Tag: Jason Cordova

Some candids from last night’s session of Fine Mess Games ‘ Lapins & Lairs. See Stephen Crawford ‘s post below for a recap.

Originally shared by Jason Cordova

For this edition of Story Game Sunday, we will be playing Archipelago. The setting will be in the style of The Shield or The Wire – crooked cops and mean streets. 

Food will be provided. BYOB.

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We had fun with Mouse Guard last night, but it was in spite of the rules, not because of them. We gave it a good, honest effort, but ultimately we decided it’s not a good fit for our group. There were several issues at play, but mostly it was the fact the game seemed to be crunchy just for the sake of being crunchy. Four years ago, I thought Mouse Guard was remarkably light and easy (coming off Burning Wheel, anyway). Unfortunately, that experience just does not hold up.

These days, I’ve become accustomed to games that are not only fast and light, but also sacrifice nothing in terms of the experience or the story being told. You could hack Apocalypse World in an afternoon to run Mouse Guard and I promise the experience would be more fulfilling than Mouse Guard proper. Or, even better, Archipelago could tell the Mouse Guard story with no prep whatsoever. 

What I’m getting at is this: I’m a grown-ass man with a job and responsibilities. If Luke Crane wants me to digest and memorize 300 pages of rules, his game needs to make it worth my time. 

There’s probably a broader conversation here about time constraints and the concept of sunk costs (the failure to acknowledge the latter being a particularly acute plague on our hobby) but I have to get ready for work. 

All set for our second session of Mouse Guard!

Mouse Guard is a damn crunchy game, and last week’s session was pretty rough. But like my mother used to say about roleplaying games: “Son, there isn’t a problem laminated play aids can’t fix.” 

We played the Norwegian story game Archipelago today. When I put this one on the calendar, I thought it was strictly an Earthsea setting, but it turns out Archipelago is actually a universal story game system (and an excellent one, at that). We did a swords & sorcery/Conan-type setting, but you could do almost anything with it. In fact, we decided that if we play it again, we’d love to tell a crooked-cop drama, like The Shield or The Wire.

Our story felt quite epic and, importantly, consistent. The rules emphasize and reinforce the idea that you are creating a story together, and that the story should have a consistent tone and the characters should obey certain rules within the world.

Each player has an Element, which is a force or environmental factor that they have complete authority over (and so have veto power when it comes to other players introducing things related to the element). In our setting, the elements were Magic, Culture, and the Drozzarkt (the bad guys, who were kind of a force of nature). If we do our corrupt cop story, the Elements will be something like Official Code of Conduct, the Thin Blue Line, and Law of the Street.

Additionally, each player has certain commands they can use to prompt better storytelling and RP from whoever is in the spotlight. These commands basically give you permission to disagree with where the player is taking the story and help to keep the narrative logical and consistent.

Finally, resolution is completely random. Whenever your character does something that can lead to failure, you can draw cards that say either “Yes,” “No,” and “Perhaps,” with each having additional conditions that must be incorporated into the story. It’s pretty cool.

All in all, we are definitely playing this one again. It is the closest thing to a universal story game system I have run across (and I mean a proper, freeform story game – not something like Fate, which has lots of traddy elements).

I’m waiting to hear that Daniel Lewis has backed this game.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/diamondsutra/ryuutama-natural-fantasy-role-playing-game?ref=search