So, just bought this, Vincent Baker's latest opus (well, Poison'd may be his latest opus, I've not checked the chronology, it's by Vincent Baker anyway).
I read it today, and while many have complained about the writing being unclear I fall into the camp of those who found it perfectly straightforward. Possibly because I don't have as many indie preconceptions as some, don't know.
So, why am I posting about it? Well, I thought it worth sharing my initial thoughts, not a review but just to get some discussion going and to see what others had made of it. If anyone can link me to actual play threads that would kick ass too.
The game opens, after the contents, with an invitations section setting out what you need for play. As part of that, it makes it quite explicit this is not a game aimed at one shots, it's aimed at campaign play. That's already unusual IMO for an indie game, here he suggests playing it "once a week or twice a month, for several weeks or a few months". A key game mechanic only works incidentally in campaign play, I actually think one shots would miss much of the point of the game.
It has a GM, it has players, players each have a character which they play, the GM plays everyone else, sets the scene and manages pacing and so on. Narrative power is much where you'd generally expect it.
You start a campaign by someone (doesn't matter who) choosing a category of what are called Oracles, there are four categories, and then four oracles are chosen at random from the category selected. The categories are Blood & Sex, God-Kings of War, the Unquiet Past and finally Nest of Vipers.
Example time, I'm picking the Unquiet Past, I randomly select four oracles from that and get:
"A camp physician, her pockets full of salves and drugs"
"The captain of a foreign troop, sent to collect tribute"
"The awakening of three powerful and malignant genii" and
"A treasure seeker, following the whispers of a slave spirit".
Now, that probably doesn't mean much yet, but I've read a fair bit of early sword and sorcery, and tone-wise we're already firmly in that territory.
Each player picks a character mentioned or potentially implied in an oracle. Let's say we have three players, one picks the camp physician, one picks the tomb-robber who inadvertently awoke the three genii (not mentioned, but you can imply it), one picks the slave spirit. Those are now our three PCs, each has certain traits in terms of how they do things, they may have particular strengths (that's the game term) such as the spirit having the gift of prophecy to take an example, and the game includes suggestions for appropriate names and so on.
The game does not go into equipment lists, and as such of course cannot be considered an rpg. One geek point to all who get the reference, and thus are as sad as I am.
Everyone who's not a PC is an NPC, so the genii, the treasure seeker, the captain and his troop (and any implicit characters such as the captain's right hand man, his lady love, his trusty dog, whatever works for you, the king from whom the tribute is due) and so on.
Play is conflict driven, potentially PC versus PC, potentially PC versus NPC, he rightly warns against NPC versus NPC for IMO obvious reasons. Each character has two or more best interests, one character's best interests will frequently conflict with another's.
So, let's say the spirit's best interest is to free itself of its binding and to punish the physician who withheld treatment so leaving it to die in the first place, the treasure seeker's best interest is to find a lost treasure, the tomb-robber's best interests are to earn enough money to buy his family from slavery and to steal the cure for the tomb-rot he has encountered, the physician's best interests are to sell his cures only to princes and potentates for the highest prices that can be found and to live alife of sybaritic luxury (you can get better than that for interests, but I'm tired).
Together, they fight crime.
The interesting bit is once an adventure is resolved, let's say the spirit is freed, the physician escapes punishment but is robbed and left destitute by the tomb robber, the tomb robber frees his family and uses the physicians medicines to cure his tomb-rot so meeting all his interests, some characters will have ended up in play on what is called an "owe list".
Characters on the owe list recur in later sessions, characters who do not may not (but sometimes still may). Each adventure involves new oracles, new characters, but some characters will come back.
The result is that over an extended campaign you will have a linked series of short stories, with some characters recurring and some appearing only briefly, all of which will have a sword and sorcery vibe going on.
And I think that's brilliant, really inspired. It's incredibly close to the original genre, to Conan, Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser, the Dying Earth (the original short story collection, not the later novels), Tanith Lee (though I only remember her dimly now). It's a piece of piss in this game to get characters like Elric or Cugel (for all I just said not so much the later Dying Earth). It evokes sword and sorcery as a genre in a way few other games do.
Setting is created in play, but the game creates over time a history and geography in play that is realised from the players and GM's decisions. He even encourages drawing maps and writing down timelines. Characters start sketchy, but over multiple sessions may become rich and detailed (or may not be followed up on). In some ways it reminds me of early D&D, where setting and character both were sketchy when you first sat down but became rich as a result of the play at the table.
IMO it pushes indie design forward, it challenges assumptions about party based play, about the link between players and characters, but still supports campaigns, exploration of setting and character, traditional and tried and tested GM/player roles. I think, based on a reading, it's a superlative piece of work.
So, how have others found it? Anyone else as impressed? Any actual play threads? Anyone wondering what the hell I'm talking about? Anyone hated it?
It sounds very interesting but one thing I am personally worried about is a lack of focus.
I will explain with your generated example. Why would the Tomb Robber and Treasure Seeker interact with the Genii and Physician? Their stories do not seem to mix and the appearance is a lack of focus on the story at hand.
Of course, I am aware that maybe you have not listed all of the necessary details to begin play but I had a somewhat negative experience with playing the beta version of Vincent's Afraid. All of the PC's were a bit scattered story-wise and we had many scenes which only featured one or two players (this was a 4 player group). Players felt bored after they'd spend a scene or two watching. I see this being a definite possibility in IaWA.
It sounds very interesting but one thing I am personally worried about is a lack of focus.
I will explain with your generated example. Why would the Tomb Robber and Treasure Seeker interact with the Genii and Physician? Their stories do not seem to mix and the appearance is a lack of focus on the story at hand.
Of course, I am aware that maybe you have not listed all of the necessary details to begin play but I had a somewhat negative experience with playing the beta version of Vincent's Afraid. All of the PC's were a bit scattered story-wise and we had many scenes which only featured one or two players (this was a 4 player group). Players felt bored after they'd spend a scene or two watching. I see this being a definite possibility in IaWA.
It probably is a possibilty, but to be honest I had kind of weak best interests there - it was after all just me coming up with all of them.
The idea is the best interests should conflict, and the GM should move things towards conflict (not all the time, but when things are flagging). You could have the same issues it sounds like you had in Afraid, but good use of scene framing and good choices of best interests I think would mitigate against that.
The tomb robber incidentally needs medicine, the physician doesn't want to give away medicine save to the rich and powerful, that's a clear conflict right there, those best interests IMO directly clash and it would be pretty easy to get those two in play.
I bought this too, and although I've only run one game so far I've been very impressed by how it all works in play. I found the text a straight forward read as well, although a few questions did arise out of the first game, mostly about whether you can change Forms mid-conflict and so on.
Perhaps the most impressive thing for me was the result from such low-prep. There is absolutely nothing you can do as a GM to prepare for the game beforehand due to the way Oracles are selected, but nevertheless we ended up with an engaging, action-heavy 2-3 hour game for our first chapter. We really had no aimless or dead-end scenes and pulling a coherent story together from the oracle elements, characters and best interests was surprisingly intuitive and effective.
Although I did notice, despite the low prep, it was an exhausting game to run! There's a lot of improvisation and coming up with interesting setting elements and scene framing on the fly - although I think this would reduce as chapters built on chapters played before and characters and NPCs recur.
Quote:
Originally Posted by agony
It sounds very interesting but one thing I am personally worried about is a lack of focus.
I will explain with your generated example. Why would the Tomb Robber and Treasure Seeker interact with the Genii and Physician? Their stories do not seem to mix and the appearance is a lack of focus on the story at hand.
Of course, I am aware that maybe you have not listed all of the necessary details to begin play but I had a somewhat negative experience with playing the beta version of Vincent's Afraid. All of the PC's were a bit scattered story-wise and we had many scenes which only featured one or two players (this was a 4 player group). Players felt bored after they'd spend a scene or two watching. I see this being a definite possibility in IaWA.
I guess this is a possible problem. However, I found that having each player-character choose 2 best interests that will lead to conflict and each NPC having 1 or 2, it's likely that everyone's stories are going to get tangled together quickly. As a GM I looked for characters on the outside and tried to bring them in when choosing my NPCs best interests, using them as ways to connect player characters.
Having the Oracle elements determined, there's an obvious drive to see how they might be connected, however incompatible they might seem at first. By the time implicit and explicit characters have been selected and best interests have been thrown around, you should have something pretty coherent to start with.
I think there's probably an ideal number of NPCs to involve, somewhere between two and four characters. Too many and I think you'd encourage unconnected, parallel storylines just trying to get each NPC into the action - I found having three worked very well for a four-player game.
Ok, I definitely buy that you can easily get around the disconnected stories with some effort. Part of why Afraid did not work for us is the scene structure and characters ending up Alone, but this thread isn't about Afraid.
Anyway, more questions. Why choose all 4 from the same Oracle? Is there logic behind this besides "because the rules say so."?
Second question, is the genre restricted to Sword and Sorcery? Are the conflict resolution rules tied to any semblance of Medieval? Could I do a Sci-Fi game...perhaps even with ships?
Edit - I'm aware you'd have to create new Oracles for a different genre, I'm worried about the conflict resolution rules
There is nothing In A Wicked Age that would stop you from using it for Sci-Fi. The attribute names are kind of sensually evocative of Swords and Sorcery but that's just words, nothing really mechanical going on.
It won't work if you want to model *the ships* themselves in some way. However, space combat as a conflict between ship captains/crew would work just fine.
There is nothing In A Wicked Age that would stop you from using it for Sci-Fi. The attribute names are kind of sensually evocative of Swords and Sorcery but that's just words, nothing really mechanical going on.
It won't work if you want to model *the ships* themselves in some way. However, space combat as a conflict between ship captains/crew would work just fine.
Jesse
Stellar. Yes, I wasn't looking for mechanical details for ships more of can a space dofight technically occur with the given rules. Much in the same way that you can model virtually any situation in the Dogs conflict resolution system.
"A camp physician, her pockets full of salves and drugs"
"The captain of a foreign troop, sent to collect tribute"
"The awakening of three powerful and malignant genii" and
"A treasure seeker, following the whispers of a slave spirit".
Space opera . . .
"A ship's psy-medic, her mind full of Medi-memes and Toxy-memory."
"The captain of an alien ship, sent to collect data."
"The awakening of three powerful and malignant AI." and
"A salvage seeker, following the whispers of a Holo-slave."
Sorry couldn't resist, but to answer your otherr question . . .
Quote:
Originally Posted by agony
Why choose all 4 from the same Oracle? Is there logic behind this besides "because the rules say so."?
In the rules it says get one player to pick any Oracle, then another to draw four cards, then another to read the orcale while the GM writes down the results.
So I think initially it's so it just goes quick, one thing after the other, just blast it out with everyone involved. I think the other part of the logic is that each oracle has it's own theme and feel and will create chapters that refelect that. However, there's nothing to stop you mixing it up if you wanted to. Personally, I like the idea off sticking to one perchapter, initially at least.
Anyway, to answer Balbinus' OP, I really love IaWA's S&S atmosphere. I love the simplicity and how well it models S&S stories. The orcales are great too. I've liked them since before they were the orcales, when they were part of the Cheesy Fantsy game (?) not sure what the name was but I found it online and used the adventure generator as a spark for short story ideas. When I saw how they were used in IaWA that's what sold me on the game.
Reading the rules it all seemed to make sense to me. I really like the artwork too, by the way, simple as it is. Though, I yet to roll any dice in a game so no link to actual play, but I am running a game pbp here at RPGnet. Here are links to OOC showing our oracle selection and Chargen, no conflcit yet as IC has only just started.
Stellar. Yes, I wasn't looking for mechanical details for ships more of can a space dofight technically occur with the given rules. Much in the same way that you can model virtually any situation in the Dogs conflict resolution system.
The conflict system operates on a very conceptual level. Your stats are more about what kind of person you are than what you can do; they are things like "With Violence," "For Others," and so forth. So I think it would work for just about anything you want to do with it, provided everyone can wrap their heads around it.
Another thing worth mentioning is that you can create your own Oracles as well. Here you can find Oracles people have created for other genres or even for specific settings.
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Running: D&D4 (Dead of Winter)
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My group just finished the third chapter of our In A Wicked Age game and it's turned out to be pretty fantastic. Most of the compliments mentioned privious are spot on.
As for focus, we found that because there is no prep for anyone and characters are created on the spot after the oracles are drawn, all the players discussed the characters they were going to make together and work them into the potential plots in the chapter. Same with NPCs.
So, in our experiance anyway, while there were PCs that never directly interacted, they all had a laser like focus on the chapter story at hand.
aaron
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There's a lot of improvisation and coming up with interesting setting elements and scene framing on the fly - although I think this would reduce as chapters built on chapters played before and characters and NPCs recur.
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