Ex Fabula: Intro and Power 19

[Luchaire]

Howdy. I'm sort of new here - that is, I've read nearly every post of the last few weeks and skimmed many going back a couple years. I've been lurking on and off since around November 2006. Anyway, this is my first post, and I figured I'd introduce my pet project - Ex Fabula. This is a game I've worked on now for over 20 years, during which time it's been scrapped and rewritten several times, seen numerous playtest groups, and generally advanced to the point where I'm working on what I would consider the "final draft."

Ex Fabula is a crunchy, complex, and very detailed system, something that I think is growing increasingly rare and unpopular, but it appeals to me and those I game with, so I'm not inclined to change that. It's also a fantasy RPG that had its roots in the early 80s as an attempt to "fix" D&D - and yes, I've read all the "fantasy heartbreaker" articles. Since that time, though, it has evolved to a point where the only thing it could really be said to have in common with D&D is that it is a fantasy RPG. It has taken new directions several times, and is now a game that could best be described as "high fantasy role-playing in a world imagined by the brothers Grimm." It has common fantasy RPG roots, but I have endeavored to gear it toward all the things that make fairy tales and fantasy engaging - specifically the sense of wonder a good fairy tale can evoke in its audience.

Anyway, I'm not really planning on making money on this, but mostly just to get it in some final form, be able to say "there, it's done after two decades," and be able to share it with others who might enjoy the same sort of game.

I went ahead and answered the Power 19 questions to see how those shaped up, and I have to admit that some of the questions are difficult to answer, and one I never could answer (#11). So here's that:

1.) What is your game about?

Ex Fabula is a “heroic fantasy” RPG that endeavors to blend high fantasy with real-world legend, lore, and fable, heavily inspired by and based on the sort of larger-than-life tales of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Aesop’s Fables, and the like. It is aimed at evoking a particular mood of wonder while engaging the players in a “traditional” sort of fantasy RPG. The essential premise is “What if the world really worked like in fairy tales, where warty witches ensnare beautiful princesses with dark magic, and giant beanstalks grew from magic beans?”

2.) What do the characters do?

The characters live within the fantasy world, exploring, advancing, collecting knowledge and power, and generally improving their lot and status. They are expected to be larger-than-life heroes, the princes who save the princesses, the wizards who defeat the aforementioned warty witches, and the knights who slay the peasant-eating dragons.

3.) What do the players (including the GM if there is one) do?

The players guide the actions of their characters (one character per player: no sacred cows slain here). They determine the characters’ words and deeds within the mechanics of the game, and have the ability to “fudge” the mechanics through the use of several metagame features designed to encourage heroic play. The GM is the traditional sort: s/he designs and presents the game world/setting, plans and arranges the situations for the characters, and handles all the behind-the-scenes mechanics and all the NPCs and so on.

4.) How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

Ex Fabula comes with no predesigned setting, being intended to work within any fantasy setting of the GM’s choice, from premade/published settings to his or her own setting. Nevertheless, it is premised on a medieval-esque world where magic is very real (yet mysterious) and monsters live in the dark corners and shadows and under beds; a world overlapping the world of Faerie and the spirit world; a world caught between gods and demons.

5.) How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?

Chargen is complex and involved, but begins with the most crucial step of all: conceptualizing a character. Everything after that is designed to guide the player toward creating a character that fills in the concept envisioned, as well as creating a sense of bonding between player and character through the investment of time and thought. As the player builds up a character (in coordination with GM input and feedback), the relationship between the character and the world of fable should emerge, with the character having specific ties to and interactions with the world. Characters are not nameless adventurers who begin with a handful of meager skills, a cheap suit of armor, and a sword, but are rather real people with real backgrounds, idiosyncrasies, even jobs, properties, and income. In a world where the non-human is, by definition, fantastic, the one hard and fast limitation is that player characters are all human. Beyond that, the options are virtually limitless in terms of character background, skill, age, wealth, abilities, and so on.

6.) What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?

The mechanics reinforce heroic play, taking chances for the “good of all,” and teamwork while discouraging such things as evil characters, player-vs-player backstabbing, etc. Also discouraged is min/maxing; a balanced approach is rewarded. Creating a “perfect character” is virtually impossible, and gains in power often must be weighed against the price to be paid (for example: improving magical abilities can erode the character’s sanity over time, as the practice of magic necessarily places the mage in a position to see into his own and other worlds simultaneously).

7.) How are behaviors and styles of play rewarded or punished in your game?

Heroic play and chance-taking are encouraged through the use of metagame mechanics such as Kismet and Heroism, resource pools from which the player may draw in order to fudge the mechanics in the character’s favor. Min/maxing is discouraged by a careful design that eliminates things such as “dump stats” and by making a wide variety of stats, skills, and abilities useful in a great many situations.

8.) How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?

Ex Fabula follows the “traditional” model here – the players are responsible for their own characters and the backgrounds/stories thereof, and the GM for everything else.

9.) What does your game do to command the players' attention, engagement, and participation? (i.e. What does the game do to make them care?)

Involves their characters in stories and situations where the characters are more than window dressing, but are instead active and effective participants capable of significantly affecting the plot and outcome. The game pits those same characters against numerous challenges of various sorts, and rewards victories that are achieved in especially creative or epic fashion.

10.) What are the resolution mechanics of your game like?

Mechanics are quite complex (and crunchy). But to boil down to simplest possible terms:

Conflict resolution is based on opposed rolls utilizing dice pools, which are very limited in size – under the most extraordinary circumstances, a dice pool might reach 8 dice max, but a more normal roll would be 3-5 dice (d10). Rolls are open-ended: a ‘10’ earns a bonus die and a ‘1’ counts as a -5. Thus, no matter how few or how many dice one gets to roll, success (or failure) is always a possibility.

Non-conflict resolution, such as skill use (e.g. lock picking) is based on the dice pool mechanic versus GM-specified target numbers based on difficulty.

Players can always influence/change the results through the use of metagame features.

11.) How do the resolution mechanics reinforce what your game is about?

I have no idea.

12.) Do characters in your game advance? If so, how?

Yes, constantly. Characters accumulate experience points which can be “spent” to increase skills, stats, metagame resources, or any number of other possibilities.

In addition, characters can advance in status, position, wealth, and power within the game world.

13.) How does the character advancement (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

Character advancement opens up the possibility of expanding the campaign in increasingly wondrous/mysterious realms, greater challenges, etc.

14.) What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?

The same sense of wonder experienced by someone reading/hearing fairy tales for the first time. The thrill of heroic deeds and survival/victory against the odds. The camaraderie of teamwork.

15.) What areas of your game receive extra attention and color? Why?

Magic in its very numerous forms, because magic is at the heart of virtually any fairy tale.

16.) Which part of your game are you most excited about or interested in? Why?

The magic system, for its open-endedness and depth and its ability to cater to nearly any imagined effect or result, even “on the fly.”

17.) Where does your game take the players that other games can’t, don’t, or won’t?

Beyond “standard fare” swords-and-sorcery type fantasy into a more fantastical experience.

18.) What are your publishing goals for your game?

Either a free-for-download .pdf or as a POD. The final result should run about 400 pages or so (standard 8.5x11 pages). Some artwork is currently being commissioned, more being sought through various avenues.

19.) Who is your target audience?

Gamers who enjoy the following: fantasy, fairy tales, larger-than-life heroics, epic good-vs-evil contests, comprehensive and detailed game systems with complex/realistic combat mechanics and exhaustive magic systems.


So there it is: Ex Fabula.

Feedback part:
I can't seem to answer #11 and I'm not sure about my answers to #13 and #9 - have I missed the mark on these?
And then, of course, there's #19: are there any players of the sort described still remaining in the RPG world, or am I a dinosaur...?
Does this sound like the sort of game that might interest anyone (besides me and my group)?

Thanks for reading! If all goes well, I hope to update with status reports and sometime soon (relatively speaking) to be able to announce a release...

[First Oni]

In my opinion, there are always going to be players like you. I wouldn't say dinosaurs, but those that like crunchy games do seem to be falling by the way side in a lot of fashions. This is as a result of fantasy and RPGs getting more and more into the mainstream. I myself like crunch as long as its not TOO much that it subtracts from the story, as some do. But that's a fine line to ride.

I think you may have problems answering the questions, really only because you didn't create a complete game, but just a system. You had an idea of where you were going with the system and apparently have tons of mechanics to support it. But, even if its not the "setting that you must use", it's always good to have a default-type setting to go along, as least to give the Game masters a frame of reference to work from.

-Oni

[chronoplasm]

Fellow Dinosaur here!
I too like crunchy systems.

I would like to see some more setting though.

[Will]

In regards to #9, #13, and #11 sort of taking them as a single "what bridges concept and system" concern.

Two ideas come immediately to mind.

1) It seems to me that boiling out a little of the generic and adding in a bit more setting would help with this. Some overarching plot requiring the players attentions to change the world for the better (or keep it from getting worse) would reinforce the ideas of risk for others sake, working together, and generally being the good guys.

2) On a related note a metagame system that actually allows the players to decide how their actions improve things would allow for less hard-wired plot and would instead encourage the kind of play you are looking for just by it's being there. Sort of a character sheet for the world itself which gains experience by the players actions and levels/improves or becomes damaged through the players actions or inactions. Dindenver's DNAawesome notes in first thoughts here might be worth looking at if you think in this direction.

Tying in the already existing dice pools metaplay the into the world rather than to the players could be considered as well. We haven't seen how those dice are generated or used yet so they may already be the deciding factor.

[Luchaire]

Thank you for the responses.

I intentionally left out any specific setting largely due to personal taste. As a general rule, I have always tended to be underwhelmed by packaged settings and usually find them constraining and limiting, and very rarely to my taste (with a few exceptions). And it's usually more work to discard them and extricate the system and use some other setting than it is just to create something else in the first place. I also wanted to present this as a system that could be applied to just about any fantasy setting a GM chooses.

That said, I can see the value of offering a setting tailored to the game, especially if it is tied into the concept and mechanics. On that note, my current campaign is based on a fantasy version of 14th century Europe (focus is on England and France). It's essentially a historical Europe with enough elements of the fantastic to make it clear that it's not "The Real World" but not so fantastic as to be completely alien. In fact, some of the plots my players have been dealing with of late have involved them in the Hundred Years War, and some of the intrigue surrounding the Avignon Papacy. They've also recently had their first run-in with the Black Death (it's 1349 in the game at the moment). Against that backdrop, they're caught in a three-way power struggle of groups involving some long-lost-but-recently-unearthed magical formulas that have the power to be seriously world-altering. How things turn out in the end is almost entirely in the hands of the players and the directions they choose to take things.

Perhaps organizing and presenting this (specifically: 14th century fantasy Europe) as a setting would be a good option? My only concern there is that I think the "alternate earth" settings have been done to death. On the other hand, I'm very reluctant to create "Yet Another Fantasy World" strictly for the sake of including one.

2) On a related note a metagame system that actually allows the players to decide how their actions improve things would allow for less hard-wired plot and would instead encourage the kind of play you are looking for just by it's being there. Sort of a character sheet for the world itself which gains experience by the players actions and levels/improves or becomes damaged through the players actions or inactions. Dindenver's DNAawesome notes in first thoughts here might be worth looking at if you think in this direction.

To reply specifically to this point: this is quite interesting and something I hadn't considered. I'll have to look into this more.