The great Matt Colville had a stream a while back in which he designed (or began to design) a pantheon of deities for his campaign setting, which got me thinking about fantasy religions and what makes them good or not. So I'm going to give more thoughts about that in this post, but before I get into that, I want to begin with how Colville began his stream. Colville made the claim that you don't actually need a fully developed pantheon of deities or a complex religious system for a fantasy game, especially D&D or one of its variants. After all, the game mechanical component for clerics is a set of wholly abstract "domains"--all you really need to do as a cleric is select the "Light" domain, and you never have to worry about the gods or worship or whatever (that's exactly how 13th Age tells you to handle it, by the way).
Colville is 100% right. If fantasy religions are not something that the DM/GM is interested in, it can be completely hand-waived away. There are a ton of things that are just hand-waived in fantasy worlds--here's a great series on all of the problems of D&D economies, for example--and it can absolutely be done with religion, as 13th Age proves. Or, in some cases an even easier solution than hand-waving is to just pick something "off the shelf" and stick it in the campaign. That's what Matt Mercer did when designing his campaign world for Critical Role--all the gods are from the 4e default pantheon, plus Sarenrae from Pathfinder/Golarion (I noticed he got rid of the proper names for those gods and goddesses in the Tal'Dorei campaign book, presumably for copyright reasons, but I have to say I like the titles they came up with better than the original names). The fact that Mercer didn't come up with the Raven Queen didn't in any way lessen the storytelling he was able to do around the Raven Queen. World builders, especially folks starting out, can easily get into the trap of thinking they have to build everything from scratch, making the task seem overwhelming. Instead, I think the way to go is to work on what is interesting to you and then just borrow the rest from someplace else, or just ignore it and move on.
So, you don't need to think deeply about fantasy religions and how they would function. But some people are really into religions as an aspect of world building, and I am one of those people. When I am not writing about D&D, I am writing about real-world religious issues, and faith is a big part of my life, so it is not surprising that this is an area of interest for me. When I get a chance to play (as opposed to running the game, which is most of the time), I tend to play clerics or paladins, and I am one of those players who does care about the temple rituals and mechanics of the fictional faith, not just the domain and cool powers my character gets. And while Colville is right that much of the world building surrounding religion is really for the benefit of the world builder and not the players/the game, you should do the things that are fun for you, and fun for me is thinking about how to make the fantasy religion seem as "real" as possible.
So, this series is going to take a look at fantasy religions, how they work, and some things to think about when you are designing a fantasy religion or implementing a pre-existing one into a campaign. To make things a little more comprehensible, I'm going to focus on five fantasy religions as exemplars--the religious system of Exandria as described by Matt Mercer in Critical Role, the "Faerunian pantheon" for the Forgotten Realms (set forth, most recently, in The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide) and the religions of Eberron, both by Wizards of the Coast; the gods and religions of Midgard by Kobold Press; and the OG of religious presentation, Glorantha. I could have picked others, either inside or outside of the greater D&D sphere, but I went with those because the Forgotten Realms is the default campaign world for D&D 5e, and thus the Faerunian pantheon is the default religious system for people playing the most popular tabletop RPG, Critical Role is the most public vehicle for D&D and shows how religions can be used in the context of actual game play, and the other three are, in my judgment, particularly interesting and/or outstanding implementations of fantasy religions.
But, to begin, I want to talk about Critical Role and how Mercer uses gods and religion in his world. Note that I'm going to try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but some of these discussions require some generalize spoilers of broad show themes. I am also far, far behind on Season Two of Critical Role, so if Mercer has changed things up in his presentation of religion, I will likely miss all of that--this is primarily coming from Season One.
As mentioned above, Mercer borrowed the "Dawn War" pantheon from 4e and dropped them into Exandria. The Dawn War pantheon itself is a mix of deities from previous D&D sources (Moradin, Corellon, Pelor, Bane, Lolth, etc.) with a handful of new entities to fill gaps (like the Raven Queen). The Dawn War gods and goddesses are perfectly serviceable on their own, but ultimately they are just names on a piece of paper. What is interesting about the Exandria deities is how they fit into the world and how religion functions for people in the context of the world.
The general presentation is that each deity is worshiped in the context of its own, more or less self-contained religion. Pike, as a cleric of The Everlight (Sarenrae), is part of a church of the Everlight that is dedicated only to the Everlight. Pike's religion is different from the religion of Lady Kima, who is part of the Church of the Platinum Dragon (Bahamut), with different rituals, edicts, organizational structure, etc. Now, because the ethos of the Everlight and the ethos of the Platinum Dragon are similar, or at least not in direct conflict most of the time, these two religious institutions can cooperate and co-exist, as we see in a place like Vassalheim. This is because, in part, it seems pretty clear that the members of the Church of the Everlight accept the idea that the Platinum Dragon exists as a separate divine entity, and visa versa. Some folks are on Team Everlight, and some folks are on Team Platinum Dragon, and while I would imagine that folks on Team Everlight would prefer that more folks got on board with Team Everlight, the existence of folks worshiping the Platinum Dragon does not raise any internal theological problems for the Church of Everlight. Likewise, while the worshipers of the Betrayer Gods are bad and opposed by the Church of the Everlight, everyone accepts that the Betrayer Gods actually exist, and are broadly speaking peers to entities like the Everlight in terms of power and scope.
The usual critique raised with a set-up like this is that it doesn't reflect how polytheism functioned in actual historical cultures, and that's true. But Exandria's religious system as portrayed in the show is not polytheism. The closest real world technical term is "henotheism," though even there Exandria's system doesn't perfectly line up with the real-world examples usually offered for henotheism because many of those examples (Hinduism of the Vedas, for example) teach that all of the different gods are ultimately different manifestations of the same unitary principle (whereas, again, it seems pretty clear that the Everlight and the Platinum Dragon are "objectively" different entities). Actually the closest, if controversial, parallel to Exandria's religion is the way pre-exilic Judaism talks about the God of Israel. If you read the Book of Exodus without the later, definitively monotheist pre-suppositions of later Judaism, the most neutral interpretation is that the God of Israel is a particular deity for a discrete group of people, one who is better and more awesome than the gods of Egypt, but that the gods of Egypt are real entities with real power. Exandria's deities lack the hard-edged exclusivism of the God of Israel of Exodus (at least, in general), but the concept is basically the same.
So, there are some parallels to what Mercer is doing to the real world. But, much more to the point, this system makes a great deal of sense as a fantasy religious system for a D&D game, both from the point of view of the logic of people in the fictional world and from a meta-game perspective of real people sitting down to a table to play D&D.
From the meta-game perspective, the primary advantage is that religion in Exandria more or less works the way religion works in the real world now, or at least in the broadly pluralistic West. If you live in the 21st Century West, you are familiar with a religious framework in which people are members of one of a set of discrete religions, each of which has a singular focus of worship, doctrine, organizational structure, and ethos. Notwithstanding the real distinctions between those religions, by and large they are able to co-exist and work together around broadly similar goals--Episcopalians and Presbyterians and Jews go to different houses of worship, but otherwise generally get along fine and have at least compatible world-views. That sociology of religion is the result of a complex series of ideas and events, all of which entirely anachronistic if projected back onto a quasi-medieval or quasi-ancient world. But, so what? It's familiar to the people sitting down to play the game, and doesn't require them to take onboard anything about how actual religions work in the real world outside of their generalized experience. And if the DM and the players don't really care all that much about religious questions all that much anyway, then you are not adding any unnecessary mental work to anyone.
But there is also in-game logic to this system. First, the Dawn War pantheon is particularly well-suited for this sort of set up, because the different gods and goddesses are both broadly defined and somewhat overlapping. In doing so, it avoids the problem of explaining why non-adventurers would ever be members of a particular god's church. Consider the deity Bane as portrayed in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Bane is the god of tyranny and hatred, and (at least at one point--I'm not up on current Realms canon) was the exclusive religion of the city of Zhentil Keep. Now, clerics of Bane make perfect sense, both from an in-world sense and from a story sense, as they are part of a powerful organization that believes it should rule everything in the name of a god who should rule everything. But imagine being a shopkeeper living in Zhentil Keep--how does worshiping Bane benefit you or impact your life? You could imagine buying into a kind of quasi-nationalism or manifest destiny idea--we are going to rule everything in the name of our god, and I am part of that larger struggle. But manifest destiny doesn't put food on the table or insure that childbirth will be safe or any of the other real-world tasks that occupy the bulk of people's lives. If the religion of Bane is only about tyranny and hatred, it doesn't really speak much to the day-to-day experience of an ordinary person. And if ordinary people would never join your church, then it isn't much of a church. These narrow faiths work better as cults, consisting of only dedicated elite worshipers.
By contrast, the non-Betrayer Gods in Exandria mostly cover a wide set of abstract ideas. The Platinum Dragon is about justice and a certain vision of order and stability; so is Erathis the Lawbearer, and Moradin the Allhammer. Those visions are probably different, but all of them could be the basis for a vision of society and social order, and so you could imagine any of them being a respectable religion for the Exandrian equivalent of the dutiful, upwardly mobile bourgeoisie. Likewise, farmers might follow the Dawnfather or the Wildmother or maybe even the Archeart. The only rather narrow portfolio among the Prime Deities is the Raven Queen, and even there life and death is fundamental to the experience and world view of people, so it would have broad applicability. The point is that these religions are broad enough to encompass regular people doing regular things, and thus they make sense for regular people to belong to. And the evil Betrayer Gods like Bane are more like cults, which makes sense in light of their more narrow focuses. Many folks will not care about any of this, but to me this adds verisimilitude to the setting--a place where people live, as opposed to simply a platform for adventurers.
The other reason this structure makes sense in the context of a D&D campaign setting is that it takes into account the radically different religious epistomology of a fantasy world. All real world religions must grapple with limitations on knowledge of the divine--how do we know about God/the gods? In a D&D world, this complex question becomes much simpler, because you can just ask the gods direct questions and have at least the possibility of getting direct answers. The level of mystery surrounding divine things is radically reduced, at least so long as you retain the default D&D assumptions about things like planar travel, spells like Contact Other Plane, and the like (which is why, as we will see, Eberron and Midgard both charge those default assumptions in order to preserve the elements of mystery).
Sure, the gods seem to intentionally give limited or incomplete information to worshipers--the folks on Lady Kima's team that went into Kraghammer probably would have benefited from more detailed intelligence from the Platinum Dragon beforehand. But the fact that you can go to the gods and ask them questions suggests that religions in such a world will have more concrete, consistent information about the nature of the gods. If there was some church somewhere that taught that the Everlight and the Platinum Dragon were actually the same entity, Pike could definitively clear up the matter directly with the Everlight when she spoke to her on the Island of Renewal. Splinter movements, doctrinal drift, schisms, heresies--all of those things that are common in real-world religions would be much, much less common in a world where powerful religious leaders can just submit disputed questions directly to the source.
Likewise, being a low or mid-level cleric in Exandria (or any other fantasy world where you can talk to the gods directly) is much more like working for the government than it is being a part of the religion as we know it. If you are a mid-level official in the bureaucracy, you are not directly communicating with the President on a daily basis, but you know that it is possible to ask the leader a question and get a concrete direct answer, even if you must do so through proxies. In fact, in D&D worlds like Exandria, it is actually easier to do that than it would be in the real world, as the deity can functionally see everything that is going on and talk to multiple people at once. So, you don't necessarily need to go "up the chain of command" to get your answer, and it would be much harder for the "telephone game" problem to crop up (someone accidentally or intentionally distorting the message that gets passed down from the leader).
This means, in turn, that religions would be much more consistent from place to place and culture to culture. It makes sense that the worship of the Prime Deities is more or less the same across continents, especially where you have one central locus of religious worship and authority that has endured and maintained continuity from when the gods walked the land, Vassalheim. But, again, Vassalheim displays a relationship between the gods that is more like the World Council of Churches than like a classic polytheistic pantheon--an alliance of essentially independent organizations as opposed to an interconnected and inter-related set of cults. This center of gravity for religious practice would reduce cultural differences and drift, because there would be a singular, "objective" reference point for the proper way to follow the Everlight, the Platinum Dragon, et al.
The bottom line is I think Critical Role's presentation of religion is one of the most sensible and "realistic" presentations of fantasy religion assuming you are working from all of the baseline D&D assumptions. "Fantasy World Council of Churches" is probably what you would end up getting if the gods were directly accessible, you had an array of multi-cultural, semi-overlapping deities, and long-term continuity of practice and worship. If you are looking for a model for how to run religion in a campaign world that uses all of the D&D-isms, particularly if you and your players don't want to invest much time or mental bandwidth in the religious system, what Mercer has done is a great place to begin. It's a great example of "leaning in" to the rules material in building your setting, as opposed to trying to jam a historic model into a fantasy world.
Showing posts with label Midgard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Midgard. Show all posts
Friday, November 8, 2019
Tuesday, August 7, 2018
The "Seven Cities" Campaign--Basics
I've been working on an idea for a new type of campaign, which I am calling (for now at least) a "Seven Cities" campaign, after the Seven Cities of the Midgard campaign setting where I plan to set the first incarnation of this idea. By "new type of campaign," what I mean is a new type of campaign structure--the organizing principle that undergirds how the campaign functions.
To explain what I have in mind with a Seven Cities campaign, we have to start with a discussion of a "West Marches" campaign. The idea of a "West Marches" campaign was developed by Ben Robbins. (Matt Colville has a good video explaining more about the idea). As Robbins describes it, a West Marches campaign is designed to do two primary things (1) encourage/force the players to be more pro-active in directing the campaign, as opposed to having them just show up and wait for the GM to shovel content at them, and (2) be more flexible from a scheduling perspective, accommodating the fact that it is hard to get everyone to a single session at a fixed time. To do this, a West Marches campaign uses a large group of players (at least eight, and preferably in the teens) who group up into more normal sized adventuring parties and self-schedule sessions with the GM. The adventures that the specific group will undertake are selected by the group from among a list of possibilities put forth by the GM in the form of a common "treasure map" that all of the players have access to. As an example, Bob decided he wants to go to the Goblin fort in the Dark Woods, so he rounds up Susie and Pete and Mary, and they schedule Tuesday at 8 p.m. to get together with the GM to go to the Goblin fort. Meanwhile, Steve and Dave and Karen want to defeat the trolls over in the Bleak Marsh, so they schedule Saturday at 1 pm to go do that.
The Seven Cities campaign is a deconstruction of the idea of a West Marches campaign. I want to keep both of the goals of the West Marches campaign, especially the first one, and put the onus on the players to drive play and determine the direction of the adventure. However, (1) I don't have enough players to pull off a West Marches style game, and (2) instead of a exploration focused "hex crawl" which you get in a West Marches game, I want to do a more story-driven style of game, with an emphasis on politics and a world where events move forward as the campaign progresses. What I want, from a narrative perspective, is for the campaign to be like Game of Thrones, with multiple storylines going on at once in a shared, dynamic world.
One of the problems conceptually with creating a Game of Thrones-style story in a tabletop RPG is the spotlight problem. In a TV show, if you want to have an episode that focuses on a particular character to develop that character's individual storyline, the writers can just put the other major characters on ice for a couple of episodes, and then bring them out of storage after the subplot is addressed. That's very hard to do in a tabletop RPG, because putting a character on ice means putting the player on ice as well. You are basically telling the player not to play, which sucks. So, instead, most GMs will do a "soft" version of this, where the GM takes the subplot and weaves it into the overall story that impacts all of the characters. But that's tricky to juggle, and it limits the sorts of subplots you can have, because it requires the subplot to at least peripherally involve all of the characters. Instead of trying to keep these balls in the air, the Seven Cities campaign spotlights the stories of the individual characters one at a time, while giving the other players ways to be involved in those stories as they wait for their "turn" to be in the spotlight to come around.
So, here's how it works. Each player begins by creating a character that they intend to be their "Core Character." This character is going to be a major protagonist in the overall story. In Game of Thrones terms, this is Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei, etc. These characters then play through a short arc (no more than a half-dozen sessions) that is pre-scripted by the GM and designed specifically to be an introduction to the world that sets up the major antagonist factions, the major NPCs, and the current state of play.
Once that is done, each player tells the GM and the other players what their Core Characters goals are, and what they want their Core Character to be doing. Having done that, each player then creates a "Secondary Character" for each storyline other than that of their Core Character. One-by-one, the storylines for the Core Characters are resolved, with other players playing their Secondary Characters on the Core Character's adventure. The GM and the players then keep spinning the wheel, jumping from storyline to storyline.
While all of this is happening, the GM is moving events forward in the world, using tools like Fronts from Dungeon World or the Faction turn from Stars Without Number. The adventures that the players select are going to impact the advancement of those background factions--if Core Character X decides she wants to wipe out the Hobgoblin Empire and succeeds, then the Hobgoblin Empire is eliminated as a threat, but the other antagonist factions that were not targeted advance their plans without opposition, and so grow in power. Since goals are ultimately in the hands of the players, the players can react dynamically to how different factions have advanced their objectives--Core Character X might, after defeating the Hobgoblin Empire, realize that the threat of the Evil Necromancers is now the biggest challenge, and decides to go off and do that.
The idea here is that, by rotating whose Core Character is in the spotlight, each player is allowed to develop a full subplot for their character, while giving the other players a way to participate while that subplot is being resolved. It does require the players playing Secondary Characters in a particular session to accept the idea that it is the Core Character player's show and defer to them, but since everyone is going to get a turn in the sun, that should be easier to swallow. It also gives the player more freedom to develop their Core Character's arc, because they no longer have to keep the story in the same narrative space as that of the other player's characters. It also opens the possibility that Core Characters to be working at cross purposes to other Core Characters, without raising all of the issues that are normally associated with PvP--in session #1, Core Character A is trying to do whatever it is he is trying to do, and then in session #2 Core Character B is advancing her contrary objectives, but Core Character A and Core Character B are not directly fighting or otherwise in conflict during a particular session.
It also allows for the campaign to handle player death easier. If a Core Character is killed, then at the end of a complete rotation of stories, the player can promote one of the Secondary Characters to Core Character status, or create a new Core Character. In doing so, the GM can be less afraid of throwing deadly challenges at the players, because even a TPK for one particular Core Character and their associated Secondary Characters doesn't derail the campaign as a whole. It also allows a player who wants to retire or sideline a Core Character to do so without mucking things up too much, as the player could promote a Secondary Character to Core Status and develop subplots for that new Core Character. All of which is very much in the narrative spirit of Game of Thrones.
Finally, it creates more flexibility in terms of scheduling. If a player who is not in the spotlight in a particular session can't make the scheduled game, then there is just one less Secondary Character on that particular adventure, which is not nearly as big a deal as if a normal PC is absent. You still might need to explain why a particular Secondary Character isn't present, but I think it is less consequential, because at the end of the day it's a story about the Core Characters.
So, that's the idea. The beta test of the idea is scheduled to kick-off in September, once we get done with our Torg arc. I plan to post campaign notes and other information here as we go along.
To explain what I have in mind with a Seven Cities campaign, we have to start with a discussion of a "West Marches" campaign. The idea of a "West Marches" campaign was developed by Ben Robbins. (Matt Colville has a good video explaining more about the idea). As Robbins describes it, a West Marches campaign is designed to do two primary things (1) encourage/force the players to be more pro-active in directing the campaign, as opposed to having them just show up and wait for the GM to shovel content at them, and (2) be more flexible from a scheduling perspective, accommodating the fact that it is hard to get everyone to a single session at a fixed time. To do this, a West Marches campaign uses a large group of players (at least eight, and preferably in the teens) who group up into more normal sized adventuring parties and self-schedule sessions with the GM. The adventures that the specific group will undertake are selected by the group from among a list of possibilities put forth by the GM in the form of a common "treasure map" that all of the players have access to. As an example, Bob decided he wants to go to the Goblin fort in the Dark Woods, so he rounds up Susie and Pete and Mary, and they schedule Tuesday at 8 p.m. to get together with the GM to go to the Goblin fort. Meanwhile, Steve and Dave and Karen want to defeat the trolls over in the Bleak Marsh, so they schedule Saturday at 1 pm to go do that.
The Seven Cities campaign is a deconstruction of the idea of a West Marches campaign. I want to keep both of the goals of the West Marches campaign, especially the first one, and put the onus on the players to drive play and determine the direction of the adventure. However, (1) I don't have enough players to pull off a West Marches style game, and (2) instead of a exploration focused "hex crawl" which you get in a West Marches game, I want to do a more story-driven style of game, with an emphasis on politics and a world where events move forward as the campaign progresses. What I want, from a narrative perspective, is for the campaign to be like Game of Thrones, with multiple storylines going on at once in a shared, dynamic world.
One of the problems conceptually with creating a Game of Thrones-style story in a tabletop RPG is the spotlight problem. In a TV show, if you want to have an episode that focuses on a particular character to develop that character's individual storyline, the writers can just put the other major characters on ice for a couple of episodes, and then bring them out of storage after the subplot is addressed. That's very hard to do in a tabletop RPG, because putting a character on ice means putting the player on ice as well. You are basically telling the player not to play, which sucks. So, instead, most GMs will do a "soft" version of this, where the GM takes the subplot and weaves it into the overall story that impacts all of the characters. But that's tricky to juggle, and it limits the sorts of subplots you can have, because it requires the subplot to at least peripherally involve all of the characters. Instead of trying to keep these balls in the air, the Seven Cities campaign spotlights the stories of the individual characters one at a time, while giving the other players ways to be involved in those stories as they wait for their "turn" to be in the spotlight to come around.
So, here's how it works. Each player begins by creating a character that they intend to be their "Core Character." This character is going to be a major protagonist in the overall story. In Game of Thrones terms, this is Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei, etc. These characters then play through a short arc (no more than a half-dozen sessions) that is pre-scripted by the GM and designed specifically to be an introduction to the world that sets up the major antagonist factions, the major NPCs, and the current state of play.
Once that is done, each player tells the GM and the other players what their Core Characters goals are, and what they want their Core Character to be doing. Having done that, each player then creates a "Secondary Character" for each storyline other than that of their Core Character. One-by-one, the storylines for the Core Characters are resolved, with other players playing their Secondary Characters on the Core Character's adventure. The GM and the players then keep spinning the wheel, jumping from storyline to storyline.
While all of this is happening, the GM is moving events forward in the world, using tools like Fronts from Dungeon World or the Faction turn from Stars Without Number. The adventures that the players select are going to impact the advancement of those background factions--if Core Character X decides she wants to wipe out the Hobgoblin Empire and succeeds, then the Hobgoblin Empire is eliminated as a threat, but the other antagonist factions that were not targeted advance their plans without opposition, and so grow in power. Since goals are ultimately in the hands of the players, the players can react dynamically to how different factions have advanced their objectives--Core Character X might, after defeating the Hobgoblin Empire, realize that the threat of the Evil Necromancers is now the biggest challenge, and decides to go off and do that.
The idea here is that, by rotating whose Core Character is in the spotlight, each player is allowed to develop a full subplot for their character, while giving the other players a way to participate while that subplot is being resolved. It does require the players playing Secondary Characters in a particular session to accept the idea that it is the Core Character player's show and defer to them, but since everyone is going to get a turn in the sun, that should be easier to swallow. It also gives the player more freedom to develop their Core Character's arc, because they no longer have to keep the story in the same narrative space as that of the other player's characters. It also opens the possibility that Core Characters to be working at cross purposes to other Core Characters, without raising all of the issues that are normally associated with PvP--in session #1, Core Character A is trying to do whatever it is he is trying to do, and then in session #2 Core Character B is advancing her contrary objectives, but Core Character A and Core Character B are not directly fighting or otherwise in conflict during a particular session.
It also allows for the campaign to handle player death easier. If a Core Character is killed, then at the end of a complete rotation of stories, the player can promote one of the Secondary Characters to Core Character status, or create a new Core Character. In doing so, the GM can be less afraid of throwing deadly challenges at the players, because even a TPK for one particular Core Character and their associated Secondary Characters doesn't derail the campaign as a whole. It also allows a player who wants to retire or sideline a Core Character to do so without mucking things up too much, as the player could promote a Secondary Character to Core Status and develop subplots for that new Core Character. All of which is very much in the narrative spirit of Game of Thrones.
Finally, it creates more flexibility in terms of scheduling. If a player who is not in the spotlight in a particular session can't make the scheduled game, then there is just one less Secondary Character on that particular adventure, which is not nearly as big a deal as if a normal PC is absent. You still might need to explain why a particular Secondary Character isn't present, but I think it is less consequential, because at the end of the day it's a story about the Core Characters.
So, that's the idea. The beta test of the idea is scheduled to kick-off in September, once we get done with our Torg arc. I plan to post campaign notes and other information here as we go along.
Sunday, June 24, 2018
My Origins After-Action Report
I have the good fortune of having a big games convention right in my hometown--Origins Game Fair, commonly known simply as "Origins." I've been going for the last few years since I got back into the hobby. This year, I ended up going in the evenings on the weekdays plus a full day on Saturday (I wanted to do a full day on Friday, but various work commitments got in the way. Next year). With the convention over, I wanted to give my thoughts on the convention and what I played.
1. The convention itself. Origins might be the perfect size for a convention. It is, by all metrics, a big convention--one of the top five every year. But it is not nearly as big and chaotic as Gencon, which is a couple orders of magnitude bigger. I've been to Gencon twice, and it is so large as to be kind of exhausting. Origins is much more manageable, but yet has a wide variety of events and experiences such that you get the "big con" feeling. In the last two years, it has had a very Wizards of the Coast/5e presence and focus, but Paizo brought out the full show (including the Pathfinder 2nd Edition demo--more on that in a bit and in a subsequent post), as well as a number of small and medium-sized publishers with a presence (not to mention all of the board game and miniatures folks).
The one major problem, and this has been an issue for the last couple of years, is that the registration system is bad and unreliable, leading to a number of system crashes. I wasn't focused on 5e particularly (I tend to use cons to play things I wouldn't/can't play in other contexts), but those events were weirdly not available to register for when I logged on the first day to register, freezing out lots of people from the D&D Open and other big name events. Plus, the system apparently doesn't let even the event organizers see how many people are signed up for the event, which prevents people putting on multiple events from organizing themselves more efficiently.
They really need to fix this. There is no reason why it should be like this.
2. GMs not showing up. While I am in complaint mode, I was really excited to play a Midgard event that was (or at least, appeared to be) sponsored by Kobold Press. Cool, Midgard is awesome, Kobold Press is awesome. So, 9 am on Saturday rolls around, and no GM. Turns out, according to the people in the room, that he hadn't been there for any of the prior scheduled sessions as well.
This is extremely uncool, and really screws up people's cons. If you volunteer to GM, you need to be there. And if someone can't make it for true emergency reasons, the folks organizing the event need to work to find someone, or at least tell people that the event is cancelled ahead of time. Kobold Press did not, as far as I could tell, have a presence at Origins, making it hard for them to react when someone didn't show up. I get that, but I feel like if they are sponsoring events they should have a contact person at the event to be able to respond to situations like this. Don't make people scramble at the time of the event.
Enough about the event. On to the games.
3. Torg: Eternity (GMing 2 4 hour sessions). This was my GMing turn, running Torg under the auspices of the Ulisses Spiele's (technically I guess, Ulisses North America is the official name) demo team. The groups were smaller than I was hoping, I think in large measure because of the time slot (4 pm, which is sort of in-between sessions--next year, if UNA wants to run demos, I'm going to push for mornings and evenings only). But I feel like they went well, especially the second session.
One of the things that came across running Torg in a convention setting is that Torg is an easy system to teach noobs. Torg is not exactly "rules light," but I think the rules are mostly intuitive, and that makes it easier to pick up on the fly. My worry with Torg is that the card play would cause too much task loading on new players, but people took to the cards quickly.
Anyway, it was fun. Torg is great. Go play more Torg.
4. Pathfinder 2nd Edition (2 hour demo). I've got a separate post coming in a bit that goes through my thoughts on the demo. My basic take is that I am far more interested in Pathfinder 2nd Editon than I was prior to the demo.
5. Starfinder short adventures (2 1-hour sessions). This was my biggest surprise. I signed up for the first of these sessions simply because it was the only thing that looked remotely interesting in the time slot I had after I ran Torg, so expectations were decidedly modest. I went from minimally interested to slotting in a second session and buying the book.
The critics will say that it is Pathfinder in space, and it is impossible to ignore the family resemblance, which is why I was initially lukewarm on the game. But two things jumped out at me and, to my surprise, grabbed my attention. First, while I would have to dig in to see exactly why this is so, it does seem to be simpler and move faster than Pathfinder. No one will mistake it for Numenera or a PbtA game, but combat moved quickly, there were not 40 skills to juggle, and class abilities were straight forward.
But the big thing was that the setting grabbed me. It's weird science fantasy, with all sorts of brand new races (I was playing a Kasatha, basically a four-armed, grey skinned Conehead). The central point of the campaign is a giant space station a la Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine or the Citadel from Mass Effect. You have sort-of clerics and sort-of sorcerers and the sort-of monk that I was playing, but also gadget based characters and other sci-fi archetypes. It's nothing close to hard sci-fi--no one will mistake this for Traveller--but it was interesting and fun and it kind of hooked me. Honestly, the best comparison I can think of is Guardians of the Galaxy, the RPG.
As I said, I went from no interest to looking around for a Starfinder Society game. I will probably do a Starfinder review in a week or so.
6. The Dark Eye (2 hour demo). The Dark Eye is #1 German fantasy RPG, with a 30+ year history and deep lore. It's published by the Ulisses Spiele folks. I own the book and have done a read-through, but had never played until Origins. My basic take is that there is a reason that national stereotypes exist, as this game is very German. My character sheet was six pages in length, not including a four page cheat sheet providing the descriptions of special abilities and spells. The skills systems is completely logical--all tasks engage multiple attributes, and so each skill check consists of three sequential attribute checks, which can be manipulated with skill points, and then any left over skill points determine levels of success. Each successful attack always a dodge or parry roll to try to avoid the blow. Many spells seemed to take multiple rounds to cast. And so on.
Now, the world seems very cool--like Midgard, its inspirations are (surprise, surprise) very German and central European. And it has been a living campaign world since the 80s, with ongoing events that change things up. The Ulisses Spiele folks want me to run some demos and I want to help out my crew. But, I mean, a six page character sheet. That seems like a big ask for a demo situation.
7. Numenera 2nd Edition (4 hour session). Also a sneak peak at a 2nd edition (though, Numenera 2nd edition is supposed to be 100% compatible with 1st edition), also really encouraging. The new stuff, in the form of three new types (i.e. classes) are an explorer type, a tinkerer type, and a face type, fills out the world and adds new dimensions to play. That's needed, because my #1 problem with Numenera is that it throws a torrent of weird and unique ideas at players and GMs, but doesn't give them a good sense of what to do with all of that stuff. It seems like they are leaning into a settlement and base-building dimension to play--all the players are set in a town, and they go out and get stuff to help the town grow and prosper. I like that, though we only saw glimpses of it in the convention adventure.
The bottom line is that Numenera is a great game--it's a breeze to run in the moment to moment, it's easy and fun to play, and the quality of the material you get from Monte Cook Games is uniformly strong. Great GM, too (whose name, embarrassingly, I can't remember).
8. Adventurer's League [5e] (2 hour session). I have not had good experiences with Adventurers' League. A couple times I have had bad GMs. This time, I had a great GM, but I felt like the adventure was pretty meh, and my fellow players were pretty meh as well. I don't know what else to say--people love Adventurers' League, and I'm not suggesting they are making it up, but my experiences have not been good.
9. War of the Cross [boardgame] (dealer's area demo). New from the 7th Sea folks. It's basically Diplomacy, with individual faction powers and changing objectives like Twilight Imperium. Yes please. They will be Kickstarting soon, and I will be backing.
10. The Ninth World [boardgame] (dealer's area demo). I bought this game, which is set in the world of Numenera. It's similar to those "adventure card games" such as the Pathfinder one, in that you play a character that has abilities, complete quests or gather equipment in the form of cards, etc. One thing I really liked about this game is that it can be played both in a cooperative mode and in a competitive mode, without radically changing the gameplay involved. I think it will be accessible to people who are not tabletop RPG players or already engaged with Numenera. It's also beautiful as a physical artifact.
1. The convention itself. Origins might be the perfect size for a convention. It is, by all metrics, a big convention--one of the top five every year. But it is not nearly as big and chaotic as Gencon, which is a couple orders of magnitude bigger. I've been to Gencon twice, and it is so large as to be kind of exhausting. Origins is much more manageable, but yet has a wide variety of events and experiences such that you get the "big con" feeling. In the last two years, it has had a very Wizards of the Coast/5e presence and focus, but Paizo brought out the full show (including the Pathfinder 2nd Edition demo--more on that in a bit and in a subsequent post), as well as a number of small and medium-sized publishers with a presence (not to mention all of the board game and miniatures folks).
The one major problem, and this has been an issue for the last couple of years, is that the registration system is bad and unreliable, leading to a number of system crashes. I wasn't focused on 5e particularly (I tend to use cons to play things I wouldn't/can't play in other contexts), but those events were weirdly not available to register for when I logged on the first day to register, freezing out lots of people from the D&D Open and other big name events. Plus, the system apparently doesn't let even the event organizers see how many people are signed up for the event, which prevents people putting on multiple events from organizing themselves more efficiently.
They really need to fix this. There is no reason why it should be like this.
2. GMs not showing up. While I am in complaint mode, I was really excited to play a Midgard event that was (or at least, appeared to be) sponsored by Kobold Press. Cool, Midgard is awesome, Kobold Press is awesome. So, 9 am on Saturday rolls around, and no GM. Turns out, according to the people in the room, that he hadn't been there for any of the prior scheduled sessions as well.
This is extremely uncool, and really screws up people's cons. If you volunteer to GM, you need to be there. And if someone can't make it for true emergency reasons, the folks organizing the event need to work to find someone, or at least tell people that the event is cancelled ahead of time. Kobold Press did not, as far as I could tell, have a presence at Origins, making it hard for them to react when someone didn't show up. I get that, but I feel like if they are sponsoring events they should have a contact person at the event to be able to respond to situations like this. Don't make people scramble at the time of the event.
Enough about the event. On to the games.
3. Torg: Eternity (GMing 2 4 hour sessions). This was my GMing turn, running Torg under the auspices of the Ulisses Spiele's (technically I guess, Ulisses North America is the official name) demo team. The groups were smaller than I was hoping, I think in large measure because of the time slot (4 pm, which is sort of in-between sessions--next year, if UNA wants to run demos, I'm going to push for mornings and evenings only). But I feel like they went well, especially the second session.
One of the things that came across running Torg in a convention setting is that Torg is an easy system to teach noobs. Torg is not exactly "rules light," but I think the rules are mostly intuitive, and that makes it easier to pick up on the fly. My worry with Torg is that the card play would cause too much task loading on new players, but people took to the cards quickly.
Anyway, it was fun. Torg is great. Go play more Torg.
4. Pathfinder 2nd Edition (2 hour demo). I've got a separate post coming in a bit that goes through my thoughts on the demo. My basic take is that I am far more interested in Pathfinder 2nd Editon than I was prior to the demo.
5. Starfinder short adventures (2 1-hour sessions). This was my biggest surprise. I signed up for the first of these sessions simply because it was the only thing that looked remotely interesting in the time slot I had after I ran Torg, so expectations were decidedly modest. I went from minimally interested to slotting in a second session and buying the book.
The critics will say that it is Pathfinder in space, and it is impossible to ignore the family resemblance, which is why I was initially lukewarm on the game. But two things jumped out at me and, to my surprise, grabbed my attention. First, while I would have to dig in to see exactly why this is so, it does seem to be simpler and move faster than Pathfinder. No one will mistake it for Numenera or a PbtA game, but combat moved quickly, there were not 40 skills to juggle, and class abilities were straight forward.
But the big thing was that the setting grabbed me. It's weird science fantasy, with all sorts of brand new races (I was playing a Kasatha, basically a four-armed, grey skinned Conehead). The central point of the campaign is a giant space station a la Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine or the Citadel from Mass Effect. You have sort-of clerics and sort-of sorcerers and the sort-of monk that I was playing, but also gadget based characters and other sci-fi archetypes. It's nothing close to hard sci-fi--no one will mistake this for Traveller--but it was interesting and fun and it kind of hooked me. Honestly, the best comparison I can think of is Guardians of the Galaxy, the RPG.
As I said, I went from no interest to looking around for a Starfinder Society game. I will probably do a Starfinder review in a week or so.
6. The Dark Eye (2 hour demo). The Dark Eye is #1 German fantasy RPG, with a 30+ year history and deep lore. It's published by the Ulisses Spiele folks. I own the book and have done a read-through, but had never played until Origins. My basic take is that there is a reason that national stereotypes exist, as this game is very German. My character sheet was six pages in length, not including a four page cheat sheet providing the descriptions of special abilities and spells. The skills systems is completely logical--all tasks engage multiple attributes, and so each skill check consists of three sequential attribute checks, which can be manipulated with skill points, and then any left over skill points determine levels of success. Each successful attack always a dodge or parry roll to try to avoid the blow. Many spells seemed to take multiple rounds to cast. And so on.
Now, the world seems very cool--like Midgard, its inspirations are (surprise, surprise) very German and central European. And it has been a living campaign world since the 80s, with ongoing events that change things up. The Ulisses Spiele folks want me to run some demos and I want to help out my crew. But, I mean, a six page character sheet. That seems like a big ask for a demo situation.
7. Numenera 2nd Edition (4 hour session). Also a sneak peak at a 2nd edition (though, Numenera 2nd edition is supposed to be 100% compatible with 1st edition), also really encouraging. The new stuff, in the form of three new types (i.e. classes) are an explorer type, a tinkerer type, and a face type, fills out the world and adds new dimensions to play. That's needed, because my #1 problem with Numenera is that it throws a torrent of weird and unique ideas at players and GMs, but doesn't give them a good sense of what to do with all of that stuff. It seems like they are leaning into a settlement and base-building dimension to play--all the players are set in a town, and they go out and get stuff to help the town grow and prosper. I like that, though we only saw glimpses of it in the convention adventure.
The bottom line is that Numenera is a great game--it's a breeze to run in the moment to moment, it's easy and fun to play, and the quality of the material you get from Monte Cook Games is uniformly strong. Great GM, too (whose name, embarrassingly, I can't remember).
8. Adventurer's League [5e] (2 hour session). I have not had good experiences with Adventurers' League. A couple times I have had bad GMs. This time, I had a great GM, but I felt like the adventure was pretty meh, and my fellow players were pretty meh as well. I don't know what else to say--people love Adventurers' League, and I'm not suggesting they are making it up, but my experiences have not been good.
9. War of the Cross [boardgame] (dealer's area demo). New from the 7th Sea folks. It's basically Diplomacy, with individual faction powers and changing objectives like Twilight Imperium. Yes please. They will be Kickstarting soon, and I will be backing.
10. The Ninth World [boardgame] (dealer's area demo). I bought this game, which is set in the world of Numenera. It's similar to those "adventure card games" such as the Pathfinder one, in that you play a character that has abilities, complete quests or gather equipment in the form of cards, etc. One thing I really liked about this game is that it can be played both in a cooperative mode and in a competitive mode, without radically changing the gameplay involved. I think it will be accessible to people who are not tabletop RPG players or already engaged with Numenera. It's also beautiful as a physical artifact.
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