Smoke, Mirrors & Faerie Dust #9

Copyright ©1999 By Joseph Teller

Email: fantasyrealms@mindspring.com Website: www.fantasyrealms.simplenet.com

Surface Mail: 266 Western Ave Cambridge Mass 02139

My absence recently from the pages here have been caused by a number of time delays, events and activities. Kiralee and I have become legally married in a simple civil ceremony, and one of the players of my gaming group also got married (in a proper Jewish Ceremony) that we attended (my first Jewish wedding). We've added a cat to our household (a wonderful time waster) and of course have had a busy time with our weekly RPG, Game Design, and running Interregnum APA.

Our RPG is going thru its summer transition, and I'm working around player absences that are getting a bit chronic (one player in China for a Month and a half, another player in Canada for a Month, a third having their work schedule changed on them, etc.), and a fourth who quit after all the bruhaha he caused that resulted in us creating a group contract/agreement in regards to etiquette and organizational operation. I'm once again looking to expand the group to cover for the missing players, running flyers locally etc..

I don't have enough to say on this to fill a full article, but I thought I'd try to offer a few personal viewpoints on the subject. I find that a certain amount of graphic violence descriptions, especially in regards to damaged received or done, often helps the ability of players to focus on the game events. It also helps center concepts within a game, and so I prefer systems that use a means of determining at loose hit locations.

In Shadow Bindings I use 7 basic major hit locations and a collection of special locales, these are used to limit player action (Head, Chest, Abdomen, and each limb is a separate locale that has a rated Mortality score). When a limb reaches half of its Mortality score in damage it is considered crippled/broken, when it drops to less than 1 it is not repairable and in many cases crushed to a pulp or severed. Heads that reach half of their mortality results in unconsciousness, and upon reaching the total of their mortality a character is dead. Chest and Abdomen wounds that reach half damage are bleeding wounds that will get worse until stabilized with medical skills or magic, and again if the full mortality value in damage is taken, death occurs. (The back of a person is considered the reverse side of their Chest or Abdomen and scored as part of such for damage).

Special locations are things like Groin Hits, A hit on a Perception organ (eye/ear), or unusual locales (like a strike on an "Achilles Heel" a vulnerable locale like a glass jaw that results in a character being knocked down and unconscious when it is struck, but which not all characters possess, only those that take it as a negative trait as part of the character's design).

I apply damage equally to PCs and NPCs in combat and accident situations, as I find that if one doesn't you end up with players reacting with a weaker ability to suspend disbelief in the events, and if NPCs are simply cannon fodder then violence is more likely. When violence occurs within the game I prefer it to have a certain amount of uncertainty, risk and realism associated with it so that the players don't engage in it often and will not become desensitized or overly thrilled with it. Its not that it doesn't occur in my games, but that it should be meaningful when it does. This is true also for accidental damage withing my games, as well as violence caused from afar (such as an explosive).

Because of how I deal with violence, player characters pick their fights carefully, and will often avoid weapons of extreme lethality when they can (several are skilled in my current game in things like martial arts, magic, staff, bladed weapons, and guns and the guns are usually the last weapon of choice, even if it's the enemy's first weapon of choice, for the majority of the characters that have gun skills). I don't use Dying clues - if you kill someone then you lose whatever knowledge they have with their death. In a game with a lot of mysteries, conspiracies or intrigues a certain amount of graphic violence tends to reduce the desire to kills someone outright unless there is no other choice. The same is true when a character's loved one gets killed - I want it to be messy and hurt a bit to get the right emotional reaction from the player's presentation of the character's reaction.

I tend to avoid too much use of infection, disease and poison used directly on player characters, as its usually not a noble or fun way to lose a character and tends to be anti-climatic. Occasionally someone may bleed to death or suffer ill effects from poison which is appropriate to the situation, but that's not something that occurs often in my games. I can't remember ever having killed a character from disease within a game, nor from infection. I haven't killed a player character with poison in over a decade, nor have I ever had a player killed of mine killed by a GM by any of these causes. (Most character's I've lost have been from combat or magic. In one case a character died by having a small mountain teleported (psionic) above him and his companions by one of the other characters in order to save the world from an alien invasion that we were failing to defeat and were otherwise going to die slowly as we were dissected by them).

I find a basic Hit Point System (ala AD&D) just not threatening enough or realistic enough in a game to keep the players in the right mindset, and a complex system (such as in Bureau 13) too much of a drag on the game progress speed and not really offering any improvement over the system I use in getting the players in the right mindset.

(If I fail to write a comment, please don't feel that your zine was not read and enjoyed, its just that I didn't have anything specific to add that I thought would be of value to the readers).

Lee Gold: Thanks for the URL for "On Thud and Blunder".

Paul Mason: Your comments on the over emphasis on the concept of design symmetry in games were hitting the nail right on the head. I don't worry about symmetry in regards to how many attributes of a specific type I use in my games and it does produce odd reactions from people. //The ILLUSION of fairness as presented in recent games like OTE, Everway, Unknown Armies and other minimalist mechanics is nearly transparent and those of us who can see thru it find ourselves suffering from disbelief not just in a situation, setting or plot, but disbelief in the mechanics as well and thus eliminating our ability to enjoy the game. I don't believe that a game system can be 100% fair, but the solution is not to make it less fair (as in minimalism), but to strive to keep it as high a level of fairness as possible. I also tend to think that minimalist design is just an excuse to not put real time and effort into a game on the part of some designers (not all, but some seem very rushed and untested).

Lisa Padol: I think we have a difference of understanding here. The player who wanted the Shaman in Everway didn't want the abilities bought as powers or as a magical creature (although they would have accepted the shapeshifting as a power) but wanted them as magic. The player involved saw that effective magic required at least 4 points in a category of magic. They perceived it as requiring both water and either air or earth. With a 20 point base that doesn't leave much for stats or other skills. Additionally, Shapeshift wasn't (as I remember it) 3 points for a variety of forms, 3 points only covered a single form, at least in the examples in the book a number of shapes was something in the order of 7 points. (Remember I haven't looked at a copy of the game since about 9 months after it came out, since it was decided to be unplayable by the local gamers and gotten rid of. The local stores that stocked it took forever to get rid of the game, and did so eventually at a loss). Generally players around here (my group and the groups I've been around in the past few years in my general area) do not like to play characters that are extremely limited in their abilities and potential (which any system that only gives you a handful of skills, stereotypes or "archetypes" to work from tends to produce). They don't want a character good for a single story or adventure, they want a character that they can play, explore and develop over months and years of play, which they often don't feel this sort of system produces. As for power level of the Shaman in comparison to other systems, it depends on what systems you look at. An Everway Shaman in comparison to a Shadow Bindings Shaman would appear to be rather limited and weak, but if compared to say an AD&D Shaman would be powerful as you stated. A RQ Shaman could probably be more effective than an Everway Shaman, but the abilities would have to be special designed to be compatible (since Shamans are in RQ speakers with the dead and manipulators of Spirits). A Witchcraft RPG or Mage RPG based Shaman would end up being a lot more powerful, and if not then a lot more versatile. In the case of a GURPS Shaman it would depend on the setting, the number of points and such, but I suspect a GURPS Shaman in 200 point game (the level most games I've been around in recent years tend towards) using the standard magic system would be both more effective and more powerful, and one in a 100 point game would be more versatile and effective, but not necessarily more powerful. As to the effectiveness of the character in an Everway game, that highly depends on the GM, since 90% of the system depends on GM fiat to decide whether something works, or is effective. So like most things, milage may vary dependent on the GM and the player. (Your own mention regarding the point differences in costs with Josh shows that there is not even standardization in regards to ability cost concepts in the system, and that it pretty much is decided by GM fiat with a small amount of referencing to the original rulebook. Around here the players prefer to have most things in simple obvious numbers for the most part (GURPS is very popular, as is Ars Magica, and even Champions). Maybe it comes from being around MIT and Harvard, where folks prefer solid numbers and a canon of law that may be referenced on things, which affects their game design preferences.

Simon Reeve: Absinthe is indeed illegal in the USA.//re: Authentic Thaumaturgy this basically represents in a game format magic as in the theory that Isaac Bonewits presented in Real Magic for the Neo-Pagan community. In the Real World this theory of Psychic-Magic is used by ADF (ar n Dracoit Fein) a Neo-pagan Druidic organization helped found and headed for many years (as Archdruid). It really has nothing to do with Medieval ceremonial magician theories, or Meseo-Paganism, and is only theoretical when applied to Paleo-Paganism. There are a number of other sects of Neo-paganism that accept this theory in part or whole aside from ADF. Isaac is a bit over enthusiastic about applying his theories to all forms of magic in the real world or in fiction and his words within the book tend to be a bit too judgmental and claiming of exclusivity. As a magic system, I find the mechanics of his system for gaming too complex, involving too much math for most players to want to deal with.

Doc Cross: Re: Your Rant about mechanics. Sorry Doc, but I don't want roleplaying games to reflect popular culture or to attract the sort of people that can't separate Jerry Springer from Real Life. Those are the sorts of people that would indeed give roleplaying a bad reputation (beyond what we already have). Let them go find and play the WWF game and leave thinking games to people who can think for themselves and are capable of understanding what roleplaying is. Instant Gratification may be the current trend, but we don't need roleplaying to follow the trends. If this did occur and such games were created and drew in the mainstream culture, it would turn gaming into a mere commercial media venture to be worked to death and become passe trite. Remember how getting trendy and drawing in speculators badly damaged the comic book reading/collecting hobby near the end of the 80s? Do you really want to see this happen again (not that the CCG overlap hasn't already done some major damage)?