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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CardinalXimenes" data-source="post: 4694757" data-attributes="member: 58259">My two cents on Deep BlackSince 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.</blockquote>

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