60 Second RPG Reviews, Chapter 5: Fiasco.

 

60 Second RPG Reviews, Chapter 4: Little Fears

 

60 Second RPG Reviews, Chapter 3: Overlight

 

60 Second RPG Reviews, Chapter 2: Fate

 

The Triumphant Return of The Game Dork!

 It's been several years since I posted regularly. During that time, I developed a small following on TikTok. It has rekindled my love of talking about games and sharing new games, so I'm going to start posting again.

However, I'm going to shift to a video-based format. So when I post here, it will always be a link to a video I've uploaded to my YouTube channel.

So here's the first one: the first installment in my '60 Second RPG Reviews.' Surprising no one, it's an overview of Changeling: The Dreaming.

Enjoy!

Free Roleplaying Games

I have been engaged in a debate on social media about whether it's acceptable to refuse to try any roleplaying game that isn't Dungeons & Dragons. One of the arguments that I keep hearing people make is 'I'm poor, and roleplaying games are expensive.'

This is a valid point, but I have a solution.

Ok, I have a solution and a comment. First, the comment: Hasbro has worked very hard to make people believe that you have to have every book in order to play (and more to the point, that each player needs a copy of the Player's Handbook, at the very least) in order to take full advantage of Dungeons & Dragons. That is very much not true. Most games work just fine if all you have is a single copy of the core rules. Supplements are optional, and in some circumstances, it's annoying to share a single rulebook (I remember trying to level up a character in D&D 3.5 when sharing a single copy of the Player's Handbook, and it was a challenge to say the least), but many games don't require the rulebook as much when advancing characters.

But now, on to the solution. There are a ton of free roleplaying games out there. Let's talk about some of them.

RPG Review: Overlight

 

Almost two years ago, I discovered a roleplaying game that very much caught my attention. I bought it as soon as I was able, and I have not regretted doing so. Now, I am delighted to write a review for this game. Welcome, my friends, to Overlight from Renegade Game Studios.

An Overview of Overlight

Three thousand years ago, the guardian dragons that watched over the world debated whether humanity had earned the right to receive the eight keys to creation. Seven of the eight dragons voted 'no,' but the eighth dragon disagreed so strongly that he gave the keys to the humans in secret. When he did so, he warned them not to use the eighth key.

This was a mistake.

The humans used the eighth key, and the world was turned upside down. It shattered into seven shards, which are suspended in space above the Endless Sea, as the Overlight shines down from above. Each shard is home to a different species, and is characterised by different dominant terrain types.

Now, the ancient history has been lost, and none remember the world as it once was. But there are some, known as the Skyborn, who have an unusual relation with the Overlight. They are able to refract it into different colours, known as 'Chroma,' which they can manifest in wonderous magical effects.

Players take on the role of one of these Skyborn, and travel among the shards, trying to learn the truth of the world that has been lost to time.

First Point: Production Value

The book is beautiful. All the art was created by Kwanchai Moriya, and it is fantastic. It is colourful and whimsical, but with a hint of danger, which is fully in keeping with the game's theme. The right edges of the odd-numbered pages have coloured triangles to make it easier to navigate between chapters. 

My biggest gripe with the production is that it could be a little more accessible to vision-impaired people. The text is in a serif-font, except the section headings, which are sans-serif. Most text is black on a pale lavender. The exceptions are: the chapter on the different shards (the background is a different colour for each shard, though the background is still a very light shade), section headings (which are still on a pale lavender background, but are red or purple instead of black), and sidebars (which are on pale green backgrounds). These are not huge issues for the visually impaired, but they are issues.

Apart from that, the only complaint I have is that there is no image I could find of the Brendenol Tribe of the Banyari. As they are the most unique of the Banyari tribes in appearance, an illustration would have been nice.

Second Point: Setting

The world of Overlight is very different from ours. There is no sky above, only the constant shine of the Overlight itself. There is no sun, no moon, and the only stars are the ones that appear to shine in the Endless Sea that lies beneath the shards. This means that the topmost shard, Nova, never has any darkness. It is a sprawling desert with little shade, populated by the Novapendra: giant centipede-like creatures (which are the only sentient race in Overlight that are not available as a PC race).

Lower shards have 'night' periods resulting from the shadows of higher shards passing over them, which happens sporadically, as the shards float around in a complex pattern that only the most learned of scholars understand. The second shard, Zenith, has few periods of darkness, because there's only one shard above it. Zenith is a cold place of snowy mountains. It is populated by the Hamanu, giant ape-like creatures, and the Zenith Order Monks (who are technically the same species as the Harkeen, but the rules treat them as a separate race).

Below that is Quill, a lush land of jungles and rivers. Many years ago, Quill collided with Banyan, the shard below it, and shattered into many smaller chunks. Quill is home to the Teryxians, feathered dinosaur-like creatures who value learning and stoicism (despite their impassioned hatred of the Banyari). Banyan, meanwhile, is a land of forest, and the Banyari who live there are small furry creatures who are divided into six tribes. Each tribe has a different appearance, but most of them have a symbiotic relationship with a plant that grows around them and forms a sort of living wooden power suit.

The next shard is Hark. Whatever terrain it once had has been subsumed by the city, also called Hark, which covers the entire continent. It is a multi-layered affair, as the city was created by digging into the bedrock to carve the houses and other buildings directly into the shard itself. It is home to the Harkeen, who are basically humans. Also on Hark is the Council of Seven, representatives from all seven of the shards that serves as a de facto government for the world.

Below Hark is Veile, made up of rolling hills and lush fields punctuated by lakes. The Aurumel call this shard home; they are similar to the Harkeen, but taller, slender, and never seen without their masks. They are renowned craftsmen and artists.

The lowest shard is Pyre. It is a hard land of mountains and volcanoes. As the lowest shard, it is most prone to being in darkness as the other shards float above it, blocking out the Overlight from above. The Pyroi call this place home, and the difficult life that they eke out in the rocky terrain leads them to value strength and endurance. They are a warrior culture, as it is hard enough to survive as warriors on their hard and hot shard. They are massive, taller even than the Hamanu, with dark skin that sometimes tends towards red, two fingers and a thumb on each hand, and elephant feet.

There is so much more that can be said about the setting. It is one of the things I love about this game; the world itself is so vibrant, so unique, and so rich in unusual details that it would take a long time to describe it in any real depth.

The various races from Overlight.

Third Point: System

Core Mechanic

Characters do not have attributes. Instead, they have seven Virtues: Might, Vigor, Will, Compassion, Logic, Wisdom, and Spirit. These virtues function very similarly to attributes, though there are some ways in which they are less intuitive than attributes. Each Virtue is rated on a step scale: D6, D8, D10, or D12.

Each Virtue has three skills associated with it (except Might, which has only two, and Spirit, which works differently from the others). These skills are rated on the same step scale of D6 to D12 as the Virtues.

To make a roll, you take three of the dice rated for your Skill and three of the dice rated for the controlling Virtue, plus 1d4 to serve as the Spirit Die, and roll all of them together. Every two dice that come up as 6 or higher counts as a success level. For example, imagine that you were rolling your Persuasion, which was rated at D8, and was governed by the Will Virtue, which was rated at D10. In this case, you would roll 3d8 + 3d10 + 1d4. If two of those dice come up as 6 or higher, that's the basic level of success: Luminous Success. If four of those dice land on 6 or more, you have achieved the second level of success: Radiant. If all six dice results are 6 or higher, that's the third level of success: Brilliant.

The Spirit Die is a little different. Since it can't land on 6, it serves an auxiliary function. If the Spirit Die lands on 4, it will have different effects in different situations. If you are one die short of the next higher success level, it bumps you up to that level. If you score a Brilliant Success and the Spirit Die lands on 4, it promotes the success to the highest level: Legendary. Otherwise, it grants you a Spirit Point. Spirit Points can be spent in various ways, most often to fuel Chroma or to upgrade a success to the next highest level.

Keep in mind, this is just how skill rolls work. The system is slightly different if you're rolling to use a Chroma, making an opposed roll, rolling to attack in combat, or (and this is weird, because money is abstracted in Overlight) making a 'Wealth Test' to see if you can afford a purchase.

This is honestly my biggest concern about this game. As much as I love basically everything else about it, the core mechanic is so complicated and overwrought that it detracts from what is otherwise a nearly perfect game for me. Not only is it hard to remember how the different types of die rolls work, and the different functions of the Spirit Die in each different type of roll, but you need a lot of dice. At a minimum, you need a d4, 3d6, 3d8, 3d10, and 3d12 (if you're willing to roll a set of dice twice if the skill and Virtue have the same rating). Ideally, there'll be 1d4, 6d6, 6d8, 6d10, and 6d12, if all players share the dice. But 25 dice for one game is a bit extreme.

Chroma

The 'magic' in Overlight is called 'Chroma.' These are basically spell lists, but you're only allowed to take Chroma that are associated with your race or your core Virtue. As much as this game purports to be about characters who are remarkable when compared to the 'normal' denizens of their world, the Chroma don't seem terribly powerful to me. Also, given that the Chroma are powered by Spirit Points, which can be hard to come by, I wonder if it can be difficult to use the powers you do have.

Combat

This is the area in which most people are turned off by this game. Combat is highly abstracted. There is usually no defense roll (unless you spend a Spirit Point to take the Full Defense Manoeuvre, which entails forgoing your attack on that turn). There are no damage ratings for different attacks or different weapons; regardless of whether you are punching, kicking, biting, attacking with a sword, spear, arrow, or thrown rocks, you do the same amount of damage (which is determined by the number of dice that come up as 6 or higher on your attack roll).

The rules state that the focus of this game is storytelling, and they don't want that impeded by lengthy combats full or constant dice rolling. Which is fine for players like me, who are more interested in the story anyway, but for players who demand lots of tactics and detailed combat systems, it is a serious drawback. I have heard more than one player look at this game and say something like, 'I was interested until I read the combat rules, then I decided I had no desire to play.'

Final Thoughts on Overlight

I know that not everyone is going to be interested in this game. For many players, it's not fighty enough. For others, the overwrought core mechanic is too hard to get past. And for some, the setting is just too different. 

But despite the core mechanic not being to my liking, I am a big fan of the game. Much like my affection for The Dark Crystal, the world is so unique, so different, so creative, so innovative, that I can overlook the things I don't like about it. I love exploring new and different settings, especially when we have a fantasy setting that doesn't follow the usual elves/dwarves/goblins/etc pattern.

If this sounds interesting to you too, you can head over to the Renegade Studios website and take a look at what they have. Until next time,

Game on!

A Scale for Crunchiness in RPGs?

 Have I come back from hiatus?

No. No, I don't think so.

However, after writing the last two articles (review of Modiphius's two new rpgs), I found that I have some things I want to say. So I'm going to write a couple more articles, and then probably go radio silent again for... who knows how long?

To start with, I was thinking about crunchiness in rpgs. I started really thinking about it when I was reading the Fallout rulebook, and wanted to compare its crunchiness level to other games.

What is crunchiness, you may ask? Let me explain.

Or rather, let me describe the quivering morass that is people's differing opinions on what crunchiness is.

RPG Review - Fallout: The Roleplaying Game

 Last week, I emerged from my hiatus to post a review of a game that was generally sent to me by the publisher. But they were kind enough to send me two games to review, so today, I shall review the second of those games. 

So welcome, fellow gamers, to my review of Fallout: The Roleplaying Game.

I should take a moment here to point out that when you look on RPG Geek, this game is listed as 'Fallout 2d20.' Don't make the mistake of looking at 'The Fallout Roleplaying Game;' that appears to be a homebrew D20 version. This is the official licensed version.

RPG Review - Dune: Adventures in the Imperium

 It has been over a year since I last posted anything. But I return to you today with a very important post: a review of a new TTRPG.

I was recently contacted by a representative of Modiphius Entertainment asking me if I'd like some advanced review copies of their forthcoming games. Obviously, I jumped at the chance. So they generously sent me a review copy, which I will now review for you.

An Overview of Dune: Adventures in the Imperium

Modiphius returns to their 2d20 system for this outing into the world of Frank Herbert's sci-fi books. Although the rules can be used to play in any era of the saga, the core rulebook focuses primarily on the end of the Imperium era; that is, the rise of Paul Atreides. The game is clearly published as a tie-in with the Denis Villeneuve film, but can easily work for those who are more familiar with the books. Although there are plenty of rules for combat, the game is intended for a more narrative style of gaming that is in keeping with the epic 'galactic politics and intrigue' style of story that fits in with the books.

Ten Candles: A Unique Roleplaying Experience

I recently watched an interesting video entitled '10 Great RPGs That Aren't Dungeons and Dragons.' That was how I learned about Ten Candles, a zero-prep one-shot roleplaying game by Stephen Dewey and published by Cavalry Games. It sounded interesting, so I read the description to the Dork Spouse, who expressed immediate interest.

After purchasing a copy of the rules, I called up a couple of friends (who were suggested by the Dork Spouse), and we all arranged to play a game together. So we sat down to tell the tale of a quartet of doomed individuals, trying to escape from an airport during the end of the world. I later ran some other games for other groups, and now I would like to share my experiences with you.

Ten Candles is somewhere between a normal RPG, like Fate or GURPS, and the one-shot mostly-free-form storytelling venture that is Fiasco. Unlike Fiasco, there is a GM, and dice rolls are still used to determine success or failure, but more in the style of Fiasco, it takes place in a single session, and the goal is less about succeeding in a mission and more about telling a great story.

An Overview of Ten Candles

The GM chooses a module (there's no reason you couldn't also create one yourself). That's the extent of preparation. Then you sit down around a table with some friends and create characters. This is done with index cards; each character gets a virtue (a single word describing some positive characteristic), a vice (a single word describing a negative feature), a moment (something that could potentially happen to bring your character hope), and a brink (some unsavory or unethical thing that your character has done in the past, and that you are likely to do again in a dark moment). Each of these is written on a different card.

Then the players record a final message (in the style of 'whoever finds this message, I want you to know that we tried'). All lights are extinguished except for the ten candles in the centre of the table, and play begins.

The candles which give the game its name, and which serve as an important part of the game's core mechanic.

The premise of the game is this: ten days ago, the world went dark. The sun didn't rise, the stars and the moon vanished from the sky, and even our satellites seemed to disappear, cutting off most communication. Five days later, They arrived.

They are nebulous and ambiguous. The GM can't even make any decisions about who or what They are before the game begins, because the players influence what They are, how They behave, and what They are able to do. They change each game, and not even the GM knows exactly what they are until the game is underway (sometimes even later).

The one thing that is always true about Them is that They avoid the light. So long as you stay in the light, you're safe.

But after five days of burning through power reserves, the world's generators are blown out. Power failures are occurring with increasing rapidity. Your characters are in a safe place for the moment, but the lights are going to go soon. Whatever the goal of the chosen module is, you have to try to accomplish it whilst there's still time.

But here's the thing: Ten Candles is a game of tragic horror. Horror, because it's frightening. Tragic, because your characters are going to die.

The game always ends with every character dying.

At the end, after telling a story of tragic heroism, of struggling against the dying of the light only to die along with that light, the players listen to the recording they made at the beginning of the game. They then sit back and enjoy the tale they have told together.

Some Detail

Players roll a number of six-sided dice to accomplish any task or attempt to be successful in any sort of conflict. If any of those dice result in a six, the task is successful. If none result in a six, then not only does the task fail, but the scene ends, a candle is extinguished, the dice pool is reduced by one, and players undergo a brief ritual in which they 'establish truths;' that is, they make a single statement about the world that must be accepted by all players (including the GM) as truth. This can be as simple as 'we found our way to the house', or as grandiose as 'the government created Them as genetically engineered monsters to serve as soldiers.' Then play continues in the next scene.

Once a candle goes out, it may not be reignited. Whether this is intentional (as the result of a failed die roll) or accidental (someone sighed heavily and blew a candle out), it brings the players one step closer to the end.

In most cases, some dice can be rerolled by burning one of the cards that contain your character's virtue, vice, moment, or brink, and when you burn your moment, you may gain a hope die which is more powerful than a regular die. But generally, it's a simple case of 'roll all the dice and hope that at least one lands on six.' 

Additionally, when a roll is successful, it will often be the player, rather than the GM, who narrates the outcome of that roll. This gives the players greater control over the game than in most RPGs.

The Games We Played

In my first game, the Dork Spouse and I sat down with three of our friends to tell the tale of three people and a service dog trapped in Terminal A of an airport, after seeing Terminals B and C go dark. Then a voice over the intercom announced that there was a plane at Terminal D that would take off in three hours. 

A curmudgeonly old man, a flight attendant, and a greedy head of a non-profit organisation joined forces (along with the dog, who's human had vanished before the game began), to find a runway service truck they could drive to Terminal D. There, they found some more survivors and boarded the plane just before the lights went out in the terminal right before taking off. Afterwards, an argument amongst the passengers escalated until a fire broke out in the plane's cabin. The last surviving PC died in the ensuing crash.

All the players enjoyed the game. They said it was an interesting experience to play a game they knew from the beginning they weren't going to 'win.' And knowing that the characters were going to die allowed them to really explore their personalities.

The second game was about a group of former sorority sisters getting together at Christmas in an isolated rented mansion in upstate New York and trying to survive when cut off from civilisation. The third game was about people who had just moved to a new city to make a fresh start in life and were staying in a hostel as they try to find a permanent home when the lights went out. In that game, they had learned that there was an arena across town that was being set up as a refuge, and the local schools were operating as waystations, and all they had to do was find a way to make it there.

The Point of Ten Candles

Obviously, that's a double-meaning expression. On one hand, the point of Ten Candles is to tell a great story. But the larger question: 'what's the point in playing a game in which you know before you even begin that your character is going to die? You can't win, so why bother playing at all?'

You may as well have asked why members of Star Fleet take the Kobayashi Maru test. It's not about winning. It's about what you learn from the experience.

From the rulebook:

It is a game about loss, but it is also a game about hope. Through it all, you must remember this: Though your characters will die, you must have hope that they will survive. That hope will live on, even in the end. But hope can be lost when those who guard it are pushed to the edge. It is in those moments that the darkness around becomes the darkness within, and that is when They have truly won.

And that, I think, is the real 'point' of Ten Candles. By telling stories in darkness, we strengthen the light. By playing games of fear, we reinforce our own strength. Or, to put it another way (and in the words of G.K. Chesterton), 'Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.'

Ten Candles is not about telling stories in which there is no hope. It is about telling stories in which, in the end, hope is all that's left.

So that's my impression of Ten Candles. I recommend you give it a try! Until next week, remember as always to

Game on!

PinkFae Archive #51: Fate Core: An Overview of a Great Roleplaying Game

We are getting closer to the end of the PinkFae archives! After today's entry, there are only three more archives left!

This article was originally published on 28 January 2017.

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I've played a lot of roleplaying games in my life. I've talked about some of them here before, like Changeling: The Dreaming. The first I ever played was Marvel Super Heroes from TSR. I've tried the big, well known ones like Dungeons and Dragons. I've also played many small obscure ones, like Albedo, The Whispering Vault, and Tales from the Floating Vagabond. Although I'd heard of the Fate system, it wasn't until last month that I got to actually play it. A friend invited me to play in a two-session Dresden Files RPG game, which uses Fate. He then loaned me his copy of the Fate Core book.

I am a convert.

Let me tell you why.

PinkFae Archive #40: Descriptive vs Statistic: An Evolution in RPGs

Today's article is another entry from the PinkFae archives. It was originally published on 5 November 2016.

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 Last week, when I posted the interview with Whitney Beltrán, I had to cut out a lot of material. The transcript of our conversation was over 5,000 words long. I usually try to post articles of around one thousand words. Generally, I keep a thousand five hundred as an upper limit. Even cutting out entire sections of the conversation, it was hard to get the article down to two thousand words. This is especially disappointing to me, as there were some really interesting topics that I had to remove entirely. The interview I posted absolutely stands on its own. It does a great job of communicating the important aspects of the game. But one of the topics I had to eliminate was a discussion of the evolution of roleplaying games. In particular, we discussed how roleplaying games are becoming less statistics-based, and more descriptive.

PinkFae Archive #11: Roleplaying: An Adventure in Imagination

As I work on reposting the articles that I wrote for PinkFae, we come to entry number 11. This post was originally published on 13 March 2016. Enjoy!

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I have talked at some length about board games, and a little about one specific roleplaying game, but I haven't yet talked in general about my favourite kind of games: roleplaying games. It's not surprising that I enjoy RPGs; as I've mentioned here before, I am a storyteller player type, which means that I most enjoy games that follow Freytag's pyramid, especially if they involve character growth and the development of interpersonal relationships. Given the right gaming group, roleplaying games are the best vehicle for telling stories as a game that you can hope to find. So I'm going to talk today about this wonderful type of game.

GMing for New Players

A local medieval re-enactment group recently held a special event, and I chose to take part. Specifically, the group hosted an RPG night; several people volunteered to GM a one-shot introductory game, and the others chose one of those games to play. The idea was to give veteran gamers a chance to play, if only briefly, and to give players an opportunity to experience a new system, and to give newbies the prospect of getting a taste of tabletop roleplaying games for the first time.

In case you're curious, there were six total GMs, running the following games: Dungeons and Dragons (because of course), Pathfinder, Starfinder, a Star Wars game using a modified Warhammer 40K system, Changeling: The Dreaming, and Fate Core. Surprisingly enough, I was not the one running Changeling: someone else had already offered to run that one, so I ran Fate instead.

But here's what I thought was interesting: a good friend of mine was very nervous about playing. She ended up joining my Fate game, but in the weeks leading up to the event, she asked me several times if it would be a problem that she had never really gamed before (technically, she had, but only in a limited way... more on that in a moment). I reassured her that I was very familiar with GMing for newbies, and had introduced quite a lot of people to the hobby over the years.

Roleplaying Games Besides Dungeons and Dragons

I was playing Say Anything with some friends recently. The basic idea behind this game, for those who don't already know, is that the players take turns being the judge, and the judge reads a question off one of the cards in the deck (the questions always refer to the judge; for example, 'What is my favourite brand of beer?' or 'Where in the world would I like to travel that I haven't already been?'). The other players write down possible answers on small dry-erase boards. The judge decides and secretly records which answer best applies. The players then vote on which answer they think the judge chose. They get points for voting for the answer chosen by the judge, and the person who wrote the answer chosen by the judge gets points as well.

On one of John's turns, he read the question, 'What game do I think is most overrated?' There were several good answers, but the one he chose was Dungeons and Dragons. The reason he gave is because there are many roleplaying games (of varying levels of quality) in existence, but so many people (even many gamers) have never heard of any of them apart from D&D (or, these days, Pathfinder, which was based on D&D so may as well count as D&D anyway).

John went on to describe how whenever he talks to people and tells them that he enjoys playing roleplaying games, they always respond with, 'Oh, you mean like Dungeons and Dragons?'

He went on to describe how annoying it always is to have to explain, 'Well, yes, it is like Dungeons and Dragons, but it's not like Dungeons and Dragons because the system is different, the setting is different, the object is different...' Because of that, because of how tired he gets having to tell people that he doesn't play D&D because there are so many other and (in his opinion) better RPGs out there, he ranks D&D as the most overrated game.

Board Game Review: Conspire

Ok, let's be totally honest. This is not a board game. It really fits into the category of a roleplaying game. But, much like Fiasco, Conspire does not fit into the traditional roleplaying game format. It's not intended for long-form stories that take multiple sessions to complete. There's no GM, no character sheets, it doesn't even use any dice.

But although it technically is a roleplaying game, in that players create a role and play the part of that role in free-form storytelling, it is much better suited to the sort of settings in which one would be likely to play a board game.

Besides, I enjoyed the heck out of this game, and I really wanted to write a review for it. So I'm going to.

One-shot, Short Term, Long Term: Campaign Length

I find myself rereading some of my Order of the Stick books again. Because, well, it's such a great story. There are five volumes of printed comics, plus two prequel books and a bonus book of strips that ran in the ill-fated Dragon Magazine and other assorted sundries. In addition, there are (at the time of this writing) 147 online strips that haven't yet been collected into printed volumes. Once it gets to the end of the current story arc, that will be volume 6. I predict there will likely by 7 total volumes, with a small chance that the total may end up at 8.

In Volume 3 of the printed books (War and XPs), author Rich Burlew wrote in his prologue that he used Babylon 5 as a model for how to write an epic-length story. He mentions the way that little bits of at-the-time seemingly irrelevant details that turned out to be super important bits of foreshadowing in the series' final episode. He refers to that show extensively as a guide for how to map out a long-term story.

On the other end of the spectrum, I will be running a one-shot tabletop RPG tomorrow. I expect it to last a few hours. In those handfuls of hourglass sand, there will be a complete story, with all the necessary elements: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement.

Tales from the Loop

In 2015, Swedish musician/artist Simon Stålenhag ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the publication of his art book, Tales from the Loop. In this book, which was completed in 2016, the reader will find a wealth of paintings that show suburban Sweden in the 1980s, but with the addition of a number of sci-fi elements such as enormous technologically-advanced towers, magnetically levitating cargo freighters, debris from failed particle accelerator experiments, robots of various sizes, and even an occasional dinosaur brought forward through time portals.

This was so wildly popular that in November of 2016, a new Kickstarter was launched to turn these paintings into a roleplaying game. This one was also a great success, raising almost forty times their target. Thus, in early April of 2017, backers received their copy of the core rulebook.

My good friend John has a copy of this game. He has suggested running a game for me and some others, so he loaned me his book.

Playing the Villains

A few months ago, I posted an entry about the various forms of heroism that can be encountered in mythology and literature. In it, I took a brief look at some of the different definitions of what it means to be a hero.

But what if we look at the other side of the proverbial coin? What about playing the villain?

This is not a new idea. In 1971, author John Gardner used one of the primary villains of the Beowulf saga as the protagonist of his own novel, reframing the story so that it was no longer a simple clear-cut case of a hero fighting against evil. A few years ago, Disney reworked their Sleeping Beauty film to tell the story from the point of view of the villain, whom they transformed from a malevolent being into a redeemable character motivated by revenge. Alan Moore's comic Watchmen was a deep look at the nature of the 'good vs evil' trope to examine the real world version of the phenomenon. Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles recasts the monsters of folklore into dynamic characters with motivations and goals of their own, not always driven purely out of malice. This concept was further explored in the first of the World of Darkness games: Vampire: The Masquerade, as well as most of the follow-up games. Then, in an additional twist, the antagonists of the primary character groups in those games were expanded as well, to give players the option to play characters who were seen as monsters by the monsters. For example, in Vampire, where the monsters become the protagonists, the Player's Guide to the Sabbat allowed players to take on the role of the antagonists (the hedonistic, often malevolent counter-sect to the 'good guy' sect of the Camarilla). This trend continued in Wraith: The Oblivion with the Spectres sourcebook, and in Changeling: The Dreaming with The Autumn People and The Shadow Court (examining two different version of 'the enemies' of the fae).