Lists, Lists and more Lists - Part 2

An equipment table with unique items highlighted

Following on from the previous post, I quite often skim equipment lists very quickly. The picture here shows why. It shows a table of firearms for Fading Suns (but this isn't about that game, this is just an exemplar I had to hand, plenty of others do this). Within the table, I have highlighted the items where the game mechanic related statistics vary. 

Across ninety-one data points (13x7) there are six numbers which are ever so slightly different. four of those relate ammo capacity and only one of those is a really significant change.

Yes, there are differences in the provenance (faction) of the weapons, and their names, and some slight variations in costs, but they really don't make much difference. There's a lot of effort here for very little benefit. I do wonder it it would have been better done with a base weapon and some tags for extra features that adjust cost, and some modifiers for price and quality based on faction.

I do know that there can be some pleasure in looking at weapons when the statistics make meaningful differences, but here they don't really. When they're all so close mechanically there's very little point in have a table to differentiate, especially if there's no flavour text that may call out the difference.

Then again, I'm not really a gun bunny any more, my days of getting excited over getting hold of a M41A Pulse Rifle in game have long gone. Except in the Alien RPG...

Hat tip to Dr Mitch for triggering these thoughts in his response to the original post on Facebook.

10 November 2024

Lists, Lists and more Lists

Lists, lists and more lists

I've just finished reading the second of the Fading Suns 4 core rule books, the Character Book. It's the largest volume and it was a bit of a slog. Although the book is well written, albeit occasionally a little long-winded, it nearly killed my interest once it hit the lists.

The game uses traits as a broad descriptor and there are pages and pages of descriptions. I nearly game up as it bored me. It's the kind of thing that you won't see in play and I'm sure that players will have loads of fun working through and making choices about their character, but reading the book from a GM perspective it just disengaged me. I had the same issue with Old Gods of Appalachia (and I know I will with Numenéra once I dig into that). I've lost the passion I once had for reading spell lists, monster descriptions and all the various forms of list that certain flavours of roleplaying game.

It's strange, as I used to pour over these in detail, but now they bore me and I end up wishing for a hypertext linked character generation tool where you can just click through. At least the Cypher games abstract this all away for the GM when creating characters. I need to read the next book to see how Fading Suns deals with this.

I know that it all falls away when it's on the character sheet but it just doesn't excite me anymore. Is it a sign of age or perhaps a change of taste? How do you feel about this kind of approach?

8 November 2024

 

Books in October 2024

 

The October cover collage

October brought eight books and 2,147 pages. One non-fiction, one roleplaying and the rest fiction. Apparently I'm down 27% on books and 30% on pages on September! I'm on 85 books in total for the year so far.

The non-fiction was 'Pathogenesis', by Jonathan Reynolds. A fascinating listen on Audible, it covers the impact of infections disease on human society, a very different lens to the usual 'great men and empires' take. 

The roleplaying game was 'Root' by Magpie Games. A superbly written and beautifully illustrated Powered by the Apocalypse game of the boardgame of the same name. Characters take the role of a band of vagabonds in a war-torn wood. Putting the anthropogenic animals to one side, it's probably the closest take to a decent Robin Hood roleplaying game that I've seen. 

I read to Aliette de Bodard novellas, 'In the Shadow of the Ship' and 'Navigational Entanglements' and enjoyed them hugely. Her books remain an automatic purchase and go to the top of the reading pile! James SA Corey's 'Livesuit' is set in their new SF universe, but there wasn't an initial obvious link to the first book. I'm sure that will develop as the series progresses. An enjoyable novella.

'The Wife Swap' by Jack Heath was an impulse by on a Kindle offer, and it was a diverting murder mystery. Different to my usual fair and consumed quite quickly.

'Moscow X' by David McCloskey was pretty brutal; once again, this wasn't James Bond style spy fiction but espionage seen through the lens of realism. I look forward to the next book. This was just pipped to the post as my favourite read of the month by 'The Curse of Pietro Houdini' by Derek B Miller. Set in Monte Cassino around the time that the Allies assault the Abbey in World War Two, it tells the story of a young refugee from Rome who falls in with Pietro Houdini, a man sent by the Vatican to help protect the art at the Abbey. It felt very different and I enjoyed it immensely.

1 October 2024