My play stile
Ron Edwards:
Hi there,
This thread interests me for a lot of reasons, but these two are what I'd like to discuss, if you find them interesting too.
1. You've encountered the "new wave" in independent RPG design through games which are pretty late in the process. This is a very fine thing in many ways, as the games' entire texts have been through a lot of thoughtful design, and every game you mentioned is very well-written toward a particular audience in each case. But looking at your experiences and priorities, I'd like to suggest some free games that were written without the revolution supporting them, and instead were themselves the revolution.
They aren't as polished as the games you've mentioned, and they were certainly not written in a way that helps the reader through every little cognitive step to understand them. But if you think of the author as someone very much like yourself (as presented here in this thread), speaking directly to you instead of publishing a product for you, I think you'll find them very rewarding to play.
The titles I recommend (and this is to you personally, not a general announcement for anyone) are: (link on page), Wuthering Heights (goes directly to the game), and Ghost Light. Although none of them provide any help with actually GMing and organizing play (in other words, 100% different from Mouse Guard), again, if you simply read them and fill in what's missing with exactly what you like to do, I think you'll find them very rewarding.
2. I'm interested in some of the fictional content of the games you played with your uncle. Do you remember any of the characters you played, especially any which survived through several adventures or stories? This may seem like a strange question, but, if there was such a character, how did he or she change from the first time you played them compared to the final time?
Best, Ron
Moreno R.:
Hi
I chime in the thread only to add that if someone is searching for the later (march 2001) version of Wuthering Heights roleplay (the one in pdf with the pictures, the character sheet and the rule about "what floats in the wind" that was reviewed by Ron, it still can be downloaded here (the link goes directly to the pdf, if you prefere going a web page go here)
Khimus:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on August 21, 2010, 09:44:07 AM
1. You've encountered the "new wave" in independent RPG design through games which are pretty late in the process. This is a very fine thing in many ways, as the games' entire texts have been through a lot of thoughtful design, and every game you mentioned is very well-written toward a particular audience in each case. But looking at your experiences and priorities, I'd like to suggest some free games that were written without the revolution supporting them, and instead were themselves the revolution.
They aren't as polished as the games you've mentioned, and they were certainly not written in a way that helps the reader through every little cognitive step to understand them. But if you think of the author as someone very much like yourself (as presented here in this thread), speaking directly to you instead of publishing a product for you, I think you'll find them very rewarding to play.
The titles I recommend (and this is to you personally, not a general announcement for anyone) are: (link on page), Wuthering Heights (goes directly to the game), and Ghost Light. Although none of them provide any help with actually GMing and organizing play (in other words, 100% different from Mouse Guard), again, if you simply read them and fill in what's missing with exactly what you like to do, I think you'll find them very rewarding.
2. I'm interested in some of the fictional content of the games you played with your uncle. Do you remember any of the characters you played, especially any which survived through several adventures or stories? This may seem like a strange question, but, if there was such a character, how did he or she change from the first time you played them compared to the final time?
1.I read both Wuthering Heights and Gost Light, and liked both of them (particularly Wuthering Heights). Basing the PCsī attributes on emotions is great, and WH seems tailored to lead to great and tragic moments, which is something I like.
I had already read pool, and I always liked it (I ordered The questing beast recently), it is so simple yet it allows a lot of interesting possibilities by empowering players to contribute to the story. This is maybe the game I liked most of the three, and will try to play it if I can. But my groupīs not very keen on trying different games constantly, so maybe I need another group just for trying indie games.
May I ask why you thought these games related to my experience with rpgs? Obviously, my games never looked like those, since I imagine those games were conceived from experiences with other published rpgs, and some discussion between rpg gamers (or were they created just by their autorsī effort?), which is not certainly my case then.
2. Well, I played two PCs with my uncle. Sub-zero (from Mortal Kombat) and a CIA agent in USA killing terrorists (not very pollitically correct, donīt you think? I was too young...). In the first case, the game was simply some fights conected, and there wasnīt much background or PCīs personality, just fighting. But Iīd tell my uncle what I wanted to do, heīd tell me how to roll, and then the outcome of the action. I donīt think we played this more than once.
In the second case (CIA agent), there was a little more character development. It wasnīt just the missions and the killing, there was the mission briefing, the healing process in the hospital after the mission, the character preparation for a trip to france (for a mission), the character buying stuff, reading books to learn stuff, etc. There was even a sort of tough choice, when the terrorists were taking hostages and I had to shoot while avoiding to kill them, and then shoot another one who had a jacket with explosives, and try not to fire them. I played two or three times with this character, and I think he added a sort of character development in the middle (when I read or trained or used a skill, I started to advance it, and after some time would get it to the next level), but that was all. The character hadnīt family or other friends, as far as I recall. The game was pretty much centered in the missions.
Between one game and the other, though, he added skills, character development, money, equipment, and something else I canīt remember.
Why are you interested in knowing that (just to know)?
Later on, I was a player on other homemade games. First, we played what a friend remembered of AD&D (that is, no rulebooks), and so it was really arbitrary, but sort of fun nonetheless. From then on, I started to be very exigent as a player. Iīd demand for consistency within the rules, try to learn them as I could, and then Iīd be a sort of palladin of playing to the rules.
Then we played another homemade game, set in LOTR, with a very peculiar system: it had consistency (attributes and skills affected rolls, weapons had its own damage, there were magic objects which influenced also rolls and damage, character development and levels, etc.), but all of it relied on the GM. Heīd decide the target number you needed to roll to succeed (that is, how attributes influenced rolls), how much damage you did on attacks, when would you advance skills, etc. It was a weird experience, because the GM was good but the basic rules werenīt (an example. To succeed on every action, the base number to achieve with a d20 was 18; otherwise, failure). But as the game developed and I started to become more demanding, the game expanded on its principles and improved, but we never threatened the GM power over it (like demanding the damage to be determined not by GM-fiat).
I carried that conduct along all games we played. In 3.0 D&D, I knew the rules better than my GM, and would correct him always I could. On school breaks, we RPGed also. I designed with a friend some rules for paranoia, and he GMed it. We played also a spanish civil war game I designed for a friend, and he GMed it.
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