Aria RPG

[jgbrowning]

What is MMS:WE?

A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe.... the best guidebook to making a magical quasi-medieval game world for fantasy gaming (3e in particular). It's easily generic enough to be useful in other gaming systems.

Here's the link to all the known reviews

http://www.exp.citymax.com/page/page/530534.htm

joe b.

 

[mikey6990]

Joe,

I have aria worlds, if you want to work something out. It is a neat book, but just was so much more that I needed at the time.

Mike

 

[jgbrowning]

Joe,

I have aria worlds, if you want to work something out. It is a neat book, but just was so much more that I needed at the time.

Mike

Send me an e-mail at josephbrowning@exp.citymax.com and we'll work something out.

I'll have to ship it to you sometime next week, because in about a hour I'll be heading off to Chicago for the game day!



Drop me an e-mail and when I get back next week I'll respond and we'll figure things out. Thanks!

joe b.

 

[woodelf]

krunchyfrogg, I never played it, probably because it had incredibly complicated mechanics. It's been a while since I read through the books, but I recall that every character was defined using over ten attributes, and you could only improve about four of them. Don't ask me why.

Too bad about the mechanics, though.

The mechanics are, overall, less complex than D&D3E. The only part that is more complex is the basic die roll--that's a bit of a beast. But it gives you a much smoother curve of results, rather than a flat distribution with abrupt ends. With an Aria roll, you can generate any result, regardless of your ability--but the vast majority of results will fall pretty close to your ability. (There are 10 level of result--5 failures, 5 successes--and if you had "no" chance of succeeding, you might need to roll 4 1s (on d10) in a row just to pull off a bare success.)

The only thing about Aria that is more complex than D&D3E is the need to build your own setting. Even the default game (without Aria: Worlds) starts from the assumption that you'll codify reality (and thus magic), then create the societies (and possibly histories), then figure out the castes and vocations within those societies, then create families, then create characters within those families. But, if you have a built setting (ambitious GM, use one of the examples in the book, use one that you found online), the game runs as or more-smoothly than D&D3E, and requires a lot less bookkeeping and rules knowledge.

Oh, the multiple attributes is actually a gem of an idea (though Aria is neither the first nor the last to use it): Basically, the premise is that most character conceptions (in any RPG) don't strongly involve all aspects of the character--they're focused on a few areas. IOW, you can sum the character up using only half-a-dozen broad traits ("dumb, uncouth, powerful warrior" "book-smart but socially-inept wizard"). So what Aria does is give you 16 attributes to play with, but 10 (or more) of those are considered average. You pick up to 6 of them to be above or below average (or maybe it was 6 above, + 2 below), thus defining your character. The reasoning is that, for the most part, you were just going to be jiggering points for points' sake for the rest of those attributes (because they didn't really apply to the concept), so we'll just cut to the chase and make them average. It also helps the game balance issues--you can't make a whole bunch of stats that you weren't going to use anyway really low just to jack up your other scores--and verisimilitude--most people aren't freaks with every single way you could rate them coming out very high or very low.

 

[woodelf]

There were at least three things that got in the way of finding/using those ideas:
1. The writing style. It reads like a college paper -- maybe a master's thesis on anthropology or sociology. It is very difficult reading, when with a different writer I think it would have been interesting.

2. The terms. They had a terminal case of NIH syndrome. They made up terms for everything, and none of them match generally accepted terms. It is worse than Blue-Speak for those of you familiar with that.

You're right, none of their terminology matched the "generally accepted" terms in RPGs. However, if you weren't already brainwashed by previous RPGs, the terms were, if anything, clearer. Let's say you come across the term "alignment", and can't find the definition in the gamebook--so you go to a dictionary. Good luck. With Aria, the equivalent terms are Personality Trait, Motivation, Passion, and Obsession. If, again, you don't have access to the game's definition, and pull out your dictionary, you'll end up with almost exactly the game definitions of the terms. Ditto almost all the rest of the terms in Aria: they break with RPG tradition, in favor of English. [One major exception is the magic chapter, where part of the problem is pressing into service a language [English] that simply doesn't have the right terms to talk about these sorts of things.] With most RPGs, the larger your vocabulary, the more confusing the RPG is (V:tM was particularly bad that way). With Aria, the larger your vocab, the clearer it is.

As for the writing style: yes, it's very complex and specific. It is *not* transparent, but it is clear. Contrast with, say, the D&D3E PH, which is written quite simply--and very confusingly. Simple writing is not always best. Should Aria have been written with a simpler style? Sure. But it hardly requiresa college education to read. It's not incomprehensible, just dry. Heck, it's easier reading than the AD&D1 DMG. Oh, and it's nothing compared to even undergrad-level sociology texts.

3. The mechanics. Roll a d10. A 1 is a critical failure, a 10 is a critical success. Yeah, fully 20% of the rolls will be criticals. The criticals are frequent enough that they totally dominate play.

Well, don't forget that all a "critical success" means is that you get to roll again, and possibly move the result one step more favorable. Because of the 10 levels of failure/success, a crit success is rougly equivalent in actual game impact to beating the DC by 5 [in D&D3E]--it might have an impact in some situations, but rarely a huge one.

Our gaming group tried to use the rules. It was a lot of work, and not worth it in the end.

As a background resource, the material is valuable but difficult to use. As a game, I hated it.

We had problems with the chargen--it *is* fairly intensive, and requires a fair bit of math. But play wasn't a problem. In fact, once you've got a finished character, it's one of th eeasiest games to actually play that i've used--right up there with BESM.

 

[mythusmage]

I'm re-reading Aria: Roleplaying again, and I've just read the die roll mechanics. A '1' (as it turns out) does not mean an automatic success, nor does a '10' mean automatic failure. I'll elucidate.

On a 1 the player rolls again. If the second die roll indicates a success, the degree of sucess is raised by one grade. Otherwise there is no change. On a 10 the player rolls again. If the second die roll indicates a failure, the degree of failure is lowered by one grade. Otherwise there is no change.

So a player who needs a zero on a d10 to succeed in a task who rolled -in succession- a 1, 1, 3 on the die would get a partial success instead of the partial failure he would've gotten otherwise.

It means that a Persona (using "Aria Speak" here) with no 'realistic' chance could do something "Mythic" (more "Aria Speak") with a long enough sequence of 'ones' on the die, while another Persona with loads of training and ability could be the victim of a monumental flub with a long enough sequence of 'tens'.

This could be simulated in d20 games, but I'll be explaining how over in the 'homebrew' forum.

 

[Mercule]

Mercule, did you participate in the WotC game search? Your world (what we can sense of it through its magics) interested me more than the worlds of even the semi-finalists we know.

Yes I did. I didn't even make the first cut.

My ego says that two things kept me from doing so. 1) Not being able to cover what I wanted to in one page. 2) Some lingering doubts about converting my magic system(s) into D&D (or even d20).

I _very_ much appreciate the comments, though. Honestly, I hope to be able to put it together in a presentable fashion for at least a "Player's Guide to Albathador" for my own players. If that happens, I'll probably at least put up a .pdf for download somewhere. Right now, though, what I've got is a pile of notes for one world and several game systems.

 

[Mercule]

Sorry to disagree with many of the previous posters, but I thought this game stunk!

You aren't the only person who doesn't care for it. Ironically, the fellow who introduced me to Aria Worlds (which prompted me to pick up Roleplay) thinks it's an unplayable game.

Then again, he thinks 3E is almost unplayable, too. About the only game he does like is Hero. *shrug*

3. The mechanics. Roll a d10. A 1 is a critical failure, a 10 is a critical success. Yeah, fully 20% of the rolls will be criticals. The criticals are frequent enough that they totally dominate play.

I think you grossly misread the mechanics.

As an example (without too much boring detail), I worked up some probability tables while playing with magic. Here are the odds of the various results for an "average" roll:

[COLOR=burlywood]
Mythic           00.04%
Extraordinary    00.36%
Superior         03.60%
Complete Success 26.00%
Marginal Success 10.00%
Marginal Failure 10.00%
Complete Failure 30.00%
Serious          14.00%
Miserable        05.40%
Catastrophic     00.60%
[/COLOR]

 

[krichaiushii]

Some threadcromancy here....

I referenced Aria over on the WotC boards, and the best link my poor googlefu could find was this thread.

I own the blue book, but apparently need to seek out the red one, as well.

For what its worth, I have only used the book for ideas.

 

[MerricB]

Yeah, I bought Aria - both books. And twice, after I lost my first copies.

Fascinating books. Showed signs of a trend of great ideas, lousy development that would continue to plague the LUG designers through many future products.

My copies still sit in my bookshelf.

Cheers!