ENnie nominees were announced today and are as weird as ever. tremulus is nominated for like 5 awards?
http://www.ennie-awards.com/blog/2014-ennie-awards-nominees/
ENnie nominees were announced today and are as weird as ever. tremulus is nominated for like 5 awards?
ENnie nominees were announced today and are as weird as ever. tremulus is nominated for like 5 awards?
The ENnies are so freaking weird. I can never make sense of them.
The ENnies are so freaking weird. I can never make sense of them.
I was just about to post the same thing. Glad to see the PbtA love, but not sure about tremulus. I like it, but there are other *W hacks I found more engaging.
I was just about to post the same thing. Glad to see the PbtA love, but not sure about tremulus. I like it, but there are other *W hacks I found more engaging.
Derek Grimm Hello, stranger!
I haven’t thrown in the towel on tremulus (yet). We’re going to give it a shot on July 31st over Hangouts. While it’s true the playbooks are not the most inspiring, I’m learning, after having played dozens of sessions of PbtA games, that that is less important than you might think. Case in point: the John Harper games are terrific and they don’t have playbooks at all. Ultimately, a good PbtA game lives and dies by its Basic moves, and tremulus’ are pretty good. I’m not finished reading the rules yet, and my opinion might change after I finish the Keeper section, but I’m holding out hope for the time being.
I’m also not completely sold on the idea that PbtA games don’t do investigation well. I’m about to post something in the other thread from today (about Trail) on this very point.
Derek Grimm Hello, stranger!
I haven’t thrown in the towel on tremulus (yet). We’re going to give it a shot on July 31st over Hangouts. While it’s true the playbooks are not the most inspiring, I’m learning, after having played dozens of sessions of PbtA games, that that is less important than you might think. Case in point: the John Harper games are terrific and they don’t have playbooks at all. Ultimately, a good PbtA game lives and dies by its Basic moves, and tremulus’ are pretty good. I’m not finished reading the rules yet, and my opinion might change after I finish the Keeper section, but I’m holding out hope for the time being.
I’m also not completely sold on the idea that PbtA games don’t do investigation well. I’m about to post something in the other thread from today (about Trail) on this very point.
Wait, really? You like the basic moves? I don’t think they’re terrible, but there’s a lot of red flags to my eyes.
Act Under Pressure is overly general (Defy Danger is still the killer app of catch-all moves), and I have no idea why it runs off of Reason. Wait. I can run away faster because I’m pretty sweet at logic? Which is also the reason I’m [edit: Which is also the reason I’m forgetting to finish sentences.]
Convince requires players to be a little too explicit regarding leverage/promises, but that’s a problem shared with its daddy, Seduce/Manipulate. It makes more sense in the survival barter system apocalypse, though.
Help/Hinder allows the option of getting help from multiple people in a game where a +1 is a big deal, statistically, let alone a +2. Weird.
Poke Around is interesting. I’d like to see it in play. But it does have a rule that allows you to roll twice to do the same thing again, which strikes me as a bad idea. Also, why does this have anything to do with Luck? (Why is Luck an attribute??)
Puzzle Things Out lets you, on a 10+, take a point of Lore instead of asking questions. So you sit down to really examine a clue, say, which triggers the move. You roll and do really well, and as a result… nothing happens in the fiction! That’s just designers not understanding the system they’re hacking right there.
Read A Person is awesome. Would love to see this used in an investigative game.
Resort to Violence is practically unchanged from Seize by Force, which means it shares a lot of that move’s problems, except in a setting that doesn’t share its underlying world assumptions.
Threaten: Why is this here? Why is threatening someone with physical harm and being perfectly willing to back that threat up one of the most basic and most common things we’re assumed to be doing in a Lovecraftian game?
The bizarre overlap and interaction between Seize by Force and Go Aggro is my biggest problem with AW, and I have no idea why someone decided to port the issues over whole-cloth to a game that really requires a completely different set of basic moves. Why are we still trying to cover “take a thing” and “kill somebody” with the same move? Why do we basically assume everyone gets hurts, always? This isn’t still Apocalypse World. Not everyone is walking around armed and armored. Why is “shoot someone that probably can’t hurt you” the same move as “threaten someone with physical harm and go through with it only if they don’t do what you want”?
…I may have too many thoughts on this issue. (And all that said, I still want to love it and hope it ends up being good.)
Wait, really? You like the basic moves? I don’t think they’re terrible, but there’s a lot of red flags to my eyes.
Act Under Pressure is overly general (Defy Danger is still the killer app of catch-all moves), and I have no idea why it runs off of Reason. Wait. I can run away faster because I’m pretty sweet at logic? Which is also the reason I’m [edit: Which is also the reason I’m forgetting to finish sentences.]
Convince requires players to be a little too explicit regarding leverage/promises, but that’s a problem shared with its daddy, Seduce/Manipulate. It makes more sense in the survival barter system apocalypse, though.
Help/Hinder allows the option of getting help from multiple people in a game where a +1 is a big deal, statistically, let alone a +2. Weird.
Poke Around is interesting. I’d like to see it in play. But it does have a rule that allows you to roll twice to do the same thing again, which strikes me as a bad idea. Also, why does this have anything to do with Luck? (Why is Luck an attribute??)
Puzzle Things Out lets you, on a 10+, take a point of Lore instead of asking questions. So you sit down to really examine a clue, say, which triggers the move. You roll and do really well, and as a result… nothing happens in the fiction! That’s just designers not understanding the system they’re hacking right there.
Read A Person is awesome. Would love to see this used in an investigative game.
Resort to Violence is practically unchanged from Seize by Force, which means it shares a lot of that move’s problems, except in a setting that doesn’t share its underlying world assumptions.
Threaten: Why is this here? Why is threatening someone with physical harm and being perfectly willing to back that threat up one of the most basic and most common things we’re assumed to be doing in a Lovecraftian game?
The bizarre overlap and interaction between Seize by Force and Go Aggro is my biggest problem with AW, and I have no idea why someone decided to port the issues over whole-cloth to a game that really requires a completely different set of basic moves. Why are we still trying to cover “take a thing” and “kill somebody” with the same move? Why do we basically assume everyone gets hurts, always? This isn’t still Apocalypse World. Not everyone is walking around armed and armored. Why is “shoot someone that probably can’t hurt you” the same move as “threaten someone with physical harm and go through with it only if they don’t do what you want”?
…I may have too many thoughts on this issue. (And all that said, I still want to love it and hope it ends up being good.)
Steve Mains Those are good points. I haven’t looked at the rules in awhile, so you may be onto something. I don’t remember the basic moves being particularly offensive. My biggest concern at the time was their attempt to mechanically shoehorn-in Sanity (and the unremarkable playbooks).
You are likely correct the authors probably hadn’t played much AW before writing the game, but only because most people don’t play enough games. In fact, most folks are just theoretical gamers who like to read rulebooks and then put them back on the shelf to be admired.
The Gauntlet ethos is no reviews until a game hits the table. This isn’t RPG.net, after all. We’ll give it three sessions and see how it goes.
Steve Mains Those are good points. I haven’t looked at the rules in awhile, so you may be onto something. I don’t remember the basic moves being particularly offensive. My biggest concern at the time was their attempt to mechanically shoehorn-in Sanity (and the unremarkable playbooks).
You are likely correct the authors probably hadn’t played much AW before writing the game, but only because most people don’t play enough games. In fact, most folks are just theoretical gamers who like to read rulebooks and then put them back on the shelf to be admired.
The Gauntlet ethos is no reviews until a game hits the table. This isn’t RPG.net, after all. We’ll give it three sessions and see how it goes.
Awesome. I just wish I could join in. Have fun!
Awesome. I just wish I could join in. Have fun!
Russell Benner People may have read it, but I refuse to believe people actually played it.
Russell Benner People may have read it, but I refuse to believe people actually played it.
Steve Mains So, now that Board Game Monday is over, I’ve had a chance to review the Basic Moves for tremulus (I haven’t looked at this book since I got my Kickstarter copy). Here are my thoughts, based on what you said:
ACT UNDER PRESSURE – I agree it is weird that it uses Reason. The only thing I can come up with is that Reason encompasses mental fortitude/nerves, but that’s not how it’s described in the book, so it seems an odd choice.
I don’t think it’s too general, though. I’ve played a number of PbtA games that use something similar, and it works fine. Dungeon World definitely did it better, but Dungeon World’s is also basically just an on-the-fly custom move. Same with World of Dungeons’ ONLY move. I don’t think it would be breaking the rules for the Keeper to do the same here, and I certainly would. If someone was trying to quickly break through a door to rescue someone, I probably wouldn’t make them roll Reason. I’d make them roll + Might and then come-up with results on the fly using the normal outcome scale (Success, Success w/Complication, or Hard Move).
CONVINCE – Seems fine, but the outcome of giving a PC a Lore for doing what you want seems strange as far as the fiction goes.
HELP/HINDER – I’m not too worried about the potential +2. If you think about it, it’s no different than what Vincent himself has implemented in AW: Dark Age (the help allows you to go to the next highest outcome category. So, if you rolled a 3, help would make it a 7-9 outcome). Having played Dark Age, I can say it didn’t feel unbalanced at all. The one interesting twist in Dark Age is that the player seeking the help has to explain why he thinks a certain person would be of assistance. I don’t think it would be fiddling too much to require the same thing here.
POKE AROUND – Seems cool to me. The holding 1 for a hard move on a miss is odd, but I’d like to see it in play before I pass judgment.
PUZZLE THINGS OUT – I disagree completely with your assessment that nothing happens in the fiction if you choose to take Lore. In fact, the rules state “The Keeper is free to tell you what they will, or let you ask questions, or give you some Dark Insight based upon your background.” I read that as similar to Gaze into the Abyss or the psychic maelstrom thing in AW. As a Keeper, I would use the selection of Lore to get that really good, chewy, weird shit out on the table. In fact, I would say the Lore choice is MORE interesting than the ‘choose 3 questions’ option.
READ A PERSON – This move seems like a good one.
RESORT TO VIOLENCE & THREATEN – I understand the weird conflation that was perceived in the similar moves from AW. In practice, though, I have never found it to be much of an issue, so long as everyone understood Going Aggro is threatening someone and Seizing by Force is fighting.
The rules in tremulus do point out that not every combat situation involves your character getting automatically harmed. I think so long as you’re being honest in the fiction and making the right move (or perhaps no move at all), this shouldn’t be much of an issue.
Your conclusion that they are genre-inappropriate may be correct. I’m not sure. I could be wrong, but I always thought there was a certain amount of noir and/or pulp vibe to these stories. If so, these moves don’t seem objectionable to me. But, I’m not a big Lovecraft or Mythos guy, so I could be way off-base here.
Phew! Now that I’ve said all that, I will stop being devil’s advocate and say there are lots of other things in this game that give me pause. There are, for example, numerous special moves related to money and harm and sanity, and it seems like a bit much to me. Combined with the boring playbooks, whose special moves only give you bonuses, and the multiple currencies, it makes me think the authors were either coming from a very trad background, or they simply hadn’t played AW very much. Both are bad signs.
BUT…we’ll see. I really don’t like speculating. I’ve already done too much. I want to give it a fair shake.
Steve Mains So, now that Board Game Monday is over, I’ve had a chance to review the Basic Moves for tremulus (I haven’t looked at this book since I got my Kickstarter copy). Here are my thoughts, based on what you said:
ACT UNDER PRESSURE – I agree it is weird that it uses Reason. The only thing I can come up with is that Reason encompasses mental fortitude/nerves, but that’s not how it’s described in the book, so it seems an odd choice.
I don’t think it’s too general, though. I’ve played a number of PbtA games that use something similar, and it works fine. Dungeon World definitely did it better, but Dungeon World’s is also basically just an on-the-fly custom move. Same with World of Dungeons’ ONLY move. I don’t think it would be breaking the rules for the Keeper to do the same here, and I certainly would. If someone was trying to quickly break through a door to rescue someone, I probably wouldn’t make them roll Reason. I’d make them roll + Might and then come-up with results on the fly using the normal outcome scale (Success, Success w/Complication, or Hard Move).
CONVINCE – Seems fine, but the outcome of giving a PC a Lore for doing what you want seems strange as far as the fiction goes.
HELP/HINDER – I’m not too worried about the potential +2. If you think about it, it’s no different than what Vincent himself has implemented in AW: Dark Age (the help allows you to go to the next highest outcome category. So, if you rolled a 3, help would make it a 7-9 outcome). Having played Dark Age, I can say it didn’t feel unbalanced at all. The one interesting twist in Dark Age is that the player seeking the help has to explain why he thinks a certain person would be of assistance. I don’t think it would be fiddling too much to require the same thing here.
POKE AROUND – Seems cool to me. The holding 1 for a hard move on a miss is odd, but I’d like to see it in play before I pass judgment.
PUZZLE THINGS OUT – I disagree completely with your assessment that nothing happens in the fiction if you choose to take Lore. In fact, the rules state “The Keeper is free to tell you what they will, or let you ask questions, or give you some Dark Insight based upon your background.” I read that as similar to Gaze into the Abyss or the psychic maelstrom thing in AW. As a Keeper, I would use the selection of Lore to get that really good, chewy, weird shit out on the table. In fact, I would say the Lore choice is MORE interesting than the ‘choose 3 questions’ option.
READ A PERSON – This move seems like a good one.
RESORT TO VIOLENCE & THREATEN – I understand the weird conflation that was perceived in the similar moves from AW. In practice, though, I have never found it to be much of an issue, so long as everyone understood Going Aggro is threatening someone and Seizing by Force is fighting.
The rules in tremulus do point out that not every combat situation involves your character getting automatically harmed. I think so long as you’re being honest in the fiction and making the right move (or perhaps no move at all), this shouldn’t be much of an issue.
Your conclusion that they are genre-inappropriate may be correct. I’m not sure. I could be wrong, but I always thought there was a certain amount of noir and/or pulp vibe to these stories. If so, these moves don’t seem objectionable to me. But, I’m not a big Lovecraft or Mythos guy, so I could be way off-base here.
Phew! Now that I’ve said all that, I will stop being devil’s advocate and say there are lots of other things in this game that give me pause. There are, for example, numerous special moves related to money and harm and sanity, and it seems like a bit much to me. Combined with the boring playbooks, whose special moves only give you bonuses, and the multiple currencies, it makes me think the authors were either coming from a very trad background, or they simply hadn’t played AW very much. Both are bad signs.
BUT…we’ll see. I really don’t like speculating. I’ve already done too much. I want to give it a fair shake.
The Lore points via Convince (which I didn’t notice the first time around) and Puzzle Things Out are strange. They basically replace an XP reward, since the game has no XP, but are, in my opinion, much less of an incentive than XP. (Removing highlighting is another change I question, but whatever.)
As for +2s, I find I have no problem with bumping up a result to the next success category, but do have a problem with successive +2s. Obviously, this problem is inside my own head and I should get over it. However! Multiple +1s/2s in tremulus, specifically, are a bigger problem than I’d first thought. Just not really for the reason I complained about. Here’s the thing. This is a horror game, theoretically. And it takes from AW the ability of one person to successfully help out another before they roll and changes it to multiple people helping out after the roll. The Keeper can limit the number of people that can help, luckily, but it’s still very much a red flag to me. In a horror game, this will just suck any tension out of the room. This is why you don’t see much in the way of Fate horror games. Failure is a temporary state–in Fate due to Fate points and in tremulus due to help. Bah, I say!
With Puzzle Things Out, you’re right. The Keeper has options for things that could happen in-fiction when the player chooses to take a point of Lore. I was making it sound like that wasn’t the case, and that’s not true. But it also provides the option for nothing to happen. You’re free to be as boring as you wanna be! Thanks, tremulus! Not game-breaking. Would never worry about it in a game I play with you guys or a game I ran. But another indicator that the designers are… off.
I’ll refrain from bitching more about Seize/Aggro/Resort/Threaten. In practice, I have seen it be a problem, but I can deal.
As for pulp/noir tone: ehhhhhh, sort of? Lovecraft himself wasn’t super pulpy-action-oriented. But there’s a bit in the story The Call of Cthulhu where a dude stabs Cthulhu with the prow of a boat and lives to tell the tale, so I can’t say it’s not in there.
Robert E. Howard’s mythos stuff was pretty punch-the-monster pulpy, and I remember reading at least a Robert Bloch story or two that prominently featured mobsters. But the Call of Cthulhu rpg perhaps overemphasized the gangsters-and-molls, detectives-smoking-cigarettes-in-the-night stuff, due (I’m assuming) to a simplistic view of the era and not really due to much in the source fiction. Long lists of guns and such didn’t help. Action in Lovecraft stories is usually something to be avoided, and the problem of violence not simultaneously its own solution. But the action stuff is still totally valid. It’s just… a weird assumption for a modern game with the words “a storytelling game of lovecraftian horror” written on the cover.
The Lore points via Convince (which I didn’t notice the first time around) and Puzzle Things Out are strange. They basically replace an XP reward, since the game has no XP, but are, in my opinion, much less of an incentive than XP. (Removing highlighting is another change I question, but whatever.)
As for +2s, I find I have no problem with bumping up a result to the next success category, but do have a problem with successive +2s. Obviously, this problem is inside my own head and I should get over it. However! Multiple +1s/2s in tremulus, specifically, are a bigger problem than I’d first thought. Just not really for the reason I complained about. Here’s the thing. This is a horror game, theoretically. And it takes from AW the ability of one person to successfully help out another before they roll and changes it to multiple people helping out after the roll. The Keeper can limit the number of people that can help, luckily, but it’s still very much a red flag to me. In a horror game, this will just suck any tension out of the room. This is why you don’t see much in the way of Fate horror games. Failure is a temporary state–in Fate due to Fate points and in tremulus due to help. Bah, I say!
With Puzzle Things Out, you’re right. The Keeper has options for things that could happen in-fiction when the player chooses to take a point of Lore. I was making it sound like that wasn’t the case, and that’s not true. But it also provides the option for nothing to happen. You’re free to be as boring as you wanna be! Thanks, tremulus! Not game-breaking. Would never worry about it in a game I play with you guys or a game I ran. But another indicator that the designers are… off.
I’ll refrain from bitching more about Seize/Aggro/Resort/Threaten. In practice, I have seen it be a problem, but I can deal.
As for pulp/noir tone: ehhhhhh, sort of? Lovecraft himself wasn’t super pulpy-action-oriented. But there’s a bit in the story The Call of Cthulhu where a dude stabs Cthulhu with the prow of a boat and lives to tell the tale, so I can’t say it’s not in there.
Robert E. Howard’s mythos stuff was pretty punch-the-monster pulpy, and I remember reading at least a Robert Bloch story or two that prominently featured mobsters. But the Call of Cthulhu rpg perhaps overemphasized the gangsters-and-molls, detectives-smoking-cigarettes-in-the-night stuff, due (I’m assuming) to a simplistic view of the era and not really due to much in the source fiction. Long lists of guns and such didn’t help. Action in Lovecraft stories is usually something to be avoided, and the problem of violence not simultaneously its own solution. But the action stuff is still totally valid. It’s just… a weird assumption for a modern game with the words “a storytelling game of lovecraftian horror” written on the cover.