Review of the Cyberpapacy and Tharkold for Torg: Eternity

A few years back I did a review of the first three rounds of supplements for Torg: Eternity--The Living Land, The Nile Empire, and Aysle.  Overall these products were strong, and I got the sense that the designers were getting their "sea legs" as they went along and the overall quality improved.  In the last few years. notwithstanding COVID and all of that, Ulisses Spiele knocked out crowdfunding campaigns for all four of the remaining cosms--Cyberpapacy, Tharkold, Orrorsh, and recently Pan Pacifica.  All of the campaigns had the same format as the previous cosm campaigns, so check the previous post for a discussion of what's involved.  This post will handle the Cyberpapacy and Tharkold, and I will follow up with the other two.

Cyberpapacy:  If there was ever a concept that was designed to appeal to me and my interests personally, it would be the Cyberpapacy.  As one can glean from the name, the Cyberpapacy is basically cyberpunk fiction, but with the Evil Corporations replaced with the worst sort of "burn the witch" inquisitorial expy-Catholicism as the primary antagonist.  I like cyberpunk fiction, and I am really interested in all-things related to Christianity in general and high-church versions of Christianity in particular, both the good and the bad.  So, again, right in my wheel-house.   

I loved the original Cyberpapacy Sourcebook at the time it came out, but having re-read it in preparation for this review, I get the sense that the designers were not entirely sure what they wanted to do with their concept.  It has plenty of cyberware, which is good, and it had some stuff about burning witches, which is also good, but it didn't really deliver a cohesive picture of the reality of the Cyberpapacy.  Part of the problem was that the continuity of the original game had the "cyber" dimension of the Cyberpapacy be a newly imposed innovation into the reality of Magna Verita (the home cosm of the Cyberpapacy).  As a result, all of this cyber stuff was actually layered onto otherwise standard oppressive psuedo-medieval Catholicism.  It didn't fit together, and that was kind of the point.

This new take on the Cyberpapacy abandons that altogether, in favor of a much more interesting vision of the linkage between the "cyber" and the "papacy."  Now, technological innovations come from direct divine revelation (or: in a slight spoiler, from other sources. . . .)  And, critically, from no other source--science is not supported by the reality of the Cyberpapacy, and is in any event completely heretical.  Cybernetics are seen as holy because they channel the Holy Spirit of the Machine, allowing the believer to shed the weak and sinful flesh for the pure, divine mechanical replacement.  Because science is not a thing, the feel remains very culturally medieval--monasteries are basically centers of manufacturing, with monks serving as floor supervisors and the assembly line workers basically taking the role of serfs.

All of this is clearly at least an homage to the Tech Priests of Warhammer 40k, but I think this was a strong design choice.  It makes the whole thing feel like a fully formed idea as opposed to jamming together two ideas.  A small, but I think very clever and flavorful idea is the notion of a "Piety Score"--each person has a numerical rating based on saying prayers and doing Cyberchurch-approved activities (ranging from "spending your Sunday volunteering to make cyberware" to "denoucing a heretic").  Those scores are displayed when you jump into the Cyberpapacy's version of the Matrix, the Godnet, as well as anyone who has a connection to the Godnet (which is basically everyone in the Cyberpapacy).  Reaching certain tiers in your Piety Score brings you access to certain perks, both inside the Godnet and in the "real world."  For example, the "Annointed" (Piety Score 1000+) have the right to use a personal car, as well as grow wings when the they are in the Godnet.  The idea of the "gamification" of faith as expressed with Piety Scores is both brilliant and perfectly on point for the setting.

Speaking of the Godnet.  As in the previous version, the Godnet is basically the Matrix, but with a religious theme--Heaven, Hell and Purgatory are places you can go in the virtual world.  In this version, Heaven takes the form of a seven level mountain, and one's access to the levels is determined by, you guessed it, one's Piety Score.  Conceptually, this works, just like it did in the original.  But, if I may say, the devil is in the details.  Netrunning/decking rules are a notorious pain point in almost all cyberpunk games, and the rules in the original Cyberpapacy sourcebook (and the associated Godnet sourcebook) were no execption, requiring GMs to map out a dungeon-style route to go through to get to the data the PCs are seeking.  The rules in this book are much more streamlined, checking in at only eight pages, and are pitched at a much higher level of abstraction.  

Beyond the rules, I really liked two other design decisions for the Godnet.  The first is the idea of "hard light holograms."  Basically, holograms in the Cyberpapacy take on tangible form, which allows personas that are in the Godnet to project into the real world.  This solves maybe the biggest conceptual problem in netrunning/decking systems, which is that they often become divorced from what the rest of the PCs are doing.  Now, "Nodders" (Cyberpapacy's version of deckers/hackers) can hack a holoprojector and fight in the real space beside all of the PCs.  It's a brilliant solution to a difficult design problem.  The other is to put all of the "paydata" that the PCs are going to want to go get in isolated monasteries or convents, isolated from the broader Godnet.  That way, PCs as a group are going to have to physically travel to locations to get what they want, bringing the non-computer focused PCs into the action.  Also very smart, even if the explanation for why all the good stuff is in isolated locations might be a little hand-wavy for some tastes.

Unhallowed Data is the adventure path, and it is different from the previous cosm's adventure paths. It is both a mystery-focused adventure and designed for the PCs to take the quiet approach as opposed to going in guns blazing.  Stealth-oriented adventures, depending on the personalities of the players at the table, may require the GM to "gently remind" the PCs of the consequences of breaking cover, and the adventure is clearly aware of this and provides plenty of hand-holds.  It also has a very well done Act set in a convent, where the PCs have to infiltrate the convent and the nuns to get access to the key data to move the story forward.  It also features the Godnet in a later portions of the adventure path, which makes perfect sense for the Cyberpapacy adventure path.

All told, the Cyberpapacy package takes a set of sneakily difficult ideas and fuses them together in a clever, accessible, gameable set of products.    

Original Torg
Tharkold Sourcebook,
with High Lord Jezrael
a/k/a Cyber Benetar

Tharkold:  I also went back and read the original Tharkold sourcebook, and I am reminded what a fun bit of early 90s RPG cheese it was and why it was one of my (and I think many people's) favorite original Torg products.  It is just chock full of big guns and cool powers and recycling trucks that will recycle people and a major bad guy named "Sterrett of the Blades" and some half-assed social commentary on early 90s Los Angeles and a High Lord, Jezrael, that kinda looks like a cyber version of singer Pat Benetar on the cover art.  Is it all well balanced?  No.  Does all of it make sense and fit together?  Not entirely.  But it is fun.  

With the exception of the Living Land (and arguably Pan Pacifica), Tharkold got the biggest make-over for Torg: Eternity.  Much of that change has to do with relocating Tharkold back to its original location of Russia (in the original Torg continuity, Tharkold attempted to invade Russia, was defeated, and then arrived in Los Angeles and later Berlin later the war).  Some of the change was a straight-up nerf--Tharkold is now inferior technologically to the Cyberpapacy, and no longer has access to religion and miracles, getting instead psychic powers.  But reading the Tharkold sourcebook, it is also clear that the tone and mood of Tharkold has been radically changed. 

One of the more subtle but far-reaching changes has to do with the nature of the headliner antagonists in Tharkold--the techno-demons, or Tharkoldu.  In the original version, the Tharkoldu are monsters, in the sense that they are normal, albeit magical, creatures native to the Tharkold home-cosm.  In this version, they are demons in the classical, theological, and ontological sense--pure evil incarnated into a physical form via the power of magic.  Rather than the eternal predators of the humans of Tharkold ("the Race"), it is stated that these Tharkoldu were originally summoned into the cosm from Tharkold's version of hell by the wickedness and sins of the Race.  As we learn in the opening fiction, the creed of the Tharkoldu is "the evil we do lives after us"--they exist to make the world worse, to spread pain and abuse.

In fact, let's talk about the opening fiction for a moment.  I will admit that I often skip the opening fiction of ttrpg books, as it is often not that great.  The opening fiction in the Tharkold sourcebook is some of the best I have ever read.  It's so well done, in fact, that I think it probably should come with some sort of content warning.  In a few pages, the authors depict an abusive relationship between Kranod, the Tharkoldu High Lord, and Jezrael, Kranod's (at the time) human woman thrall, and the psychology that underlies such a relationship.  There is a small detail where Kranod licks Jezrael's face, and we are told that he has done that so often that hair doesn't grow on the side of her head in that region.  That detail made my skin crawl.  The resolution of the story (which I suppose it's OK to talk about as the designers have talked about it publicly) is that Jezrael kills Kranod, and Kranod accepts this because he knows that he has so traumatized her that she will never be free of the effects of the abuse she suffered at his hands.  

The new Tharkold, expressed most clearly in this story, is in a very real way an exploration of generational trauma, and how evil gets passed down and transmitted across time.  That's pretty heavy material for a game like Torg.  But it also acts as a glue to the genre elements embodied by the cosm--basically Hellraiser meets Mad Max.  Both of the component genres are pretty grim, and the synergy of them is definitely grim.  To take a single example out of many--Tharkold's version of the Matrix/the Godnet is Kur, which is literally hell, populated by lost souls and horrors who must be bargained with to find the information you are looking for.   

Upping the grimness factor is the fact that Tharkold is in the midst of a three-sided struggle for power in the cosm in the wake of Jezrael's assassination of Kranod.  One side is the completely sociopathic Jezrael; side two is fan-favorite from the original Torg Thrachen, a Tharkoldu with big ambitions and an alliance with the Gaunt Man (the High Lord of Orrorsh and the leader of the overall invasion).  And the third side is the President of Russia, a former intelligence officer who wormed in way into power pre-invasion and has used the crisis as an opportunity to not only solidify power in Russia, but also invade and annex Russia's neighbors.

I mean, it's Putin.  I know it says in the book "President Volkov," but it is clearly Putin, so much so that I would just call him "Putin" in my games.  Keep in mind that this was written prior to the invasion of the Ukraine, which I actually think is really fortunate, given the apparent unwillingness of the Torg: Eternity team to engage with current events (see my next post on Pan Pacifica).  The idea that a "native" would use an invasion as an opportunity for power is a dimension that was not really present in the original game, but it makes sense and is a fertile field for game stories.  And reading the material in the context of real-world events adds an additional edge--as over-the-top as Tharkold is, it feels more real somehow.

As far as the game mechanical content, it is what you might expect--lots of cyberware (known in Tharkold as "occultech") and psychic powers and magic spells with a suitably demonic theme.  In a nod to the original game, there are rules for playing a demon who rebels against their demonic nature; unlike the original version, these rules are relatively well balanced, which is nice.  There are also mutant powers that come with random negative side-effects, which do a nice job of being meaningfully negative without being unworkably punitive.  Nothing is world-shaking here, but everything is well done and flavorful.

The adventure path for Tharkold is Blood on the Blasted Lands.  I have discussed previously that Torg adventurers tend to have a "theme park" quality, designed to show off all of the varied elements that a particular slice of the Torg universe has to offer. Blood on the Blasted Lands is absolutely an example of this, but it is a really, really well done version of the Torg theme park.  The PCs will be traveling across the Tharkold realm, hitting both the irradiated wilderness areas as well as the major cities.  One of my favorite elements in its structure is that it starts out as a fairly conventional quest structure to travel around and find clues about The Thing while fighting off baddies and dealing with horrors, and then organically immerses the PCs in the political elements of setting.  That's tricky from a writing perspective, and it is easy to make awkward and clunky, but here it is done very well.  Getting players to care about politics in a setting and getting buy-in for difficult moral choices is often a struggle, but I think this is going to work, even for groups that already drinking deep from the Torg lore.  It's more conventional in its structure than Unhallowed Data, but it works and is very evocative of the brutal complexities of Tharkold.  

I can't decide whether Cyberpapacy or Tharkold are my favorite cosms in Torg: Eternity.  Design-wise, I think Cyberpapacy had a higher degree of difficulty, if for no other reason than coming up with good and workable netrunning rules has been such a white whale for some many games.  And I think Unhallowed Data is one of the best of the adventure paths (rivaled only by the Orrorsh one, about which more in the next post).  But there is something about Tharkold's grimness and splatter-violence mixed with a more sophisticated-than-you-would-expect political intrigue that really works.  Tharkold is still every bit as fun as the old version, but now much better balanced.  Either way, I think these two really show off the best of the genre mash-up fun that Torg has to offer.

Thoughts on GMing Theory, Part 1--Quest, Rules-Light Games, and GM Restraints

This was going to be a review of Quest, the new hotness in the tabletop RPG scene in the last month or so.  Quest is a game that takes a number of big swings, biggest of which is having the designer announce that their goal was to "overtake D&D" as the ttrpg fantasy leader.  And, having reviewed the rules (which are mostly available under a Creative Commons License), I came pretty quickly to the conclusion that Quest is a game that very effectively and skillfully creates a play experience that I am not particularly interested in.  It's here, on the level of goals, on the level of what this game is trying to do and why it is trying to do it, that I think Quest is incredibly interesting, notwithstanding my personal tastes.  And so, rather than review Quest in the normal way, I would like to use it as a jumping off point to talk about the design theory that it embodies.

The first thing you see immediately in looking at Quest is how rules light it is.  There are no attributes and no skills, and all checks are resolved using a single die roll that is read according to a fixed chart that is reminiscent of Powered by the Apocalypse games, with added "critical success and failure" levels tacked on to either end.  There are classes and a list of powers that drive play, but that's more or less it--the combat rules in the CC License doc is, by a generous count, two pages long with lots of white space between the columns.  I wracked my brain to think of a lighter game system than Quest, and the only thing I could come up with John Harper's Lasers and Feelings.  It truly pegs the meter on the light-weight side.

What interests me about this is what the designer, TC Sottek, is saying about ttrpgs by and through Quest.  If you make a game this light, and you say that your goal is to overtake D&D, what you are saying is that you think the overwhelming majority of that rules structure in D&D is unnecessary and should, or at least could, be discarded.  What's interesting about this claim is that, at least to some degree, the designers of 5th Edition D&D agree, or at least identify with the sentiment behind it.  Here's what Mike Mearls said about the design goals of 5th Edition:

“D&D’s 3.5 and 4th editions were very much driven by an anxiety about controlling the experience of the game, leaving as little as possible to chance,” Mearls explained in a Twitter thread. “The designers aimed for consistency of play from campaign to campaign, and table to table. The fear was that an obnoxious player or DM would ruin the game, and that would drive people away from it. The thinking was that if we made things as procedural as possible, people would just follow the rules and have fun regardless of who they played with.” . . .

“With fifth edition,” Mearls explained, “We assumed that the DM was there to have a good time, put on an engaging performance, and keep the group interested, excited, and happy. It’s a huge change, because we no longer expect you to turn to the book for an answer. We expect the DM to do that.”

The design team referred to the goal as “DM empowerment.” The phrase may be misleading, because the goal of DM empowerment is not to tickle a DM’s power fantasies. DM empowerment lets DMs fill gaps in the rules—and sometimes override the rules with their own judgement. DM empowerment lets your wizard use spells outside of combat, among other things.

In other words, having a robust rules-set, and especially having a robust set of rules that bind the GM, hamstrings the ability of the GM to run the game, tell a fun story, and have a good time at the table.  And there is no question that the wrong sort of rules can be an impediment to all of those things.  But, as I think about my experience of running games of late, and looking at some systems that push in the opposite direction, I think this line of thinking is misguided.  I don't think fewer rules and more "DM empowerment" leads to a better play experience, perhaps counter-intuitively especially for the GM.

What do I mean by that?  Let's start with the experience of playing a board game.  In this context, it doesn't matter whether it is a competitive board game like Monopoly or Twilight Imperium, or a cooperative style game like Pandemic or Gloomhaven--the basic experience of play is that each person is trying to achieve the best outcome possible as seen from the perspective of the posture that the game puts them in, within the constraints imposed by the rules.  So, if I am a player in Twilight Imperium, I am attempting to achieve ten Victory Points (or 14, if we are all masochists) for my Faction before any other Faction gets ten VP, according to the structures the game establishes for how VP are earned in play.  Getting the best outcome I can under the rules is where the "game" part of playing a game lies, and is where the fun of the game is found, distinct from the social enjoyment and other externalities of playing a board game.

Now apply that to a tabletop RPG.  The same basic framework, at least at this extremely high level of generality, works for the players of a ttrpg--I want to succeed at my objectives as I define them, within the constraints of the rules, limited perhaps only by the (often unspoken) caveat that I must work and play well with my fellow players.  But, for the GM, it doesn't translate at all.  If a GM approached his or her job the way you are supposed to approach a game of Twilight Imperium, the game would break down almost immediately.  This is because, in large measure, the GM is wholly unconstrained in terms of what game play elements he or she can introduce into the narrative of the game.  "Rocks falls, everyone dies," is a cliche of GM dickery, but it's not against the rules.

On the other hand, this unconstrained ability of the GM to introduce narrative elements is the thing that makes ttprgs so interesting, and is the thing that can't be replicated in other game forms.  You don't need a fixed scenario, because you have a live person behind the screen that can react dynamically to what happens as the game goes forward.  If you constrain that freedom of action of the GM too much, then you might as well play Gloomhaven, and let the GM have the fun of being a player.  There is, and their needs to be, a power imbalance in ttrpgs, at least those that use a GM.  

[As an aside, I think this discussion of power imbalance is separate from the important conversation about safety at the ttrpg table.  It is certainly the case that GMs can use the inherent power imbalance as part of creating an abusive situation, but even GMs are perfectly respectful to the players at all times still have a measure of power that the players don't have.  I think this is important to say, because Quest puts the safety issues at the forefront of its presentation, and nothing I am saying here is a criticism of those efforts.]

So, the GM needs the freedom to design the world, but you don't want the GM to be a jerk and blow up the play experience by trying to "win" in the normal way.  What do you do?  Well, in a sense, the GM plays with his or her hands behind the back, crafting an play experience that is not about "winning" in the normal way, but one that rides the line of challenging the players while keeping the game going.  That is, or at least can be, a very fun experience for the GM on its own merits.  But it is not really the same experience as "playing a game" in the way that playing Twilight Imperium is, or even the experience of being a player in a ttrpg is.  Rather than think about "playing the game," the GM in this context is more of a "story concierge" for the rest of the table.  Notice the way Mearls frames it: "We assumed that the DM was there to have a good time, put on an engaging performance, and keep the group interested, excited, and happy."  Other than "have a good time," which is undefined here, all of the other elements are player-facing and service oriented--the job of the GM is to do stuff for the players, not for himself or herself.

Again, being a "story concierge" can be a lot of fun.  But so is playing a game.  And while you don't want to constrain the GM's freedom of action altogether, one way to maintain the experience of playing the game for the GM is to constrain the GM's freedom of action in certain respects.  Yes, the GM can decide which monsters to put into an encounter (constrained by story concierge considerations), but once that decision is made the way the monsters play in the fight is constrained by the rules.  I tie my hand behind my back by only selecting level-appropriate enemies to oppose the PCs, but having done so I now do everything within the rules to play those enemies for maximum challenge.  Once the pieces are on the board, it is a game between the GM and the players in the context of the particular combat.  And that's fun.

All of which filters back to why I think the Mearls quote is wrong-headed.  Not all restrictions on the freedom of action of the GM are good, but the good ones create space to allow the GM to "let loose" and play a game.  Conversely, taking away all of the restrictions and giving the GM unlimited creative freedom force the GM into 24/7 story concierge mode.  If you want to say that the way 3rd and 4th edition tried to constrain GM freedom of action via rules didn't work, then I get that.  But I think the idea that restrictions on the GM imposed via rules are a bad thing to be avoided in toto is one I can't agree with.  Restricting the GM with rules can make the game more fun, especially for the GM, because it makes it more like a game.  

But that of course leads to the question of what sort of constraints on the GM are good ones, ones that make the game fun for the GM will still holding on to enough narrative freedom to make the game work.  There are many examples across the different game systems, but in the next post I want to talk about three of them that I really like and I think are really interesting--Modiphius's 2d20 system (Conan, Star Trek Adventures, and Infinity are the games in that series I am familiar with), Torg and Torg: Eternity (more specifically the Drama Deck), and the neo-OSR experience of Forbidden Lands.  

Review of The Living Land, Nile Empire and Aysle for Torg: Eternity

A while back, I wrote a review of Torg: Eternity, the ambitious and (IME) successful re-imagining and reboot of the early 90s classic Torg.  In my review, I mentioned that there were plans for rounds of expansions for each of of the settings, or "Cosms" in Torg-speak.  Thus far, two of the seven Cosms--the Living Land, and the Nile Empire--has been released to the public, while the third--Aysle--has completed its Kickstarter and sent out the drafts of the core products to backers (of which I am one).  So, I figured now was a good time to check in and see where the game is and what we can look forward to in the future.  Because I am going to review three waves of products, I figured it would make sense to make some general comments and then get into each product.

The Kickstarters and the Kickstarter Model:  The base Torg: Eternity game was Kickstarted back in 2017, and was built around a package that the Ulisses Spiele folks called "the Cargo Box."  The Cargo Box for the original Torg: Eternity Kickstarter was a massive 12" x 9" x 8" box made of high-quality cardboard that weighed about 12 pounds fully loaded.  In addition to the hardcover Core Rulebook, the Cargo Box contained two hardcover adventure books, a GM screen, the Drama Deck of cards necessary to play the game, a commissioned soundtrack, and a wide assortment of chips, tokens, and other games aids.  The Cargo Box was and is an extremely impressive physical product, made with high quality materials and a ton of useful features.

This model has been replicated for each of the Cosms--a dedicated Kickstarter, centered around a Cargo Box consisting of a sourcebook for the Cosm, one long, 7-10 session adventure set in the Cosm and one compilation of short adventures (though Aysle has two long adventures), a GM screen, a soundtrack, more Drama Deck cards, and a bunch of accessories.  While I bought the Cargo Box for the first Kickstarter, I have gone for a lesser tier for the Cosm Kickstarters, in the form of the sourcebook in hardcover, pick-and-choose the accessories, and the rest in PDF.  This is in part for budgetary reasons (the Cargo Box was a $175 pledge for the first three, up to 175 Euros for the Aysle round due to the extra hardcover book), but more out of despair for finding storage space for a series of massive boxes of stuff.  Having seen the Cargo Boxes for the Living Land and the Nile Empire "in the wild," they appear to be every bit as impressive physical products as the original, and I am really tempted to go in for a Cargo Box on the next round.

The multiple sequential rounds of Kickstarters and the need to produce a massive product like a Cargo Box has made the release schedule slower than many fans were hoping for.  To be fair, these Torg: Eternity Kickstarters have had very fast turn around times--5 1/2 months between end of the Kickstarter and product shipping for Living Land, about 6 for Nile Empire.  Going forward beginning with Cyberpapacy, they are promised even shorter 4 month intervals between Kickstarters, which is crazy-fast (to put this is perspective, and I hate to drag Heinsoo and Tweet, but it was three years and nine months between the close of the 13th Age in Glorantha Kickstarter and my receipt of the physical product).  A big part of how the Ulisses folks pull this off is that the text of the sourcebook and the other big written products are done prior to the start of the Kickstarter--which is why the draft Aysle sourcebook arrived in my inbox a couple of hours after the close of the Kickstarter on Monday.  That kind of instant feedback is great, and avoids the feeling that you have thrown your money into the void.


Cosm Sourcebooks in General:  While the original Torg boxed set was certainly playable by itself, the original game in many respects wasn't complete until the six Cosm sourcebooks were released (six, because in the original Torg timeline the seventh invading Cosm, Tharkold, was initially defeated, and doesn't reappear until two years into the war).  This is, in part, because Torg is such a big, sprawling thing that you simply need more page count to flesh out each of the Cosms.  But in the first incarnation, it was also clear that the writers of the Cosm books were "making it up as they went along," building out each of these Cosms as the books came out.  As a result, the Cosm books were literally necessary, as they contained critical rules needed to play and make characters in the Cosm.  This also had the effect of retroactively making some of the material in the box set obsolete--famously, the final encounter in the introductory adventure in the boxed set is essentially unplayable if you use the Power of Fear rules from the Orrorsh Sourcebook.

The Cosm sourcebooks for the original game also varied in quality.  From my perspective, Nile Empire (except for the gadget rules) and the Cyberpapacy were excellent, Orrorsh had great lore but poor, complicated rules, the later Tharkold book also had great lore but was completely OP, Aysle and Nippon Tech (now "Pan Pacifica") was hit-or-miss, and the Living Land was poor.

With all of this in mind, the Cosm books for Torg: Eternity follow the trajectory set out by their predecessors for original Torg.  Most importantly, the Cosm sourcebooks provide 144 pages of additional page count to fill in the blanks for their respective Cosms.  I'll get into more detail with each of the respective books, but as a whole they do a great job of being very focused on what is going on in the invasion zones, and thus on the material that is immediately "game-able" as opposed to background lore.

They also provide more game mechanical material.  Unlike in the first go around, however, there are no instances of "remove and replace" that invalidate material in the Corebook.  Instead, everything is tacked on to the existing framework laid out the Corebook.  It's here we see the effects of one of the smartest changes introduced in Torg: Eternity, the unified Perk system.  Every character ability that is not a Skill or Attribute is expressed in a Perk--magic, miracles, cyberware, and a whole host of Cosm-specific abilities and doo-dads.  Because each Perk is a discrete, modular bit of game mechanics, the Cosm sourcebooks can add a bunch of new options without invalidating the previous material by trotting out new Perks, which is in fact a big part of all three Cosm sourcebooks.

To the extent there is brand new material, it is layered on top of existing material and enhances ideas and themes that are already there.  One of my favorite things are the new Drama Decks that come with each Cosm.  The Drama Deck is the lynchpin of what makes Torg unique and great--instead of rolling initiative or similar mechanics, for each round of combat or other dramatic scene, the GM flips over a card that controls initiative, provides bonuses and penalties to the Heroes and/or Villains, and regulates other elements of the round.  The Drama Deck makes each round of combat unique and unpredictable, avoiding the often tedious slog that combat in tabletop RPGs can become.

The Cosm-specific Drama Decks are card-for-card replacements for the existing Drama Deck that add, on top of all the existing Drama Deck elements, a Cosm-specific condition that affects both the Heroes and Villains during the round.  So, Card #1 in the Nile Empire deck makes every Air Vehicles test Favored (in D&D terms, rolling with Advantage), but all planes must make a Check to avoid colliding with another plane or the ground.  Because the new deck is just like the old deck plus the condition (and new art), you can use or not use the Cosm deck without changing the fundamental game flow.  The diversity of Cosms is the heart of what makes Torg great, and anything that makes playing in each Cosm feel distinctive and unique makes the game better.  The designers get that, which is good to see.

The Living Land:  I pretty confident I am not alone in rating the Living Land sourcebook as the weakest of the original Torg books. It's clear they had an initial idea--a Lost World of jungles and dinosaurs--but then didn't really know what to do with that basic concept.  Perhaps more to the point, the original Living Land was just not a fun place to set games in.  In addition to very low levels of technology, social organization (which, if you are a real stickler, makes it hard to organize things--like adventures), and magic, there were World Laws that basically were just vehicles for the GM to troll the players.  The Law of Decay caused items to randomly be lost from the PC's inventories and food to spoil, while the Deep Mist made it hard to get from place to place and easy to get lost.  It just wasn't fun or interesting, and the writers in the original continuity seemed to recognize this by making the Living Land the perennial whipping boy, turning the whole thing into something of a joke.

So, the Torg: Eternity crew had a lot of work to do with the Living Land.  Much of the rebuild can be seen in the Corebook, where the World Laws were revised to make them more playable and fun, and the dominant religion was tweaked to be a little more "user friendly."  The Living Land Sourcebook extends this project, in a couple of ways.  First, it goes into pretty significant detail about the various tribes of Edeinos (the lizard folks that are the dominant inhabitants of the Living Land Cosm), and does a good job of making each one feel different and interesting in ways that can be used in play.  The one topic I would have liked to have seen more development was the role of transformed humans in and among those tribes--I seem to remember the original version having a human-only tribe, but there's no indication of one here.  The other element that this version of the Living Land really dials up, to good effect, is the idea of savagery and kinetic action.  The World Laws of the Living Land make healing easier, and the social Axiom makes large-scale coordination unlikely, so the best course of action is usually to charge in and go all-out.  Torg in general works when each of the Cosms has a distinct feel, and I think the "new" Living Land has that in a way the old one did not.

The big adventure for the Living Land, The God Box, is . . . OK.  In many ways it is a published Torg adventure in the classical style, in the sense that it is very linear (some might say "railroad-y") and it has the feel of a theme-park ride, whisking you from place to place and showing you the highlights of the Torg world.  The God Box brings back the sub-reality of the Land Below, which I know was a crowd favorite but I never really saw the attraction to or purpose of, and here it feels like a weird detour in an adventure that is supposed to highlight the Living Land.  There was also an Act that felt especially like a theme-park ride, where the PCs are whisked to Chicago to show off the death-worshiping Edeinos tribe, and then whisked away for the conclusion of the story.  Still, despite the problems I had with the middle of the adventure, I liked Act One in Washington, D.C. and I especially liked the last two Acts, set in the jungles of the Yucatan in Mexico.  If I were to run it, I think I would just cut out the Land Below and Chicago stuff in the middle and run the beginning and the end as a shorter scenario.

Overall, the Torg: Eternity incarnation of the Living Land is much, much better than the original.  It's still not my favorite Cosm by a significant measure, but it is a place I would run stories in, as opposed to being a place to be avoided as in the original.  The Edeinos are now interesting and scary, and the place has a distinct feel.  Again, not my favorite, but much better, and that "much better" can be seen in the Living Land materials.

The Nile Empire:  In a way, the Nile Empire presented the opposite challenge for the Torg: Eternity team from the Living Land.  Wisely, the Torg: Eternity designers recognized that the Nile Empire as presented in the original game was fantastic, and thus changed very little of the substance.  It's still the pulp stories of the 30s, encompassing low and medium powered costumed super-heroes alongside adventure figures like Indiana Jones.  It still has all of the weird ancient Egyptian magic and mysticism.  It still has Dr. Mobius, the costumed super-villain/fascist dictator/re-born Egyptian Pharaoh.  It still dials up the action to 11, with heroes and villains dying and making their Inevitable Returns.

So, the challenge here is to give old-school Torg fans something new and make the material feel fresh.  To be honest, I am not sure they totally accomplished that goal.  Upon first reading of the Nile Empire Sourcebook, I thought "this is basically the same stuff in the original Nile Empire sourcebook," and I was a little disappointed.  But, on second read, I think that's unfair.  In part its unfair because the original stuff is so much fun, and not everyone remembers or has access to that goodness.  All of that fun goodness is here for the new incarnation as well, and the designers should be applauded for knowing a good thing when they see it. So, the Nile Empire Sourcebook gives you more pulp powers and Egyptian miracles and weird mathematics and engineering magic and piston-engine fighter planes and all of the good stuff from the original.  It holds on to everything that made the Nile Empire great.

Speaking of holding on to things, we need to talk about Wu Han.  Wu Han, in the original and in this version, is Dr. Mobius's right-hand lieutenant and frenemy, and he is very intentionally designed to be the embodiment of the "inscrutable Asian mastermind" trope.  Now, the use of this trope makes sense in the context of the Nile Empire, as it is a trope that has its origins in the pulp stories from which the Nile Empire draws.  And I should say that high school me who ran original Torg absolutely loved Wu Han, and used him all the time as a primary antagonist.  But, I mean, Wu Han as a character is racist, or at least is likely to be portrayed in an unflattering, racially-influenced way.  I get, in a meta-sense, that that's part of the point, but me of 2019 was way less enthused about the idea of  busting out Wu Han as a villain as the me of 1994.  Particularly in light of the way the Pan Pacifica Cosm steers away from some of the problematic early 90s Japanaphobia of the original Nippon Tech Cosm, I'm a little surprised to see Wu Han retained here.  Because of the meta-context, I get why he was retained, but, yeesh, I don't know.

As for the adventure, The Fires of Ra, here's the thing.  If you are going to play in the Nile Empire, you have to accept the genre in which you are operating (this really applies to Torg as a whole--embrace the genre tropes, don't fight them).  If you come to a Nile Empire scenario looking for deep character moments and subtle opportunities for role-playing, you are missing the point.  You come to a Nile Empire scenario for break-neck action and the piling of challenges one on top of the other ad infinitum.  And The Fires of Ra delivers that, in the form of set piece after set piece, alongside the all but audible voice of the authors shouting "Go Go Go!" at the players and the GM.  This is the sort of adventure where having your plane shot down, finding parachutes, and jumping out of the crashing plane is the set up to a first Scene of an Act.  It looks exhausting to run or play in, and I mean that in a good way.  You have to know what you are getting into, but within those parameters, The Fires of Ra reads as a really fun time.

So, while the Nile Empire set doesn't break any new ground, the underlying idea of The Shadow meets Indiana Jones meets ancient Egypt weirdness is so good and so much fun that it carries the products along with it.  And if you are new to Torg, and so don't have ready access to all of the old Nile Empire material, the Nile Empire Sourcebook is a must-buy if you are playing Torg: Eternity.  It's goofy, but it's goofy on purpose, and it is just so much fun.

Aysle:  In a stream that the designers put on as part of the Kickstarter, Lead Designer Darrell Hayhurst hit on the core problem with the original Aysle Sourcebook.  That book spends pages and pages describing Aysle "back home"--the geography, the factions, the history, etc.  But none of that stuff is really all that relevant for play unless you decide to ditch Core Earth and the Possibility Wars and turn the game into a pure fantasy, D&D-style game--in which case, are you sure you want to play Torg?  But, more to the point, while Aysle is an interesting and well-done fantasy world, it is just another fantasy world, and so not really distinctive enough to bear the weight of being by itself.  Which, of course, was not the point--Aysle is designed to exist in the broader Torg context--but it points back to the question of whether all that home Cosm material makes sense or is helpful.

As you might expect based on Hayhurst's comments, almost all of that background lore is cut out, and there is a strong focus on what is going on in the Aysle realm on Earth.  This is a good decision, and it makes the product much tighter than its predecessor.  But the other thing the Aysle Sourcebook does is that it hones in more clearly on the type of setting it wants to be.  Yes, Aysle is a fantasy world, but there are a number of subtle variations in fantasy worlds.  The Aysle Sourcebook, in a way that doesn't come through as clearly in the original version, grounds itself in the conflict between Light and Dark, in a way that reminds me tonally of movies like Willow and Excalibur (the 80s version) and, especially, Return of the King.  It isn't consistently "grimdark" a la Warhammer, but it also is darker than most D&D-influenced fantasy settings, and it intentionally layers the grimmer and the more hopeful elements next to each other.  Light and Dark are almost tangible elements, and they are at war, and the Dark is winning (though, not overwhelmingly so).  This is in the original version in a game mechanical sense, but it feels like it is more reflected in the setting in this version.

I really like this.  It's just enough of a specific angle to make Aysle stand out from a truly generic fantasy world, without limiting access to all of the standard, generic fantasy tropes.  And, let's be honest, fantasy role-playing games are popular because those standard generic fantasy tropes are good and fun.  You want your fantasy setting to do all of the fantasy things, and Aysle does all of that.

Not surprisingly, much of the game mechanics stuff is associated with magic.  The Aysle Sourcebook really does a great job of threading the needle between providing a diversity of options for magic-focused characters, without ratcheting up the complexity level.  The fundamental choice now is between being a generalist mage who has access to all of the spells, or picking one of four schools of magic (plus necromancy which acts as a fifth school) and limiting your spells to a particular list in return for having more spells (especially in the beginning).  These schools were sketched out in lore form in the original Aysle book, and they have the advantage of being broader in scope than most "magic school" taxonomies, while still being distinct and making for interesting choices.  So, for example, the "Kindred" school lets you affect all kinds of living beings, while the "Principles" school includes light, darkness, magic, "living forces," and "inanimate forces."  It seems a little obscure on first read (especially if you don't remember these categories from the original Aysle book), but it is easy to apply in play.

Similarly, they add a cantrip system, giving all magic using characters access to a fairly robust set of utility spells automatically, but only usable within the Aysle Cosm (though, you can take a Perk to use them in other Cosms).  I love these kinds of systems, because they make magic using characters really feel like wizards and allow players to come up with creative uses for magic, without adding complex systems or allowing wizards to defeat every problem with magic.

Then there is the adventure, Revenge of the Carredon.  Revenge stands-out from the previous two tent-pole adventures in a couple of ways.  First, it incorporates more of the deep Aysle lore, bringing in the two big name good-aligned NPCs, Lady Pella Ardinay and Tolwyn of Tancred.  In doing so, the adventure feels like it has more weight and significance than the previous two.  Second, it has a more open structure, with an opening Act, a set of middle Acts that can be accomplished in any order, and then the finale.  This is not some radical innovation in RPG adventure design, but as I mentioned Torg adventures historically tended to be very linear, so I found this to be a refreshing change.  Likewise, while the quest is get the five Things you need to defeat evil, so pretty standard, I found it to be an interesting and engaging version of that pretty standard outline.  Revenge of the Carredon is a strong offering, and the best adventure I've seen out of Torg: Eternity so far.

The bottom line is that I think the Aysle product wave is very strong, the best of the three so far, and it makes be very optimistic for and excited about the forthcoming Cyberpapacy and Tharkold waves (which are the two Cosms I was most excited about going in).  It makes Aysle distinct without being narrow, and it provides a wealth of interesting play options for Aysle characters.  If you weren't part of the Kickstarter, keep an eye for when it comes to general release at the end of the year.

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. 

Review of Torg: Eternity

Every time someone tries to reboot some piece of fiction, the folks behind it will give you the same design goals--"we want to keep the good parts of this thing you liked, but update it to be in keeping with modern sensibilities."  That sounds great, but the problem is that this goal only works if the people in charge of the reboot understand what "the good parts" of the thing being rebooted actually are.  Reboots go south when the folks in charge think that the "good parts" to be kept are not actually the good parts, while the stuff removed as part of "updating" is actually the good stuff.  Plus, because taste is subjective, what this really turns into is whether or not the people in charge of the reboot have the same understanding as you do of what the good things are about the property in question.

This question--do these folks have the same understanding of what is cool about this thing?--was at the forefront of my mind when I heard that German game publisher Ulisses Spiele was rebooting Torg.  The original Torg, published in 1990, is probably my all-time favorite tabletop RPG.  Because I love Torg so much, I was both excited and worried about the reboot.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but will these folks screw it up?  I liked what I saw with the new rules set when I played in a demo game at GenCon in 2016, and everything I had seen and read about the project provided reason for encouragement.  So, I backed the Kickstarter for Torg: Eternity, which proved wildly successful, and I have now received the PDF versions of the products (my physical products in a cool box are due in a couple of weeks).  Now with the re-boot in my hands, I can tell you that the folks in charge of Torg: Eternity got it very much right, at least from the vantage-point of what I think is so great about the original Torg.

So, what did original Torg get right that Torg: Eternity keeps?  The best part of original Torg is the gonzo setting, and that setting has been retained in the main.  Like the original, Torg: Eternity is set in the present in a version of our world (called "Core Earth") with a greater cinematic flavor--imagine a world where the events shown in the Die Hard or The Fast and the Furious series were real and everyday occurrences.  Core Earth get invaded by other realities (referred to in Torg-speak as "cosms"), each representing a different genre and each taking over a specific piece of territory on Earth.  So, for example, the UK and Scandinavia are invaded by Aysle, a dark fantasy reality that is close to Middle Earth if Sauron had captured the Ring.  Through invasion, the reality of the invaders gets overlaid over Core Earth's reality, so if you travel to England post-invasion, magic works but your mobile phone doesn't.  This set-up, as well as a somewhat complicated but workable set of rules for how the realities interact, allow for players to play characters from many different genres--you have can a fantasy sword swinger, a crusading journalist, a techno-ninja, and a costumed super hero as an adventuring party.

Torg: Eternity keeps the vast majority of this fictional set, but makes some smart tweaks.  The cosms that worked well (Aysle, the 1930s pulp heroes and Egyptian mysticism realm of the Nile Empire, the Victorian horror realm of Orrorsh) are mostly kept as-is (though the Orrorsh invasion site is moved from Indonesia to India, which is an interesting change).  Some of the other realms get more extensive revisions.  The near-future, Asian themed cosm called "Nippon Tech" in the original was very much "inscrutable Japanese corporate menace," in the vein of other late 80s/early 90s fiction like Rising Sun; Torg: Eternity broadens it to "Pan Pacifica" and includes more anime and zombie apocalypse influences.  Tharkold, which was a little unfocused and "better than everyone else" in the original, becomes more clearly post-apocalyptic techno-horror in this version, as well as being moved to Russia which works thematically (and is a call-out to plot threads in the original timeline).  The remaining two cosms, the Lost World dinosaurs and lizardmen Living Land and the "Spanish Inquisition using the Matrix" Cyberpapacy, get more moderate but smart changes to smooth out some of the weirdness of the original, while keeping the flavor.

The second best thing about original Torg was the card play mechanics, and here Torg: Eternity also keeps the substance with a few smart changes.  There may have been tabletop RPGs before Torg to use cards as part of the game play, and there have been a few after, but none have done it so well.  Card play in Torg has two dimensions--a GM-facing side that determines initiative in combat and other dramatic situations and assess round-by-round modifiers and conditions, and a player-facing side where the player plays cards to provide one-shot bonuses or change the scene in various ways.  It's not obvious from reading the rules what function the cards serve in the context of overall play (it may come across as unnecessarily complicated), but in play it becomes clear that the interaction between the two dimensions of card play recreates a feeling of cinematic action that many games attempt to generate but fall short.  Clever, non-coercive mechanics reward players for taking creative actions in combat beyond "swing my sword" and "shoot my gun," making combat less of a grind.  The cards also give a way to set up staples of adventure fiction like bomb defusal or other timed hazards that most RPGs struggle to emulate well (and Torg: Eternity extends those rules to cover vehicle chases in a clever way).

The two major changes to card play in Torg: Eternity are to physically separate the GM cards from the player cards, and to add a third set of decks of "Cosm cards," one for each reality that the players may find themselves in.  Physically splitting up the GM-facing "Drama Deck" from the player-facing "Destiny Deck" makes the learning curve a little easier on new players and GMs (and allows them to put cool art on each card), but the mechanics of how the cards work is basically unchanged.  The real innovation is the Cosm cards, which allow players to introduce genre-appropriate events into stories that are set in a particular cosm--for example, one Living Land Cosm card causes a random group of dinosaurs to attack the party, whereas a Nile Empire Cosm card causes a villain to escape to plague the heroes in the future.  Often, playing a Cosm card creates a disadvantageous situation for the players, in return for receiving additional "Possibilities" (a currency that allows players to get spectacular results or avoid damage), so players have an incentive to make the story more interesting, even if it comes with short-term problems.  Having multiple decks of cards to juggle might be logistically more complex, but reinforcing the feel of each cosm through the cards is worth the additional complexity.

In contrast to the good things, there were some problems with the original Torg.  Most pressingly, original Torg was a bit of a Frankenstein's monster from a rules perspective.  The rules in the original boxed set were a little crunchy from a modern perspective and had a few structural problems, but the real problem was that each cosm-specific sourcebook rolled out a set of unique sub-systems that were mostly self-contained, didn't necessarily work well together (or with the stuff in the core set), and were often unnecessarily complicated.  So, you had 20 pages of gadget design rules that required you to draw a schematic of your device in the Nile Empire Sourcebook, next to 40 pages of spell design rules in the Aysle Sourcebook that generated results that were very different from the spells in the boxed set, along side (what, in my view, was the worst offender) the Power of Fear rules in the Orrorsh Sourcebook that were a record-keeping chore for the GM, stupidly lethal for the players, and made the climatic encounter in the initial adventure in the boxed set unplayable as written.

The rule changes that Torg: Eternity makes are almost all designed around streamlining systems.  Magic, miracles, psychic powers, and super powers all work on the same basic rules chassis.  There have been some complaints online that it sucks some of uniqueness out of the magic particularly, but on balance I think it is worth the trade-off to have everything work the same way.  The game also simplifies the cosm-specific rules--each cosm now has only two straight-forward World Laws that apply to everyone physically in the cosm's boundaries (removing the ambiguity in the original game over how World Laws work), with the rest of the flavor of the cosm handled by the Cosm cards.  Beyond removing sub-systems, there were a host of changes to various mechanical elements, generally in the direction of simplifying and streamlining.  To be clear, Torg: Eternity is not a rules-light game, especially by modern standards--I will confess to having my eyes glaze over when first going through the various situational combat modifiers.  But neither is it excessively crunchy, and I would put the overall complexity around that of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, if distributed differently.  And while I can't say I love every change (I'm very lukewarm about the new advancement and experience rules, for example), the majority of the changes are good and sensible.

The #1 problem with Torg: Eternity, which is both a good problem to have and one that is perhaps unavoidable, is that there is not enough of it.  The core book is only 280 pages, which covers both rules and setting.  That's about the total amount of material that was in the original boxed set, but like the original boxed set there is only a skeletal description of each of the individual cosms.  I am not sure that folks, especially folks brand new to Torg, are able to pick up the current material and run it as is.  If a GM wanted to run a campaign in Torg: Eternity right now, he or she would either have to do a ton of prep work to flesh out the cosms, or borrow from the material developed for the original game.  The Kickstarter provided the full library of original Torg books in PDF to help with option #2, but there are enough changes to both rules and setting that adapting the original material would itself take a bit of doing.  The Ulisses Spiele folks are also promising a new round of cosm sourcebooks for Torg: Eternity, but, given the tentative schedule they have provided, we won't have a full suite of material for at least another three years.

Again, to be fair, the original Torg boxed set had the same problem--the setting is so sprawling and high-concept that it just requires a lot of stuff.  A comprehensive book of Torg's setting alone could easily fill the 280 pages in the Core Book.  But the end result is that if you want a plug-and-play, fully formed setting that you can go with right off the jump, you might be disappointed with what you get in the first round of Torg: Eternity products.  The foundation and frame of what I suspect will be an awesome house are there, but you are going to have to put up the walls and install all the fixtures yourself, or otherwise wait for the Ulisses Spiele folks to roll out their product line.

Still, Torg: Eternity is a wildly successful re-boot of a great tabletop RPG, one that exceeded my cautiously optimistic expectations.  The rule system is worth digging into and trying out, even (or, perhaps, especially) if you have written off turn-based procedural combat systems in favor of a more free-form narrative approach found in things like the Powered by Apocalypse games or the new 7th Sea.  Torg makes that experience more interesting and more engaging than any other system I have encountered, without getting bogged down in excessive detail or crunch, and all of that is back in spades with Torg: Eternity.  It also has a fun, if out-there, setting that allows for really any sort of character concept or idea.  I am really excited to see what comes next for Torg: Eternity and the Ulisses Spiele folks.