Let's Play: Losing the Plot or Out of Touch!

 The title of this blog came to mind after two conversations. The first one was with a couple friends who, like me, are of an older generation that remembers a time when Star Wars worked reasonably well because the oversaturation of content was restricted to comics, books and games; the core conceits of the universe were officially corralled within a handful of movies. So today my son, who should be target demographic #1 for Disney's Star Wars, had lots of scathing opinions about The Acolyte's loose effort at either mishandling or redefining the core conceits of what its universe is. In a bygone age something like Acolyte would be another random Dark Horse Comic or maybe a West End Games sourcebook that was quickly forgotten. Today....it's a TV show and sort of feels like someone has steered wildly off course on the original sparse but satisfying core nugget of the Star Wars Experience.

The second one was me reading about How Robert Downy Jr. will return to the Marvel Universe as Doctor Doom. I don't know how this works. I can speculate its more of their multiversal madness, but the reason they are not working right now is precisely due to the fact that multiversal storylines do not make for coherent storytelling, and they reduce the gravitas of the main plot. Comics use multiverse storylines to "fix" issues prior authors and artists caused for future artists. They sometimes use it to do hard reboots to clean up the myriad obscure plots that make it hard for new readers to break in to the current books. They often (in DC's case) use it to tell cool stories they can't tell any other way because the core conceits of a comic universe require things be static and not change. But the film universes of these comics clearly work differently, and the application of multiversal themes seem to be the death knell of both the Marvel and DC film continuities. You can have fun in the moment, but then you leave and realized it tasted great but was just empty calories. These is nothing to feel invested in, at the end of the day. It is a storyteller's dead end.

That prompted me to think, so am I the crazy one who is out of touch here, thinking that bringing Iron Man guy back s Doctor Doom guy....a  move I can only imagine will do no justice to either character....is just kind of digging the hole Marvel is in even deeper? Or am I Out of Touch, and if I were one of the cool kids this would all make sense somehow?

My son, who is 12, barely remembers the Avengers movies that offed Tony Stark as a character. He has seen some Fantastic Four films and found them old and out of date. He doesn't know of care why the Iron Man actor is now also the Doctor Doom actor, and has so much Marvel content at his finger tips that he gains satisfaction by refusing all of it, because his generation, to survive, must set these boundaries against the hordes of IP issued forth by the Media Overlords. So....if you feel this way does that mean you are Out of Touch too? Even at 12? Or has Disney well and truly Lost the Plot?

I guess if we're lucky my son will know how awesome (or terrible) a Downey Jr. Doom is before he's graduated High School!

Long-Form vs. Short-Form RPGs - Or, There's Never Enough Time to Run Everything

Right now my gaming group....well, I as GM anyway....have a problem, and that problem is that we are currently playing Dungeons & Dragons 5E on both Wednesday and Saturday. That's a good thing, sure! People love playing games and its nice to have had a consistent D&D group in one form or another for decades now. But here's the problem.....I''ll provide a short list:

Tales of the Valiant; Mothership; Call of Cthulhu; Savage Worlds; Pathfinder 2E Revised; Traveller; Mork Borg; Vast Grimm; Mutant Year Zero; Gamma World; Swords & Wizardry.

I could go on....but you get the point. There's a lot of RPGs I have I'd like to also be playing right now, but I keep running D&D 5E. The reason, of course, is because D&D at its heart is a long-form game experience. You can run short campaigns, sure, but D&D is built around the core conceit of forging lengthy tales of heroes who venture forth and have exciting experiences over many, many game sessions. As a result, starting a D&D campaign isn't just (for my table, anyway) a case of "go explore that dungeon," its a campaign-level "Start at level 1 and work your way to whatever level the DM can get to before breaking," type deal.

Some of the other games work much better with a more short-form experience, where the game can last 1-3 sessions or maybe a mini campaign arc of 5-10 sessions followed by a satisfying conclusion. Savage Worlds does this well. Horror games are particularly suited to this format and I run Call of Cthulhu and Mothership usually with the expectation that a campaign will rarely go past 5-10 sessions. I did once run a CoC campaign that went 18 sessions, but even that one had to end spectacularly and with a measure of finality that was quite satisfying and is still talked about years later.

The problem is: I love running long-form campaigns but I really thrive on short-form campaigns where you can remain more focused on a specific concept space. And right now, I am running essentially two long-form campaigns because when it comes to D&D and its clones, it is all too easy and natural to slide in to the lengthy campaign format, sometimes without even realizing it. Now, luckily for me the Saturday campaign has a definite potential closing point. For whatever reason, my "secondary campaign" night (which is Saturdays) is always easier for me to eventually tire of and want to bail on. So I expect we will get 2-3 more sessions out of it before I am proposing something new. This is unfortunate for my players on Saturday who would like a long running campaign, but necessary for my sanity, because deep down these days I am full of 20 ideas at a time, but have room for exploring only one and a half-of them at a time. 

Wednesday is the real problem for me: I want to try out Tales of the Valiant, but we're hip deep in our ongoing D&D 5E campaign with no end in sight. Tales of the Valiant is meant to be a 5E replacement ruleset, so in theory I could cheekily just start using it and gradually shift the campaign over but....nah, that wouldn't be as satisfying as starting a new campaign aimed specifically at using Tales of the Valiant by itself. So yeah, I remain stuck there for a bit.

Meanwhile, I have loads of new ideas for other games, including Mothership, Cthulhu, Savage Worlds and some more obscure ones such as Dreams & Machines and Gamma World (the 4th edition of the game from the nineties, no less!) that I want to entertain. I feel like I could have done this more efficiently twenty years ago. Ah well! We'll see what I can do.

Tales of the Valiant is here! Let the 2024 Edition Wars Commence

 I finally got my Tales of the Valiant Player's Guide and Monster Vault books, along with the very nice GM screen. Together these two books comprise all the core you need to play the game, so I am intrigued to see all the useful (but non critical) content in the GM's Guide coming out later this year.

The new books are sturdy, standard Kobold Press style, with gorgeous Kobold Press artwork that "feels like D&D" which is the best compliment I can provide to the game. Given that the Kobolds have essentially positioned Tales of the Valiant to be to D&D 6th Edition what Pathfinder 1E was to D&D 4th edition, this is a good place for them to reside.....whether that is by accident or design I cannot say. If D&D 6th edition -and go look at all the release details so far if you don't think the new D&D 2024 isn't a full-out new edition!- does not grab as much attention and go over as well as it could or should, then Tales of the Valiant could provide a more than suitable alternative. 

TotV will most likely remain niche no matter what, as its the kind of thing you sort of know about and get interested in if you're already hip deep into RPGs, while D&D has cornered a different kind of market with a more casual crowd who's overall interest is less obscure and more trendy. But if it turns out that D&D shed too much of its identifiable crust in the remaking, then we could indeed see people start looking around for alternatives (or maybe even just stick with their old books). 

I can see this happening: D&D 6E seems to be caught between two markets right now. The general perception of the new class and rules promotional details coming out strongly suggest a mechanical rework designed to appeal to a more hardcore crowd interested in a bit more mechanical rigor and tactical acumen. Simultaneously we are being told the game is being revamped for "how people really play" and there seems to be a strong push toward friendlier and less violent art, character focused development that leans hard into the "start as a super hero, not super zero" thematics that 5E was already noted for, and a broader sense of inclusion for game tables which eschew the rigors of mechanical combat in favor of pure role playing. These are interesting and very opposite demographics to appeal to simultaneously in a product....and I will be interested in seeing if WotC can pull it off.

There's also an entire segment of modern D&D gamers who have only come in to the hobby with 5th edition, and have never had to experience an edition change. For many, a perceived increase in mechanical rigor (or even just a moderate level of changes for change's sake) could be more than they want to deal with. I could be wrong....who knows!

Even if D&D 6E takes off and also succeeds via D&D Beyond and Roll20 (which, correct me if I am wrong, seems to be substituting for D&D Beyond's original goal of making the online experience more video-game and microtransaction driven), it's okay, because Tales of the Valiant clearly has the "I like physical books" crowd covered, and even better if you do want to go VTT with it, Shard Tabletop is a damned fine product. If TotV can manage to make Shard or something similar provide an easier set of tools to desgn and subsequently print out for live table gaming, they will manage to cater to both live and virtual crowds easily. With D&D Beyond.....I feel like maybe D&D is not as poised here as they had originally intended. But hey, it's not September yet, we shall see how that goes.

Amidst all this are other game systems, but I think they all suffer in odd ways that prevent them from getting to be the next Pathfinder 1E to D&D. Pathfinder 2E, for example, shed so much OGL identity that it is functionally a different sort of game now, one with few to no identifiable "D&Disms" left. At least Tales of the Valiant wasn't afraid to include an owlbear, for example! It retains a lot of stuff that firmly plants it in the realm of "D&Dlikes" which means its comfort level will be more familiar to many players now than PF2E. PF2E, meanwhile, is poised to be a good alternate for people who want a D&D inspired experience but also really want a lot more mechanical rigor and very tight math. There is a crowd for that, and they are already playing their preferred game (PF2E). 

Other potential contenders lurk out there, but each offers a niche experience. Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised is my favorite OSR experience next to OSE. OSE is also cool. Shadowdark is out there, and it seems like people do like it. None of them are poised to become the next Pathfinder 1E, though, because each is catering to a specific playstyle subset of the broader population.

Anyway, the last six months of this year will be a fun roller coaster for D&D and now Tales of the Valiant. I'm developing a new campaign (well, an old one set in a new -or old- era) for TotV and will start posting some details here soon. I think I have buy-in from my group, so I'm excited to get a chance to try it out before the D&D 6E madness hits in three months.