New (very negative) review of THE RIDDLE OF STEEL

[Pyske]

So, is there anything else that the review (accidentally?) makes us think about, such as Tywin's comment?

The review brought a couple things to mind for me.  One in particular stuck with me:

What is the purpose of the priority system?  I suspect it is not a power balance issue; commentary on the the sorcery system indicates that power balance is not a major concern.  In his post Ralph Mazza describes it as part of the whole "sacrifice & risk" philosophy of TROS, but do these tradeoffs tell us something meaningful about the player or the character?

. . . . . . . -- Eric

edit: fixed bad grammar caused by rephrasing

[Jake Norwood]

The priority system is exactly that--it starts asking you what's important to you; it's not supposed to balance anything.

Jake

[Pyske]

The priority system is exactly that--it starts asking you what's important to you; it's not supposed to balance anything.

Understood.  But moving beyond that, what conclusion should I, as Seneschal, draw from the fact that my player chooses Social Class A as opposed to Attributes A?  Are they telling me that they want to control the world more through social & economic pressure, rather than raw personal ability?

. . . . . . . -- Eric

[Valamir]

Its what's important to the player Psyke.  
TROS is subtle like that.  Its ALL about what's important to the *player*

That's why SAs can change so easily.  Someone might be prone to think "why would the character lose his Passion so easily".  Answer:  Because the *player* wanted him to.  If the player doesn't want him to, he doesn't change the SA.  If what's important to the player is a real good honest ingame portrayal and roleplay of how the character lost his passion before actually making the change on the sheet.  The player can do that too.  If the player doesn't need to have that played out in game but is happy thinking about it occuring off stage...than he can do that.

Even the combat system features *player* skill.  Its possible for a buff axe wielding viking type to get schooled by a 12 year old kid with a stick (cough cough) because the *player* screwed up.  Someone might be prone to suggest that the character should be a better fighter than that, but TROS is all about the *player*.

Even the system for death feeds into this.  Its real common for an opponent to go down through shock and pain or blood loss, meaning he's out of the fight, but not yet dead.  This gives yet another opportunity for highlighting what the player wants...what to do with the defeated guys who aren't killed.

So yes, when viewed from a character simulation perspective the Priority system irritates the heck out of me.  When viewed from a "force the player to make choices" perspective it works quite well.

[Valamir]

The priority system is exactly that--it starts asking you what's important to you; it's not supposed to balance anything.

Understood.  But moving beyond that, what conclusion should I, as Seneschal, draw from the fact that my player chooses Social Class A as opposed to Attributes A?  Are they telling me that they want to control the world more through social & economic pressure, rather than raw personal ability?

. . . . . . . -- Eric

Could be.  Or it could be them telling you that worrying about having enough money to buy clothes and necessities bores the heck of them so they want to be rich enough to simply not have to worry about petty expenses.  Or they might make that choice because they want the story to focus on the priveliges and obligations of nobility.  They may want a game that operates on a social level where they don't have to justify what the son of a pig farmer is doing trying to talk to the king.  They may want to entangle their character in the burden of noblesse oblige.  

Could be alot of things.  The important thing is its a choice the player chose.  It probably isn't necessary to grill him as to the why.  But it probably is a good idea to make sure he understands the trade off.  "Do you really want to be landed nobility so badly you'll sacrifice high attributes or proficiencies to get it"  If yes...that's a statement.

[Callan S.]

Added my bit. I'm just interested in what the reader of the review gets concerned over reading it, rather than trying to school the reviewer.

Damn cut and paste error at the start though.

[Brian Leybourne]

As an aside and for the record: the poster Seanchai hates everything that is TROS, and in fact anything Forge related from what I can see. I pretty much ignore anything he has to say because he's using that hatred as the basis for his arguments rather than logic or knowledge of what he's arguing about.

I suggest others do the same.

(edit: Also for the record: I'm not bashing the review or the reviewer, he makes some valid comments, although he keeps contradicting himself over and over (seemingly so he can say something else bad) and overall, the tone of the review warrants a substance of 2-3, certainly not 1. I'm just bashing Seanchai).

Brian.

[Malechi]

As I've discovered after reading some of his other posts at rpg.net  

As for the reviewer himself, I'm having trouble figuring out when he's going to make his mind up.  As far as reviewers are concerned he's awefully spiteful himself.

[Bill Cook]

Seanchai (James Durnon) makes some valid points.  Other comments simply indicate a poor match for his interest.

Things that struck me:

The first thing about the book that turned me off a little was the artwork. The artwork was very inconsistent. Some pieces were great, and others were like a child's drawing.

I had the same reaction.  I initially bought three indie titles after lurking a bit at the Forge: Burning Wheel, the Riddle of Steel and Sorcerer.  BW really swayed me with its consistent and striking layout.  TROS really turned me off, and I was glad other people took an interest in it so I wouldn't have to read it.

Initially, I was really excited about the character creation system. It allowed for a lot of flexibility on the player's part, yet kept them from creating unrealistic characters . . .  But something occurred to me after making a couple of characters, and helping my players make theirs. One player of mine noticed a huge flaw, and after that, I couldn't view it as a viable creation system anymore.

I can't answer to his issues with breaking the chargen, but I do find it to be a bit cheeky for other reasons.  Mainly because some of the priorities disinterest me.  So that's just me saying there are some flavors of ice cream I'll pass on.  As a pro, I appreciate the redundancy of means to define advantage (by preference) and the scaling trade off.  It's just a bit of a peacock's tail.

While you are defending, you cannot attack, and vice-versa. This was another disappointment for me . . .  Why? Well, either you hit someone or you don't. If you hit, you win the round, and can continue again next exchange. If you miss, your opponent will win the round, and you will automatically be sent on the defensive.

The duality of the round and its call for CP budgeting is one of the best things about the combat rules, IMO.  I think Seanchai is looking for a game of tennis (i.e. back and forth).  It's not as though there are going to be a lot of hits that would keep a combatant on the defensive.  The idea is not to get hit.  So there will be more trading of initiative than not.

. . . the other thing that turned me off about it was that combat was extremely deadly, meaning that basically, the first one to hit won the fight, in almost every case. This was what the designers intended, I'm sure, but in my opinion, I would have preferred a more heroic combat system.

Well, it's good to know what you want.  But TROS is not "flip a coin" combat.  The tactics have just shifted from checking your health levels (to see how many more rounds you can stay in) to CP budgeting and choice of maneuver (to keep from getting hit).

Incidentally, I find the damage tables (and the lengths necessary to arrive with a result) to be excessive.  My group loves the brutal descriptions (esp. dismemberment) while I lament the search time.

The game is primarily set up to have one on one, man vs. man type of fights. It is not meant for your party to fight a troll, a giant, a dragon, a beholder, or any other beast. Why? Well, for starters, the system assumes that you are fighting one man, and only man, and that this man is a humanoid the size of a human.

This describes, to me, a choice cell for combat: a duel between men.  Personally, I am deeply reassured by the human-centric focus of the rules.

Supposedly, the second book released by this company has more tables for fighting other types of beasts, which is good, but to me, this should have been given in the core book, and I refused to cash out any more dough to this company to find out.

Well, I guess he could publish a supplement to his review called OBFIOS (Of Bitching For It's Own Sake), and we could take revenge by refusing to buy it:)

I've read a number of posts in the forums on Driftwood's site, and so far, I've come up with three different answers to a simple question (and I'm not sure any of them were correct): How do you write a successful adventure where your players have SAs that are totally contradictory?

Create your characters in reaction to one another during your initial session.  (Right, Valamir?)

On the subject of SA's, while they are great, even revolutionary, I think it's valid to say there is over promise in their presentation and praises.

So, even if you design the adventure around the players' SAs, they will change, and ruin it for you.

It's about trust.  Since SA's are potentially plot-based, the game must allow for flexibility in their reassignment.  More to Seanchai's point, it seems his play style is at odds with the intended use of SA's.

Does anyone want to play Pippin the hobbit while I play Gandalf the wizard x10?

(This is me, raising my hand and smiling.)

This is supposedly countered with the fact that whenever you cast a spell, your character can age a few months (maybe they really do start at age 4!). That's not much of a deterrent in my mind.

Again, no match.  He's not wrong.  Neither is TROS.

However, aging lacks bite for me.  I would prefer a more insidious consequence.  (e.g. Ged's Shadow, the Thieves' World mage's polymorph curse, Raistlin's corruption of neutrality, etc.)

To me, there just seems to be a lack of mystery to it all. In my mind, I prefer magic to be mysterious, rarely understood, and maybe unpredictable. Not a scientific process of A + B + C = D.

Agreed.

Weryth could have the making of an excellent setting, but because the book was so big, they left out a bunch of needed descriptions. Most of the regions and their inhabitants are not explained in any great detail, meaning you pretty much have to make it up for yourself, which makes me wonder why they bothered at all.

I feel the map alone is a sufficient offering.  Getting us started on world creation, to me, is just a bonus . . . for some other member of my group with more time on his hands.

[Alan]

On the subject of SA's, while they are great, even revolutionary, I think it's valid to say there is over promise in their presentation and praises.

Rather than over-promise, I think it is under-explaination.  More guidelines and examples and a less "use it as you wish" approach would go a long way to making the text convey the use of SAs.  I once read that Jake wasn't sure if he wanted to include SAs in the game and perhaps that tentativeness shows.

So, even if you design the adventure around the players' SAs, they will change, and ruin it for you.

It's about trust.  Since SA's are potentially plot-based, the game must allow for flexibility in their reassignment.  More to Seanchai's point, it seems his play style is at odds with the intended use of SA's.

In a later message Seanchai said a revealing thing: he reduced the importance of SAs from the start, so they would not cause players to break HIS carefully laid plot.  To do so, he marginalized SAs by giving out few and instituted an experience point system to compensate.

From this starting choice, he and his players just avoided ever experiencing the best part of Riddle of Steel.

[Alan]

Rather than over-promise, I think it is under-explaination.  More guidelines and examples and a less "use it as you wish" approach would go a long way to making the text convey the use of SAs.  I once read that Jake wasn't sure if he wanted to include SAs in the game and perhaps that tentativeness shows.

You know what?  I just read the SA rules again - those on using them as bonus dice and those on giving them out for roleplay actions and I'm gonna take that back what I said.  The rules are straightforward and do indicate when to use the dice, how many points to award each player per session, and what they should be rewarded for.

I think the problem is not the rules, but that the rules are going against ingrained expectations.  As someone said, we're used to glossing over personality mechanics because they often really don't have much effect in most RPGs.

Along comes TROS, and it's SA rules are fine - what they need is a big disclaimer "We're not kidding!  SAs are a central mechanic that really do make a difference!  If you don't use them, you won't see what the fuss is about."

[Valamir]

Theres some misleading elements of the above.  James Durnon wrote the review.  To the best of my knowledge, James and Seanchai are not the same person.

Seanchai responded to my response to the review

[Alan]

Whoops!  I apologize for the misidentification.

[Malechi]

This has been my assertion all along and that of any of my players who've read the book.  "Oh thats what they're for, cool" End-of-story...

While its a smallish section of the book, I still think its quite clearly stated how to use them.  In the GMing section, from memory, it states clearly how to tailor adventures to the players SAs.  The brevity of their presentation is perhaps something to do with the simplicity of the rules.  Concise and elegant, with a lot of depth hidden under the surface.   Not rocket science and not something a seasoned GM would find difficult.  In fact I think its a hell of a lot more simple than that.  I'd hazard a guess that newbie GMs would find the SAs perhaps a most obvious start-off point for adventure creation allowing them to create games quickly.  

Which begs a question, how many people here are relative newcomers to gaming?  I've been playing for about 15 years which makes me a middling gamer I guess, but I've run the game *for* newbies who got it a hell of a lot easier than D&D frex.  

Jason..

[Alan]

I had been playing and GMing for a good 15 years before I found The Forge.  I started reading GNS theory and playing games like InSpectres before I read TROS, so I didn't come to the game straight from my old habits.

I do recall however that it took several months of intense study of the Forge  before I gave up all of my old GMing paradigm (what Ron would call Illusionism).  I remember some posts where I worried about the consequences of letting go the plot and allowing the players to drive play.

I think that's a main stumbling block for a lot of people who come from D&D into TROS.

In retrospect I think "This is what I was looking for all those years."  But I forget there was a time when a couple main elements of TROS would have baffled me.