Nova Praxis Review

I’m going to kick off a new cycle of reviews with a game that I finally finished reading (it’s only be the better part of a year): Nova Praxis. With that, I’m also trying to get a rhythm and structure down to how I approach reviews so they’re informative without just rattling off a bunch of facts about the product (like how many pages are devoted to this or that, or dry chapter breakdowns). Most importantly, I’m eschewing any kind of rating scale at all.

Overview

Nova Praxis is the latest game from Voidstar Studios. It features a transhumanist-style, post-cyberpunk setting. Earth was pretty much rendered uninhabitable by a grey-goo type scenario, and mankind has since populated the stars. Society has changed, ideologies have changed, but ultimately people remain the same. The player characters are presumed to be edgerunner/troubleshooter types, either living on the edges of or beholden to a tarnished utopia. There are cybernetics, sleeves (the ability to download a consciousness into a new body), virtual reality, drones, and minds that exist only as software.

Nova Praxis’ Fate Pedigree

Before going any further, some comment on Nova Praxis’ flavor of Fate is probably useful. Nova Praxis uses a variant of Strands of Fate, which is itself a Fate variant. The game was apparently developed somewhat before and concurrently with Fate Core, but it sits firmly on the Strands side of the divide. Mostly this means the system tends to be a little more “crunchy” than Fate Core in terms of modifiers and extra systems...yet at its heart it’s still Fate (4DF, aspects, stress tracks, etc.). Overall, Nova Praxis is not as dense with subsystems as, say, Starblazer Adventures but still features a number of them. There are some departures from Strands that slide Nova Praxis a little closer to Fate Core. It eschews abilities for skills, and goes back to using stunts instead of advantages. It also reduces the number of character aspects to start with to 5. These changes bode well for Fate Core fans wanting a science fiction game, as it makes adapting it all the easier, but the game is solid on its own.

The Book

Well, in this case, the "enhanced PDF". Hands down this is one of the best looking and most feature-packed PDFs of any game I’ve read. The experience on a tablet is likely even better, but I only have a PC. Every page has a side menu on the left for accessing chapters and buttons on the right for moving from page to page. Chapter headers have menu buttons to go to specific subjects that seamlessly take you to the text. Every other PDF I have looks primitive in comparison. Plus, it’s fully bookmarked. There’s an appendix with a variety of NPC templates, glossary and the aforementioned character sheet. The artwork, as seen in the screen captures scattered throughout this review, is full-color, evocative and very high quality.

My copy has a slight problem with the back and forth arrows turning weird colors when I click on them. I may have an outdated PDF, or it could be my version of Acrobat or even my PC. If the case it is an outdated PDF that’s no fault of Voidstar’s, who have been on-the-ball with updating the PDF and getting it out to customers. I probably just haven’t downloaded an up-to-date version. My only real complaint is that the borders seem kind of busy, but not in a “ZOMG, why’d they layer the text over an image of Donald Rumsfeld?!” way. They don’t really detract from reading.

The Setting

The first few chapters of the book are dedicated to the setting’s history, locations, culture and politics. The setting is compelling, given that the Singularity kind of came and went with the birth and unexplained shutdown of the first true AI, named Mimir. Prior to shutting down it essentially spit out a ton of technological advancements (called Mimir-tech) - so many, and so advanced, that there are entire disciplines dedicated to decoding its archives. This technology is where pretty much everything comes from in Nova Praxis. This leads to humanity taking to the stars, but even in the wake of the end of scarcity and unparalleled technological advancement, doesn’t do anything to end conflict - it just makes it worse.

The end of a bitter war between two superpowers results in one side releasing the technophage - nanites that reconstruct matter into war machines. The technophage spirals out of control, and mankind is forced to try to fight it, then try to stop it, and eventually run from it. Earth is abandoned, leaving billions to die. The governments of the two superpowers become all but insolvent, forcing the largest corporations to have to step up and take charge. This leads to the formation of the Coalition, and the establishment of the current house system.

Coalition society is post-scarcity, at least in terms of ensuring that what is left of humanity has a baseline standard of living. The result is a society where the citizens have all of their basic needs provided for and have the freedom to do absolutely nothing - in exchange for near constant monitoring of every aspect of their lives. The Coalition economy runs almost solely on reputation, with those who contribute the most having access to more wealth. Predictably, there are those who who are unwilling or unable to live under the aegis of the Coalition and the Houses - they are called Apostates. Some hold-outs even try to continue a guerrilla war against the Coalition. Obviously, the Apostates, Houses and others exploit as many loopholes in the system that they can - otherwise it would be a pretty boring place to tell stories in.

Overall, I find the setting to be perfectly serviceable but not “Wow, that’s really awesome!” inspired. The aesthetics are good, and there are good justifications for why there would be groups of troublemakers running around stirring shit up. The structure of the Coalition with the Houses falls a little flat for me, but that’s mostly a taste preference. What the setting has in spades is a good mix of general tropes, ranging from a cyberpunk dystopia to Mass Effect-style space opera. It’s easy to drop things in that match any number of themes. I could see doing something in the vein of the Unincorporated Man, or even Blindsight, just as easily as a simple cyberpunk-style run with a Mr. Johnston and a double-cross and everything.

The Rules

Nova Praxis is basically Fate with a few differences. In case you’re not familiar with Fate, here’s the general rundown I included in my Fate Core review:

• Uses Fate (or Fudge, same thing) dice, specifically four (notated as 4DF). Two sides are marked with a +, two sides with a -, and two sides are blank. They are read by adding up the results, so ++ - is a +1.
• Skills are rated from 0 to 6 or higher. They add to the die roll. There are no attributes.
• Most importantly, uses descriptive "tags" called aspects. Aspects represent things that are important - to the character, to the scene, even to the campaign - and can be used to justify influencing the story or results such as getting bonuses to die rolls, rerolling bad rolls, creating a special effect or merely being used as a justification for an action. Aspects can be used by (called invoking) and against (called compelling) characters, and characters can take actions that will add new aspects into play.
• It uses a currency called Fate Points that players spend to use their character's aspects (called invoking). Players receive Fate Points when their aspects are used against them (called a compel).

The differences in Strands of Fate mostly revolve around nomenclature, the use of aspects and some specific cases regarding die rolls. Rolls that succeed over the difficulty can generate Spin, which follows the standard pattern of allowing the player to create a short-lived aspect. Rolls that fail to generate enough shifts generate Stall, which can result in a negative penalty or just something bad happening - a short-lived, negative aspect. Likewise, situational modifiers can be positive or negative, and compels can be used to impose a penalty on rolls. The game also multiple scopes for aspects, and doesn't allow more than one aspect from any one scope to be used on rolls. The system also keeps the concept of Persistent Aspects from Strands of Fate.

Since the game sits on a balance (and a rather nice one) between more traditional role-playing systems and Fate Core (which I’m taking as the “standard” to compare it to), there are a number of subsystems and specialized rules. For example, there are rules for sweeping beam weapons, falling, poisons and diseases, etc. Personally I’ve kind of moved away from needing or wanting these types of rules, but they are definitely useful as baseline examples for how to handle various situations that can come up in play.

There are two subsystems stand out: Rep-Ratings and Sleeves. Both of them are tied intrinsically to the transhuman nature of the setting, and so are totally appropriate to be given focus with their own rules.

The character’s Rep-Rating is an abstraction of the complex system that exists in the setting for tracking a person’s contributions to culture and society. Rep-Ratings are used in place of money, as well as calling in favors. They can also be used to limit membership or acceptance into various social institutions, schools, etc. People can give one another bumps or hits to their rep ratings pretty much at will, although it affects their own Rep-Rating when they do so.

Sleeves are new bodies that a mind can be downloaded into. They come in two types: biosleeves and cybersleeves. In order to utilize them, a character needs to undergo Apotheosis - effectively digitizing their mind. There are a number of stock sleeves available for characters, each with a cost, aspects, physical skills, built in augmentations, points for customization and any special rules. Not all characters are Apotheosized, although many augmentations can be purchased without the need for a sleeve.

Character Creation

As part of this review I’ve created a character, straight out of the rules and following the steps listed in the book. Nova Praxis comes with a form-fillable character sheet at the end of the PDF, and the same sheet is available as a stand-alone PDF. You can see the completed character here.

One thing I like about character creation in Nova Praxis is that various components - such as skills - are listed right there in the appropriate step. There’s lot a not of flipping between sections. The only exception is stunts, which makes sense. If they were listed with the stunt selection step, you’d just have to flip past all of them to get to the next section.

Unlike Fate Core, Nova Praxis does not include the character concept as one of its aspects. What it does with aspects though is something I’ve always liked: the aspect alphabet. While not hard rules on what the aspects have to be, they provide a nice guideline for the kinds of aspects that make well-rounded characters. The aspect alphabet goes in a bucket list of cool things to do for any Fate game, along with the mad-libs style template for phrasing invokes and compels from Fate Core.

Beyond aspects, characters have a starting state: Pure, Sleeved or as a SIM (basically software). The inclusion of an option and support for playing a character that is basically pure software is really interesting, as SIMs can control surveillance systems, download themselves into sleeves, and control drones. Each state has it’s own benefits in terms of bonus skill ratings, refresh and free stunts. After the state is determined, the player chooses skills. There are 20 skills total, plus three physical skills. The separation of the physical skills seems like it was a good way of dealing with characters that can have a wide-range of physical abilities (or, in the case of SIMs, none at all). Likewise, sleeves and drones have at the very least their own allocations of physical skill ranks.

To make it easier to distribute skill ranks, there are three skill sets (Specialist, Expert, and Generalist). The skill ranks between the sets are not the same - Specialist grants 22 ranks, with the highest skill rank at 5. Expert grants 30 with a max rank of 4, while Generalist gives 38 and a max rank of 3.

Finally you choose stunts, determine your character’s allegiance, choose gear and calculate starting Rep-Rating and stress boxes.

When creating a character I ran into an annoyance and a couple of issues. The annoyance was the character sheet - while it covers all the basics, it could have really used dedicated spaces for the character’s current state and allegiance. As it stands I jammed them under Notes. That’s relatively minor.

One of the issues was when calculating Physical stress. The first time that it's explicitly stated that humans are Size 0 is on page 151, under "Lifting Things" and there is no size chart in the game aside from vehicles (which starts at Size 1). It took some searching to find this out, and only after that I remembered that humans are Size 0 in Strands of Fate. Again, this may be changed in any revised PDF that may exist, and it's far from a showstopper. Still the character creation process is fairly straightforward, and the layout and writing make it relatively painless (aside from the dilemma I face any time I create a character in a vacuum).

Finally, there’s choosing starting gear. The method used to determine how much gear the character has is to determine the highest cost that the character can purchase and then choose one piece of gear for each step down to 0. So if, like my character, the starting value was 7 I would choose one piece of gear that costs 7, then 6, then 5, etc. I was barely able to squeeze in the types of items I thought this character would have, and had to do a lot of rearranging to fit in with the n = n - 1 pattern. The personal computer had to go in a slot one higher than it should have (so I added an aspect modification, which increased the cost by 1), and I left the 1 and 0 slots empty. To be fair, I restricted gear purchases only to what was actually listed without making anything up, which might be an unrealistic situation (more on the gear selection below).

Gear

There is a whole chapter devoted to gear, and it gives some decent guidelines on restricted items, modifying gear, augmentations, as well as building sleeves, drones, and vehicles. The examples are rather sparse for weapons and equipment (one of the reasons that I struggled with equipping my character - I wanted to do it straight out of the book without adding anything). Strands of Fate actually has a slightly more varied equipment list, with a few items that would definitely have been useful in Nova Praxis (such as equipment kits).

Now I’m not a gearophile, but when there is an equipment list I like to see a good mix of generalized gear and special, setting-specific items. For a game like Nova Praxis, this would have been especially helpful. Personally, I would just wind up filling in the blanks with items from Strands of Fate, or other games such as Blue Planet, Jovian Chronicles, etc. Similarly, there are only a handful of sample drones and vehicles given. While the rules are there to build your own, it would be nice to see at least a small variety of stock vehicles for immediate use, as well as to get a feel for how “canon” vehicles and starships are statted out.

Some Room For Improvement

There are a few things I would have liked with a little more meat in Nova Praxis. First, some more utilitarian illustrations or description to give a better feel for the setting. One thing that I find with some settings is the zoom level is far enough out that there’s no real impression of how things are “day to day”. In contrast, Blue Planet does a good job of conveying what life on Poseidon is like in just the Player's Guide. The same goes for Jovian Chronicles in terms of living in various installations, what shipboard life is like etc. I suppose the difference is that both of those game lines are well developed with multiple books, while Nova Praxis packs everything into one. Still Voidstar might have included a few zone maps or illustrations of locations, vessels, stations, etc. The same goes for more example vehicles. Similarly, while each House has it's specialties listed there's little indication if there's any overlap. Is House Dalianis the only starship manufacturer? Does House Jinzhan manufacture them and, if so, how are they different? Likewise, I thought that the information on compilers was a bit on the skeletal side - enough to grok how they affect the setting and are used, but still leaving me with a couple of questions (particularly regarding PCs purchasing them).

tl;dr

Nova Praxis is a solid post-cyberpunk, transhumanist style roleplaying game. For anyone familiar with the genre it doesn’t hold a lot of surprises, but it does offer a good foundation for nearly any style of game that a group might want to run. While the setting could definitely work with nearly any system with minimum fuss, the tailored version of Strands of Fate that it is built on serves the game very well. The PDF is extremely well designed and organized, even if the links are a little on the busy side - just not enough to be a true distraction.

Nova Praxis is available from DriveThruRPG for $14.99, as well as in digital and hard copy from the Void Star store.

Evil Hat Fate Dice Kickstarter In Its Last 5 Days

Just a friendly reminder in case you didn't know or haven't back it. Evil Hat's Fate/Fudge Dice Kickstarter is in it's final 5 days. It is on it's way to unlocking a set of sweet Eldritch Dice.

Post-Apocalypse Exploration "Triangle Tables"

Quite a long time ago, RPGNet user Gullerbutry had a wonderful thread on "triangle tables". I turned around and made a set of triangle tables for random exploration of a post-apocalypse city or its environs. I was straightening out some documents and assets and, even though I linked to them a long time ago on Dreams of Flesh and Spirit, I thought I'd put them up on here as well. The way these tables work (you can see a sample image below) is you roll 5dF and cross index the + results and the - results. The little numbers in the corners show you the probability for that square (that's how I  figured out the distribution). For these tables, you either decide what type of area is being explored or roll on Table 1. Then you find the appropriate table and roll again. The goal is to figure out what there is for exploration within two rolls or so. You can grab the .PDF from Google Docs.

Fate Core: Some First Thoughts

I was finally able to back the Fate Core Kickstarter yesterday to the level I wanted (and coincidentally found the Thematic Fate Dice Kickstarter and promptly threw behind that, because $28 for 16 dice is a bargain). So far, I like a whole lot of what I see with just a few rough spots.

The reduction in the number of starting Aspects is a Good Thing(tm). I've been head-down with Strands of Fate for a while now (particularly adapting Tribe 8) and I have found that the "Aspect Alphabet" can seem a little too much. Reducing the number, and tying a good many of them to other portions of character creation, seems like it would go a long way toward helping people who get stuck on Aspects. As usual, the advice on Aspects in general is top notch (which is what I'd expect from Evil Hat).

I still have a few reservations about "the phase trio", but I can't really put my finger on them. Since first reading about the concept in Spirit of the Century, I haven't been able to quantify exactly why either. Tying together PCs has always been a sticky point in games, and I've played in plenty where one or more PCs just have no connection to the others and it dragged the entire game down. An alternative beyond the cliche being in the same unit, or being forced to work together, or any other forced relationship between the PCs is awesome. Yet, the Phase Trio seems almost too forced. Phase one is not the problem, it's both Phases Two and Three being crossing paths. I'm thinking I might not enforce it so strictly, but allow for Phase Two (or even Three) to take a step back.

A good example of what I'm talking about is a guy I work with, who we'll call Che (because that's his name). When he started working here we quickly found out that not only were we in Marine Corps Boot Camp at nearly the exact same time (he went in a couple weeks later, so he wound up in the next company over) but we were in the same company in School of Infantry. Mind, there are 4 platoons in a company; we were in the same barracks but different squad bays. We fell out onto the same stretch of parade deck every morning, went to the chow hall at the same time, and did the much of the same training. We had to have rubbed shoulders or exchanged a few words at some point. But neither one of us remember it because I was injured and discharged, and he went on to Desert Storm. Yet we wound up sitting one cubicle away from each other, 20 years later. So I guess the tweak I'm thinking of is having at least Phase Two represent something more vague ("Served in the same company"), and even allowing the order to be mixed up a bit (maybe Phase Two happened first, then Phase One, then Phase Two). This allows for a little more flexibility in accommodating character backgrounds. More than likely the stock method implicitly supports this type of mixing things up, so it's hardly a big deal.

Tomorrow I'll dig deeper into the mechanical workings of character creation and the tweaks that they've made to Fate.

Year of FATE: The Laundry and Exalted

To round out the other games I'd like to be able to tackle this year are two games where I love the settings but not really the system.

The first is The Laundry rpg from Cubicle 7. I have a soft spot for espionage, office humor, and Mythos-related things, and I think the Laundry-verse is perfect for playing in. The only issue is I'm very lukewarm about BRP - it's perfectly functional, but just kind of sits there for me. I would definitely veer toward using FATE for such a game, and incorporate some specific elements to help capture the required feel. One idea I had was using handouts and forms from the sourcebooks as a way to generate FATE points. Get handed a form, fill out, when the player returns it they get a FATE point because you know something is going to happen because of whatever is in the report. The other idea I had was for a zombie parody mission, possibly in the style of the Warm Bodies.

Second, we have Exalted. I loved the first edition setting but wasn't big on the system. This wasn't for lack of trying - I ran both a first edition and a second edition game, but they were such a huge chore I swore off Exalted for a number of years. The announcement of third edition has piqued my interest, but I doubt even a complete system overhaul would encourage me to wade back into the system. Even if I take cues from people who have previously adapted Exalted, it'll still be a lot of work, Since I haven't regularly gamed for a number of years, taking on Exalted too might be a too much. I suppose I could run Tribe 8 and Exalted, and keep the other games in the wings for nights when regular players can't make it.

Year of FATE: The Thief campaign

I've been thinking of the various games I'd like to try to kick off this year, and I've decided I want a handful of FATE games. Aside from running my Strands of Fate version of Tribe 8, I've wanted to do a Thief-style game for a very long time - and playing Dishonored is just adding fuel to the fire. The upcoming FATE Core might be just the thing.

The biggest challenge I see is thief-style characters - for example, Garrett in Thief or Corvo in Dishonored - are generally solitary. Sure, they may have allies or other characters they rely on, but they can't have a large team when they're actually working. A good parallel are netrunners in Cyberpunk. The netruns could take a decent amount of time to resolve, but only the netrunner character's player was involved. To make matters worse, netruns took only seconds or minutes of game time, leaving the other players very little time to have their characters accomplish something else. My thinking for this type of game is each player has a thief as their main character and another secondary character such as a fence, captain of the guard, gang leader, wheelman, guild enforcer, recurring patron, etc. This allows for the player to stay engaged at least part of the time when another player's character is going solo. Like in The Dresden Files the city where the characters are based would be created collaboratively.

Another important element is the feeling of creeping from room to room, avoiding guards, overcoming obstacles, etc. that video games like Thief or Dishonored excel at. Skill rolls alone sound pretty unsatisfactory. Players in either of the two video games who are cautious, observant, and take the time to plan things out typically find getting through a mission much easier. One way to handle this (aside from the Stealth tracks I mentioned in my previous post) it to treat each zone as an adversary that must be defeated. The zones would have Aspects representing things important to or of concern to a thief - lighting, hiding places, sound, visibility, alternate routes, locks, etc. The thief would then have to develop the best strategy to "defeat" each zone. My understanding is that FATE Core may have some elements that would help out with creating the zones as adversaries; even if it doesn't, the FATE fractal would already handle it. If need be specialized rules for "building" locations could be developed easy enough. Similar to city creation, it might be really cool if the other players, beside the player who will be attempting the job or mission. collaborate on creating the location.

So for my "Year of Fate", my second game is definitely going to be Thief/Dishonored inspired. I think it would be a really awesome campaign if done correctly.

Sneaksy

I was finally able to start Dishonored last night. Mental note: when trying to configure a hard drive and a little voice keeps telling me "You've done this before" don't answer, "Yeah, so why isn't this working?" and keep bashing my head against a wall for over an hour. It means you've done this before and there's a drive with Windows installed on it in the desk drawer, already configured, from the last time the SSD died.

Dishonored so far is very much in the same vein as Thief, which makes me pretty happy. Stealth games are typically so much better than regular old FPS frag-fests, and the Thief series is one of my all-time favorites .I would go further and say Dishonored is a perfect bookend for the Thief series (at least until a new one comes out, hopefully next year). I was able to slip right in to Garrett mode, and the guards seemed like old friends, just with different slang and new tunes to whistle. It was liking putting on a nicely worn-in pair of old boots.

One of the things I miss about Thief is the light gem. This one little UI element, indicating how illuminated your character is, helped immensely in remaining stealthy. A few times it even reminded me I still had a weapon drawn ("I'm totally in the dark, why isn't the gem black? Oh, I still have my sword out."). Deus Ex: Human Revolution was able to make up for the lack of a light gem by having augmentations for displaying what direction the enemy is looking and their alertness level. Dishonored has a similar power, called Dark Vision.

Playing video games - especially good ones - makes me think about roleplaying games and how their concepts and subsystems might work in a roleplaying environment. When well done, video games excel at setting tone and mood. I've wanted to run a Thief-like game for a very long time, borrowing stylistic elements and tone, but it's always seemed hard to get the feel right. One concern is the genre wouldn't seem to lend itself well to multiple characters, since they are almost always very solitary. This is hardly a huge deal, and I might tackle it in a later post. But the most important thing is stealth has to be done right - possibly even as a mini-game.

Stress Tracks...Again?

Coming at it from a FATE perspective (specifically, Strands of Fate), my first instinct is, "Stress track!" Our sneaksy characters would have a Stealth custom stress track. I'm thinking it would have stress boxes equal to something like: (Deception + Agility + Other Modifiers) - Size. The character's own actions and movements mark off stress boxes, with Consequences representing miscalculations or other events ranging from "Stepped on a stick" to "Knocked over a box" to "Caught in the open". Stealth stress boxes clear at the end of the scene, but there might be actions which could clear some as well.

As an alternative, or even a counterpart, guards and other characters may have an Alertness stress track to represent how alert they are. An Alertness track is a little trickier, because it runs "backwards". More alert characters would have a smaller track, while distracted or less alert characters would have a larger one. One solution would be to have the track start at a fixed value - let's say 6, but it could possibly vary by the quality of the guard - and subtract Perception plus any other modifiers. Consequences would reflect increased levels of alertness, from "I think I heard something" to "I should check that out" to "Raise the alarm!". Like the Stealth track, Alertness Consequences would clear over time or after performing specific actions. For both Stealth and Alertness, various Edges and Determinations can be set to represent specialized equipment or the mental state of the stealth character or the guards (setting up the classic situation where the guard is always trying to catch the thief).

These ideas, or something similar, combined together could create a mini-game where stealth is the focus of the action, almost like "stealth combat".

Zones

The final consideration for a stealth-centered game is how zones are set up. By necessity the map would look a lot different than one set up for a swashbuckling fight or a shoot out. It would probably outline zones of various light levels, little or lots of cover, or alternate routes such as overhead or underneath an area, etc. Aspects like Intermittent Light or Hard Metal Floor or Soft Carpeting would round out a good stealth zone map. Combined with some stealth track and some alert guards, this looks like a promising framework for all of the sneaksy stuff I'd need in an rpg.