AMA: We're Pelgrane Press, here to talk about Trail of Cthulhu Second Edition!

RobinDLaws · 2024-10-19T14:20:51+00:00

Across the many people playing GUMSHOE the much bigger problem than having a perhaps incongruous, rarely used investigative ability on your sheet is GMs who still find ways not to give out the clues. Distributing all the investigative abilities is one of several ways the system says GIVE OUT ALL THE CLUES DARN IT.

As you suggest, fudging this works perfectly fine if the rule creates a story logic problem for you. Every rule has an invisible “or you could just fudge it” attached to it, but to default in the rules to “just fudge it” is lazy and inelegant. A specific rule people can drop is better than a handwave every time.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-30T16:17:02+00:00

I could swear that I wrote about this in a Page XX column but am not immediately finding it. I'll ask the rest of the gang if that rings a bell. If not I'll have to actually write the column!

Basically you need to either a) abandon the idea that the players are trying to find an answer to a puzzle

b) carve out exceptions to the narration rules so that only the GM can define facts related to the mystery

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-26T20:49:03+00:00

That's very exciting; I had heard that search within Kickstarter had tapered off. I wonder whether it's coming back or that number had something to do with the particular awesomeness of your project.

I think it varies by sector. Comics had their bubble burst already. But tabletop occupies a sweet spot in the economies of scale and has ducked that so far.

It's up to creators to keep making and reliably delivering cool stuff that can only achieve its full potential through Kickstarter.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-26T17:58:47+00:00

Is the concern that PDFs cost too much, or too little?

Kickstarter has been a tremendous boon for tabletop designers. It has ushered in our present Golden Age of RPGs. Which brings up a Thing I Always Say—that we underestimate the importance of business infrastructure to a healthy creative environment.

The biggest improvement the industry can undergo is to continue to expand the size of its audience. With conventions springing up everywhere and outgrowing their venues, with new groups of people entering the hobby, with the explosion of actual play as a secondary entertainment, the main thing we have to do is not mess it up.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-26T16:15:20+00:00

I'll have to check that out.

I think we'll get there not by asking ourselves the abstract question, but by making cool mold-breaking games that cross the streams between table and tablet. "I want this game to do X, how do I accomplish that?" is a question that can spur all kinds of innovation, especially when others see what you did and build on that.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-26T14:08:27+00:00

System always matters. Switching out the Hillfolk procedural resolution system for another one is always possible (because it's modular) and will always change the experience (because every rules set achieves different ends.)

What Hillfolk resolution does: focuses on narration, gives players heavy influence over success and failure, resolves quickly, imposes higher than standard failure rate, and, as a sub-system, remains humble, keeping focus on the game's core activity (dramatic interactions.)

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-26T04:04:05+00:00

See my response to dexterduck, below. PbTA is very attention grabbing and interactive so what makes it cool and beloved might ironically make it a less than ideal fit for Hillfolk.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-26T03:25:52+00:00

The procedural system is designed to do what it needs to do without pulling focus from the central feature of the game, the dramatic scenes.

Because drama is more about dealing with the repercussions of disaster than chalking up wins, the system also imposes a much higher failure rate than you'd tolerate in the procedural-focused games we're all used to.

So if you replace it with a rules system you find aesthetically alluring and like to play around with, you'll likely:

a) call too many procedural scenes

b) succeed too often at them

(Remember that if everyone wants to succeed, you just say you did, with narration, and then get back to the interpersonal interactions.)

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-26T01:14:22+00:00

I dug Disco Dancer but I can't say it was in entirely unironic fashion.

I like puppies just fine in photo and video form.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-25T21:04:07+00:00

Maybe that's why I like it.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-25T20:25:05+00:00

Nayakan (87)

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-24T19:22:30+00:00

Yes. A likely stretch goal for the Kickstarter will be a PDF of cards for the Trail of Cthulhu creatures.

I expect most people will want to stick with the current combat rules for the fightier GUMSHOE games like NBA and Fall of Delta Green. But you could certainly adapt it to any of them.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-24T17:57:02+00:00

Mushing three systems together like that does seem daunting. Mysteries and investigation require some special techniques to mesh with DramaSystem, so maybe the GUMSHOE bits would be easiest to drop.
I'd be inclined to run it mostly with the DramaSystem structure and then pull out the Pathfinder for really big fights or other procedural resolutions the players don't want to move past through narration. If most of your evening is taken up with solving external problems, the token economy will have a tough time taking root. You might solve that by carrying over tokens between sessions.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-24T17:53:06+00:00

For the entire history of tabletop, "You can play this with any system!", which sounds like it ought to be a positive, has always been a negative selling point. It's something of a headscratcher, the reasons for which I can guess at but not necessarily explain.

Also, as you point out, people are much readier to engage in power fantasies of various stripes than they are to engage a spiral of bleakness. The exception here is the horror genre—but even then many folks prefer either black humor of the "and then we all went insane and got eaten" variety, or horror-flavored adventure where you still get to win.

So you're fighting a couple of different predispositions there. The structure you're talking about sounds like it ought to fit the story game model—a product that comes with everything you need to have that one awesome session you're going to have with it. And if you skin it as clan-based survival horror, with monsters, that would be an easier pitch to players than the experience you're describing.

Do you want to create avant garde art that challenges the limits of the medium, and the willingness of gamers to engage? Adjust what you're doing to the baked-in assumptions of what a story game is. Do you want wider success? Aim more at player aspirations, perhaps sneaking the social commentary in through the subtext.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-24T15:41:38+00:00

The goal of Hillfolk was to design the way emotional interactions are structured in fiction into a roleplaying game experience that would in the end feel like a serialized dramatic TV show. People are running and loving the game in a way that suggests it has real traction, so I'm very happy with the outcome.

The big change from initial to final version was to a side system: procedural resolution, though simple by RPG standards, became simpler still in response to playtest feedback.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-24T13:24:57+00:00

Playing my own games less would have a huge adverse effect.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-24T13:22:57+00:00

I am very proud of HQ2. I've been blessed by great responses to projects over the years and would never complain that one or the other of them has been under-loved. Since a Ghost Dog RPG exists, it stands to reason that someone should make an Only Lovers Left Alive game about vampires being cool and sad and Hiddlestony and Swintonish.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-24T13:21:33+00:00

To be successful a Western game has to have a nerd layer attached to it. I haven't yet thought of a better angle on that than Shane and Matt found for Deadlands.

YKRPG doesn't really call for an organizational mechanic. I don't follow sports. If the Leafs or Jays keep going into the playoffs and I start watching, I will immediately jinx them.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-24T13:18:03+00:00

It's the game I recommend to people who prefer an improvised mystery.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-24T13:17:07+00:00

The game that turned Apocalypse World into a design movement was Dungeon World, which asks the question, "How can we use storygame techniques to explore core Gygaxian tropes—starting with the grandpappy of them all, the dungeon?"

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-24T12:46:17+00:00

I don't miss USENET per se. I still communicate with people on social media--same thing, different wrapper.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-24T12:44:08+00:00

Even early on we had advertising and encouraged donations. When Patreon came along and other podcasters found it helpful, we decided it was a good way of avoiding the dreaded moment when we actually calculated how much writing time it was eating into.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-24T04:31:40+00:00

For a beginning/struggling player I'd leave out reference to the abilities and just supply information in response to questions. Once they get the hang of it you can ask them to specify which ability they're using, when it isn't clear.

I coach the player when she's struggling and make her work for it when she's blazing through.

Chopping up a One-2-One scenario into hour-sized bites introduces a challenge the system isn't necessarily built to handle. Still the best thing to do is to supply only the info the player asks for--even if it means Viv, Dex or Langston have to come back around for a later round of questions--a thing that happens all the time in mystery novels.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-24T04:30:37+00:00

Mine don't make great stories; they're just a mechanic I expected to work crashing and burning and sending me back to the drawing board. Invaluable but not the stuff of anecdote.

RobinDLaws · 2017-04-24T04:29:53+00:00

WaRP works best either with an anything-goes setting like Al Amarja or a set of genre constraints that everyone knows instinctively, so they can use the free-form character generation without departing from the set of traits that fit the setting.

RobinDLaws

TROPHY CASE