I’m glad someone has taken the time to document the bullshit of Evony Online. I’ve been seeing the ads on rpg.net for the last few weeks:

I’m not bothered by the idea of a game with sex in it. I am bothered by the ads showing up on relatively PG sites. I’m also bothered by the continued assumption that only the money of white het males should matter(”My Lord”!)…

I expect the first videogame company to figure out making a game aimed at slash fiction fans, they’d be pulling in the fucking dough.

While tinkering around with writing up some setting material, I realized that in order to really get the most out of using Community Resources as Flag mechanics, you kinda have to shift your view of them.

The book lists them as literal resources or abilities (”Wealth”, “Influence”, “Magic”)- though in the examples you see it becomes abstracted to themes (”War”, “Peace” etc.). And this works well enough, but if you focus it a bit more, it really shines.

“One Thing”

Make the first Resource the “one thing” the community has that makes it stand out and gives it influence and power. For example, “Controls the Southern Trade Routes”. This sets up their biggest source of power and sets a tone for what the community is about. If you choose to focus play on it, it becomes a big source of conflict, while if you focus play away from it, it still sets up the base of legitimacy while wrestling with other issues.

“We need THIS to survive.”

Pick two resources specific to the community and situation that they need to survive. “Safety from Sand Beasts”, “Oases, Water, Housing”. These should fit local to the setting and be things the players would want to call on often (in this case, a desert campaign would make sense). The strength of a community is not just the numbers, but how appropriate the resources are to the kinds of conflicts you expect to see fairly often.

“This is who we are.”

Finally, have at least one resource set to define the social/cultural identity of the community. This sets up a combination of morale and culture. “The Southern Trade Clan, and the ways of the Old Royalty”, “The last of the Dynasty style weavers”.

As a whole

By doing so, you set up communities in basis of power, necessary resources, and cultural identity, all of which make great places to set up conflicts. You’ll also notice that more than one could stand in for the recommendations in the book- military, wealth, magic, etc., while at the same time giving it a bit more context if you’re using it to generate situations to play with.

Some folks might remember when I did the “1 Sentence Character Concept generator”. Well, here’s an evolution of it, usable for any game, but inspired by HeroQuest’s character generation process.

You’ll also notice it sets up a Conflict web around the PC – a mix of friends, allies, rivals, obligations, etc. A great way to build characters and situation.

You could either fill out the whole thing, or, just do the first sentence and fill out one or two of the other sentences- filling in more as play develops.

Extended Character Concept Generator

A (personality trait) (profession/role) trying to (goal) despite her (flaw).

She wants to become (profession/positive trait), achieve (social status), overcome/move beyond (past trouble, mistake, tragedy). She believes in (ideal or personal credo) and can’t stand people who (believe other credo/behave in a certain way). People know her as (reputation) and expect that she will (achieve/fail/become something).

She is a part of (social group), is expected to obey (authority figure), assisted by (friend/group of friends), is opposed by (rival group).

She wants to earn respect/love of (NPC), see (NPC2/rival group) get their just desserts for (dirty deed), help (NPC3) deal with (problem/flaw), fulfill (promise made) for (NPC4), and protect (NPC5) from (personal flaw, danger, other NPC or group).

Only in a world of magic could you make this really work, but it looks awesome:

Background

Once, Bota was a free land, the center of trade between the Lunar Empire and the Bayan lands to the south. Over 30 years ago it fell with hardly much bloodshed, some say, because it was already flooded with traitors, converted to foreign ways by the missionaries.

Today, Jala has become the center of resistance- both refugees streaming in from the north from Lunar raids as well as a few seeking adventure and a name for themselves by fighting the invaders.

War Comes…

A small group of Bayan missionaries have come from Boto, begging that Jala surrender peacefully. The Imperials have grown tired of the long struggle to take the Bayan lands- they have sent a new general, Maratha, brutal, cruel, and determined to break all resistance.

The Heroes

Young members of Jala, either natives or refugees, who must decide how to best protect and serve the people in the face of oncoming war.

Does it make more sense to try to engage the Lunars in the contested jungles further north? Make alliances with the Siyan Hill Clans? Try to move as many refugees south? Can any compromise be struck with the Lunar missionaries or is it just another Lunar trick?

Keyword: Jala Native
Abilities: Traveler-wise, Refugee-wise, Hates the Lunars, Hardworking, R-ship: Diwata Selene, Family Standing

Jala Resources:
Bayan Cultural Identity, Fierce Warriors & Militia, Local Alliances, Craft & Trades, Freedom for Bayan Lands

Defining your character:
Each character should have some description of how the Lunar Invasion impacted them directly (including family history), some abilities and social position that would put them in a place to do something about it, and some ties to the cultural aspects in particular.

Diwata Selene

The guardian spirit of Jala, small altars are found all around town, and along the roads. Selene appears to be a young woman dressed in colorful clothing, wearing a distinctive traditional headwrap and wielding a curved dagger. Her spirit is called upon to fight tigers and dangerous beasts of the jungle, to find lost children, and, to protect Jala when in danger. Most travelers, traders, and refugees give offerings before any journey and thanks after one.

Other Communities

Boto Resources:
Bayan Cultural Identity, Lunar Cultural Influence, Lunar Garrison, Northern Trade Center, Town Expansion

Siyan Resources:
Fierce Independence, Brutal Infighting, Guerilla Mastery, Rare Herbal Medicine and Poison, Spirit Traditions

One neat thing about HQ2 is the way in which communities are handled – they’re defined by 5 resource traits which:

a) can be used to set up situations in play, moments of crisis, opportunities, and conflict
b) can be improved or reduced as a measurement of the well being of a given community
c) can be called upon to aid player characters

What these do, is serve as Flags on a group level- a group of players could define what they want the campaign to be about through selecting appropriate Resources and assigning the traits appropriately (weaker traits = more conflict).

For example, if you wanted to do a Battlestar Galactica game? The Fleet would count as a community with Resources like, “Trust”, “Political Infrastructure”, “Vipers, Pilots, Marines”, “Food”, “Hope & Morale”…

HQ2 brings up the issue of Nested Communities- that you might be part of a national group, a local village, a religious group, a particular clan, all at the same time- which gives you several layers of communities to work with and aid or protect. This then sets up those very classic stories of the hero choosing between protecting kin or saving the country, etc.

It also becomes a neat thing where you might bring in one Community Resource at one level to influence a rival community at another – basically, we’re talking the issues of intersectionality built into the game mechanics.

“Yes, well, they are heretics, but she IS the daughter of the head of the merchant guild- and she could easily sell the rights to the trade routes to Baron Ofsky… let them keep their temples!”

Hero Wars had this, but sort of divided between the rules for community support and the rules for setting up crisis moments, but it locked in the categories- this is an elegant combination of the two, which I think makes a lot more sense and should lead to a lot of interesting play.

So I finally got my copy of HQ2 via PDF. I haven’t had a chance to really do much more than some quick skimming, but here’s some thoughts.

ETA: Now that I’ve read it…

HQ2 is the most recent iteration of the Hero Wars ruleset, more clearly written, and better designed in many ways. The rules are fairly elegant compared to the last two editions, and modular, much like Burning Wheel (except non-crunchy).

The rules provided can be drifted either towards Sim to Illusionist play, or to Narrativism, depending how much you decide to follow the advice through most of the book (Nar leaning) or follow a few bits of advice and rules in a few parts of the book (Sim or Illusionist leaning).

You should get this game if you have some experience with rpgs AND you know what your preferred play style is. It is easy to push the game in the direction you want it to go, either way, BUT it does little in actually teaching you how to get there(for that, I would recommend other games).

It does give you a lot of useful advice about specific techniques to add color, flourish, pacing on top of it.

What’s Good

The biggest change out the gate is that the rules are not tied to the Glorantha setting, which, gives people a chance to see how flexible and powerful the core design is.

There’s some really great advice about how to run conflicts, which, I think map perfectly to D&D 4E Skill Challenges.

There’s some fun mechanics about community resources, which I think will appeal to people who were intrigued by stuff like Burning Empires, Houses of the Blooded, or Reign, but found the larger resource games too crunchy to deal with. Hero Wars had touched on this, but this has some pretty good mechanics for encouraging proactive heroes to save the day.

HQ2 makes a lot of small fixes to things from previous editions- fiddly stuff with modifiers, augments, etc., which are both easier to understand and implement in a lot of ways.

There’s a lot of examples, from a lot of possible settings, showing off all the different ways you can use the system.

What’s not good

The biggest standout to me is the advice about fudging rolls, and to a degree, a bit about how to set difficulties. While I like that there is acknowledgement of difficulty not being set to any illusion of “realism”, and arbitrarily set, it’s the idea of ramping it up and down, including fudging, to pump up or down the tension of the group – AKA classic Illusionism.

The second problem I see is the legacy from it’s first incarnation as Hero Wars- the way in which players are encouraged to hyper-focus their characters on a few traits and abilities and not bother with the rest after a time.

Partly this is because both core rolls and augments depend on the base number of a skill, partly because Hero Points are too precious to spread out a lot, and partly because the game relies primarily on GM’s handing out narrow/broad modifiers to try to encourage more diverse advancement.

(a number of things could have made this different, but simply enough either making lower rated traits cheaper/easier to raise up and/or divorcing advancement from Hero Points).

Finally, HQ2 suffers from the same problem a lot of genreless games have- it’s somewhat dry and uninspiring. Which is damn sad, because the rules look pretty solid and fun. Though Glorantha setting books will bring the usual crowd, what will help them is if they get a solid setting with a different market appeal- perhaps something like how Savage Worlds has been exploring with different setting ideas.

Small Things

The Extended test rules have been modified- they’re slightly less fiddly than before, though I’d have to play to say if there’s that much of a difference in experience.

As mentioned above, HQ2 doesn’t firmly sit in either the Narrativist or Sim camp, despite all the “story advice”- I’m sure this was not a real concern for either Robin Laws or a lot of the Gloranthan fanbase, but I imagine it will continue to produce rough edges for groups where some folks want to shape the story while GMs fudge the dice rolls to force outcomes.

There’s a fair amount of artwork, but overall it’s not terribly inspiring or anything. The layout and graphic design is… really basic. It works, it’s just nothing spectacular.

Logistics

To be real, there’s concerns outside of the game itself to consider. The hardcopy is $30, which is about normal for an rpg these days.

The PDF is $20, which, is somewhat on the high end, and, sadly, the PDF distribution service they’re using is really, really bad. Like, “Look up stuff online to get help to figure out how to download the thing you paid for” bad. It’s even more boggling when you realize the file itself is just around 6 MB- easily attached in emails these days. It sounds like they fixed the issue at this point, still pretty bad hit to take on release day.

Overall?

The traditional roleplayer will find some really useful stuff in this game, and, I imagine in play, will discover some new ways in which games can be structured (much like the previous editions).

The indie roleplayer who is familiar with all kinds of weird games and is comfortable with scene framing, narration trading, and stakes setting? Probably won’t find anything new here – just a simple serviceable system and some illusionist chains at places.

The Gloranthan fan will find rules much like Hero Wars and Hero Quest 1, with much better clarity and examples, and a stronger bent away from emulating “realism”.

Suggestions for running this?

Come up with a strong setting. This could be a mod from another game, or a movie or book series you’ve always wanted to do. Show how the -awesomeness- of the setting is created and supported through your rules and use -that- to teach the rules and get buy-in from your players.

Show off how easy it is to make characters- show players how easy it is to make the character they’ve always wanted, without having to do massive point juggling or navigating power trees.

Show off how traits like, “Protects out of guilt”, “Secretly in love with the Prince” and “Commitment Phobia” can be as useful than “Swordfighting” or “Throws Fireballs”.

Rob has a really great chart about how “things happen” in the fiction in roleplaying games. (He was also kind enough to provide an example chart as well.)

While this is putting the most core aspect of roleplaying (”we make shit up”) under a microscope, it’s sadly necessary, especially when so much of design has been based around the magic box theory – that someone how knowing how it works kills the joy.

Where it becomes interesting is, when we consider System and how it manages the flow of negotiation:

A. Lumpley-Care Principle
1. Constrained by appropriate Fictional Positioning
2. Options/authority divvied by system possibly with cues serving as non-negotiable resources in play.

Thinking of it this way, it’s a little more clear what role cues play – they’re there where you -don’t- want negotiation.

Whether it’s a tactical map or a pacing mechanic to force a choice upon a player, cues serve as “guarantees” – either limiting the kinds of changes that can happen in a fiction (”I’m at 0 hitpoints, I can crawl but I can’t run”) or opening up options (”I’m spending a Narration point, I get to describe what happens!”).

This is also why a group can force many games to focus on whatever they want, and push a Creative Agenda into a game, but if you want to design a game to work a certain way, it’s about constraining negotiation options or encouraging specific contributions, and for many games (and the experience of gamers), that’s often through cues.

That said, here’s some generalizations we see along Creative Agenda lines:

Gamism – Tends to focus a lot on cues, primarily because it provides a better arena for fair competition. Gamism primarily focused on fictional positioning tends to crop up at random places – OD&D, T&T, Amber, and mixed examples – Donjon, Beast Hunters and 1001 Nights. Interesting note- authority and negotiation methods tends to stay stable throughout play for the most part (Donjon being the big exception, Rune being about taking turns being the challenge giver…)

Simulationism- Ends up all around the map in both how it juggles negotiation AND cues- Sim is about the fiction created- so how you get there is more of a personal preference of the group or aspect of the specific game played rather than tied to any method. This is why different Sim might not look the same at all and we see a lot of Sim slides into freeform pretty easily.

Narrativism- Narrativist play tends to focus heavily on negotiation, whether formal rules or informal, if only because making statements through fiction is a natural negotiation process in and of itself. Cues are often either springboards for thematic content or ways to reward or force thematic statements through choices (or cues fall off altogether).

I remember clumsily trying to talk about “The Ball” and Player Input a few years back and basically all of that is wrapped up in how we have formalized or informal negotiation processes to shape the fiction.

Lots to think about.

During the times of Darkness, the Mala lived in bloody war with the Cave People, the Trolls. It was terrible- not one village or clan could survive without every and all people trained to run and fight, at any moment – the Trolls would come up out of the ground at any time, full of hunger and ready to eat any living thing.

It was in this time of terror, that the people turned away from falsehood and found their heritage – the One God. By divine vision, the people each learned part of a written language, and all the 12 nations came together sharing their language- it was the lesson that by working as one, they could survive and prosper. The written language allowed them to develop Science, and teach across long distances and generations, and they found ways to coordinate their defenses against the Trolls.

And they found the Science of Prayer, and brought Light back into the world, driving out the Trolls back down to the depths.

Since then, the Mala have formed a vast empire built on trade and Science. Masters of Math, Astronomy, History, Engineering, Medicine, there is much they have learned and use to bring truth to the world of troubles.

When the Red Empire arose and smashed the Huangfan, no one expected it. Though the hazardous desert serves as a barrier between the two empires, the Mala have been ever aware that they might be attacked next.

Though they keep their eyes to the east, the troubles are, in fact, down below. The Trolls still fight for gold and ore, but what has become a real threat is that the Trolls have taken to destroying or stealing salt. And now a shortage is starting and the 12 nations are starting to feel pressed. Secret prayers and plans are being made, factions are forming.

The Mala have remained strong through unity… but can it last?

Mala

Keywords:
Educated in Words and Numbers 17

Traits:
Politically Astute 13
Worldly 13
Science of (choose one: Math, Writing, Maps, Stars, Medicine, Architecture, History, Song, Jewelry, Strategy, Alchemy, Husbandry, Agriculture, Religion, Trade)

Relationships:
Family and Clan: 17
Faith in the One God 13
Fear of Trolls 13
Distrustful of Lunars 13

Items:
The Mala are a wealthy trading empire, so choose 3 items as traits at 13. These can be local or exotic objects.

Magic

The primary magic in the Mala Empire is the worship of the One God- people gather in Temples and make prayers and read the lessons from the Scroll of First Language and various other scrolls or books of sciences and laws.

Some Temples have symbolic pits representing the holes from which the Trolls once emerged to carry away and eat the people, which alternately serve as places to pray for protection, curses upon enemies, make divinations to foretell of danger, or to practice fighting arts. It is also believed that people who practice forbidden magic would use these pits as well.

Finding such a pit outside of a Temple would be an ill omen, a place of evil and bad magic. The cries of terror and the crunching of bone are sometimes said to be audible from such places. It is rumored that before the First Language, a few of the people allied with the Trolls and worshipped the same dark god, and happily sold their own people as sacrifices in trade.

The second type of worship is mysticism, by the Order of the Sufficient Ones, alternately known as the Seekers of Sufficiency, or the Worthy Ones. Their philosophy is that all things in the world are limited, and therefore, in want or need of something, which can only be fulfilled by the One. Their path of worship is to overcome the limitations and dissolve all unworthy traits until being “sufficient” of the Giver of Sufficiency.

They do not form larger groups, and mostly have small cells of teachers and students. They may also make prayers at Temples and participate, though it is said they have alternate, inner readings of all of the Scrolls and books.

Hero Questing

There are regular rituals of protection and prayer, and annual rituals acknowledging Salvation from the Dark Times- both the struggles of knowledge, the struggles of war, and the bringing of peace and unity.

Individuals are often encouraged to seek deeper and learn more by communing and heroquesting to learn from the First Teachers throughout history.

As it stands now, the salt is running out, and people will start getting sick and dying without it- many have begun either heroquesting to divine for locations to find more, or perhaps, to destroy the Trolls who have started taking it.

As times get harder, small vendettas and feuds have started coming up, and people have begun doing small quests against each other… This is forbidden by the law, but anyone can find a rationalization if they want to…

The One God has led the Mala from the Darkness, but will they learn to lead themselves?

Being excited for the HQ2, I’m coming up with my own setting, sort of an AU of Glorantha – Runa. Part of this is after really looking at -how- problematic the POC stuff is, it’s just easier to take the ideas I like, and make my own, instead of banging my head against a wall…

Once part of the great Northern Dynasty, the Shattered Clans are the survivors of the great cataclysm more than 400 years ago.

The Red Empire had just unified and was still fractious when the Red Goddess began war upon the Northern Dynasty – forcing those under her to work towards a common cause, and playing on centuries of envy and fear.

For the Dynasty, and their people, the Huangfan, it was a disaster that threw off a golden age they had achieved after hundreds of years of corruption and unrest. For once, people had known two generations without war, senseless corruption and abuse, nearly everyone was fed and so many could read. It was a time of unity.

As such, the war was fierce. The Dynasty brought all of it’s power to its defense, but the Empire had bloodlust, greed, and fanaticism. And new magic. Forbidden magic.

It came to a head at the Blue Palace. The Siege was a struggle both in the mortal world and the spiritual- across the nation, everyone who could also engaged in prayer and ritual – calling upon ancestors, gods, pulling the hidden family rituals and powers kept secret, to save their culture.

But even then, it was not enough. The Blue Palace fell to the massive assault. Countless people were lost to the spirit world, ripped away both body and soul, the gods themselves had disappeared, the and entire land of the Huangfen was reduced to a spiritual desert- animals and growing things simply died on the spot.

The magic of an entire people was stolen. And a Red Moon rose, signifying the Goddess’ power and ascension.

The Huangfen saw their darkest days. So much was lost. No gods for salvation. No poetry of lament. No one could remember or perform the art of smithing, architecture, ceramics. Even the ability to grow the simplest crops all died each time one of them took hand to the task- the Siege had ripped away their very heritage and arts, cursing an entire people to a nomadic existence.

Most died. A few gave up their names and past and lived with the enemy. A few continued West to the Mala Empire beyond the sands. And the most? They live as traders between the Mala and their cursed enemies of the Red Empire, dreaming of the day they rise again and restore their homeland.

Huang Fan

Keywords:
Traveler & Trader 17

Traits:
Enduring: 13
Recognize Huang Fan Artifacts: 13
Bitter: 13

Relationships:
Looked down upon by others: 17
Traveling Clan: 17
Kinship with Other Scattered Clans: 13
Hate for the Lunars: 13
Hate for Huang Fan who joined the Lunars: 17

Huang Fan are unable to take any traits related to: Poetry, Smithing, Ceramics, Agriculture, Architecture, or theist/divine magic.

Magic

Huang Fan have two types of spirit magic- worshipping the ancestors and spirit binding.

The first is common and approved, it provides no direct magical effects, though it might be small bonuses here or there, and sometimes stuff like guiding visions. In the barren spirit side of their homeland, millions of ghosts and ancestors await, who might be able to impart great skills or teachings to them, if one can survive the horrible ordeal of the spirit world there.

The second, spirit binding, is commonly used to curse people or cause illness or mind control. It’s not approved, but at the same time, the desperate will find such a worker for revenge. Some have made a living selling spirit seals and empowered charms.

In terms of mysticism, the Huang Fan have always had a history of ascetic sages, though it’s much harder to encourage a people on the brink of extinction that following a path of giving up EVEN more will lead to salvation. Nonetheless, a few still live in the distant areas, building merit through privations.

A few who have traveled to the Mala, have embraced the teachings of the Sufficient Ones – which is said to mirror another lineage that once existed in the lands of the Northern Dynasty.

Hero Questing

The Huangfan are desperate to collect artifacts of their past- as they serve as keys or foci for rituals to enact Heroquests.

If they were able to enact a quest to restore their ability to raise crops, or build homes, they might have a settled life again. But until then, they live and “roll with the dust” in sorrow.

No one even knows who the gods -were-, so wretched is their state.

Some believe if they destroy the Red Goddess, they can take their power back.

Perhaps.