Here's something interesting I've found, though I can't remember from where. Called "Revisionist History", it claims to be a game designed specifically for the PBP and PBEM formats. Here's the blurb:
This game aims for a multi level narrative. You play a scholar studying the lives of people in the past. In the course of the game you simultaneously create the story you are researching as well as the story of your scholar. The game is created and presented as a narrative of a group of scholars who are piecing together the story of some event from various sources and who have their own agendas to fulfill with the story that is told.
Sounds complicated? I know. But it's simpler than it seems. Have a read and judge for yourself; I don't want to paraphrase here and direct attention away from the author's site, because aside from anything else the game deserves attention. What interests me about it is that it's an honest attempt to do something with PBP/PBEM that only it can do. As a player of online games, I'm very familiar with the frustrations of trying to carry out traditional gaming with the format. It is possible, but it can be tough going. This provides a model not only for a system that works well with the format, but which goes to the next level and makes it actually gameable in and of itself. I like that and appreciate the effort put into doing it.
So as you may know, I've been thinking about running a PBP game, but can't decide what to run - there are just too many wonderful options. So here's a strange idea. By coincidence, I just the other day thought up a new and special system for governing human interaction whereby people offer their opinions about what they want (or "cast a vote", if you will), whereupon those opinions (or "votes", if you prefer) are collated, and the majority decision is carried. I call this system "democracy", from the Greek demos (or "people") and kratos (or "strength"). You are free to use it in the conduct of your own lives, if you wish.
The strange idea is that people who want to play in a PBP or play-by-chat game run by me can submit to me their opinion (or "cast their vote") whereupon I will count the "votes" for and against the various options and via "democratic" means will decide on what to run. I know this is likely mindboggling stuff for my readership, but bear with me.
I will now list the options available. Interested parties should send me an email at jeanDOTdelumeau AT gmail DOT com saying "I would like to play [x]" where x is the title of the game. Preference will be given to people who I know and am involved in or have been involved in a game with. I'll choose about 4-6 people, count the votes, then choose a game based on that and let people know by Monday-ish. Deal? Here are the options:
- Pendragon, but set in the Land of My Fathers, Cumbria/Scotland. Feudal knights in the north of Britain, facing off against Picts, Irishmen, Saxons and giants. No kilts because they hadn't been invented yet.
- Cyberpunk 2020, set in Chigasaki. Low down and dirty, more Burning Chrome than Snow Crash or Bladerunner.
- Sandbox ICE Middle Earth Role Playing in the Late Third/Early Fourth Age. Tolkien's entire creation as a playground. No appearance of canon characters because that's boring.
I like games that are fairly serious in tone, in which the players take initiative and have to expect it's likely their characters will die at some point if they're not careful. I don't have a preordained story in mind and what happens in the game generally does by player choice.
An interesting post by edsan yesterday about setting fetishism and the social contract of explaining what the terms of a game are going to be before it begins. I'm the kind of person who traditionally leans towards the setting-fetishist point of the scale - you've probably worked this out already if you've been reading my blog for any length of time - but I recognise that essentially it's all a matter of horses-for-courses. I'm a player in edsan's Empire of the Petal Throne campaign, but I have basically no knowledge or experience of Tekumel. If you're going to run an EPT campaign with utter rubes like me, then setting fetishism just ain't going to work. You have to play fast and loose. Setting fetishism is a great thing if the players have both the knowledge and the willingness to invest heavily in the game world; if they lack either of those things you'll have a disappointing and rather crap game. (Similarly, playing fast and loose with a setting when players have the knowledge and willingness to invest is a recipe for unfulfilment and general wailing and gnashing of teeth.)
edsan points out that a good thing about Mike D's Ruins & Ronin project is that it doesn't allow itself to get hung up on details about feudal Japan. It's a fantastical vision of feudal Japan in the same way that D&D is a fantastical vision of feudal Europe. In the same way that D&D didn't worry itself unduly with accurately representing the life of a peasant in 11th-Century Avignon, so there's no reason for a 'Japanese' fantasy game to accurately represent life in 15th-Century Kanazawa.
I both agree and disagree with this. D&D might not be very realistic in its depiction of medieval society, but Harn is. (And during the 2e era, TSR made several forays into historical realism which I found particularly enjoyable.) Similarly, Ruins & Ronin might throw out socio-cultural detail in the name of pulpy fun, but The Blossoms Are Falling proved that basing an entire game on socio-cultural detail can be just as entertaining. It's a matter of those horses and their courses, again. Self-evidently, so long as players are clear as to the aim of the game, it shouldn't matter. As with the social-contract expectation that players should know whether they're turning up to play Tekumel canon or EPT-for-dummies, potential buyers/downloaders of a game should know what it is they're getting into. (This was always my problem with Legend of the Five Rings. If it was supposed to accurately represent Japanese society it was an embarrassing failure, but if it was supposed to be a fantasy game which just happened to take some of its influences from Japan, then I could forgive it. But which it was was never made clear.)
Anyway, in the comments to edsan's post, vraymond (who also happens to have written about this sort of thing recently) mentions running a game set in Kofun era Japan. I've thought about this too. (I wrote about it briefly here.) During that period, roughly between 250 and 538 AD, Japan was a disunited region of chiefdoms and tribes who built huge mound-like tombs (rather like iron age Britain). However, not much else is known. The societies present in the archipelago were all pre-literate, so almost all of our scant knowledge comes from sources in China and Korea, who were more technologically advanced, and who began to make regular journeys to Japan during the period.
My idea for a Kofun-era game was that it would take place in a sort of quasi-historical version of East Asia where mythological beings, magic and so forth are real. The players would be Chinese or Korean diplomats, missionaries, traders and/or adventurers, who make the journey across the Yellow Sea and find a strange, mist-shrouded, forested set of islands full of barbarians, ghosts, dragons and ogres. These strangers in a strange land would then have to make of it what they could. (Rather like how in traditional EPT games, the players are always foreign newcomers trying to survive in Tsolyanu.) I think the advantage to this sort of game is that it allows a DM to come up with essentially whatever he wants - he can throw in any bastard mixture of Japanese mythological tropes - without having snobs (like me) complaining that "it wouldn't have been like that". And yet at the same time, if he's the setting fetishist type, he can spend weeks or months of his life developing an intricately detailed game world, and it won't matter that they players don't know much about it because, by definition, they're foreigners. There's no potential for conflict between players who "know about" Kofun-era Japan and those who don't, because everybody including the DM is in the same position of more-or-less complete ignorance. And at the same time there's plenty of scope for Japan-inspired fantastical weirdness.
I'm working on my mollusc-world/Yoon-suin setting at the moment, but maybe after that I'll think about making a Kofun-era based something-or-other.
So I'm joining edsan's Tekumel PBP game, and also kick-starting my own Planescape PBeM campaign, and it's given me the bug for starting off something new. I've just finished off a big project and have some time on my hands, and I've been talking a whole lot about Warhammer, so what better moment to dust off the old Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay rulebooks and see if anybody wants to get involved in a PBeM campaign?
The Particulars
The game will use the 2nd edition WHFRP core rules (I actually prefer 1st edition, but don't have the rulebooks) and will be set in the Border Princes. This is a lawless area where colonists from the Empire, Bretonnia, Kislev, Estalia and Tilea mingle with greenskins, dwarves and chaos cultists amidst ancient haunted ruins. The politics are in a constant state of flux, with bandit chiefs, minor princelings and robber barons rising and falling from power with the changes of seasons, and monsters and opportunities for adventure are everywhere. In short, it's like the Wild West of the Old World, and the perfect place for a bunch of adventure-seekers to pitch in and make a name for themselves - and maybe become Prince of their own little domain.
It'll be a sandbox type campaign, in which the players will be free to do what they want to do without railroading, so it'll need people who are happy to take the initiative. But I'll provide plenty of adventure seeds and locations for exploration to get you going. If you want to do old-fashioned dungeoncrawling with hirelings, you'll be able to, but you'll also be able to get mixed up in grander concerns if that's your thing.
Newcomers to WHFRP are more than welcome. The game is simple, and as I've already mentioned, character generation is more or less random, so no in-depth knowledge of the mechanics are required. (I'll do all of the in-game dice-rolling myself beyond character generation anyway.) It's a lethal game, though, and I won't pull punches or fudge rolls, so expect character deaths in roughly equal numbers to those you'd get in OD&D. If you need to know more about the Warhammer setting, take a look at these wikipedia pages. (Although because the campaign will take place in the Border Princes, you don't need to know most of the details of what's going on in the rest of the world.)
If you'd like to get involved, send me an email at jean.delumeau AT gmail.com for further details. I'd like a group of between 4 and 6 players who can commit to mailing something at least once a day on weekdays; any more people than that and things could get unwieldy, though if I'm swamped by dozens of applicants I may consider running with two different groups of four.
When people say that fantasy, science fiction, horror and so on are just escapism, I always inwardly roll my eyes, even though I have to recognise that the description is fundamentally sound. What annoys me is that it is also fundamentally sound for every genre of fiction. You're telling me The Secret History, White Teeth, Bleak House, Pride & Prejudice and Midnight's Children aren't about escape from real life? Saying that 'fantasy is just escapism' is simply another of the many ways in which the Literati consign the genre to the Untouchable Shelf in the book shop where the Not Real Literature books go.
The problem, you see, is the word just. 'Fantasy is about escapism' is a proposition I have no difficulty with. 'Fantasy is just escapism' is dismissive and wrong, not only because the genre is about so much more than that, but also because it implies that there's something bad about escapism - like it's an insignificant or unworthy goal. As we have seen, such an implication is idiotic because if it applies to fantasy it equally applies to 'literary fiction' or whatever label you want to give the Proper Novels - but it is also idiotic because escapism is at core a good thing.
Let me tell you about escapism. I spent much of last year in a kind of limbo between finishing a Master's degree and starting my Ph.D, mainly because of problems with the funding body who pay me for my research. During that time-between-times I was working as a translator and editor cum Head of English at a small company in Yokohama, and it was The Dullest and Most Soul Destroying Job in the world. I spent most of my time sitting at a desk in my office painstakingly translating patents and employee contracts that didn't have a modicum of anything approaching interesting content; getting up to grab another cup of coffee every hour or so from the lobby; idly flirting with the receptionists while drinking said coffee; staring out of the window; and listening to the clock tick on the wall. My boss didn't allow us to listen to music and I worked 10, 11 or 12 hour shifts at a time. I have never known longer days.
I think four things kept me sane during that period. One was the financial renumeration, which wasn't at all bad. Second was the fact that I knew I would be leaving in October. Third was going drinking after work. And fourth was the escapism offered by the fact that I was alone in an office and could post in various PBeM games during the day without anybody knowing.
The fourth thing was perhaps the most important. I would sit in my silent, grey, deathly boring office while life crept by outside at glacial pace, and I wouldn't mind the dullness, because for a few minutes every hour I was creating an imaginary world with good friends: slaying dragons, assassinating politicians, exploring ocean depths or just shooting the breeze about what we were going to do next. That's escapism for you. It ain't a bad thing.
Perhaps this is too masturbatory for words, but my PBB (Play by Blog) game is underway. Don't worry - I won't now commence to act like a catpiss guy, blustering you into a corner and not letting you go until you've heard all about his favourite character. I just want to let you know, in as polite a way as possible, that you're welcome to lurk.
Later on I'll inflict a new series of posts on you: the Mighty Fighting Fantasy Cover Monster Bestiary!! (tm).
Apologies if this is a non-topic, non-quality blog entry. But Scott managed to pull this off - and anything he can do, I can do too, dammit!
I'm going to run a PBEM Planescape campaign. It'll be done via yahoogroups, which I've been using to run another PBEM game for about three years now, and which has generally been satisfactory. (Also, I'm not good at setting up forums and the like, because of my strong technophobic streak, and having game turns emailed to me is much easier to keep track of than visiting a forum every couple hours.)
And I'm open for applications. Email me if you want in, at jean.delumeau THAT SWIGGLY MARK THING gmail.com.
The Crunch Bit
2nd edition AD&D, as God meant the game to be played, although seeing how little difference there is between 1st and 2nd edition AD&D I might be willing to accept 1st edition classes, magic, and so on with a few tweaks. I'm not big on playing the rules exactly as written, anyway.
I have essentially all the brown complete handbook series, plus various other sourcebooks, so feel free to go hog wild on kits and the like. However, this is going to be a game for Primes - we're going for a Strangers in a Strange Land theme here - so no planar stuff is allowed. (A corollary of this is that people who don't know their Planescape arses from their elbows are more than welcome to join.)
Mechanics-wise, we're going for old school starting-at-level-one 3d6-for-stats. I'll have you make those rolls, and other very important ones, via an online dice roller. Generally in-game rolling will be done by me, though. As Planescape is a tough setting for 1st level characters, I won't enforce stat class restrictions. I will enforce level limits, though, and although I'll be as fair as possible, I won't pull punches regarding character death.
Game wise, I'm big on combat, exploration, swashbuckling action, and weirdness. Angst and emo, not so much. I like character development and I like a good stories but I don't like those things to be predetermined. Ideally, they'll arise during the course of play.
There's no metaplot here or big story arc - the planes are infinite, you've just arrived, and the multiverse is your oyster. Let's see where you end up!
I'd like a party of 6, so get in quickly. I'll choose people mostly on a first come first served basis, although obviously if I know you (via the blogosphere or wherever) it'll be a help. For the time being, just send me an email saying "I want to play!" or words to that effect, and we'll go from there.
Glutton for punishment that I am, I think I'm going to start up a new play-by-email campaign. If and when I do, I might advertise it here, so keep your eyes peeled.
It's no exaggeration to say that play-by-email is the only reason why I'm still in the hobby. I don't get to play face to face very often, especially over the past five years that I've been in Japan, and with the marital and work commitments I have. There are quite a lot of English-speaking role players over here, but finding the time and opportunity is tough.
Moreover, when I first came to Japan I'd actually been away from the hobby for four or more years, and had lost touch entirely with what was going on. When I first started playing PBEM games back in around 2003, believe it or not I didn't even know that a Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition had been released. I was astonished to find out that TSR no longer existed, that there was no more Planescape or Dark Sun or Al Qadim, that half-orc barbarians were now core rule characters, and that play was now dominated by something mysterious and awful called an attack of opportunity. It was only through a now (sadly dead) site called pbem.com that I came back to the fold and started involving myself in rpgs again. My first game was a 3rd edition one that lasted for two years and was thoroughly enjoyable, mainly because the DM was good enough not to bother enforcing most of the rules. I played a dwarf fighter called Gorky, who spent most of the time insulting his comrades and charging around swinging an axe. I was re-hooked.
Play-by-email is a funny thing, of course. It's not to everyone's tastes. But it would be wrong to call it a poor imitation or alternative to tabletop play. It's just different - like comparing television and radio. You don't remember the great sessions, because there aren't any sessions. Instead, you tend to remember fun interchanges (carried out over the course of a few days!) or great posts people have made. And the brilliant thing is that you can go back and review those great posts in years to come. (I run a game that's now over three years old, and I'm looking forward to one day downloading the 4000 or so posts everyone has made and reading the whole sprawling madcap thing together.) This isn't possible with tabletop role playing, much as I wish it was.
The anonymity is interesting, too. I've 'known' some of the guys I game with for over four years now, but I have no idea what most of them do or even how old they are. They're just "the guys". It's an odd sort of relationship that you develop with somebody who you know almost nothing about outside of the game - not exactly a friend, but a kind of comrade in arms. Surprisingly, it isn't an unpleasant thing. It's strangely pure, in a way. You both like to game, and that's the beginning and end of it.
