The Penny Arcade Heartbreaker Report

So, the Penny Arcade Report might have outed itself as not necessarily the best place to go for tabletop gaming news.

Yesterday an article by "Infinity", the author of The Future Belongs to Us, somewhat randomly appeared. Doing so on a larger site like PA implies the game is something people should watch out for, something they should know about. If one were to look at the press release on Tabletop Gaming News and interview at Initiative Tabletop, that impression would be reinforced. The reality is more of a marketing tactic. I don't know if it's the result of some marketing class, the publisher thinks it's a good idea, or something else but I do know it feels like they are puffing up and trying to look bigger than they are. We had it with Mykal Lakim's royal "we" and his posts about meetings and hiring people and planning a full game line before even having the first book out, and having a full staff of writers and editors. But why PAR wouldn't vet their guest columnists better kind of escapes me.

It comes off something like this. TFBTU isn't $19.95, is it?

Now I have nothing against Infinity personally. Anything he can do to try to get his name out there probably helps. But I think it's odd that PAR would tap him instead of Fred Hicks or someone similar for a column on keeping tabletop games "fluid". Instead, we get a cross between marketing and "Intro To Heartbreaker Logic 101". It makes it appear that the editor or content manager might not really know who is a big name in gaming, and figures anybody that can shove a POD book with a glossy cover in their face must be. We should probably count our blessings that it was Infinity and not Mykal Lakim that was offered the column.

Overall, the article doesn't tell its readers anything they don't already know. It tilts at windmills defeated 20 or more years ago and makes the author sound like someone who's never played anything other than d20 or Storyteller. Statements like this don't help either:

More powerful characters may be able to overcome this, but they are rolling 10, 15, 20 dice all the time which can get pretty ridiculous. You shouldn’t have to roll more and more dice as you become more powerful.

<Pedantic nit-picking hat>Exalted is one of the few games I can think of where this is the case and there are certainly many more dice pool systems where it isn't (Silhouette and Synergy spring to mind because I'm most familiar with them).</Pedantic nit-picking hat> What makes the statement even more out of place is that even if Exalted is the target, it's a completely different genre than TFBTU. The systems have very different goals, and in Exalted rolling buckets of dice is one of them. Either he doesn't have a good grasp on what forms dice pool systems can possibly take, he doesn't grasp how systems don't all have the same design goals, or it's hyperbole. Regardless any gamer with reasonably broad experience can identify the statement as being baloney.

The end result is the author comes off as either inexperienced or amateur and raises the question of why he would get the slot for the column instead of someone else. It damages PAR's credibility as an outlet for tabletop gaming news and makes me wonder if they're running paid-for articles.

Hey look, Penny Arcade might actually have something to say on this!

What goes over best for me (and doesn't immediately bring on the snark reflex) is when game designers are honest and forthright without any pretentiousness. I would liked to have seen an article about how an indie, small publisher brought TFBTU to market. What decisions were made during the process. Their own reservations, things they wish they could have done better. Instead of defensiveness and "Everyone who's played it says it's great! My mom even said 'That's nice, honey'!", open discussion of negative criticism. Most importantly an answer to why the cover art is pretty good quality (if questionable subject matter for anyone trying to sell to anyone other than teenage boys) but the interior art is really poor, and what decisions led to depicting an ostrich with bedroom eyes, Lando Calrissian fighting ninjas over a treasure chest and a Power Ranger riding a lion-themed golf cart (among many other things).

I never thought an ostrich could look so coy

Do RPGs Have To Be Played Before Reviewing?

This came up in reference to my review of The Future Belongs to Us. The author emailed me and wasn't happy I had reviewed the game without playing it.

But do you have to play an rpg to review it? Is it unreasonable to evaluate one on reading alone?

From this perspective, the entire game must be reviewed, from soup to nuts. If you don't it's like forming an  opinion of a movie or piece of music without experiencing it. Anything else is invalid and not a complete picture. Nobody would take a review of a movie seriously if the reviewer hadn't viewed the whole thing.

But rpgs are books. They can be evaluated on content, layout, art, writing and the rules. Anyone with a technical eye toward game mechanics can get a good idea of how the game will play just with a read through. I don't need to play a game to know a single d20 has a flat distribution of results, or that 1s being fumbles and 20s being critical results in a 10% chance of an extreme result and how that will affect play. I've been there and done that. When I read Exalted 2nd edition I knew the ticks, AV, and DV would be problematic for me. Turns out when I tried to run it, I was right.

That's not to say playtest reviews aren't desirable. They are - but the subjective nature of actual play, makes it no more valid than a "capsule review". The two things exist for a reason. Reviews are opinions based on experience and  subject knowledge. Anybody who has played more than a handful of systems (and I've played more than a handful) can see how all of the pieces fit together, just as they can make any game "work" and likely have fun while playing it.

But there's a final piece here that's particularly relevant to The Future Belongs To Us review: I couldn't have playtested it fully because it's a player's guide. The book has swathes of information that is vague or simply not there which is most likely in the gamemaster's guide. A playtest wouldn't have done it justice, and had I done that the review would have been much worse. Plus, there were hover gorillas and Lando Calrissian fighting ninjas over a treasure chest and I don't think I could live up to that challenge.

The Future Belongs To Us Review

Full disclosure: the author approached me to do a review and I agreed, on the condition that I would make the review fair but there was no guarantee it would be favorable. I’ll try, but as Nick Lowe said, “Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.” EDIT: the author has requested I clarify that this is not a playtest review. More on this subject tomorrow.

A couple days ago I received a package containing The Future Belongs To Us Player’s Guide (hereafter TFBTU) from Ataraxy Publishing. It is 192 pages long, soft-bound book with a full color cover that could do with less deformed-breasted porn-star. The back cover blurb says:

“After the Dragons...

 After the Wolf...

 The next generation of role-playing excitement”

And claims:

“The DiceLight system brings many new innovations to the RPG hobby”

That is...not encouraging, because those pronouncements in back cover blurbs are almost a guarantee that none of those things are happening inside the book.

Layout and Art

The book’s layout is very simple and no frills, without any decorative borders or other embellishments. The text is large and easy to read - it may be a tad too large. The book is divided into sections covering the setting, rules, character creation, skills, etc. The organization is a little scattered, causing some page flipping. It does get points for having clear writing with very few spelling or grammatical errors.

But the art...you just have to see it because I can’t describe it. It’s not bad, it’s “LOL WTF”. Every piece lacks perspective and proportion, and many are weird or have nonsensical subjects. When I showed one of the pieces to a coworker he just stared at it for a few seconds - his mind couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. What’s worse is the art doesn’t seem to match up to anything in the setting.

If I ever play this game, I am demanding a hover gorilla

I'm still trying to parse this one...

Setting

The setting is basically this: the UN has taken over all of the things, there’s one world currency, firearms are illegal everywhere so only criminals have guns, violent crime is on the rise, there isn’t any privacy, and a single gang called the Hardbodies has somehow taken over all organized crime. Somehow the Hardbodies managed to massacre 10,000 police officers in New York. Business charge entry fees and run background checks before customers can enter. Just like  the art, if this were tongue in cheek like Underground or something along the lines of John Shirley’s Eclipse Trilogy I could suspend disbelief. This makes me feel like I’m reading my Facebook friends feed (how did so many of my friends become survivalist-types, anyway?), or a Left Behind book crossed with one of those alarmist speculative fiction books written by a survivalist to scare people into buying ammo and gold.

The System

The attributes in TFBTU are a typical spread: Dexterity, Agility, Strength, Perception, Build, Ego, Stamina. Ego and Stamina are “Determining Attributes” that set the value for two derived...I mean “Dynamic”...attributes: Passion and Energy. Aside from attributes you have Knowledges, Skills and Proficiencies. The delineation is a little hazy, but Knowledges do not have ratings and are things the character has, well, a knowledge of. Skills are areas of expertise and Proficiencies are kind of narrow areas of Attribute focus. There is also a martial arts system, technically making four areas for players to purchase abilities.

The die mechanic is roll d20 + attribute + bonuses from proficiencies or other modifiers versus a target number. Skills have different automatic effects per level, such as being able to write a specific complexity of software. As such, skills are not rolled for. There's very little in the book on adjudicating how skills and proficiencies tie together when rolling.

Passion seems to be part of the game’s claim of innovation. Every day the Passion attribute resets itself, and points can be spent from it to increase rolls, reroll extraordinary failures, or revive from being knocked unconscious. When things happen, like something good or bad happens to the character, Passion can be increased or decreased. Along with Extropic Points this gives two pools that can be used to get bonuses or effects on die rolls.

One issue with the skill/knowledge/proficiency arrangement can be seen in how firearms are handled. There is a Firearms Knowledge that means the character knows which end to point at the target and not shoot their own face off. Then there is a Weaponry skill that means the character has...knowledge of weapons. Finally there is a Ranged Weapon proficiency that provides a bonus to attacks. Whether all of it makes sense is arguable, so I’ll leave it alone because system-wise there’s bigger fish to fry.

There are also some odd choices in terms of how things are categorized. Telecommunications inexplicably encompasses hacking and bypassing computer/network security. The proficiency to get a bonus for piloting a rotary wing aircraft, submarine or spacecraft is called Free Motion Vehicles. There is a skilled called Rearrangement for switching weapons and proficiencies for Leg Strength and Upper Body Strength. I’ve never once asked myself why these things aren’t present in other games...and probably for good reason.

But the bigger fish I mentioned is attributes, skills, and proficiencies all have different ranges. Not just between types, but between one another. The attributes are on one of five different ranges ranging from 1-3 to 2-30 (in case you’re keeping score at home, that means only two attributes have the same range). Likewise, the ranges for the skills and proficiencies can range from just a couple to ten or more. Each has customized benefits or modifiers for each level, meaning each one is its own little self-contained rules packet. It makes it very fiddly and more complicated than it needs to be.

The points that are used to buy all of this stuff are called Extropic Points, and a starting character not using a template has 4000 of them. Just like each attribute, knowledge or skill has its own rating ranges, each one has its own costs per level. Stamina is 3 per level, but Perception is 5, Strength is 30 and Dexterity is 160. Climbing is 3 per level, while Surface Vehicles are 23, Running is 11 and Leg Strength is 23. Meanwhile, skills are 1 per level and knowledges just cost 1 each. Starting wealth can be purchased with Extropic points as well, plus various character enhancements. Extropic Points are also given out as experience points and can be spent on character improvement, as well as various character enhancements. What those enhancements are is mentioned but not details, because they are actually going to be in a separate book (the equipment section is 27 pages of gun porn, followed by some vehicles, some robots and some miscellaneous equipment).

There are a number of character templates provided so the player doesn’t have to try to distribute 4000 points in increments from 1 to a 1000. How the templates work with one another would require a playthrough, so I’ll trust they work well with one another. 

Now, aside from the Extropic Points being oddball amounts, there’s the question of whether or not the relative differences are really equal. Is having a point of Strength really 10 times more useful/expensive/whatever than a point of Stamina? It’s an extension of the same problem I have with systems like GURPs. Is there really any need to measure the skill levels in hundreds of points? It comes off as overcomplicated and (more) arbitrary than a game needs to be.

Conclusion

As a player's guide, the book fulfills its mission - it describes how to create a character and seems to cover all of the bases. Undoubtedly the GM's Guide will cover adjudicating the rules, so aside from the basic mechanics covered in the Player's Guide it's hard to judge how good the system is. It definitely fulfills the "DiceLight" moniker by only using one die and having a single resolution mechanic. The over complicated system of having each attribute, skill, proficiency, etc. essentially have its own rules does a lot to turn me off from the system - I'm not fond of "exception-based systems", such as Exalted's Charms or the proliferation of stunts in Spirit of the Century.

However, TFBTU is a freshman effort and it shows. It’s obvious a lot of work went into the product, the writing, and the rules. But the system isn’t really anything new or innovative, and could probably fall through a wormhole into 1988 and nobody would look twice. It has some of the hallmarks of a heartbreaker: enthusiasm from the author that the game contains stunningly new concepts, a little bit of naivety regarding marketing their games (what first brought the game to my attention was a "press release" on Tabletop Gaming News). The Passion attribute has promise, but there are plenty of other systems out there that offer similar mechanics - and a number (such as Fate) that go even further to give narrative control to the players. Finally, in a perfect world, artwork wouldn’t be important - but no art is better than poor art. The Future Belongs To Us just isn’t quite ready to live up to its own hype.