[RPG]: Seven Leagues, reviewed by Lev Lafayette (4/3)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13093.phtml

Lev Lafayette's Summary:

A rules-light narrative system based on the realms and stories of Faerie. Makes excellent use of public domain art and describes the setting with finesse; an enjoyable short-term alternative, but would need work for longer-term experiences.

Go to the full review for more information.

[hieronymous]

Thanks for the review, Lev. If I may, I wanted to address a couple of points:

--"Unfortunately, there are very few examples of what constitutes positive or negative modifiers and what does exist is scattered through the text"

Actually, there's a table that clearly (if subjectively) describes Narrative modifiers in concrete terms, and an entire section on how to adjudicate Charms. There are also examples of play (Baba Yaga attempting to snatch a child for instance) where Narrative modifiers are attributed. Sure, those are "throughout the text", but that's a good thing, IMHO.

--I also wanted to mention that the game is available as a color, screen-res PDF from a variety of places, most notable RPG Now:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=6048

and you can get it in print from Lulu, in a grey-scale interior art or color interior art versions:

http://www.lulu.com/content/153328
http://www.lulu.com/content/205996

[Lev Lafayette]

Originally Posted by hieronymous

Actually, there's a table that clearly (if subjectively) describes Narrative modifiers in concrete terms, and an entire section on how to adjudicate Charms.

Personally I don't count saying +4 is "Easy" to -4 being "Very Difficult" as being 'concrete' terms.

How difficult is for character to leap over a 5m chasm? Off the top of my head, I simply don't know. If, after play stops to discuss the issue with the players, I decide it's "Average", what happens in ten sessions time when, having completely forgotten the decision, I try to tell another play that a similar leap is "Hard"?

Guidelines like this is what I like to see in task resolution systems. It makes life a lot easier for both GM and player alike.

[hieronymous]

I see your point. However, allow me to offer that having difficulties set based upon depth of a fall, height of walls, choppiness of waters, etc etc. is rather inconsistent with the genre. Notice there are no rules for "movement", "climbing", "swimming", or even "flying". I've translated and published Reve, so I know all about crunch, and appreciate that in some games a consistent set of objective difficulties are essential to "game balance". However, I think those wargame-derived conventions would be wholly inappropriate here. For that matter, I consciously left notions of "game balance" out of the game design, but that's fodder perhaps for another discussion.

[niklinna]

I agree with hieronymous, it's the narrative import of the challenge that matters, not its objective measurements. This is a big part of what makes Spirit of the Century and other such games so appealing to me. Whiffing on a random challenge is no fun. However, if the challenge is there to offer an opportunity for deepening the story in different ways based on success or failure (or degree thereof), now we have something worth going at.

So ultimately the rating itself doesn't matter, to me. What matters is how the challenge affects the story!

[hieronymous]

Thanks for the post. Getting back to the 5m leap example, I would suggest that in a fairy tale game, describing a chasm as 5 meters in the first place is out of place. The chasm might be "terrifying", "abyssal", "dizzying", "broad" etc. To cite an extreme instance, drawing it out on a hex grid battle map and counting hexes is wholly inappropriate. Given that emotional or poetic descriptions are dictated by the genre, how can a player possibly claim that a "daunting" chasm this week should be only -2, because last week's "extraordinary" leap from one rooftop to another was also -2?

Even if the Narrator parsed her words very carefully, and had an exhaustive list of adjectives corresponding to modifiers, what difference would that make? The objection I have to games that equate a value for a word is that they've just substituted one adjective ("daunting") for another ("-2"). And I write that fully cognizant that I have done the very thing to a small extent in Seven Leagues.

Finally, so what if there's no consistency from week to week? I'll refrain from making that haggard Emerson reference, and only say that fairy tales are rife with examples where an opponent or obstacle are daunting in one scene, but two pages later pose our hero no threat. Isn't adherence to the literary genre more important, as niklinna suggests, than to some 1970s notion of wargaming "balance" and "fairness"?

[Lev Lafayette]

Originally Posted by hieronymous

Isn't adherence to the literary genre more important, as niklinna suggests, than to some 1970s notion of wargaming "balance" and "fairness"?

Not necessarily - and the agenda I raised had nothing to do with balance or fairness, but rather a consistent simulationist (even faery simulationism) perspective that simply makes the game easier to play.