The Favored: Deadlands

Image Copyright Pinnacle Entertainment Group

I was staring at a blank page, struggling with what I should write about today.  There are times when the well is dried and there is not much you can do to fill it.  I started down some paths and quickly gave up.  Nothing was hitting me.  In frustration, I glanced at my email to see if anything new showed up, and lo and behold I see an email from a recent Kickstarter that I backed: the 20th Anniversary edition of Deadlands, the Weird West RPG that won my heart long ago with the simple subtitle, "The spaghetti western...with meat!"  I had just received my pdf copy of the book, and paging through the copy, taking in the new art while the latest album from the Pine Box Boys played in the background (The Feast of Three Arms, of you want to check it out...horror-themed country folk), I realized I might as well talk about one of my all-time favorite systems and settings.  So here it is, one of my top 5 RPG systems and settings:  Deadlands Classic.

Now, before you go off and google Deadlands, let me clarify which I mean, because there are two versions of the western setting (as well as a couple of versions of a post-apocalyptic setting using the same world and system).  Originally, there was what is now called Deadlands Classic.  As the years progressed, the creator sought to streamline the system and make it more accessible, as well as usable in a number of ways, so he created the Savage Worlds system.  The version that I favor is the Classic system.  Savage Worlds is a decent generic system but suffers the generic system issues of losing setting-specific flavor and unique systems in favor of lighter rules that lean towards bland in order to fit into a number of settings.  Though I would happily play a Savage Worlds game, I much prefer the older system.

Deadlands Classic is a bit of a mess, system-wise, let me tell you that up front. The combats are probably the roughest part, with each attack action taking a number of dice rolls to determine to-hit, damage, location, magic rolls if needed, etc.  So one combat can go on for hours, if you let them.  The system is also ranged-oriented, so the melee rules are a little wonky, at least in the original version.  A later update smoothed some of the issues out, but the system remains close to broken in a few ways, but if you aren't above house ruling, then you should be fine.  

What it does right is add a number of setting-specific mechanics that give the system its flavor.  You use poker chips to represent experience gained, as well as chances to change dice rolls, avoid damage, etc.  Since gambling is a big theme in the mythology of the west, you have to decide whether to hang on to those chips for that experience at the end, or burn in them in a chance to alter your fate.  To keep with the gambling theme, you use a deck of cards to determine initiative.  In addition, one magic class, the huckster, actually plays a hand of cards with a demon in order to cast their spells.  Those that hate randomness in games may want to steer clear of this class because you can get anything from an epic, god-like cast off of a hand in one cast, and a complete dud in the next.  But that wildness, to me, is part of the flavor and the fun.  Beyond these unique mechanics is a skill-oriented system augmented with a merit and flaw system to build depth in a character, and a way to be rewarded for actually playing to your flaws.  

Beyond the system is the heart of the game:  the setting.  Deadlands is the epitome of "weird west", combining history, magic, horror, and a touch of humor to create a wonderful backdrop to tell stories.  The best Deadlands game can move successfully from a straight western to pure horror as a normal situation is turned on its ear by something beyond the norm.  In Deadlands, fear is food for the dark entities causing the horror in the west, making nightmares real in an attempt to sow more fear in a bid to terraform the Earth in preparation for their eventual return.  Player characters represent the light in the darkness, doing their best to fight fear with hope.  Their strongest weapon is storytelling, telling everyone the see of their victories against the darkness and lowering fear levels.  Otherwise, fear can reach a high enough level that an entire area is claimed by the darkness and only the strongest can push it back.  

The alternate history setting gives game masters (called Marshals in Deadlands) the leeway to play with historical events and figures, giving them different outcomes or backgrounds to suit the story they are telling.  In addition, death is not necessarily the end for characters.  If they die, they have a chance to come back as a sort of sentient undead called Harrowed.  If they are chosen by a dark spirit (called manitou), they must play through their worst nightmare in order to fight the manitou for control when they return to the world of the living.  Harrowed enjoy some powers and benefits, but they must constantly fight the manitou riding inside.  If they fail, the manitou can take temporary control use the character to cause the very fear they are fighting.  

I could keep going, but I will spare you my gushing.  Suffice it to say, Deadlands is one of my favorite systems.  Is it perfect?  Absolutely not.  But the unique system mechanics, combined with the wonderful version of weird west storytelling it offers makes it rise above its faults in my opinion.  So if you have never had a chance to play or run Deadlands Classic, look for the 20th Anniversary edition coming soon from Pinnacle Entertainment Group and dive into your own spaghetti western...with meat! 

All those tiny glass screens

Nick Bentley over at  the Move38 blog recently published a blog post about smart phone integrated board games, and the general current board game boom we are experiencing.

Smart Board games in the age of screens

The general thrust of the article is that, A: Part of the board game boom is a reaction against screentime and B: This screen fatigue is a major reason that smart phone integrated board games haven't performed very well so far.

I think that maybe there is a different influence that phones and social media gaming have had on the current board game boom. Cell phones are ubiquitous now, we carry them everywhere. Having a pocket computer allows us to do all kinds of incredibly useful things, central to the use of the phone, we can speak with anyone anytime, can send messages and mail with incredible ease. As secondary uses go we have an array of applications that bring incredible utility, guitar tuners and metronomes, Appalachian trail maps and guides, sound and light board control interfaces, medical device monitors, every interest and industry seems to have benefited from pocket applications. Social media is so perfectly suited to the device that personal networking has surpassed the original function of person to person voice communication that phones were originally intended for. The end result is that we have created devices that are so useful to us that in a short 20 years it is now more common in the world to have a cell phone than it is to have indoor plumbing. We haven't even mentioned mobile gaming yet.

Mobile gaming, gaming on a small screen in short limited amounts of time pushes mobile games into a few design spaces. One type are the quick simple control arcade experiences, endless runners, flappy birds etc. Another big one is the turn based or time sink style games, things like clash, or farmville where you can just hop on now and again do your thing and let the game run in the background. Where there are games there is the need to compete as well, but the play at your own pace style of phone games also needs to apply to competitive games as well, simple designs, turn based, ease of learning and mastery. All of these design elements already exist in classic board games. So mobile developers are smart to mine board games for ideas. Words with friends is the most obvious example, just a simple scrabble clone that works perfectly on the platform.

So now we have a massive market, playing games that are essentially digital board games already. It makes sense that some number of these users are going to be reminded of the good times they used to have with board games and go looking for them. Back to the article linked in the move38 blog, they say that in 2015 the board game market made 250 million dollars, (still less than half the CCG category!) The overall mobile game sector in the same year was 34.8 billion dollars. So even a small number of mobile users looking for board games creates a big swing. It feels more likely to me that rather than people fleeing screens for face to face games, that our screens have created more gamer in general. This is a case of a rising tide raising all ships, only in this case it's the mobile gaming tide pulling up the board game segment.

Or more likely it is a combination of both unplugging and new interest.

So if I'm right we should see better performance of these smart phone integrated games. Well in fact we are seeing good sales from these games, when they are good games and the integration makes sense. To look at some of the games listed in the original article we see some winners and losers. Golem Arcana is often pointed out as an example of failed digital integration in a board game. I was at gen con this year and attended a panel by the main developer of GA, and my impression is that he is very interested in the potential of hybrid games, and as such they may have pushed the envelope too far, making the game totally dependent on the app, rather than having the app be a tool to assist in the game play.

Alchemists on the other hand was one of the better selling hobby board games of 2015. The phone in that game is used more as a tool than a game engine. It is used to randomize and moderate mechanics that would be tedious otherwise. Similarly Mansion of Madness second ed seems to be doing well, in Mansions the app manages the bad guys and the map, while the players work together against it. I think the reason we haven't seen more success in app integrated board games is that we just haven't seen that many of them yet. We are just starting to see them and everyone is learning how to execute them properly. It feels more likely that these games fail because of poor execution rather than a societal backlash against screens.

That said, I'm old and curmudgeonly enough that I'm not especially looking forward to tech enhanced table top games. I enjoy the pushing of cardboard bits, I like that you have to understand the mechanics of a game instead of having them hidden. These app games are coming though so the best we can hope for is that they are fun. From looking at Move38 they seem to be working on it, but seeing how they are making proprietary widgets, I can see why they would have a bias against screens!

Mining: The Exorcist (FOX tv series)

It's October, that magical time of year when everything comes up horror.  Rather than digging around, trying to find scraps of horror in movies and television, we get a banquet of content.  Books, comics, even music all turn a darker shade of crimson as the leaves turn and the pumpkins dominate the entrances to stores and homes all over.  On this table of bounty, I have been enjoying a number of horror offerings.  One of which is the new Fox series The Exorcist (I know, it will probably be cancelled after its first season, but I can't help myself).  I went in extremely cautious, and after 3 episodes I can say without reservation that I have moved to cautiously optomistic.  

A quick review before I do a quick mining session.  The first episode sets the stage and as such, moves fairly slowly until the very end.  We are introduced to the young priest, the old priest, the victim's family, and the victim herself. This is not a rehash of the movie, though, and the show makes sure we know this.  It also ties to the movie very briefly with an article in an old paper mentioning the tragedy at the end of the first movie. But this show is definitely a new entry in the world of the Exorcist, despite the initial similarities. There are some segments that give you hope that we will have a true horror series and not just a family drama, but it is really the last 10 minutes or so that fills you with hope for what the series will become.  I am excited to see where they go with this show, and if the horror elements of the episodes so far are an indication, it should be a fun ride.  As long as Fox execs don't screw it up...

So what can we mine from this that we can't get from any other possession story?  The one nugget in the three episodes so far that could be used for gaming purposes is the way the possession occurs.  Most posession stories show the posession from the witnesses and not from the victim.  In this show, we see the descent from the victim's perspective.  The demon is given a face, it interacts with the victim, and most of all, we see that the possession is not entirely unwilling.  We see a broken girl with issues that give the demon a way to work its way into her willingly.  It is not a hostile takeover.  It is a seduction.  What we see is a girl, hungry for attention and tired of being second best in her family, despite her successes.  At first she resists, but the demon wears her down, acts as first friend, then loved one.  This is so far one of the strongest pieces of the show, and also the nugget of rpg usefulness that I am mining from the show.

So how do we use this seductive possession scenario in our games?  From an non-player character (NPC) perspective, they are not a victim.  The seduced NPC that the player character (PC)s are meant to save may actually resist their attempts to help.  They do not see the entity as an enemy, but a friend.  Perhaps the way to defeat the entity is not an epic boss fight or intricate ritual, but a social contest with the NPC victim themselves. They must convince the NPC that the entity is an enemy and that it is the NPC's fight to win and not the PC's.  Perhaps the "final fight" requires one or more PCs to continue to convince the NPC to fight while the rest of the party deals with manifestations caused by the entity to delay or eliminate the party.  In this, we have more than a two-dimensional possession scenario, and one that can create more depth for the story and for the NPC, as well as the entity itself.  The entity is not some boring bag of experience points, but something with motivations and character.  A three way social contest between PC, NPC, and entity would be a highly entertaining final battle.

The other way the seductive possession can be used is on an NPC.  Perhaps the entity comes from a particular item the PCs pick up.  Perhaps it latches onto a PC when they visited a particular area.  Or perhaps the game master (GM) sees a particular PC flaw on a sheet that would be a powerful invitation to an entity to start its seduction, something that happens completely unrelated to the current game story line.  During play, the GM could privately send messages to the PC, tempting them with help or with ideas that could get them out of sticky situations (at some sort of cost, of course).  These can be played as social contest requiring dice rolls, but it depending on the player, it could be pure choice.  Accepting the help gives the entity another tick in possession, however the GM decides to track this.  After a certain number of ticks, the PC begins manifestations, then potentially loses partial control of their character as the entity asserts itself.  This could even happen in the middle of an adventure, so suddenly the focus is on understanding what is happening to the PC and helping them.  This could even set up a choice for the party:  help their party member and fail the quest, or finish their job at the risk of the possessed PC sinking deeper into the entity's clutches.  

There are a number of ways to use the seductive possession in a game, both on PCs and NPCs alike.  It creates an interesting dynamic, an enemy that can't be chopped or shot, and one that is not a brute, but a cunning and manipulative entity that preys on the weaknesses of mind and spirit that exist in any individual.  It is a frightening concept, much more frightening than the faceless, angry spirit that most possession stories show.  It forces a confrontation of self and of flaws that we may not want to acknowledge.  That is a horror of a different sort...

The myth of Hero

Excitement was in the air, that thrilling anticipation of a fresh rpg. Friends around the table ready to pass through the door of imagination. They sit ready to make bigger than life characters, explore strange worlds, defeat evil, cross and double cross. The GM pitches his world idea and players instantly snap to coming up with character concepts. Someone asks casually, “what system are we using?” The GM pauses, and reaches into his backpack, with a slight grunt he pulls two massive tomes out. Blue and gold graphics start to bring dread into hearts of the players. That internal fear confirmed when the GM says, “Let's try Hero”, as he drops the the books causing a 3.8 tablequake. Instantly fear turns to horror, the joy of the game drains to be replaced by visions of calculus and 4 hour long combats. Another game is a victim of Herophobia.

Hero's reputation as a monolithic impenetrable fortress of rules is well earned. The rule books are huge an imposing. The default setting, Champions, is potentially the most confusing variant of hero that you can run. The quick start rules in their Sidekick editions are good, but no book seems to provide an obvious signpost as to where to start. All of these choices are intentional for better or for worse. The giant rule books are a marketing point, including the famous rulebook can stop a bullet stunt. Champions deserves to be a flagship line because it highlights what hero does better than any other system, but getting that sweet super hero gold requires a lengthy time investment to make it work right. Hero is marketed and designed for Hero players first and foremost, and that has the side effect of keeping hero in the 'hardcore' rpg category during an age of light and story driven rpgs.

Hero has a lot going for it. It has a wonderfully consistent set of rules that once you understand them scales through all kinds of power levels and campaign settings. Layers of complexity can be added and removed painlessly. When people think of hero they tend to think of the full buy in version. High character point super heroes with complicated powers and multi powers. But the true selling point, and the one that puts it in a class above other generic systems is the strength of it base system. The simple bones that build into the variety of beasts it can become. My friend Chris likes to say that Hero is his go to light game. While Hero isn't a light game by the standards of modern rpg design, I know what he means. It is easy enough to apply hero to most campaign concepts, with a minimum of tweaking. For those oddball one shots it is often just as easy to throw together a few Hero characters. In games with no power, or low powers the process of making a hero character offers a lot of control while being pretty painless. At low character point levels fights move extremely quickly, letting you run very action oriented games without a lot of combat downtime.

Easy character generation, quick combats, but that doesn't sound like Hero. That isn't champions, but unfortunately Champions and Hero are mostly synonymous. So what hero needs is a quickstart that plays to those advantages. The allure of the quickstart is that you can hop right into a game quickly, but a hero quickstart would be generic, so suddenly there is a lot of work to build the world. So we need a stripped down quick start game with an easy to understand world tied into it. It turns out that before Hero came out the system published exactly what I described in 1984. It was called Justice inc. JI was a version of Champions with all the powers stripped out, and a really tight pulp hero game theme. All the rules needed to play, with a few little add ons for the sake of theme. A good set of resources for running pulp games. In many ways it was the perfect Hero supplement.

As much as I hate the Fantasy flight new Star Wars model, it might be a good line for Hero games to take. Fantasy Flight with their Star Wars rpg republishes all the core rules with some minor modifications each time they put out a major sourcebook. While this is annoying for a game where the theme changes just a little bit, it is an awesome fit for a generic system that could have wildly different settings and themes. I think a hero curious person might be more likely to buy a small tight game like JI to get a feel, then if they enjoyed it, it would be easy enough to expand into the wider game. It of course doesn’t have to be JI, a cool post apocalyptic game, some unique take or licensed fantasy game. The easiest and quickest way to learn Hero is to play with those already converted to the cult of Hero. Currently there really is no good way for new players to easily get in.

I recommend giving hero a shot. Especially if you are the kind of person who wants a game that is mechanically deeper than most. The mechanical depth is offset by its logical consistency. The math involved is very straight forward.  Hero just isn't as inscrutable as people make it out to be, if you are capable of splatbook surfing 200 pathfinder books to make some crazy build you should be fine playing some good old 1980 rpg technology. Long live Hero.

Musings: Defining Game Value

 

I thought I would take a moment and reflect on how I define the personal value of games. This line of thought actually began a few years ago as I looked at the extremely large number of video games in my PC game Steam library.  As I stared at the long list of games, I realized that I had not played many of them at all, causing me to wonder if maybe I had a game collecting problem.  I did, and still do, but the results of that initial thought has led me to a way to at least stop and consider a game purchase before actually clicking the "Buy" button.  So while I may not have curbed my incessant need to collect games (both video and tabletop), I at least have a measurement that I can call on.

The method I use to gauge whether I have gotten my money's worth out of a game is based on the per-hour cost for the game.  Basically, take the amount of money I paid for a game and divide by the amount of time I have played the game (easy to do in Steam since it gives you an actual time played stat).  The result is essentially paid per hour of game play.  My basic guideline is that I strive to pay one dollar per hour played (so, for example, I would hope to get 30 hours out of a $30 game).  This is a basic method that is sometimes tweaked, depending on the game itself.  I have paid $60 for a game and only played 15 hours, but felt that the experience was so good that I felt that I got full value for my money. So it is, of course, a very subjective sort of measurement, but it lets me feel like I got real value when I hit that mark, or go beyond it.  There is nothing like playing a game to a satisfying conclusion (either the end of the game or when I am done playing) and finding out that I got a great value based on this method.  It's like a double win!

What the above measurement also allows me to do is make decisions when I am considering a game to buy, and this is where it has really helped me. Now, whenever I look at a game, I ask myself if I will get my dollar-per-hour value out of the game.  That makes me think hard about a $60 game.  After all, that means I would be looking to get at least 60 hours of game play out of it.  And in my current life and schedule, that is hard to do.  I also factor in the potential for a great experience that would offset time played, but if I am not sure about a game, the per-hour cost estimation can make or break my decision.  Conversely, it also makes taking a chance on less expensive games easier, since I give myself the permission to play less in order to feel like I got value.  I also feel extreme gratification when I go well beyond the dollar-per-hour goal.

This method of gauging gaming value has had a positive effect on me, both in terms of finding satisfaction in a game even if I do not complete it (a struggle I had for a while, and a subject for another article perhaps), and in making me aware of what games I buy and actually playing them.  After all, there is no value in buying a game and never playing it.  This has led a switch in me from game collector back to game player.  And that makes me happier overall.  My Steam library may not be growing as quickly now, but I am seeing more and more games that have been played.

Now that I am using this metric on my video gaming hobby, I need to start using it on my tabletop gaming buying.  I am very guilty of board game collecting, as well as roleplaying book collecting.  My dollar-per-hour ratio on many of the games that I have bought is not good at the moment, and my addiction to tabletop Kickstarters does not help.  I may need to tweak the metric a bit since tabletop gaming is a different beast and involves others, so there are factors to consider in determining value beyond my own personal enjoyment.  This will be an on-going project, and one that I will update on this blog as I try to figure out how to swing from collecting to playing in the tabletop realm.

So how about you, dear reader?  How do you determine whether you have gotten your money's worth in a game (video or tabletop)?  Do you think my method makes sense or seems off?  It works for me and gives me peace of mind, but it may do nothing for you, and that is ok.  We all determine value differently.  I would love to hear how you determine yours.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get going. I just picked up DOOM on sale, so it is high time I go wreck some demons...

Train to Busan

I just got back from my friendly local retro cool, bar-theater-future brewpub-burlesque house, as usual I was not disappointed. Tonight I saw the Korean zombie movie “Train to Busan”. Train debuted last year at cannes I think, and had international release this summer, it has done pretty well with the largest American box-office of any Korean film so far.

Train is about as standard a zombie movie I have seen in a while. With the glut of zombie movies and shows I have gotten used to the Zombies plus X description. 28 days later is Zombies but they are fast, walking dead is zombies plus endless narrative, World war Z is zombies plus cgi swarms, pride and prejudice and zombies literally has the Zombie plus X in the title. You could say that Train to Busan is Zombies plus Koreans, or maybe Zombies on a train, but in reality it is just a well made zombie flick with no real gimmick.

Our main character is a fund manager, recently divorced who doesn't spend enough time with his daughter. It's her birthday and all she wants to do is go to the city of Busan to visit her mother. Father daughter end up on the train, and we are introduced to a number of other side characters. We get two elderly sisters, a homeless man, a high school baseball team, the girl in love with one of the baseball players, and the real stars of the movie, A young couple, the woman pregnant and the husband a burly boisterous guy. All of these characters feel well developed, most impressively nearly all the character development is accomplished through good direction and just physical acting rather than dialogue.

After the obligatory hints that the world is falling apart, and the single infected girl stumbling onto the train at departure, our train gets rolling, and so does the movie. Everything plays out exactly as you imagine it would, people start to get bitten, fast rage zombies go crazy on the train, our heroes are forced together, the humans are the real monsters, etc etc. This movie follows the formula to such an extent that it almost feels like homage, but where most tribute movies get caught up in making references train just accepts the tropes and executes them. I don't know anything about the korean zombie movie scene, but it feels like maybe the film makers understand zombie movies and have set about doing the best job they can to introduce the baseline to a new audience. All the actors are great, the direction keeps things interesting, the story is creative enough dealing with the troubles of fighting a zombie in the tight confines of a train.

This movie doesn't feel like an indy zombie movie, it plays out like a big budget movie in terms of story and plot. The central story isn't about murdering zombies, it is about a father trying to keep his daughter alive. I put it in the category of movies that created for a larger market. The gore is subdued, the movie never goes off the rails or into the absurd. It's is a movie for walking dead fans, not for dead alive fans. This movie has a clear morality as a central theme. In Train to Busan the central moral dilemma is should you act in your self interest, or should you risk to help others. Our selfish fund manager has to learn from his selfless daughter the importance of helping others.

One thing that struck me while watching the movie was that aside from the cast being all Korean, this movie could have set anywhere. You could film this script line for line shot for shot in almost any country. Compare this to a movie like Old Boy where a similar wholesale script and storyboard transplant resulted in a sub par movie. Train to Busan feels very culturally generic.

If you want to see a perfectly executed zombie movie, I recommend Train to Busan. If you want to see a more interesting Korean movie about fighting your way to the front of a train, I recommend 2013's Snowpeircer.

Mining: The taking of Deborah Logan

Fezzypug has been recommending this movie to me for a while. The taking of Deborah Logan is yet another horror movie in the found footage/housecam style, with an exciting twist, that is it is actually good. At first it seems like another possession haunted house movie, with the schtick being that the person being possessed is an Alzheimer patient, but as the movie goes on it unwinds a cool backstory with plenty of spooky schlock to liven up a game. I'm not going to avoid spoilers, so if you are a horror movie fan I recommend skipping the blog for now and adding it to your netflix. So here we go in no particular order.

1. Putting the bad guy in the body of someone close to the PC's. One of the main characters in the taking is Deborah's daughter. The fact that she is fighting to save her own mother pushes into many extreme situations. In many rpgs players tend to get into kill it with fire mode quickly, this is a lot tougher when the monster is an innocent person that needs to be saved.

2. Using a hospital as a setting for session. Players are often hurt, bad guys get beat up, there are plenty of reasons for players in a modern game, or even a historical one to end up in a hospital. What if after the a big showdown with a major villain, where the players barely make it through and everyone took damage, you open with the players still wounded in the hospital. Perhaps another foe of the party decides to make a move against them while they are down, maybe the big bad wasn't really killed. The players might have to overcome the obstacle of doctors not believing them, the players being drugged or restrained, at the very lest the players will have no gear to speak of and have to improvise with all the dangerous implements a hospital setting provides.
3. Old ladies that can teleport, have snake venom and are graphically shedding bloody skin all the time.
4. A ghost from the past possessing someone to complete an unfinished ritual. The players get to research and find out what the ritual is. Use that information to figure out the final uncompleted step and race against time to stop it.
5. The bad guy working against herself to help the players. What if your bad guy is fully aware that what they are doing is evil, and actively brings the players into the situation to stop themselves. A conflicted bad guy ties into number one as well.
6. A strong visual theme to go with your evil occult thing. Instead of generic otherworldly scripts and pentagrams tie a strong theme to an occult ritual or plan. In case of the Taking that theme was snakes, but it could be anything. Nobody remembers a generic crazed cultist, but what if the cultists explode into snakes when you kill them? Or if they remove their own hearts and put them in clocks, and put clockwork hearts in their chests instead. Or if all the cultists have to drown themselves to join, and their lungs are perpetually filled with seawater and goo? Almost anything can work here. In a movie something like this could come off as cheesy, but rpgs are allowed to embrace cheesy in a way that serious movies can't.
7. There is no seven.

It is October the time for scary movies, so don't be surprised if you get more of these. I also just watched Blade 2, and that movie is ripe for mining!