Why Do You Love The RPGs You Do? It's Worth Thinking About

If you've spent any time at all in RPG spaces, whether online or in-person, you've heard gamers talk about their favorite games. Whether it's one of the early games from the dawn of the hobby, something that exploded on the scene during the boom of the 90s, or one of the various settings that came out of the OSR revolution a few years back, gamers are not shy at all about bigging up the games we love.

However, a lot of these conversations devolve into arguments over time... particularly when we have a round robin regarding game recommendations. With that said, I feel like a lot of these arguments could be avoided if we took a moment to not only ask which games we like, but to actually take a moment to evaluate why we like them.

Really? That edition? Okay, make your case.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

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One Man's Meat is Another Man's Poison

All of us have favorite games, but even if two different people adore the same RPG, they may love it for wildly different reasons. For example, Pathfinder Classic is still my go-to game for high fantasy RPGs, as it was for a lot of people. But while I loved it primarily because of the robust mechanics that carried on from DND 3.5, for other folks it was their first RPG, and they have a lot of nostalgia for it. Other people really like certain classes like the magus, or they love the Golarion setting, and enjoy exploring its various nooks and crannies.

While all of these players might share the same table, chances are good they're all getting something different out of this one game system. And while you can have that much variation among people who like the same game, you can also have one person who doesn't care for a game for the exact same reason another person absolutely loves it!

As an example...

While a lot of the interest in the FATE Core System has fallen off over the past few years, I remember when this game was everywhere. If you were looking to adapt a property, or if you needed a fast turnaround, this was the system everyone recommended. Horror, fantasy, sci-fi, FATE could do it all! It was easy to learn, easy to play, and it was a story-forward, mechanics-minimum experience that removed a lot of the reading and number crunching from your game, allowing new and experienced players alike to get to grips with the action quickly.

All the stuff I just described is what a lot of people loved about this game. It's also a description of why I was never more than lukewarm on it at best.

Now, does my opinion that this game is primarily just an exercise in cooperative storytelling but which barely has enough components to it for it to claim to be a game mean it's bad? Absolutely not. I'm one RPG fan in a colossal sea of people, and it was plenty successful without me buying a copy and making it my game of choice. And just because I don't subjectively enjoy an experience, that does not mean it isn't the perfect experience for someone looking for that exact type of game.

It was just bad for me.

And this is what I wanted to get to as part of this week's update. Because a lot of the time we know whether we like a game or not... but we don't always stop and ask why we do or don't like something. Especially when the thing we do or don't like might not actually have been the game's fault; a bad GM, awful table mates, too many homebrewed mechanics that just didn't work... a lot of things can make or break a game that have nothing to do with what's between the covers. That's worth thinking about, not just because it can help give you a better sense of what appeals to you as a player (thus making things easier to recommend to you in the future because you can more precisely describe your enjoyments), but because it can help you figure out what experience someone else might be looking for before you tell them the game they definitely need to play next!

We can like our games for whatever reasons we want. We can dislike games for whatever reason we want. But if you can't articulate what about this experience sparks joy, and what does not, then you're going to get into a heated debate with someone while the two of you talk past one another because the fact that this game is a chopped down, rules-light affair where your characters have the survivability of a wet paper bag may very well be the reason one of you hates it, and the other loves it.

Lastly, even though I didn't find a place to work this link in earlier, take a moment to go and read my article 5 Things You Can Do To Be a Better Ambassador For Your Hobby. I figured that gelled nicely with this week's topic.

A Reminder, For Folks Who Haven't Subscribed Yet!

Regular readers have likely seen me talk about this before, but we're only 106 subscribers away from getting the Azukail Games YouTube channel over 1,000 people! Not only that, but we're slightly less than 1,000 hours of watch time away from getting the channel monetized!

Whether you just want to listen to me talk instead of always reading my blog, you're a fan of audio dramas, or you're looking to break into the TTRPG industry and you want the inside scoop from a professional, that channel has a little bit of everything. And once we get it monetized, we'll be able to expand, and do even more stuff! And if you want to support some of my other work, subscribe to my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary.

I am not allowed to have my own YouTube channel for complicated reasons, which is why I had to go to one of the site's only viable competitors. For the full run down, please read Trying Out Rumble as a Platform For My Audio Dramas (Join Me, Won't You?).

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

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The Difference Between "Bad" Characters and "Evil" Characters

I've been dwelling on alignment a lot recently, but judging from the reactions my article The Punisher is Evil received, it's a topic that folks are interested in seeing more of. This week, though, I wanted to touch on the difficulty of shades of gray when it comes to our characters. When we want them to have a bit of an edge to them, but to stay out of darker realms.

What is the difference between a character who's bad, and one who is evil? I don't have an absolute answer to this question, but I have found some shadowy places that I think might be of interest to my fellow players out there.

The wearing, or not wearing, of skulls is not always an indicator.

While we're on the subject, though, are there any other characters you'd like to see me do a deep dive on their likely alignment? Or any particular alignments you'd like a 5 Tips post for, such as my 5 Tips For Playing Better Evil Characters? If so, toss a comment to let me know!

Where Do You Draw The Line?

Before we go too deep into this, first thing's first. Alignment by its very nature depends on absolutes in a setting. Moral relativism does not work with alignment because it's tied to games that have literal heavens and hells, angels and demons, etc. In these worlds there literally is a divine checklist and a neutral arbiter who decides whether your actions were good or evil.

How your character thinks about those issues, whether they feel justified, etc., is completely irrelevant. Whether they believe evil is good, or good is evil, doesn't matter. The divine laws of the cosmos have decided what is good and what is evil in many cases.

If there were no absolute goods, traditional LG paladins wouldn't be a thing.

Now, with that out of the way, the first thing you need to look at are what actions are considered inherently evil in your setting. This will vary from game to game and group to group, but we're not talking about small potatoes here. We're talking capital "E" evil actions.

Some of the more common options here include:

- Murder for profit (as well as just murder in general)
- Propagation of slavery
- Deliberate casting of evil spells
- Torture

The list goes on, but you get the idea. Evil actions are inherently bad things. Whatever your reason, whatever the character motivation, whatever the end result, it's fruit from the poisoned tree.

So, the first important consideration here is what actions are evil. Not just bad, or selfish, or harmful, but things that are outright evil. Because while it is true that characters who have committed evil acts in the past can redeem themselves and attempt to change their alignment, it takes a lot more work to climb out of that hole.

And if you commit more evil actions, it just means you dug yourself back into the hole again.

What Do Bad Actions Look Like?

Our morality as players tends to vary pretty widely. I've yet to be at a table where everyone agreed completely on what is good, and what is evil. However, a useful question to ask when it comes to characters who are bad, rather than being truly evil, is to ask what damage their actions do overall? Who is hurt by the things they do?

I said git out of my forest!

As a solid example of a "bad" character, take the classic thief. Your pickpocket, your burglar, etc. These individuals steal for a living, no question. They are breaking the law (as if that ever stopped an adventurer), and they are committing an act that most of us would really rather not have happen to us.

But under normal circumstances, I'd argue that action falls into the category of "bad" rather than "evil."

Why is that? Well, at its core, theft is a property crime. You are stealing a thing (gold coins, jewels, magic items, etc.) from another person. And in the case of pickpockets and burglars, the theft is usually the extent of the act. You might break a window to get into a home, for example, but at the end of the day you took a thing. There are going to be certain circumstances where this act is made more or less problematic (you knowingly stole the last savings from someone who then starved on the side of "makes it worse," to snatching food from a cart because you were starving and broke on the side of "well, that's not so bad"), but generally speaking property crimes aren't in the "evil" category.

What else might make you bad, but not evil?

Well, we've agreed that murdering people is generally an evil act. Murder is the deliberate killing of another person with malice aforethought, meaning that you set out to kill someone else deliberately after making the decision beforehand. However, most of us would agree that defending yourself from someone or something trying to kill you is not murder. Defending someone else is also okay, and often seen as a good act. A more questionable, "bad" thing to do might be to deliberately put yourself in a situation where someone will try to kill you, thus forcing you to defend yourself.

It's not evil, because they were actually trying to kill you. They could have chosen to walk away, and not attack you. You did provoke that response, though, which is... shady, shall we say.

Tangible Harm Versus Cultural Norms

There are dozens of different actions that might be considered unscrupulous, duplicitous, selfish, blasphemous, or otherwise "bad" that never cross over into real evil. A character might tell lies to hide their own actions, or to gain rewards they don't deserve. Someone might use threats and intimidation to force cooperation from those who don't want to help them, or to force someone else to back down from a fight. Someone might rob graves, commit adultery, burn down empty buildings, gamble illicitly, break religious covenants, or commit all sorts of other immoral acts.

But at the end of the day, it's important to ask if their actions cause tangible harm. And if so, what was the purpose of that harm?

This is where that divine slide ruler comes into the picture.

Let's go back to the thief. Did they need to steal whatever they stole in order to provide for themselves? If not, was the person they stole from tangibly harmed by that theft?

If a thief was starving and took bread from a merchant, they certainly broke the law. But did the loss of that one loaf of bread do the merchant any real harm? Probably not. But what if the thief stole a noble's jeweled ring instead? Well, given that the ring serves no real purpose other than ornamentation, the result is that some of the noble's wealth is now in the thief's hands. The noble may lose some face, and have to wear a different ring, but there hasn't been any true, tangible harm done to them. And if the thief broke into a crypt and stole the jewelry from the dead? Barring setting rules that involve the dead rising in wrath, dead people don't need money. Taking it from them harms no one, as it was just sitting there in the ground, unused and mostly unaccounted for.

Again, that doesn't make these actions good. It does, however, put them into that gray area of bad.

Anytime there's a question of whether an act should be labeled as bad or evil, it's important to ask what harm comes of it, and if the action is being taken to defend oneself against harm. And if you want a character who is bad, but not evil, don't try to justify them regularly committing evil acts. Try on someone who is irreverent, non-conformist, spiteful, or who is a little crass, vulgar, or illicit.

You'll have a lot fewer arguments, and you'll have to do way fewer mental gymnastics.

Also, as a pro tip, remember what I said back in The Risen Antipaladin. You get a lot more mileage out of someone who committed evil acts in the past, and who is trying to be a better person now. So when we meet them, they've managed to plateau at "bad" instead of being actively evil. That reputation might still be following the character around, but they don't create the friction of actively committing atrocities in team-based environment when some of your companions may feel morally obliged to stop what you're doing. Even if it might solve current problems.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Fluff post! If you've used this in your games, share a story down in the comments!

For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my recent short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

The Worst Werewolf Game I Ever Ran

Most of my stories here on Table Talk are about my experiences as a player. I've been pretty fortunate in my gaming career that most of my time spent behind the DM screen has been positive. However, there is a particular story that I think holds a lot of lessons in it. Names have been changed to protect people whom I feel are overall good gamers, but happened to walk into a perfect storm of the blind leading the blind in the following situation.

Werewolves and White Elephants

This story begins around Christmas many years ago. I'd been invited to a white elephant party, and had hemmed and hawed over whether or not I was going to attend. I decided to come at the last minute, and since I had neither the spare cash for a gift, or the time to pick something up, I put an I.O.U. for a one-shot game in an envelope. Any system the recipient wanted a one-shot in that I had access to, and could reasonably run, I would do.

The rabbit hole went pretty far down on that request.

The guy who wound up with my white elephant gift (let's call him Geoff) really wanted to play a Werewolf: The Forsaken game. I was pretty solid on my new World of Darkness lore, even though werewolf wasn't one I'd delved too deeply into. I asked him if he was sure, and told him all right, I'd have something ready to run in a month. He got a handful of players together, and I started the conversation rolling on who they were, and what was befalling them.

The Setup

It bears mentioning that I tend to emphasize the dark parts of the World of Darkness when I run a game. Not that awful, heinous things are always happening to PCs or their close friends (because graphic depictions of torture, sexual assault, etc. are not something I would inflict on my players, and they're crass from a storytelling perspective), but rather that the world is threadbare and desperate. The greedy are greedier, the needy are needier, and you should take nothing at face value. There are mysteries within conspiracies, and you should keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

Starting off on a positive note here!

With that said, the handful of players put together their characters. They had most of the moon signs, and a pretty solid smattering of the tribes. No one had requested any crazy magic items or out-there gifts or merits, so I didn't have to have any debates with anyone. And, as I requested, everyone put themselves in a pack. And Geoff was the alpha. mostly because he was the one who'd requested the game, and because he was the one with the most system mastery.

I did something else, as well. I gave the players free dots in Allies and Mentor, attaching them all to important NPCs and working those connections into their backstories. Part of this was for my convenience as a storyteller, but another part of it was more insidious. More on that later.

So, this pack received a call from a highly-placed ally in New York City. An Iron Master alpha, he's known as the Iron Wolf. Partly for his refusal to back down, but also because he's the head of a major firearms company who does custom work for supernatural clients. Heavily involved in the city's politics, there is a small crisis going on at the moment. A crisis he wants the PCs to come and help with, since they owe him a favor for setting them up on their own plot of land upstate. As hooks go, it was pretty standard.

Into The Belly of The Beast

The pack got their gear, and headed into the big city. Geoff, who had taken a merit that let him see the spirit world with one eye and the material world with the other, chose to leave this ability active at all times. I asked him if he was sure. When he said yes, I described the decaying nature of the spirits as they headed into the city. The way everything became hard-edged, and feral, made dirty and harsh by its proximity to the pounding heart of the Big Apple. And then, as they got into the city proper, Geoff saw there was a colossal hole rent in the spiritual realm over the island of Manhattan. A swirling vortex where something terrible had torn the fabric of reality, leaving a gaping wound in the sky.

That's enough to leave anyone a little shook up. He decided to turn the merit off at that point... at least for a bit.

The pack parked at the Iron Wolf's HQ, and were met by one of his lieutenants. A warmaster who'd trained one of the pack's hitters, Ivan Ivanovich was known to most simply as the Black Russian. He ushered the pack up, and they were given the task they were being asked to complete.

All right yuse mugs, it's exposition time!

About a week ago, there had been a meeting arranged between some of the Iron Wolf's pack, and one of the local vampires; an old Dark Ages warlord named Michael Thorsson who held relentless grip on parts of the city. There was an uneasy peace, and the goal of the meeting was to make sure that peace held. As a show of good faith, they'd even met on the vampire's turf. No one who went to the meeting had come back, though. Thorsson said they'd never showed, and that he had no idea what had happened to them.

The party's job was to go, and independently investigate the incident. To find what had happened to the missing werewolves, and to get the facts without bias. Major players were dealing with the incident that led to the spiritual tear in the fabric of the world next door, so what would usually be a matter of great importance was a little lower on the priority ladder right then. The Iron Wolf gave the pack encrypted phones to contact him with, should they find something, and he sent another of his betas with them to act as a guide to the city should they need someone to show them around.

So... What Do?

When I'd been asked to run a werewolf game, I made sure to open up the world as much as possible. If the pack started running data searches on key figures in the city, I had dossiers prepared. If they wanted to go to Thorsson's nightclub where he held court and arrange a meeting, I had the stats for his ghouls, and the man himself, fully prepped. If they wanted to reach out to their Allies or Mentors for aid, I knew what would happen. If they tried to contact other werewolves in New York, I had them drawn up. If they went off the tracks entirely and tried to contact other vampires, changelings, or the mage community, I had that prepped, too.

In short, I had a huge mental map with all the major players, creatures, potential encounters, and everything in it. I had prepared for everything... except what actually happened.

So... what do you do?

I asked the pack what they did. The players looked at Geoff. Because while he may have had the most knowledge of the game mechanics, it didn't seem he really had any idea how to go about investigating such an open-ended plot. After several, long moments of silence he suggested they go to the warehouse where the meeting was supposed to happen, and sniff around?

A logical course of action. I said sure, they could find it no problem. So the pack headed out to the waterfront, took on their wolf shape, and did a walk around the block. They found a chain link fence with razor wire, half a dozen guards inside, and two or three trying and failing to be inconspicuous around the block. Geoff even turned his merit back on to glance into the spirit world. Because his initial plan was to simply phase out of one world, sneak in, and then push back into the material realm.

What he saw was that the fence, on the spirit side, was a series of pikes with bloody, moaning heads atop them. They felt potent, and wrong, but not dangerous. The sight of opposition on the other side (especially opposition that wasn't from the werewolf purview and which was an unknown factor) stopped the initial plan cold. Even though the heads did nothing but act as a spiritual alarm, and they could have been avoided through the proper use of gifts, or through properly applied violence.

Instead, the pack decided to bluff its way in. A task that was awkward, stilted, and which resulted in them totally blowing their cover. The guard, knowing something was up, agreed to let them in with a smile. As soon as the pack was inside the warehouse, though, they heard a huge bar being thrown over it, trapping them inside. The clock's ticking, and someone doesn't want them to get out. Of course, they were where they wanted to be.

Blood and Secret Tunnels

Figuring that they may as well do what they came there to do, the pack puts its wolf skins back on, and starts sniffing around. They smelled blood right away, and it definitely belonged to other werewolves. Some high successes later, and they found a secret tunnel that looks like it goes down into an old Prohibition smuggling run. Just as they open it up, they heard several SUVs pull up outside. They smell sweat, fear, and a lot of gun oil. Nothing they couldn't actually have dealt with (it seemed the players continually forgot they were werewolves, and thus top of the food chain in most circumstances), but they decided to scamper down the hole into darkness below.

It's okay... I have a plan for this!

Once they're down the hole, the pack hears the nervous voices of a dozen gunmen up above. No one was willing to go down after them, so they closed the door, locked it from above, and muttered that they'll catch them on the other side. Again, this is a full pack of werewolves... a wooden door with a deadbolt wouldn't stop them from waiting a while, and then busting up through the floor if they chose to. But they decided, instead, to follow the blood trail that continued on in the tunnel. Not only that, but they find the tunnel was stamped with Thorsson's sigil, marking it as his territory. So far, so expected.

At least until the blood trail goes off one way, and the vampire ganglord's mark goes off another way. The pack decided to follow their noses, and they found a bizarre scene. A dozen piles of ash and charred bone, some with scraps of cloth in them, filled the hallway. The ash smells corrupt, and rotten, but there's also a strong smell of ozone in the area. It is quite unnatural, and unpleasant. They also found a misshapen skull with elongated fangs. And, in the middle of it all, a severed arm that definitely belonged to one of the missing werewolves. On the arm is a watch, which Geoff correctly identified as an item that captures a scene in time for future study. Not only that, but the watch currently has a scene in it. A scene that could be replayed by any of them to get some insight into what, exactly, this dead werewolf had seen. Was it evidence that Thorsson had betrayed them? A shot of the murderers? A final message for those who eventually found him?

Well, they never knew. Because upon finding this clue they nodded, said, "Yep, that's a clue all right," then put it in their pocket and never looked at it.

Giving Some Direction

It was around this point that I realized the pack was looking for more in the way of direction from me. So I decided to pull a lever I'd put in place for just such a situation, and had one of their phones ring. While underground. From an unrecognized number. Something that I'd made very clear when I handed the devices out wasn't possible. Geoff answered, and a voice his character has never heard before told him specifically that the pack is in danger. Down the tunnel is a vault door. Go through it, and run for the stairs. Do not linger, and do not go back the way they came. Do not trust the Iron Wolf, he is telling you lies.

Maybe that will get things going, yes?

The pack found the vault door, sure enough, and went through it into an abandoned train station. It's clearly been turned into someone's living space. It reeked with an unnatural aroma, which was very similar to what was in the tunnel near all the dead vampires. Rather than bolting for the stairs, as the mysterious called suggested they do, everyone took their time. They weren't being stealthy, mind you, they were just walking slowly. So, since they chose to ignore the warning they were given, that was when the lights go out. Except for a figure walking toward them. A hulking man, with the unkempt beard and matted hair of a hobo. Geoff, who still had his merit on from the fence, also sees the burning fire within him. A white, unnatural light that sparks and snaps from his steel teeth, down through mismatched limbs that each carry a unique corruption all their own.

When presented with such a terror, what does the pack do? Make occult checks to understand what the hell they're looking at? Transform and fight their way past him? Tuck tail and book it for the stairs, which are clearly in sight? Parley, and hope that the creature is more civilized than it looks?

Well, mostly they just sat and stared. Finally the NPC tried to talk to the thing, and rolled just well enough that it decided to leave them be. Then the spook house got rolling again, and they ran up the stairs to street level. Anticlimactic, but hey, I could be more specific if that was what it took.

The Conspiracy Explained

Geoff's phone rang again, and the same mysterious voice told him he was being followed. The pack was given confusing directions that had them double-back several times, until finally they found themselves in front of a steel-reinforced door in a blind back alley. The door opened, and a figure stood in the arch. Skinny, red-eyed, and more than a little mad, he stared at them and gave them a small flash of his fangs. He smelled like the other things, and there was no mistaking the vampire. He hung up the phone, and shuffled back inside, beckoning the pack to follow him.

Which they do... with neither question, nor violence.

Anathema is the creature's name, and he's been nursing one of the werewolves who escaped the slaughter in the tunnel. She was alive, mostly insensate, and hadn't so much as been pricked by the nosferatu's fangs. He went back to organizing his red web of conspiracies, speaking all the while. He told Geoff again not to trust the Iron Wolf. He's been engaged in some kind of shady deals, and likely set up the members of his pack who went to the meeting. The goal was to kill them, but Anathema isn't sure why. To start a war with Thorsson? To garner sympathy from the other packs in the city who have had tense relationships with him? Or perhaps it's related to the mage sanctum that was defiled, and the wound it left behind. He doesn't know, but his final warnings to the pack were not to trust their benefactor, and to not come back to this place again.

Then he shut the door in their face.

So What Did They Do?

After being told repeatedly not to trust the Iron Wolf, and with the surviving werewolf mewling and moaning not to take her back to him (and clearly looking distrustful of the beta who was sent with as the party's "guide"), the first thing they do is call him up, and tell them they found a survivor.

I planned for every eventuality... except this one...

They call him up, and he sends a car to come get them. In the interim they don't question the surviving witness (the only one who has first-hand knowledge of what went down). They just wait patiently, get in the car, and ride back to the headquarters they were at earlier. They hand off the survivor, and never asked where she's being taken, or what they're planning on doing for or to her. Nor does anyone question why, as soon as they hand her over, she goes limp, as if she's resigned to her fate.

At that point they take the elevator upstairs, walk straight up to the Iron Wolf's desk, and give him a full run down of everything they saw and did. That's when Geoff took out the mystical watch he found, and clicks the button to review what was saved in it.

The watch held a scene of its owner spying on the Iron Wolf, and his beta, as they made a deal with a creature from the deepest, darkest parts of the spirit realm. Evidence that they gave their allegiance and aid to the sort of things they're supposed to be fighting against. Because this entity promised to give their children physical bodies (for those who don't know, werewolves are forbidden from mating in this setting because they give birth to ravenous spirit monsters... and these two essentially made a deal with a literal devil to keep having inbred werewolf babies).

Now getting the plot development they'd been given hours ago out of game, and revealing it right in front of what turns out to be the villain, no one knows what to do. Of course, the first thing the Iron Wolf does is pull a huge hand cannon out of his desk drawer, and start blasting away with silver rounds.

Then, finally, something happened.

Unfortunately, what happened was that the assassin who'd literally been following them the whole time (until they lost him by following the vampire's instructions, only to pick him back up again when they called the villain and told him where they were), burst in through the window behind them. While there were a lot of pack members, there weren't enough of them to deal with a gunslinger with silver hollow points before he took one of them down. They managed to destroy his body, only to realize that this was one of the spiritual abominations the Iron Wolf had created. And while they'd been distracted, the alpha was now opening the secret door to the shrine that anchored his wicked master in this place.

Wisely, they took to their heels.

In the elevator, the handful of remaining pack members find the Black Russian. He seems completely unfazed by the carnage, and the raw aura of evil emanating from his alpha's back room. When the pack demands he help them escape, he shrugs, and hits the button for the garage level. He plucks a set of car keys off the wall, and leads them to a van. Geoff demands to know why he's helping them. Ivan only shrugs and asks why he wouldn't help them. Despite being one of the lieutenants of this whole operation, and showing no surprise at anything he saw in his alpha's office, the pack just accepts that.

Then they ask Ivan to drive them back to Anathema's lair. A place he specifically told them not to return to.

They manage to remember the directions to get back, and they find the door unlocked. Bizarrely, though, the interior is empty except for a scrap of paper on the floor. All the filing cabinets, the webs of newspaper clippings, and banks of computers are completely gone. Instead of carefully sniffing around, Geoff walks in, and picks up the note. He has enough time to read the phrase, "I told you not to come back here," before the shaped charges go off, detonating the place.

Wounded and burned, the pack piles back into the van while Ivan leans on the hood smoking a cigarette and texting on his phone. They shout for him to drive. He nods, and hits the car lock button, before detonating the C-4 inside the van, and killing everyone inside.

The Lessons

There are several lessons to learn here. First, from a DMing perspective. Make absolutely sure that your players want (and are prepared for) the kind of game you're presenting to them. Later review made it clear to me that, though the players had asked for a Forsaken game, that didn't necessarily mean they wanted a game that was an open-world sandbox, that involved tracking down and solving conspiracies, or which was filled with darkness and betrayal. Those were things I assumed were part-and-parcel to being a World of Darkness game, and that assumption was likely what led to so many player freezes when they were presented with choices, and warnings. What I should have done was conduct a survey asking them what sorts of plots, themes, and roles they would most like to see in the game, and the kind of feel they wanted.

With that said, when NPCs expressly tell you that you're walking into a trap, don't be surprised when it blows up in your face.

That's all for this week's Table Talk. Hopefully the mistakes I made as a DM, and the mistakes my players made in this scenario, illuminate what not to do for some folks. If you're interested in more content from yours truly, check out my Vocal archive, or head over to the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio where I work with other gamers to put together fun skits, advice, and world building videos. If you want to stay on top of my latest releases, then follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you want to help support me, head over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page, or click the following like to Buy Me A Coffee. 

Odam's "Of Dreams And Magic" Review (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly)

As anyone who regularly reads my blog knows, I tend to mainline Pathfinder. In fact, I even went so far as to write a post titled Why Pathfinder is My Game of Choice to clarify my feelings and opinions. However, while I doubt I'll ever get tired of Golarion, I do play other games. Sometimes it's because I want to do something new, and sometimes it's because a new game plops in my lap and I decide to give it a read.

And that's kind of how I ended up reading "Of Dreams and Magic".

If you're not familiar with Odam Press's game "Of Dreams and Magic", it came out around 2015 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. In this game, the world is controlled by a force called the Doubt, which has convinced humanity that magic isn't real. Of course some people awaken to this lie, and embrace the truth of magic. These dreamers, known as Anima, can channel the power of their dream self into the real world, taking on extraordinary powers. They can also walk in the worlds of dream, fighting great battles in realms their fellow sleepers would never even guess exist. This has angered the Doubt, though, and it sends its agents to undo these Anima at every turn, spawning nightmares and reavers to crush their spirits, and force them back to sleep.

The Good

First things first, let me say unequivocally that the concept behind "Of Dreams and Magic" is a knockout. The idea that regular people can embrace the pure magic of dreams, and use it cast off the chains of a nebulous, gray, uncaring enemy feels like a modern fantasy version of The Neverending Story. With laser rifles and fireballs. Or, for World of Darkness fans, it feels like what you'd get if Mage: The Awakening knocked up Changeling: The Lost. It's flowing, free-form, and it allows you to bring a huge variety of concepts to the table. It also means you might have a party made up of a caped superhero, a fire-breathing demon prince, a shape-shifting hunter, and a haunted detective with a possessed gun.

In addition to the game's flavor, "Of Dreams and Magic" uses fairly simple (and unique) mechanics. You roll two ten-sided dice, one that's positive, and one that's negative. You figure out the result of your roll, add it to your bonus, and that determines whether you succeed or fail. There is also a unique mechanic called CAP, which is used to allow players more narrative control over their character. If you exceed the difficulty of the check, then every point you exceed it by is a point of CAP. You can then spend that CAP to modify the results. This might make attacks hit harder, make spells go further, or even allow your hacker to penetrate a firewall in seconds rather than minutes. As a mechanic for rewarding player success, and letting the table pick up the narration baton, that's quite unique.

The Bad

With that said, everything is not all rainbows and gumdrops for this game. There is a lot of number tracking, including your conviction (the stuff you use for powering your magic and abilities), your CAP, your wound penalties, and dozens of other factors. It's fairly reminiscent of the World of Darkness in this regard, but rather than keeping track of half a dozen hit boxes, and between 1 and 10 points of magic, you've now got hundreds of points to keep an eye on and maintain. It's not a deal breaker, but it is an annoyance.

The game also uses roll-off combat, which is an adjustment for a lot of gamers. Simply put, if you want to roll to hit an enemy (or to take any kind of contested action), that enemy also rolls to dodge, duck, block, etc. your attack. If their parry/dodge/whatever beats your hit, then you miss. Additionally, for every additional action you take, you suffer a cumulative -5 penalty. So you might be unbeatable on your first attack, but if you get mobbed and have to roll several defensive blocks, then you're going to go down fairly quickly. Again, this is not a deal breaker, but it is important that DMs who are used to systems like DND or Pathfinder where you roll against a static defense number keep very careful track of who is doing what, and in what order. Otherwise it's extremely easy for one bad guy's defense to get mistaken as their turn, and screw up the initiative order entirely. If you've ever run a Pathfinder or 5e game where someone had the parry ability, you're pretty much running a game where everyone has that now. As a result, combat is going to involve at least twice as many rolls, and can easily turn into a slog.

The Ugly

There is no nice way to say this... the base book for "Of Dreams and Magic" is in desperate, dire need of an editor. While the game's mechanics are fairly straightforward, the actual text of the rulebook is confusing, poorly laid out, and tends to use game jargon and abbreviations that haven't been clearly explained instead of clear-cut examples and simple language. The glossary is a joke, and if you want to answer basic questions about things like magic items, dreamscapes, etc., you're going to have to look in five or six places before you find the answer you want.

If you're the kind of gamer who doesn't mind doing a few cover-to-cover reads, and who is okay asking the empty air, "what the hell does that even mean?" twelve or thirteen times while trying to find an answer to a question, this won't be a problem. But the book's dense, unintuitive layout is a serious hurdle players will have to get over before sitting down at the table.

In The End

"Of Dreams and Magic" is a game with a lot of potential, but it has some serious flaws in its presentation. If you can overlook the lack of polish, and occasional head-scratching denseness (since I'm sure it made perfect sense to the designers and play testers, but I had hour long discussions with the Dreamweaver over what certain rules actually meant, and how things work), then the sheer flavor, freedom, and gonzo concept makes the game worth trying out. But if you're used to more mainstream games like Pathfinder, Dungeons and Dragons, or even most World of Darkness games, there is going to be a fairly hefty adjustment period. Take a deep breath, and remember, you only have to learn a new system once. It's always easier after the first dive.

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday update. Figured I'd spread the word, and try to leave a complete, balanced review. If folks liked this, let me know, and I'll consider doing it for other games I come across. For more content from yours truly, check out my Vocal archive, or head over to the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio where I work with other gamers to bring the world of Evora to life. To stay up-to-date on all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you'd like to help me keep Improved Initiative going then head over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to leave a little love in my cup. Even $1 a month goes a long way, and it will earn you some sweet swag as a thank you.

Starfinder is My Biggest Gaming Disappointment of 2017

Ever since the book flew off the shelves, everyone and their mother has been asking me what I think of Starfinder, Paizo's stab at sci-fi after becoming one of the top names in fantasy RPGs. The core book sold out at Gen Con this year at a rapid pace, and it seems like the only thing people can talk about in most of the gaming groups I follow and post in.

Well, I finally got my hands on a copy of the core book. I settled into my chair, opened it up, and went cover to cover. I am, by no means, an expert on the system. However, after giving it a read, I can describe my opinion thusly.

Pretty much this. For days.

Before I cracked the cover, I was hopeful, and excited. I was eager to see how wide the possibilities before me spread. After my read I was bored, frustrated, and genuinely angered as a gamer in a way I have not been in a very long time.

What I Was Told, Versus What I Got

When I first heard the spiel for Starfinder, I was stoked for everything I was hearing. Paizo was going to stride boldly into the sci-fi genre (or maybe just finish the sidestep it had been taking, given that we already had androids, crashed starships, and Old Ones), and it was going to do so with the same flair we'd come to expect.

Furthermore, we were going to get a continuation of the core world! Golarion, and its solar system were still the setting, and there would be a timeline from where we were, to where we are now. So anything your group did in adventure paths like Curse of The Crimson Throne, Rise of The Runelords, Mummy's Mask, etc. would all still be universe canon at your table. It would even be possible to play descendants of those old PCs, especially if they came from long-lived races that kept careful track of their bloodlines. This filled my head with images of deep space sorcerers, alien druids, phase rifle wielding void troopers, and tech-head ghosts that infiltrated the worst places in the cosmos, and vanished without a trace.

That is, of course, not what I got.

Now, if you have not read the core book for Starfinder, let me tell you that what I saw is not what I had hoped for.

Before we go forward, I will say that I felt many of the rule alterations and additions were quite sensible. For example, of course a sci-fi setting uses credits as currency. I like that classes get more skill points, because if there's more knowledge and education, folks are going to have more skills. And there needed to be some new skills added, like Computers to account for the setting's futuristic nature. Reducing armor to only light and heavy makes sense, since we're dealing with futuristic and tactical armors, not the more traditional fantasy armor. I like that it was made clear that you don't need a partner to strap you into a suit of heavy armor anymore. The gravity and environmental rules were, of course, going to come up for things like zero g combat, and going to alien planets.

Here's what I don't agree with, though. I don't agree with making two dozen subtle changes to the core mechanics of the game so that it reduces player options for customization. I don't agree with going from a rich world of options where we had dozens of races, and hundreds of classes, archetypes, and prestige classes (not to mention feats, spells, and unique traits), to only a half dozen races and classes, as well as a few pages of feats and spells, to play with. I disagree that in a world with space-age alloys and super-advanced technology that there aren't shields, whether they be adamantine or entirely energy-based. I also disagree on decisions that made the game feel more like an attempt to ape Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition style and flow. Lastly, and most strongly, I disagree with the dismissive tone, and token attitude, that infuses the "legacy conversion" section in the rear of the book. A section that I feel was one of the game's major selling points, but was littered with comments like, "at DM discretion," and, "isn't really meant to work in Starfinder," or, "is going to be difficult."

Why Angry, Though?

I mentioned that I was not just disappointed by this game, but that I was genuinely angered by it. Allow me to explain that statement.

If Paizo had set out to just make a sci-fi RPG, then I would say that Starfinder is definitely a success in terms of that goal. It's perfectly functional, do not misunderstand me on that score, and if I was in the mood for a sci-fi game I wouldn't kick it out of bed. In fact, I'd play Starfinder over most other sci-fi games (particularly the Star Wars RPG) hands-down if we're just talking about the mechanics.

So why you mad, bro?

What makes me mad about the game is that it's claiming continuity with one hand, and slamming the door in Pathfinder's face with the other. It's going to continue the story of the same world, but it doesn't want you to use any of the other books you already bought to open up the horizons, and populate the world. It wants you to ignore archetypes like the Tech Slinger, or the Cyber Solder, who would have been perfectly at home in a setting where their power sets matched the tone of the game. It wants to slap your knuckles, and chastise you for trying to use your old bestiaries, even though they're jam-packed with monsters from outer space and other planes who would be right at home in ghost ships, or on hellish, alien worlds.

Aside from making world continuity a selling point, there's another reason this setup displeases me so much. Because there was no reason for most of these changes to be made in the first place.

If you dig through the Pathfinder books, there are already rules for running a futuristic game peppered through the material. The game's rules for modern firearms are to simply take the guns we're used to, and make them simple weapons instead of exotic ones. Cost adjustments were also listed for worlds where firearms were common, rather than rare. There were already feats for technological weapon proficiencies, so everything from monofilament whips to chainswords could already be wielded by any class who took the right feats, or had the right proficiencies. There were already rules for creating, and using, high-tech items in the Technology Guide, and we already had rules for piloting and building ships both normal and magical.

With all the rules that had already been established, there was no need to re-invent the wheel. The Starfinder core book could have collected all these rules, put them in one place, and then added a few, simple tweaks to embrace the futuristic setting fully. Things like giving armor or shields the ballistic quality, meaning they count against firearm attacks, though not against rays, lasers, or other force effects, for instance.

The only reason to make all of the re-designs that I can see was to make it so players would have to either sweat bullets to put square pegs into round holes trying to convert the dozens of Pathfinder books they already have, or just buy the new material for Starfinder as it comes out. And honestly, with so many technological rules already in the books, and available online, you could just take the minor changes from Starfinder, and play the game with all your favorite classes from the barbarian to the kineticist fully intact.

Because sure, I think the Vesk are cool. I like some of the fun stuff the Soldier and the Operative offer. But when a game purports to be set in the same world, but limits my options for play from thousands of unique combinations to a paltry handful of puzzle pieces, that is not a game I'm down with. I expected better, and was severely disappointed both by the content itself, and by the tone of a game which boasted a rich history, but then locked it behind glass where we're not allowed to touch it.

Edit: Also, I'm Bored

After some time to think about it, and answering comments on this piece, I realized something else about Starfinder that I have a complaint about; it's boring.

I don't mean it's boring in that the writing is bad, the setting is uninteresting, or that you can't play fun games in it. I mean that it's sci-fi by the numbers. When you heard there was a class-based sci-fi RPG, this is exactly what you'd expect. There's the tech guy, the stealth operative, the soldier, the techno wizard, the weird spiritualist, etc. Even the races are just paint-by-numbers.

I didn't get my version of the game, but just as Pathfinder blended sci-fi into fantasy to create a unique combination you couldn't get in other games, so too I was hoping Starfinder would blend some fantasy into sci-fi to make something equally unique. So you could have a cyborg druid, or a wizard with a ray gun, or a medium that would channel the alien spirits of long-lost battlefields. Stuff that would upend genre expectations, and be unexpected.

Instead of giving us exactly what the genre ordered.

That's all for this Moon Pope Monday update. I'm sorry it wasn't more positive, but it's something I really needed to get off my chest. If you're looking for more content than I have on here, check out my Gamers archive. It's still growing, and I'm not stopping anytime soon. If you want to stay on top of all my releases, then follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you'd like to support my work here, head over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a patron today. All I ask is $1 a month, and in exchange I'll keep doing what I do in addition to giving you some sweet swag as a thank you!