'Ask Ryan about In A Wicked Age !

[Minicol]

Alright man, you asked for it

So I ask you : what's about this game that's so special ?

what it's about anyways ?

 

[Crothian]

What's wicked Age? It sounds familiar but I can't place it.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Somebody beat me to it. Drat!

Can you explain the Owe list a little more, the rules just don't seem to be that awfully clear.

Anyway, why can't you mix up the Oracles and just mix the results? Could you use the owe list to allow drawer's choice.

I've also found in most games, if the party is split that the Burning Wheel mechanic of limiting scenes to 15 minutes works really well. Would that work for In A Wicked Age?

 

[ST]

IaWA is a really neat game, but the designer himself admits that for some groups, it simply doesn't work. There's a certain particular type of social element that has to be there at the table, or it has the potential to really fall flat. (I'm not sure on the specifics, but i think it has to do with how people handle the back-and-forth of conflicts. It's come up a couple of times.)


The interesting thing about this is I don't think of it as much of a ding against the game; most RPGs work that way, after all. It's kind of asking too much for all of his designs to work like Dogs, where literally if you follow all the advice in the book, you will get the advertised experience out of it.

Also, the oracles (which you can use free online) are pretty awesome for almost any fantasy game; they evoke a particular type of color very well.

 

[DMH]

Here is a review:

Review of In a Wicked Age - RPGnet

 

[Ry]

So I ask you : what's about this game that's so special ? what it's about anyways ?

What's wicked Age? It sounds familiar but I can't place it.

My best answer to these questions are in the Canon Puncture interview I did in February.

Off the top of my head, and not doing it justice:
1. No prep (though someone needs to read the game carefully)
2. Anthology structure (play a character for a session, sometimes they come back in a later story, and sometimes they don't - depending on the players' actions)
3. Play passionately with everyone at the table.
4. Each session produces a self-contained story (about 2 hours).
5. Ever feel like you don't see enough of the world? IAWA can put you over the horizon with each new session.

Oh, in terms of what it's about, here's another quick link to give you an idea of the setting: The Four Oracles. You can hit refresh to see new Oracle draws.

PS: Stereofm, I really, really want to do some kind of document for playing IAWA with Pathfinder imagery and tropes.

PPS: I don't have a lot of time this weekend - I'm out the door soon. But I know this thread is here.

 

[Ry]

IaWA is a really neat game, but the designer himself admits that for some groups, it simply doesn't work.

I think he's being too modest (he took some flack about the 'voice' the rules use). The GAME is as good or better than Dogs (having played both) but it can't be as tight because far more diverse situations result from a game of IAWA than from a game of Dogs.

I've played it with some pretty diverse groups and have always had success. Am I just that awesome? Maybe. If I am, you should take my 'Awesome' word for it - the game is damn, damn, good (and I've played A LOT of games). If I'm not awesome, then the game MUST be awesome to explain all my successes. QED

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Yeah I'm an educator, so I tend to ask complicated questions.

 

[Ry]

No worries! Here's the 2 minute answer:

The Owe list rewards characters (and players) for being protagonists. A person who faces opposition that is tougher than themselves - with a chance of winning - is acting like a protagonist.

So the game rules reward someone who puts their character in that situation (as evaluated by the dice - rolling against bigger dice but at least surviving the first round of an action sequence (or 'first round of coercion', as I like to say).

Mixing the Owe Lists is actually tricky; taking the Unquiet Past as an example, it's a mix of ancient gods, angry ghosts, and forgotten tombs and the human people that get caught up in that stuff. So if you pull from multiple oracles you run the risk of not getting the mix you're actually asking for (like, I want political intrigue and an army at war) and instead get something lopsided or mundane.

When I pulled from multiple Oracles, I rewrote the whole thing so I had really heavily-themed pieces and a separate deck called 'All Too Human'. So the All Too Human would get 1 or 2 cards drawn, and the rest would come from another oracle. Or you could draw 2 Unquiet Past and 2 Blood and Sex, but then you know what you're getting into (i.e. heavily themed elements).

In the second and further sessions, I DEFINITELY support letting a person who's at the top of the Owe list pick an element from one Oracle but drawing 3 remaining elements from another.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

So what is the composition of the "All Too Human" Oracle. Do you have it in .txt, .pdf, or .doc format?

And could I do this with the random adventure sheets from d20 sources (Dungeon Master's Guide, Races of the Wild, Races of Stone, Complete Mage, and Epic Level Handbook and for non-canon the Book of Erotic Fantasy). How could I organize those seeds into appropriate oracles?