Being in the Main the Mouth of Olde House Rules
Ok, so we like stuff; and people who like stuff are fortunate to be part of a small-press community that makes good stuff. So get ready for a post where we gush about something awesome we've discovered, but also a post about how our corner of the world world is breaking boundaries and generally coloring outside the lines. We're doing things, making stuff - and all for the good of the scene! Yeah, this is a post about that...
So first off, there's the License to Slay from the Bureau of Dragons and the good folks at Damn Elf Press (who also run a nice little blog). We've all fantasized about slaying dragons in our favorite suit of mail. All of us. Happily, the Bureau has us covered with the Official License to Slay, impressively rendered and suitable for framing.
The License comes on a classic 8.5 x 11 parchment with gorgeous calligraphy and your name (or that of a lucky recipient) emblazoned thereupon. And it's stamped for authenticity by the Bureau, so accept no substitutes! Each comes individually numbered and with a wallet-sized card to boot. It's a nice presentation and a unique gift for the dragon lover on your list. Suitable for framing, the License is just $9.95 in time for the holidays.
And while you're applying for your License, be sure to check out the Case Files and Dispatches, which add a nice sense of lore to the whole thing. It turns out dragons are real and in need of slaying. But the only thing worse than getting on the business end of a genuine fire-breather is running afoul of the law, so make sure you're dressed in asbestos underwear and covered with a License. Don't mess with Louis Baston...
Now the cool thing about this (aside from being cool) is that it transcends the usual downloadable PDF paradigm and does so with something original. We anticipate t-shirts in the near future (Damn Elf wore 'em at at GenCon). More importantly, as the means of production and distribution increasingly falls into the hands of mere mortals, perhaps we'll see miniatures and other so-called "professional" items from small-press creators.
We know, Kickstarter is making things happen, but we anticipate a time when 3-D print on demand becomes a thing and we'll release an official line of P&P miniatures...
OK, so the next big thing is Lapsus Calami by Matt Jackson, already a well-known cartographer and blogger. To know him is to love him - and to know him means knowing he loves the old-school with an admirable passion. Well it turns out that Matt has started an excellent little zine called Lapsus Calami. He's made this available on his Patreon page for free but also mailed out a few hard copies as well. You know, snail mail and stuff.
Matt's not the only one doing this, and we don't mean to slight our other friends in the community. We love 'em all. But getting that two-page, yellow card-stock zine took this old man (Robyn wasn't part of the 70s scene) back to a time when your favorite small-press publication just might be a couple of photocopied and barely legible pages...
Of course, Lapsus Calami is very legible owing to Matt's excellent maps and also quite readable thanks to his great writing and clever back stories. But in a world where everything is available 24/7, it sure felt nice to read something in a simple and delightfully low-tech format. It's small-press designers breaking the mold and finding new (old) ways of making things and delivering them to their audience. If you can, support Matt's Patreon.
At the turn of a new century, print-on-demand technology enabled a new generation of publishers to get their ideas out. And the innovation hasn't stopped. Those same publishers are finding new ways to do old things (or vice versa), stealing some of the big industry's thunder and taking our esteemed hobby back to a time when the small-press scene was the scene. The chickens come home to roost - and that's a good thing for once!
Well, that's a wrap. We're finally going to a monthly format, so see you in September...
Today we released Red of Tooth, our game of rabbits and survival loosely based on Watership Down but also Bambi (a remarkably dark children's movie) and maybe Farthing Wood (for those of you from the other side of the pond). It's a digital title right now, but coming in hardcover very soon. Intelligent rabbits may not be your thing, but maybe you'll find its imagined universe to your liking and give the rules a try...
So first off, it's a rules-lite game; and those of you already familiar with our stuff should understand and even recognize our typical flourishes. But for everyone else (and you, our dear regulars), here's what it's all about. Yes, it's a rules-lite game, and also a d6-based system. We love d6 stuff because it's so easy (check those kitchen drawers, chances are you'll find a pair) and because there's something special and definitively "pre-gaming as industry" about them, especially in a game where player choices matter more.
Once again, the characters are intelligent rabbits possessing the Spark; that Prize of Understanding granted to their kind and a few others. But intelligence aside, they still lack hands and opposable thumbs. That means no armor, no weapons and no inventories, making most forms of resource management out of the question. Moreover, despite their intellectual prowess, they are otherwise just rabbits. Simple laporidae...
And rabbits aren't exactly cutting a swath of destruction across the countryside. No, your characters won't be killing the farmer's dog or mounting a retaliatory strike against the hunters who took out their friends. This isn't a game where you kill for experience, but one where enemies are to be avoided because that dog will tear your rabbit to bloody rags in short order. Intelligence aside, Red of Tooth strives for a sort of naturalistic realism, and the ferocity of predators (and humanity with its firearms) is pretty hard to ignore.
Combat, even among rabbits, is fast, furious, and often lethal, although the ability to flee hostilities (or avoid them through camouflage) is strongly emphasized.
But it's not all bad news. Characters have a class (phylum), whether stealthy Foragers, brave Scouts, or prophetic Witch Hares. And while it doesn't make sense to give them ability scores, they are nonetheless rated in their five senses, each one granting unique and life-saving abilities. Rabbits, like many animals, enjoy superior hearing and smell, among other things, and rely on these in ways humans can't. Useful stuff for sure, but still only as good as the choices and decisions of the players (which is the real value of intelligence)...
So it's game of survival against long odds; but one standout aspect of the rules is their emphasis on role-playing. We've flirted with this before, with experience bonuses for superior role-play per Barons of Braunstein, Blood of Pangea, and Diceless Dungeons, among our favorites; and it's here as well. But this rulebook goes one step further and allows the players to choose (or roll) two personality traits to guide their advancement, noting that much of the game's underlying tension comes from it's cast of all-too-human animals.
If this sounds like your thing, Red of Tooth delivers. And if your rabbits survive their adventures, they can establish their own warren and sire offspring who just might take their place when death inevitably comes. Mortal heroes fought dragons and giants, but the rabbits, tiny heroes of the natural world, fight them for real. Only now the rabbits are you...
Character classes. Some love 'em, others hate 'em. But most, I suspect, are willing to go either way with the understanding that each has something to offer. I fall into the latter category. Classes, where used, create a sense of mutual interdependence and contribute to a game's implied setting. How's this a problem? Skill-based systems, on the other hand, enable near-total customization, which is undeniably cool. There's nothing not to love about this approach so go ahead, make that armor-wearing battlemage...
But when it comes to classes, is it possible that less is actually more? I mean, how many character classes becomes too much? I'm a little torn.
On the one hand, if I come across a really nice class with a good skill set and progression options, I'm definitely all in. It's really, really hard to hate something that's cool on the fantastical face of it. And who can blame me? But the problem with some class-based systems is that the only way to add a new skill set is to introduce a new class; and let's face it, some new classes come across as bloated, redundant, and unnecessary...
Barbarians? As a class?* They're just fighters from a primitive, probably northern culture, complete with loincloths and outdoor survival skills. Can't we just roll up a fighter and embellish the backstory? Gygax, for all I loved Unearthed Arcana, built an overwrought class around his apparently fawning love of Conan. Of course, I have a fawning love of rules-lite games, so others may disagree. But do we really need to build a whole new class around the ability to take natural cover or climb trees? Seriously, do we?
Or a class built around the lance (cavaliers) or acrobatics (the thief-acrobat)?
All of the above feel more like backstories to me. Barbarians and cavaliers can exploit Unearthed Arcana's weapon specialization rules and leave the rest to the player and their negotiated character concept. Can Borg climb that tree? Why not? He grew up in the Northern Wood, after all. Just roll under dexterity to make it happen. Ditto for cavaliers and lances. Or charging on horseback, for that matter. And really, how did thieves perform acrobatically before 1985? Hint: they were quite acrobatic since 1975!
Feel free to disagree. Trust me, I see both sides of the coin. Barbarians and cavaliers behave differently in the game's implied setting. But is something lost when there's increasingly less opportunity to proceed from a character's backstory? And does a game suffer when each new class is just an excuse to introduce a few new skills when said system already got along fine without them? It's definitely a "classy" debate for the ages...
*Yeah, yeah, Pits & Perils has a barbarian class, and I still have reservations!
Ok, so our friend over at the Necropraxis blogspot posted about game reviews; specifically, what constitutes a good (and useful) one. This is well worth reading. Potential buyers depend on reviews to make informed decisions, and while we all have opinions, reviewers just might have a responsibility to help their readers along. And so in the interest of full disclosure, we offer the following (not at all surprising) admission...
We haven't always written "pure" reviews. Often, we're just gushing about something we personally enjoyed. But to our credit, we've always tried, at a minimum, to explain what the product is (and what it isn't) and to identify precisely who might be interested. This goes without saying, but if we're going on about how "rules-lite" a system is, then it might not be to your liking if you don't like rules-lite games! Anyway, we've always felt like we had some obligation to those who might put their money down on our recommendation.
So read the Necropraxis post. We'll take it's advice on board for future reviews because we want to help (and not confuse or mislead) others. But we want to add something to the discussion; namely, that "good" and "bad" are sometimes subjective.
I'm sure everyone understands this. Yes, it's possible for a game to be broken beyond the point or repair in it's present form; but some so-called failures are only failures to certain people based on personal preferences. And to provide a couple examples...
(a) The monsters are rote and derivative. That's bad, unless the reader wants something more traditional or something "blank" they can put their own stamp on.*
(b) Magic requires too much book keeping. A no-no in my book, but quite a few people actually get off on this, and telling readers I was turned off isn't the same as saying rules-lite gamers may be turned off, but fans of crunchier systems might be interested.
As Necropraxis said, take the time to explain the what of a game minus any snark or personal broadsides that might detract from a review's usefulness. But if I'm posting this for any reason, it's to offer a single addendum: in our reviews, we should try to identify who a particular product is likely to appeal to, and who it isn't. On more than one occasion, I've bought (and enjoyed) a poorly-reviewed product because its supposed failures were actually strengths in my biased eyes. I'm not sure the reviewers meant it that way...
Which is really just a fancy way of reminding would-be reviewers that one man's trash is another man's treasure. Good reviews inform and (in extreme cases) serve as a warning to others. But when so much comes down to personal preference, the goal of any review should also be to get the right games into the hands of the right people. Our preferences can't possibly be the standard. At best, we're more like old-time matchmakers!
*And really, how do we objectively define this? Remember, one man's trash/treasure...
