The holidays and a head cold have slowed my posting of late, but I am hoping the new year will bring me many thoughts that are blog-worthy. I did get to play in one game of the new generic RPG Genesys with friends over the holidays. Genesys is a Fantasy Flight Games product using a variant of their Star Wars RPG system they call the Narrative Dice System. The Narrative Dice System makes use of proprietary dice which are sold by Fantasy Flight specifically for Genesys. The dice have different symbols than those sold for the Star Wars Narrative Dice System, but I believe the Star Wars dice have the same shapes and numbers of symbols. Both Star Wars and Genesys are dice pool game systems with successes, failures, advantages and disadvantages, triumphs and fumbles - the terms vary slightly between the specific games as do the actual symbols. Attributes and skills add positive dice and difficulties add negative dice.
Genesys is a true generic rulebook in that what it presents is a tool kit for referees to construct their own specific game from - or you can wait for Fantasy Flight to do a setting book for you as they promise with their Runebound setting (and others of less interest to me). What a couple of the fellas in our regular group did was take the Genesys book and make some houserules based on the setting material for Aventuria - the default setting for The Dark Eye RPG. A couple of us are big fans of Aventuria as a setting, but I have yet to master The Dark Eye rules - although I have run it (muddled through) a couple times. Aventuria is a mature setting that has been the default for The Dark Eye game which is Germany's oldest fantasy RPG (1984). Aventuria is loosely based on medieval Europe incorporating much from folk lore, fairy tales and classic fantasy. Using the Genesys game for Aventuria requires a degree of adaptation. Genesys only provides for human characters, which is basically a good fit for Aventuria where players are encouraged to play humans - the dominate race. Being a fantasy setting there are other races and a slew of monsters which must be created whole-cloth for the Genesys game. The rules give some guidance regarding fantasy classes and races, but is not specific to Aventuria, or any other known world.
Magic in Aventuria is rather complex with white, gray and black magic, witches and the divine casters including the priest and shaman, all at potential odds with each other. Magic knowledge in Aventuria is controlled and access is jealously guarded. The average citizen of the many nations of Aventuria is likely to view magic with suspicion and fear. Practitioners of the arcane are required to disclose their peculiar art by wearing robes of white and are greatly restricted in the spells they may research and deploy. Gray wizards are considered semi-outlaws and dabblers in black magic are just criminals.
Genesys treats magic as a skill, or set of skills, with difficulty levels depending on how powerful the effect may be. Using "Mage Fire" as an example, a net success while rolling a single difficulty die may be used to produce a simple effect such as a small flame in one's hand. To project the flame forward (such as in the classic Burning Hands spell) would add a level of difficulty (a second difficulty die). A third level of difficulty would be added to increase the range of the projected flames. This is all "house ruled" in Genesys.
Genesys and other tool-kit RPG systems always remind me of the early days of the hobby when this do-it-yourself approach was what almost everyone did. Part of the joy of sitting down at a referee's table in those days was the discovery of how that particular referee ran the game. Not only did I expect to be exposed to a unique milieu of their own creation (there were no published worlds), I wondered how magic would be handled, saving throws, combat, damage, hit points...the list is almost endless and virtually everyone experimented with rules. Everything was open to interpretation and creativity encouraged. The game is a lot of work for the referee when approached in this manner, but the fun (for me) is unequaled.
No comments:
Post a Comment