploit certain potential happens, yadda yadda yadda.
So. AC Syndicate and the equal opportunity asskicking that is Evie Frye. Much fun. So neat. Woman parkour and lethal application of a gentleman's walking stick for the win. (cough) Anyway, leaving aside the surprisingly high percentage of female NPCs wandering around Victorian London in trousers...
I may be remembering this incorrectly, but in earlier variations it was a good idea not to just haul off and sputch someone in broad daylight because bystanders would respond with shock and alarm. Panic. Screaming. A hue and cry for the watch or equivalent. That, at any rate, is what's in my noggin. This is a game that's supposed to be stealthy, isn't it?
And then Jacob drops down on a heavy right in front of a couple of factory workers, kills the baddie, leaves him bleeding out...right in front of a couple of factory workers. And just walks off. No attempt at all to hide. Said workers, who have just seen a mystery man drop out of the sky and ruthlessly murder one of the factory's security personnel? Do nothing. Just another day on the job, man. Dead guard? Groovy, baby. Blood? What blood? Never liked that bloke anyway.
I gotta be misremembering. I just gotta be.
I can understand why innocent bystanders might have been converted to a less responsive mobile terrain type (don't wanna know how complicated it'd be to actually program all that and the processors only have so many cycles to go 'round) but it does sort of break immersion a little bit.
= = = = =
Okay, now I'm off to convert Aledys to 7th Sea 2nd Edition. Huzzah.
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