[Liquid] Well, I just rolled the dice for show
Frank Tarcikowski:
Every once in a while I think back to this game I played in in 2004. At the time, everybody was talking about “cinematic” role-playing, where, at last, you got to actually be cool and kick ass. We were playing Liquid, a free German RPG that was mostly classic (though not bad) and proclaimed “cinematic” as the way to play. The setting was Wild West, Steampunk, Victorian age gentlemen, voodoo and zombies. Some people would call it pulp (I wouldn’t). Anyway, it was clear that it would be all about coolness.
So we played and we were posing and shouting and laughing and giving our best descriptions and in-character lines and sometimes rolling dice. Later, the GM admitted that he rarely bothered to figure out the correct result according to the rules, rather just deciding at wim.
These days I’m known to say that “style over substance” sucks, that coolness posing without risk may be entertaining for a short while but that in the long run it’s rather empty and meaningless. I can play a game of WuShu for one or two hours and enjoy myself but after that I’ll be fed up for months. The GM in the Liquid game back then, Sven, went on to become a big fan of WuShu and the game’s biggest promoter in Germany. He even translated it to German and put up a website.
But back then, we weren’t playing WuShu. We were playing a game with pretty standard task resolution and combat rules that had initiative and attack rolls and defence stats and damage. And when we rolled the dice, as players, it was fun. Sometimes the GM told us the target number and sometimes we even missed, or sometimes he didn’t tell. Sometimes they were in accordance with the rules and sometimes they weren’t. According to doctrine, I should have felt betrayed when he revealed later that he had been making most of it up. But really I didn’t. I remember that I thought he shouldn’t have admitted it. But I didn’t care much.
The game was much talked about for its over the top action and other stuff we made up. I was playing this very British lord who had his butler by the name of James (what else), and somehow James evolved to become the Uber-Butler with everybody contributing the most hilarious ways in which James would be omnipresent and omnipotent. When we were camping in the Great Plains, he would have a perfect English breakfast ready for me and even the London Times of today. When we were hacking our way through hordes of zombies he would be there with an umbrella to keep my tweed coat from getting stained with gore.
My favorite moment was a scene where some Steampunk monster tank was approaching us and I talking to another player, Markus, who played a vodka-addict Finnish weird scientist. In the most polite fashion, I inquired whether he might have some chemical substance at hand that might serve to destroy that monstrosity. Markus portrayed this drunk and a little fuzzy guy rummaging through his bag and producing things, holding them against the light and then shaking his head, stuffing them back, while the GM described the monster tank in great detail and how it drew nearer and nearer, firing grenades that struck ever closer to us. At the same time all the other players were shouting at Markus to hurry up, while I informed them that a gentleman will not be hurried.
When finally I mounted my horse with a bottle of nitroglycerine, nobody was surprised that it was “just in time”. Also, everybody looked at me expectantly and to I said, in a Roger Moore voice, “For Queen and Country”, and off I went. I think Sven even gave me a target number but in Liquid you also have a couple of “save the day” points and I burned one of them just to be sure, and blew up the tank. It was very delightful.
Now, this game was five years ago and in the meantime I’ve played games like WuShu or Primetime Adventures which, in theory, support this kind of thing much better than a “classic” game system based on task resolution and combat rules with only a few quirks to help you “be cool”. And yet for me personally, I have to say that the Liquid game was actually more fun. I have some thoughts as to why, but I would like to hear yours first.
- Frank
Callan S.:
Magician shows are better when you don't know the rules of the illusion?
Here's a hard question - which is better - that 'awesome' game, or being able to see through the veils?
Frank Tarcikowski:
Hi Callan,
It wasn’t really a classic magician show with the GM as the stage magician and the players as audience. We were all on that stage.
But seeing through the veil… I think that’s an important point, though I’m not sure it’s the best way to describe it. What’s true is that in the Liquid game, System at work is not nearly as easily assessed as in the other games I quoted.
Looking at WuShu, I think it’s just a bit too blunt, too sheepish. And looking at PtA, I personally have found it to usually devolve into rolling the dice early and then just doing a monologue, as opposed to this chaotic everybody shouting thing we had in the Liquid game. (I know that’s not mandatory but it’s the way it worked out in the PtA games I played in.)
It’s hard to really recollect how I felt about that Liquid game five years ago but I think it felt more valid, more connected, more substantial.
- Frank
Callan S.:
Well, if your not sure of the System used in the liquid play, perhaps how do you know PTA and wushu are supposed to do the same thing?
Are you looking for evidence that discarding the ruleset is more fun? Using PTA and wushu as evidence?
oliof:
Callan,
I don't think the GM did use illusionism in the sense you're implying. My impression from Franks AP is that the group played mostly based on a thorough understanding of the „Genre“ (to borrow a word from literature), with the system as one way to influence the particulars of the evening. And playing always gains if the players have thorough understanding of the Genre involved. One of the traps with games like PtA is that without a sound genre foundation, play can deteriorate into something like what Frank described.
Frank, how would you compare the Liquid game to the boyband-roadmovie PtA session you ran at Nordcon? It seemed everyone had a blast at that (as far as I can assess from having been at the table next to yours). Was it really less substantial?
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