Mythic Bastionland - initial impressions, and making a Realm

[pemerton]

Just picked this up to read over the holidays. Love what I'm seeing so far.

If you make a Realm, please post to this thread about it!

 

[Fenris-77]

Im going to have to reread this and look for 'gaps'. That wasn't my impression on my first, admittedly casual, reading. The perception of gaps in rules can just as easily stem from reader expectations and prior context as from any actual gaps. Given that this is pullling a lot of OSR readers that might be a factor.

 

[pemerton]

Im going to have to reread this and look for 'gaps'. That wasn't my impression on my first, admittedly casual, reading. The perception of gaps in rules can just as easily stem from reader expectations and prior context as from any actual gaps. Given that this is pullling a lot of OSR readers that might be a factor.

From my perspective, it's uncertainty around how non-Myth-related prep and non-Myth-related framing are meant to work.

I can plug the gaps based on my experience with Burning Wheel, Torchbearer and Prince Valiant. I'm guessing OSR-types would plug them differently. But I think that also might tend towards the concerns raised in the blog that was linked to, that is, identifying different "gaps" which I think aren't gaps at al!

 

[Fenris-77]

From my perspective, it's uncertainty around how non-Myth-related prep and non-Myth-related framing are meant to work.

I can plug the gaps based on my experience with Burning Wheel, Torchbearer and Prince Valiant. I'm guessing OSR-types would plug them differently. But I think that also might tend towards the concerns raised in the blog that was linked to, that is, identifying different "gaps" which I think aren't gaps at al!

Yeah, this is what I was getting at. Gamers who are used to rules sets A and B that have features/mechanics X and Y might easily identify a game that doesn't have those features as having gaps. The reality might be that they simply haven't expanded their conceptual horizon far enough to analyze the game without reference to the games they usually play and the mechanics they usually use. This is, by coincidence, exactly what I think is happening with the discussion of BBay in that other thread. I'm not sure if that's what's happening with MB, but I'm keen to figure it out.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, this is what I was getting at. Gamers who are used to rules sets A and B that have features/mechanics X and Y might easily identify a game that doesn't have those features as having gaps. The reality might be that they simply haven't expanded their conceptual horizon far enough to analyze the game without reference to the games they usually play and the mechanics they usually use. This is, by coincidence, exactly what I think is happening with the discussion of BBay in that other thread. I'm not sure if that's what's happening with MB, but I'm keen to figure it out.

Make sure to post your thoughts!

I've got doubts that plugging gaps by using the methods of (say) Moldvay Basic will work well for the game. But presumably that's what at least some people are doing.

 

[Fenris-77]

Make sure to post your thoughts!

If I have any thoughts worth posting I'll certainly share them.

I've got doubts that plugging gaps by using the methods of (say) Moldvay Basic will work well for the game. But presumably that's what at least some people are doing.

Perhaps! People using their best tools to plug gaps is fine for some value of fine regardless of which tool we're talking about. I doubt that Moldvay basic will be my choice though given my familiarity with the rest of the Into the Odd games.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This has interested me enough that I'll probably pick this up at some point to read if nothing else.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Im going to have to reread this and look for 'gaps'. That wasn't my impression on my first, admittedly casual, reading. The perception of gaps in rules can just as easily stem from reader expectations and prior context as from any actual gaps. Given that this is pullling a lot of OSR readers that might be a factor.

Perhaps, I wouldn't die on that hill, but in my experience MOST RPGs, particularly more traditional ones, make HUGE assumptions about what an RPG is and how it is played. These are pretty critical gaps in my book. You don't notice them, because you basically scan such a game as "Basically D&D plus a few different mechanics."

But I would note that, even modern D&D is pretty rough on this sort of thing. You are probably going to leap in and say 5e tells you everything you need to know, but it doesn't! I see the gaps, they exist. You probably don't see them because you've filled in your expectations and preferences from decades of prior gaming. One reason I see these things clearly is, I started with the original D&D, and all the gaps were glaringly obvious there (not actually being critical of the authors, it was a new thing). I kind of know what to look for, and we had no prior tradition and experience to use to fill them in back then, so the issues were pretty clear. 1e, 2e, 3e, even 4e to a degree, have a lot of those same gaps, as does 5e. People have just long since developed tribal knowledge and filled them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, this is what I was getting at. Gamers who are used to rules sets A and B that have features/mechanics X and Y might easily identify a game that doesn't have those features as having gaps. The reality might be that they simply haven't expanded their conceptual horizon far enough to analyze the game without reference to the games they usually play and the mechanics they usually use. This is, by coincidence, exactly what I think is happening with the discussion of BBay in that other thread. I'm not sure if that's what's happening with MB, but I'm keen to figure it out.

I don't think 'Conceptual Horizon' or anything like that is involved. A game text is a text containing the instructions for how to play a game. You read it, you do what it says, you are playing that game. If you get to a certain point and there's no instructions covering what you do in situation X, then that's a gap! Now, MECHANICALLY most games have open-ended mechanics that cover things like "how do I roll dice and what do they mean in any arbitrary situation", but a lot of games have very large lacunae in terms of things like "how do we decide what situation comes up next?" Or "who gets to choose what comes up next, and by what process?" or any of a variety of other things like that.

I think, from the discussion, @pemerton's concern revolves around the sorts of issues I give as examples. Now, something like B/X D&D is pretty complete here, at least if you are in a dungeon. It sounds like MB OTOH doesn't really tell you what to do when, say, a player just declares his PC is going to do something that isn't clearly related to a Myth or other defined game element. Like what if Sir Mike says "I bring Lady Lenore some flowers." (maybe this is a bad example, as I haven't read the rules, but I think you get the idea).

 

[SteveC]

People have been talking a lot about "D&D Killers" as in "is this the game the next D&D killer?" And I think, in a broad sense, there won't be one any time soon. It's not viable, really, in any way. What there are, for me anyway, are games that kill my interest in playing D&D. This game is one of them. I really like the take on the genre, the knight characters you play, and the quest driven nature of the game as it's laid out. If someone put a game of this in front of me, I'd jump in at a moment's notice.

A friend of mine has an amazing birthday celebration that's become a full-sized gaming week. I've run something at it most years, and this will be the game I'm trying out this year. It has really basic mechanics, but the stories that come out of the quests just look amazing. We'll see if that's true. As I'm writing this, I suppose it might come off as dismissive of D&D, and as D&D is the biggest yum around, there's no way I intend to yuck it. I'm playing a 5E game tonight, for instance, but if I could come up with a good VTT implementation, I think this would fit my online group exceptionally well.