Critiquing the Conjunction : Forked from the Great Conjunction

[Jack7]

Forked from: The Great Conjunction (RPG DESIGN CONTEST)

I've been working on mine a lot today, and I think it's become 50% more playable in the last 24 hours.

My plan is to post a play-tested version with better-written rules an a lot more content by April 1st; I think setting a public deadline will help get me to do it.

The biggest lesson I got from this? Don't procrastinate! Too bad I already knew that.

I've forked this thread from the Great Conjunction.

DISCLAIMER: These critiques are not intended in any way to color or influence the judging of the contest, but rather to offer constructive suggestions for future improvements of the works offered up by the contest. However if you are judging the contest in any way and feel you might be unduly influenced by what is said here then you might want to avoid this thread.

I thought I might add little commentaries and criticisms from the works I've reviewed (from the Conjunction Contest) in this thread. I'll post more comments and criticisms and suggestions as I go along. If anyone else wishes to add their criticisms and comments then this is the place to do so.

Now, my power has been out for days due to a massive snowstorm, and so I've had no time or power to do much formal reviewing, but this is what strikes me thus far:

Work: Deep Black

Author: Joshua Gervais

Criticisms: A lot of typos, repeated or left out words, etc. I suggest a careful re-reading and some editing to remove these distractions from an otherwise extremely thought provoking game-work and take on magic as perceptual reality. I understand the deadline pressures with all of the works handed in, I'm just saying you and everyone else will want to tighten up your work with future revisions.

Comments: I really like the idea behind this work and I like the idea of magic and other influences altering the perception of reality. This is something I am pursuing in my own work with Esoterica, such as Psychic Powers and Mental Powers, with things like Demon possession, and with Magic as regards Illusions, both arcane and staged illusion/misdirection.

I don't want to go into too much detail in this thread regarding the particulars of your work but I have so far enjoyed many of your design ideas and think your overall approach (both generally and mechanically) is extremely flexible, fluid and easy to use. In addition it leaves much room for expansion as well as being intuitive and "magical" in the sense that it is almost a combined mystical/psychological approach to magic. Which I personally highly enjoyed, the way things can skip around in nature and sequence. It leaves a sensation of magic being uncontrollable to a degree, and yet useful all at once. And this is a far, far superior "Vision of Magic" than many of the highly technical/pseudo-scientific approaches I often see as regards the subject. It is refreshing and invigorating magic, not stale and predictable magic, though in some senses it is simple. It is psychological magic, in the high sense of the term, where the mind and soul tend to flow into and out of one another and one is never really sure of exactly what one is seeing or what it exactly means. (That's the way I imagine it working given the setting involved.) Your game suggests that magic has "layers of intention and meaning" and not just simple minded, parlor game "effects." That magic is intimately tied to the characters, their minds, perceptions, duties, past, future, and personal experiences. And that is the best implication of your approach to magic, that magic is both "out-there' and "in-here" all at once and is not just simply a game substitute for modern physics in another guise. Ironically enough it is a modern game setting, and yet you manage to create a magical atmosphere which is not the same old boring, technically and mathematically obsessed, mindless, fire-and-forget, billiard ball battle-magic.

I also very much like the idea of the unreliable memory and of what that implies about magic. I have often thought that if magic were real then a good memory would be absolutely key to trying to keep it from altogether escaping the control of the individual attempting to use it. Twisting the memory would have an enormous impact upon twisting a power that already, by its very nature, twists reality itself. I liked your play of turning the memory into a related element of magic itself.

I also wish more game designers could grasp this simple concept you articulated:

If a player ever says they can’t do something because of a lack of character knowledge, tell them to do that thing anyway.

A game shouldn't be limited by the rules, the rules should be constructed in such a way as to help the player exceed himself through his character.

I could say some other things but I need to do a more careful re-reading now that my power is back on-line and I think this is a good enough initial critique for my part.

Suggestions: Drugs. Technology. Stage Illusions. Certain types of interrogation methods. Sleep deprivation. Suggestion. Genetic manipulation or therapies. Medical procedures. Protracted exposure to the elements. Maybe even exposure to certain spectra of energy radiation, chemical substances, and pathogens. I'm saying these things because I think they could add valuable physical and psychological techniques that would enhance certain in-game situations and encounters, especially given your setting background and general game milieu.

There are a lot of interesting game elements you could interject into the background of this game, and a lot of ways you could expand it and take it into some other interesting directions.

Overall though I really like what you've done as an initial effort and Godspeed with the contest.

I'll post critiques of other works later as I get the time to read and study them. In the meantime feel free to post your own critiques.

 

[EP]

I've read through Deep Black, Eightfold, and one other one (don't have them in front of me right now) with Tarot Arcana in progress. Since I'm getting them mixed up, I'll write down some quick notes and post them up here later on.

One thing I do notice between all of them is a trend towards abstract combat - characters lose battles rather than hit points. Some of these components seem hard to follow over the course of combat and there are questions regardings actions not quite covered in the current versions. Like I said, I'll post something more concrete when I jot notes down and get my facts straight.

 

[CardinalXimenes]

My two cents on Deep Black

Since I got Eightfold finished for my own conjunction entry, I've had time to read over some of the other submissions. I haven't played any, so these estimations should be taken with more than the usual grain of salt. The first game up under the inquisitorial gaze is Joshua Gervais' Deep Black.


Presentation:
Visually, it's good stuff. Nice use of color to offset topics and enough whitespace to avert any wall-of-text problems. The material is presented in a smooth progression. The text could use a second pass for typos, but there's nothing notably problematic there. A few rules left me a bit confused- on page 11, for example, it says that a target that flatly refuses a proposed consequence gets the stick. That is, they now get to determine the consequences of the conflict. I suspect I'm misunderstanding this.

Setting:
The setting itself is focused on playing magically-endowed ex-CIA agents battling oppressive visions of the future. This kind of tight focus seems a good choice for a small, short-development game. There are some preset nemeses in the form of magical ex-CIA agents helping oppressive visions of the future and some oddball-type supernatural foes that may or may not have anything to do with the enemy agents. Characters are motivated by the vision they received when they became magical. This vision varies, but always shows some profoundly dystopian future. According to the game, subjects are intensely reluctant to discuss their visions.

As an interesting point, GMs are discouraged from laying down any pre-planning before a session. The idea is evidently that players equipped with a basic understanding of the setting and their visions will drive the game by their own motivations, and GMs need only provide the obstacles in the players' paths. There seem to be a few problems with this ambition, however.

First, the game stresses repeatedly that visions are private. Agents don't like to talk about them. This means that for X players there will be X story directions being generated, all of which are likely to be secret from the other players. This is a perfectly reasonable tact to take, but if the game really is about intra-group motivation conflict and the struggle to control the narrative of events, it could be called out more explicitly.

Second, the GM is apt to end up taxed when X different storylines start getting pursued. Unless a PC manages to convince the rest of the group that opposing their bete noir will also oppose their own visions- and do this without knowing what the other PCs' visions _are_- multiple antagonists will be introduced by player actions. The GM is going to have to animate these antagonists with minimal forewarning. This is a good opportunity to keep the GM engaged rather than as a passive dice umpire, but it's going to tax a novice.

Magic is highly abstracted in this setting. The CIA process which endowed the PCs with their visions also granted them magical awareness and the ability to use quick, versatile magic (knacks) and slow, versatile magic (sorcery). Brief guidelines are provided on what knacks and sorcery can accomplish, but the bulk is left to player invention. Given the implicitly haphazard state of the PC's magical education- I could find no mention of where the PCs could reliably learn how to use their spells and incantations- this seems for the best. All but one type of PC can use magic, but there appears to be no formal education in it.

Mechanics:
Here's where I get a little uneasy with Deep Black. The basic conflict resolution mechanism is 1d10+Relevant Stat+sometimes 1 point more. Stats range from 1 to 4 for beginning PCs, who split 10 points among five stats in a 1-3 range, then add 1 more to their role's specialty. So far, so good.

To resolve a conflict, all participants make a test using the stat which relates to their action in the conflict. This is where things get iffy for me. There's no way to compel a subject to deal with a confrontation using a specific stat. Therefore, the only thing stopping a PC from constantly relying on their strongest stat is their ability to rationalize its relevance. Considering that two of the stats are "Combat" and "Social", there's not a whole lot that can't be rationalized, particularly at the meta-level.

The type of stat used in the conflict also doesn't seem to have any explicit bearing on the outcome resolution. If you win a conflict via Social, for example, the default penalty to your target is 3 stat points of injury selected by the victim. You could also narrate just about any other outcome you please, provided the GM buys it and the target accepts it on a metagame level.

Between these two factors, PCs are given very strong mechanical encouragement to ride their best attributes all the time. This is a perfectly
viable way of doing things, but it does tend to pare the number of interesting decisions that can be made in a conflict. One can always use weaker stats with more obvious application, but the only "reward" there is the need to use less imagination.

A secondary concern about the mechanics is the math that happens when multiple enemies conflict with one PC. Granted a PC rolls an average of 5 with 4 in his stat, a Normal Joe opponent will win the roll 30% of the time. Against two Normal Joes, the win rate goes above even, and three Joes will win 2/3rds of the time. I'm not sure if this is a real problem, however, because a single Joe needs to win the roll 3-4 times to win the conflict. Team Enemy's wins are spread out over multiple combatants, while the solo PC gets all his wins. In any case, randomness is very high, with a beginning PC rarely ever having more than 2 points advantage in a 1d10 spread, and experienced ones having rarely more than a couple points more.

As a final mechanical note, it would've been nifty to see more mechanical motivation for keeping your vision private. Maybe bump magic effects higher if your assailant knows your vision?

Summary:
Deep Black seems like a lively game for a small group experienced in RPGs. Novices may be intimidated by the "Make your own story" angle encouraged by it, but the rules are extremely straightforward. The magic system is abstract enough to avoid the kind of immersion-killing "But your magic can't do that!" arguments that crop up with open-ended systems (oMage, I'm looking at you). Players will need to very much sign up on the self-generated storyline aspects of the game, but it looks like the structure is sound enough to support that.

 

[Jack7]

CX, that was an interesting and well observed review.

As an interesting point, GMs are discouraged from laying down any pre-planning before a session. The idea is evidently that players equipped with a basic understanding of the setting and their visions will drive the game by their own motivations, and GMs need only provide the obstacles in the players' paths. There seem to be a few problems with this ambition, however.

First, the game stresses repeatedly that visions are private. Agents don't like to talk about them. This means that for X players there will be X story directions being generated, all of which are likely to be secret from the other players. This is a perfectly reasonable tact to take, but if the game really is about intra-group motivation conflict and the struggle to control the narrative of events, it could be called out more explicitly.

Second, the GM is apt to end up taxed when X different storylines start getting pursued. Unless a PC manages to convince the rest of the group that opposing their bete noir will also oppose their own visions- and do this without knowing what the other PCs' visions _are_- multiple antagonists will be introduced by player actions. The GM is going to have to animate these antagonists with minimal forewarning. This is a good opportunity to keep the GM engaged rather than as a passive dice umpire, but it's going to tax a novice.

I agree with you here basically, but to me this was a real strength of the game. It makes the game spontaneous, highly leveraged as a role play effort, and personally as a GM I love complex storylines which are basically character driven and/or mutually player-GM driven.

To me this way of functional play only adds to the conspiratorial atmosphere, even to the point of deeply and directly involving the GM into the conspiracy. That is the GM becomes a sort of de-facto ad-hoc player in the conspiracy and even he might not be aware of exactly where things are headed at any given point. And personally I am enthused by that idea. It is innovative, and a superb GM involvement tool.

But I do agree with you. It might intimidate a GM who is used to tight and strict storyline/plotline control, or one who is a novice, or one who cannot quickly improvise on his feet.

I might suggest a basic-gameset mechanic which allows the GM more control over the story (or one that allows him top re-establish control if necessary for a period of time) and the already presented one for more advanced GMs or for GMs who find it easy to improvise.

Good critique, I hope others will follow

 

[jdrakeh]

I think I'll go ahead and do the official judging in this split thread, as well. And, yes, I am reading the games. I will probably have to re-read them in a few days due to some new medication that I'm taking, as well as some other health complications, though. I mean, provided that people care about the judging results not reading like total gobbledygook

 

[CardinalXimenes]

Some thoughts on The Awakening

Next up, it's David S. Percival's The Awakening. I'll allow that I've got a soft spot for post-apocalyptic settings, so this one was an interesting one to look over for me.

Presentation:
I really like this layout. The TOC was handy, the two-column format was easy to read, and the heading font changes made topic shifts easy to spot. The quote inserts could perhaps have used a bit more flavor, but the fact that they were there helped give more visual interest to the pages and fend off walloftextitis. The decision to put the conflict resolution process definitions in front of the character trait definitions produce some muddiness in using terms before they're defined in the text, but it's fairly minimal. Perhaps the largest problem here was in the combat section, where it explained the effects of damage and permanent wounding, but didn't explain how much damage a hit did until the skill section and the later equipment section. The effects of Dodge and Parry are also only revealed later, and not mentioned in the attack resolution section of the rules.

Setting:
The game is set in the modern-day Pacific Northwest on the Canadian side of the border, about three years after the entire human race fell asleep at the same moment. The PCs are among those relative few who have since awakened, finding themselves dirty, confused, and worn from months or years of sleepwalking. In addition, all the Awakened have woken up with at least one inexplicable psychic power. The vast majority of humanity continues to sleepwalk, impervious to hostilities from other human beings. A portion have awoken as pack-living, murderous "Nightmare Runners" that lack both psychic powers and any vestige of human reason. To top off the new world's menagerie a number of monstrous or unnatural creatures now haunt the wilderness, the seas, and the desolate cities.

On one level, The Awakening provides a standard soft-apocalypse setting. There are no nukes or alien heat rays or comet strikes to wipe out industrial resources or physical structures, and three years isn't enough time for natural decay to efface human creations. Other Awakened have scavenged the low-hanging fruit, but any halfway inventive group of PCs would have plenty of reasonable places to look for useful salvage. The physical plant of civilization is still there to be used. A lot of the more popular post-apocalyptic tropes from the genre can be inserted into this setting without difficulty. Cannibal biker gangs, New Age cults, crazy survivalists- they can fit in here with minimal tweaking.

On another level, The Awakening tries to add psychic powers into the mix. This is a tricky thing to patch into a setting like this, and I'm not sure the integration was quite as smooth as it could have been. On one level, this is perfectly reasonable- these men and women have just woken up a few months or a year ago and the functioning of their powers isn't a certainty under the best of conditions. They may not have gotten enough of a grip on their abilities for it to have meaningfully affected how humans interact. Figuring out how their psychic shticks can be used among other humans could well be a good part of the newly-awakened PCs' adventure.

On the other hand, the psychic powers tend to be rather tightly defined and somewhat mechanistic in their effects. They're tools, much like a rifle or a water filter, and their uses are generally fairly obvious. For some settings this kind of magic would make perfect sense, but it makes a rather sharp contrast to the dreamlike, surreal quality of most of the other "magical" creatures and phenomenon noted in the game.

Adventure hooks for the setting are straightforward. Just about any soft-apoc trope can be used with minimal trimming, and the setting offers Nightmare Runners and psychically-empowered warlord types as setting-specific threats.

Mechanics:
Rolls are almost entirely percentile-based, though a deck of playing cards is used for determining initiative and psychic power skill roll bonii. The basic action resolution mechanism involves rolling under Stat+Skill+Difficulty Modifier on percentile dice. Stats range from 0 to 30 for beginning characters. Skills are availble with two at 10, two at 20, and one at 30. Difficulty modifiers range from -40 for an extremely difficult task to +40 for a very easy one.

As you can see, a character attempting an average-difficulty action that he's been optimized for is still looking at only about a 60% success chance. The advancement system ensures that this total is going to rise fairly rapidly within a session for often-used skills, but it's still not quite heroic-level performance. This could well be reasonable for a game in which the PCs are simply regular men and women who've happened to be Awakened, but it could be frustrating to play characters gifted with unearthly psychic powers but unable to actually use them with any kind of reliability.

I haven't got a good feel on combat from my reading. It feels like it could be extremely wiffy, with attackers looking at 60% hit chances at the top end. Then again, everyone can take two actions per round without penalty, so that's two 60% chances to hit. A given weapon can't strike more than twice, so if you want to take more than two actions to attack, you need a second weapon or a willingness to punch or kick. Actions are declared at the start of the round, and every action after the second adds a -10% cumulative penalty on all actions taken, and offhand attacks suffer an additional -10%. Napkin math suggests that the penalties balance out attack-spamming tactics versus aiming fairly well.

For a post-apoc game, I found it interesting that I didn't find any guidelines on hunger or disease. These elements aren't terribly popular in most RPGs, given that dying of untreated bronchitis or infected bug bites isn't exactly the most heroic way to go. Even so, post-apoc setting players often enjoy emphasizing the brute necessities of existence, where finding a month's supply of Hormel Potted Meat Product is something that merits celebration rather than burial.

On the whole, the mechanics of the game seem solid and serviceable, though I have a few reservations about how fiddly modifiers can get at times, with skills granting special perks, Dodge and Parry affecting attacks, damage being determined by die face determination, initiative by card decks, and advancement based on specific skill rolls. It seems to me that there were a lot of good ideas here, but maybe too many of them got used in one system.

Summary:
This is another good and workable game. The psychic aspect and backstory could be removed entirely and you'd still have a perfectly playable post-apocalyptic game. That may be the game's greatest weakness as well as its best virtue; the backstory and psychic elements don't seem to be as tightly integrated with the game world and mechanics as they might be. The combat system and action economy look interesting, and I was impressed by how well the math on them held up under my first look.

 

[twistnack]

Thanks for the critiques Jack and Cardinal you both gave me some interesting things to mull over when I expand Deep Black.

I got the chance to play test the game myself, but I wasn't able to get play test information from other people. One of my major goals for an expanded version is to see where other people get when they try to play the game as written.

Cardinal's concern about multiple opponents hadn't occurred to me, because most of the conflicts in the game were either the PCs ganging up on someone or one-on-one.

A few rules left me a bit confused- on page 11, for example, it says that a target that flatly refuses a proposed consequence gets the stick. That is, they now get to determine the consequences of the conflict. I suspect I'm misunderstanding this.

I can see how that might be confusing. I was trying to be conversational in the wrong place. I meant "get the stick" in the sense of getting hit with the stick (the default consequences, injury or blackout) rather than receiving the stick.

As a final mechanical note, it would've been nifty to see more mechanical motivation for keeping your vision private. Maybe bump magic effects higher if your assailant knows your vision?

I like that idea a lot.

 

[Wik]

Next up, it's David S. Percival's The Awakening. I'll allow that I've got a soft spot for post-apocalyptic settings, so this one was an interesting one to look over for me.

Y'know, I agree with almost everything you said there. Personally, Combat IS a bit wiffly, and it's being edited already. Damage, as it stands, does not scale with the health points/wounds system supplied. That really needs a change, but I didn't have time to get something really working.

The Characteristics don't work too well, either - that table will get modified. Basically, it's pretty hard to get any high (or low) characteristic. The table will be changed, once I get a workable idea.

You are right about the skill ratings, and that's the way I wanted it. PCs are supposed to be average joes - in fact, the "Concept" system supports this in a sense (since if you take "Soldier" as a concept, you can't use concept bonuses to replace the mostly combat-related skills... meaning it grants less than if you were to take "mechanic" or "homeless man"). I also wanted to give a benefit for PCs aiming, aiding another, and all that jazz... plus, it encourages the use of cover (Which I've just realized I didn't really put into the rules!)

Regarding Psychic Powers... I ran out of time, and I'm not sure I really like how I set them up. I'll be really looking over your feedback, there. I mostly agree with it.

As a note, a lot of setting "rules" (such as diseases, gas use, weapon quality, and the like) is actually going to be covered in a sub-system I planned on adding, but didn't really have the space for. It is a system that actually predates the Awakening by quite a bit. And it's a doozy of one - simple, and fun. I'll probably add it as an expansion at some point, once I've fixed the major glaring errors.

Summary:
This is another good and workable game. The psychic aspect and backstory could be removed entirely and you'd still have a perfectly playable post-apocalyptic game. That may be the game's greatest weakness as well as its best virtue; the backstory and psychic elements don't seem to be as tightly integrated with the game world and mechanics as they might be. The combat system and action economy look interesting, and I was impressed by how well the math on them held up under my first look.

Thanks a lot for the nice words! I think I could have merged the psychic powers into the rules a bit more, but I think they still have a pretty good place (for example, your "initiative" result can affect your psychic skill score in a combat). I think setting is going to be a big part of my future design on things... I was too busy fretting over mechanics that I missed a bit of the fluff.

 

[Wik]

I like Deep Black. I've been reading it off and on, and I really like the setting detail. It makes me think of X-Files, but much darker. Sort of a Delta Green game, almost. Which is a very nice thing, indeed.

As for the rules-side of things, they seemed fine to me, though they are not the type of rules I personally enjoy. they're simple, and that's a great thing. I think they'd work, but I don't have the rules-fu the reviewers here have.

I *really* like the idea of the Underworlds. They're such a great idea, and they really scream "magic". They remind me of that X-Files episode in the Bermuda Triangle, where the agents are sent back into the 1940s. I could see them being used for similar purposes. Plus, they're a great way to introduce modules from other systems!

I don't really agree with Jack7's suggestions on Deep Black. Not because they are not great things for the game (they DO fit), but because of the realities of space in the game. I fully understand how it is - you just don't have time to include all those great ideas. Drugs are already in the game, Jack (there are stats for Drug Dealers) - at this level, that's all you really need. A lot of the other suggestions can be easily put into the game -as setting details, not as things requiring specific game rules. And there already is a little bit of "technology" - intelligent robots, and all that jazz!

I just think that there are only 50 pages for the game, and only two months to fill them. Because of this, we all had to make sacrifices in content. Of course, you could argue that Deep Black is only 29 pages long, and so it could reasonably have had 21 pages more of fun stuff... but then, not everyone was able to devote a huge amount of time to the design. I like this game, I like the approach, and while it may have a few small errors/oversights, I think they all do. Ny two cents.

 

[Jack7]

I don't really agree with Jack7's suggestions on Deep Black. Not because they are not great things for the game (they DO fit), but because of the realities of space in the game. I fully understand how it is - you just don't have time to include all those great ideas. Drugs are already in the game, Jack (there are stats for Drug Dealers) - at this level, that's all you really need. A lot of the other suggestions can be easily put into the game -as setting details, not as things requiring specific game rules. And there already is a little bit of "technology" - intelligent robots, and all that jazz!

Well Wik, in this sense I'm talking about for future expansion and revisision of the game, not for this version. I can see though that from the way I phrased that I didn't make it clear that I was talking about future inclusions, and not my initial critique..