Moving forward with the OSR

Let's get one thing clear: Zak is not the OSR. Though nobody can deny the impact and influence he's had on the OSR, this is in the past. I've seen some people proclaim that the OSR is now essentially dead in the water. That innovation is over and it's time to move on.

I simply don't believe this is true.

The community is as important as it's ever been. It's as innovative as its ever been. Look at Luka Rejec's Ultraviolet Grasslands (Exalted Funeral Press) and tell me that's not an exciting slice of fried gold. Look at Black Pudding (Random Order Creations). This year Romance of the Perilous Land will be the first OSR game from Osprey Games, owned by Bloomsbury.

The imminent closure of Google Plus has ignited a resurgence in the blogosphere. Without a centralised community, we've become nomadic, moving from blog to blog conversing, challenging and celebrating. This is a visionary community, one that will move forward with positivity. There are thoroughly decent people doing thoroughly decent things and this should continue.

Not only will the OSR survive - it will thrive.

An argument for cultures instead of race in roleplaying

Image: Wizards of the Coast

Alexis at the Tao of D&D recently wrote about D&Ds propensity, particularly in 5e, to force identity onto a PC through what essentially amounts to 'race fluff'. This got me thinking about why culture is a favourable alternative to race in games.

Race is a loaded term and in roleplaying games it tends to put you in a box. As an elf you're more sensitive towards nature, you're more musical or whatever. As a dwarf you dislike elves, you can recognise underground masonry etc. God forbid you come across a goblin trying to parley because your Paladin's having none of it. Goblin equals evil bad thing to be killed. Essentially, things tend to get racist.

I'd argue that culture is a better alternative to race. Culture covers traditions, customs, language and heritage without having to hang onto a particular race. An elf could be integrated into dwarf culture. They're still an elf, but they may not have anything to do with typical elf culture. This is a simple way of looking at it, but it still sort of talks race. Let's take it one step further.

The Tharesh culture are historically miners. While Tharesh started mainly as dwarves, die to trade and travel the Tharesh count many humans and gnomes among their numbers. Growing up in this culture, people are more likely to be sympathetic to rocks, understand the value of precious minerals and know the great lays of Udrick of the Great Pick. Mechanical bonuses can apply to these, but they're never predicated on race.

Taking it further still. Your gnome bard had grown up in Tharesh culture, but has since moved to the warmer southern climes to Dwilt, integrating into Al Tal'hu culture. This is a seafaring culture of all races, many of whom worship Venhara, the sea goddess, and many have traditionally grown vineyards, so they understand well the southern wines. Here we see a patchwork culture - our gnome has heritage as Tharesh, but it interweaves with Al Tal'hu. This could mean taking some aspects of both cultures mechanically.

Races are static, but culture is ever flowing. Characters could pick up aspects of cultures as they travel around - whatever resonates with them. Pathfinder 2e changed race to ancestry, but this is simply a difference in words. Culture still has room for racial heritage - but this can be as important as the player wants it to be.

Why the Genesys system is a great storytelling tool

Image: Fantasy Flight Games

Around three months ago my group decided to kick off a game of Edge of the Empire, with myself at the GM helm. For those unfamiliar, Edge of the Empire is a Star Wars roleplaying game from Fantasy Flight, now one of three variations that focus on a specific Star Wars theme, albeit with the same core system called Genesys. EotE is all about smuggling, roguery and netting a big payday even if you have to break the law.

Regular readers will know that our game for the past four or so years has been Pathfinder. We love Pathfinder for its tactical combat and granular character creation, but we decided that, after a stint with PF2, we should try something else. Being big Star Wars fans, we wanted to give Fantasy Flight a shot to wow us with their system. We knew we weren't going to get the crunch of PF (fine by me) but with the vast array of races and character types in the galaxy the players should still get a good character creation experience.

We're now three sessions into our second adventure, Beyond the Rim, and I'm happy to report that we're having a great ride. The system is built from the ground up for cinematic gameplay, which took us a bit to get used to at first. It's full on theater of the mind, rather than the prolonged miniatures combat we're used to. The dice are configured in a way that outcomes are never binary, but have degrees of success and failure, with even big wins having the potential to carry what the game calls 'threats' - which is where things can go wrong. Ultimately the system aids am emergent storytelling experience. Because outcomes can swing in so many directions, the GM or group can determine how the story is affected. Couple this with light side and dark side points, which can be used by the players and GM to add new elements to the game, what you have is a rich system that facilitates cooperation between players and GM in coming up with all kinds of story curve balls and plot points. Take a short encounter from last week's game. The players were being stalked in the jungle by a ferocious nexu (think a four-eyed tiger with a massive mouth). The nexu pounced on one of the PCs, rolling a success to hit, but a couple of threats. This meant something was going to go a tad wrong for the beast. We all decided that the PC had managed to grab it and hold it towards another PC, who would gain a bonus die in order to help him try shoot the nexu. It worked - the nexu's brains went everywhere. Afterwards, the players realised that it was getting dark and they were in a jungle without supplies. They had previously tried and failed to make torches from rags and tree sap, leaving them vulnerable to night prowlers. One of the players spent a light side point to basically change the game world by saying that nexu blood is known to be a tad flammable. They soaked some rags, wrapped them around some branches and created a couple of torches.

This is a really small example, but it illustrates how the Genesys system operates. It facilitates a story that can unfold in multiple directions. Sure, the strange dice take some getting used to and fans of crunch may be left wanting, but for that cinematic feel Genesys is a great choice of game.

Let's talk about how incredible Break!!! looks

Break!!! could well be the most beautiful game not yet released. I've been following the game's development since the designers began blogging about the creation process in mid 2014, seeing it blossom like a pink candy rose into what looks to be a sumptuous anime-inspired experience.

Those breezy pastel brush strokes are courtesy of Grey Wizard, a phenomenal artist whose style evokes fantasy manga by way of the NES. Mr Wizard is one half of the talented Break!!! team, whose scribe is Reynaldo Madrinan, though both take design duties on the game.

Looking at the sample pages the team has blogged, you'll notice its ruthless design efficiency. This is a manual designed to help readers learn to play, littered with helpful markers, keys and uncluttered layouts. It's the best pathfinding I've seen in a roleplaying book so far. It looks like a videogame and boardgame manual had a child.

Break!!! sits somewhere in the modern fantasy genre. Races include the cat-like Rai-Neko, the 'perfect' Promethean, and the orcish Bruun, while players can also take on the roles of blue collar workers, retail workers and desk jockeys. I'm not super into anime, but dear lord does this game interest me. Following the game's development, you'll see how much of a labour of love Break!!! is. Recent pictures show dabblings with a die-cut 3d world map. It's gorgeous, as everything I've seen in the game has been.

Needless to say, I'm waiting with bated breath for Break!!!. 

Images property of Grey Wizard and Reynaldo Madrinan. Used with permission.

The arrival of The Thin Priests

The following is a concept for my upcoming game Blackmace.

Our lady of perpetual sickness, the matron of buboes, the queen of filth. Her rusted scythe carved the Pit where she resides with her Broken Horde. Worshipped by the Fetid Gorgers, so named for their proclivity to devour diseased flesh in wretched festivals. Her Flayed Knights, stinking of corpse grease, emerge from swamp ichor, screaming into unlife, hunting warm bodies to glut on the scarlet wine of their meat vessels. These are but frontline soldiers of her eternal war on the living - a war she will inevitably win through the atrophy of time.

Disease is her purview. Cities fall and civilisations crumble under the spread of rot. The Fetid Gorgers crow mockingly as the serfs are instructed, with the din of a tin bell, to bring out their dead. Ravens pick at bloody sinew.

 The Thin Priests arrive, swinging pink clouded incense on creaking chains, their faces hidden by pallid masks. Suddenly blades gleam in flickering torchlight, a gorger head rolls into the gutter. The Thin Priests don't speak - rapid taps on their breastplates signal their next move. Tok tok tok. The ravens launch into the night. Gorgers disperse, finding black nooks in which to crawl spiderlike, their crooked speech becoming rasping whispers.

Dawn arrives with the hymn of the thrush. The Thin Priests have long since moved on.

Taking a look at Fours, a new minimalist RPG from Ken St. Andre

It's been a while. Time for the first post of 2019.

So, yeah, Ken St. Andre has released a new game. He dropped this sneaky whisper of a PDF onto DriveThrurpg, the rogue. It's called Fours and it's a super minimalist game that spawned from Ken's conversation with John Wick around how few rules a game can have to be still considered a roleplaying game. Let's dig in!

First off - the cover was designed by Gilead (presumably not of Handmaid's Tale fame). It's a Danforth-esque line drawing of a warrior lady. Pretty nice stuff. Nothing fancy, but I suppose it's minimalist.

Characters have four attributes: smarts, intangibles, power and health. They also have a class and basically a list of stuff the GM agrees they're allowed to have with them.

Classes are Thief, Warrior, Avatar (demigods who don't know they're demigods) and Wizard, with only the latter two able to use magic. Each is linked with a card suit and character creation uses random card numbers to get your attributes, with bonuses depending on your class.

I don't want to give too much away with the rules otherwise I'll end up writing the full game out, but conflict is pretty interesting, working on either a success/fail basis by picking a random card - if it's your suit then you succeed; or a struggle/compare basis where cards are compared, added to attributes and the highest wins. Aces are critical successes and deuces are catastrophic failures. In combat, the lowest total is deducted from the highest to get amount of damage done. Interesting system, but I'm not too sold on being only able to succeed 25% of the time on average. This is also how magic works - the caster freeforms it by saying an effect and they have to pick a card matching their suit.

Otherwise everything else is GM fiat, but the GM must respect the outcome of the cards.

So it seems that Fours was a bit of an experiment in minimalism, which I'm totally on board with having created In Darkest Warrens, Wired Neon Cities and Shatter6 to basically answer the same question Wick posed to Ken. I'm intrigued, but maybe not enough to play it. Still, I have the feeling that the system is (ironically) begging to be fleshed out into something bigger.

You can pay what you want for the Fours pdf.