Fantasy Age vs. Pathfinder

I was struck by the simplicity of Fantasy Age versus a more complicated game like Pathfinder. Both are high-fantasy RPGs and they do what they set out to do well enough.

Fantasy Age is a simple game with a simple, unified core mechanic. It plays fast, is super easy to pick up, and does a great job with progression and the sort of lighter adventure and solve the mission job it sets out to do. I have a slight issue with post-roll stunting and still feel Legend does this better, but it is a good mechanic (with tweaking) and I look forward to Blue Rose's release next year using the same system.

But then again, I still get this feeling that Pathfinder just captures my imagination better. It feels like fantasy to me. The worlds and options presented in its books (both first and the excellent third party supplements) open up infinite worlds of adventure. Despite some of the issue I have with how large the game has gotten and the almost too-many choices now availible, I feel there is still a strong core of fun to be had that a more simple game such as Fantasy Age just can't capture.

Complexity vs. Depth

Pathfinder has depth, and loads of it. While yes, some of the depth presented has a great deal of complexity to it, you can use as much as you want (as is the case with every game). But as I drill down into Pathfinder's depth, I find a lot of reward for paying the price and using the complexity in my games. The deeper you go, the moer tedious the game becomes, but also there is another deeper and strategically rewarding game at the highest level of complexity.

You can play Pathfinder two ways, the first being an almost a Pathfinder Beginner Box style of game that plays like an action game. Ignore encumbrance, AoOs, and limit actions to something more simple and straightforward. The game becomes an action game, and you get 75% of the reward of playing. Nothing stops you from house-ruling in PBB as the way you play and keeping things simple, so it's all good.

The second way of playing the game is by drilling down to a level of complexity you enjoy, and playing at that level. For some, that means playing 100% by the rules, using all the tactical combat rules, encumbrance, and playing the game almost as a fantasy combat simulator. It is admittedly a more difficult game, becuase something as simple as what loot you choose to pick up could be a matter of life or death later as you are fleeing an encounter. I like this level of detail, and while it slows things down, it gives players more choices during a play session other than "where do I swing my sword next?" Action-gaming is fun and great, but sometimes I like to see how a group of players gets together and deals with a world hostile to their presence in it, and watching them make decisions and survive in a rules-set that is unforgiving and applied with a firm hand.

It is the same reward you feel when you beat a video-game on its hardest mode. You get this real sense of accomplishment and feeling of mastery that a more simple game just does not provide.

Simple for the Right Reasons

Yes, if I am here for the good times and story, I am more apt to play a simple game such as Fantasy Age with the group. Perhaps this is our first few times together and we need a simpler game to get the ice broken and see how the personalities and play styles mesh.

If this is a game about romance and I purposefully want the rules to get out of the way (such as in Blue Rose's case), I am also more apt to prefer a simple game that gets out of the way so we can focus on the drama and relationships. I perhaps could play romance-style games with Pathfinder, but the urge to drill down into full-simulation and combat mode is there, and I prefer players at the table to not focus on those aspects of the game.

I could bring up D&D 5 here because it relates to the discussion. D&D 5 at its current state just feels like it captures a more basic dungeon-ing experience centered on the brand's core worlds. It feels like a Fantasy Age in a way where the game is streamlined and simplified, and that is a good thing for playing stories focused on the conflicts and characters in those worlds. But again, for me and my groups, it feels like there is something missing, and it feels like the Fantasy Age thing again. I like depth. D&D 5 is early in its run, where Pathfinder is settled in and comfortable.

Sometimes, I want and I crave depth. It's not an all-the-time thing, as I love my pick-up-and-play games too, and also the simple and focused experiences. I like for my games to dive in and give me those complicated character design choices. I like for options to be fiddly and force you to learn. Gaming is never a One Ring thing where one game rules all; as gamers, I feel it is cool to have different games for different moods.

Depth Budgeting

Depth is also a thing you budget, just like complexity. You an put depth in different places, but you need to pick and choose what areas of your game you desire a deeper experience, and which areas should be simplified and kept streamlined. Where and how much complexity and depth is one of those game design choices you can plan out, or stumble into - but you need to plan this out to have a game that feels like it has a balance of simplified areas and complex ones that deliver a great and deep play experience.

So Pathfinder still calls to me in a way as it sits there in all its refined and voluminous glory. I like the game, and I like the world. Is it simple and fast-to-play? No, it is clearly not a fast food sort of game for fast food sorts of moods. But it does have depth and a complexity I can appreciate and embrace for what it does. It is a classic version of a classic game, and it does a good job on a couple of levels, both simple and complex, and it has the weight of both first and third party support that is second to none.

Fantasy Age, by contrast, is also a young game with support to be seen. I look forward to the refinement that may come out in future games, and I love the core 3d6 mechanic. It is a fun ice-breaker game with simple rules and quick options, and it is focused on storytelling - not survival and character building. It does what it sets out to do well, and is an interesting option to the Dragon Age game (or an upgrade of it, if seen another way). It does not have the depth of a more mature game, and I don't feel it needs it for what it sets out to do, so there is that to consider.

But what strikes me here is how depth can be seen two ways, as complexity that should be simplified (as D&D 5's direction went in), or as something to be enjoyed and savored and as a feature of the game that reflects maturity and something more to consider than just story-based action gaming. You worry about more from everything to character design to in-game choices, but you are rewarded more for maing the correct decisions based on the moment in time you make them.

Theorycrafting and Pathfinder: More is Better

I was checking out threads on people's experiences when it comes to just sticking to the main Pathfinder book, and I came across this discussion on the Pathfinder forums:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rx4g?Core-Only-How-does-it-change-things

Ouch.

So if half my group shows up playing summoning druids I am just going to rub my temples in a mock headache and tell them what? Yes, there is a lot to be said for "play what you love," but the thing I dislike about the theory-crafting crowd is...

...they are ultimately and 100% right about a lot of things.

The base game is, in a way, broken, and the later books have done a lot to fix things and make all options viable and balanced. The expansion books have their own sets of problems, but the Pathfinder game was written in a "patch as you go" sort of way and if you are not playing with a full set of books you aren't playing with something that approximates an even playing field between classes.

What I don't like about theory-crafting posts is that they tell me my illusions of a simple game using only one book are nostalgic dreams built upon an assumption that less is better. And these posts are for the most part right.

In this case, Pathfinder is a lot like an MMO in this regard, a lot of people reminisce and love the concept of playing the game by the original rules and before any expansion, but those feelings are typically never really based in reality - they are based on feelings. And with feelings, you get emotions all wrapped up in the mix, and things just become a big mess. It is better to go by facts, and you either accept the original game has its flaws and live with those, or you play with the new stuff and get all the fixes and complicated add-ons.

The old days in most MMOs did suck, and things are for the most part better now. Despite the few changes you probably disagree with and the complexity the MMO has added, the thousands of things that were fixed over the game's lifetime are just such a better experience you forget how clunky things were and how much of a game was to play before all the tweaks were made. There were exploits back then, and most MMOs had huge problems the designers later fixed.

Star Wars Galaxy NGE need not speak up at this time. Please sit down. I said most MMOs, but I will admit before the NGE there was some pretty broken stuff. The problem is afterwards, everything was broken, but that's another story for another day.

It is a tough part of my feelings about Pathfinder, I love the game, but to play the best version - you play with a full set of books. If I want a simple game, I will play something else.

That fact is hard for me to accept.

Occult Adventures, and Huge Sale on Hero Lab

I took the jump and ordered Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Occult Adventures, and it's also worth noting the Hero Lab module for this has been released as well.

There is also a huge sale going on until November 8 on many of the Pathfinder Modules over on the Hero Lab site, so if you have been waiting (like me) to pick some of these up and complete your collection, it is worth it to do so now!

I didn't want to wait a month to start diving in, the reviews for this one are that good. Perhaps this book will be the base for a limited run game set in the 1920's with a distinctly Pathfinder feel. I am overdue for a redo on my Pathfinder game world, and I can envision a major clean up and some big changes to come in my metaplot and how things are organized for my players. More on this soon, and a Design Room article on what looks to be a major shot in the arm for the Pathfinder system with this book.

Upcoming Pathfinder Books: November 2015

I am really tempted to buy Occult Adventures book for Pathfinder, but I am waiting on two other books before making the plunge. This book is already out and getting great reviews and re-invigorating the Pathfinder player base, so it looks to be a great buy and worth the time to read and play. It also solves the "I want to play an ice/fire/etc mage" problem Pathfinder (and also D&D) have with players coming in from games and MMOs where those options are available. In other words, these sorts of options have been a long time coming, and sorely needed. I am looking forward to them, and I have high hopes for this guide.

The first "must also purchase" is Bestiary 5, and you can never have enough monsters. I am hoping there are some more occult and psionic-themed monsters in this guide that will fit well with the psi-using classes in the above book. What are heroes with new sources of power without creatures who dabble in the same powers? Great heroes deserve great monsters. This is coming the 18th of November, and that is when I will likely dive in.

The second is an odd guide called Occult Realms, which looks to be the Golarion-specific campaign guide for the first book, and it presents additional character options, monsters, setting, and background info. I don't ike the fact this information has been broken off in an additional guide, but if it is purely setting-specific, I could see why. I will need to read some reviews and test the waters before I decide this guide is 'official' for my group. You know how this goes, sometimes an add-on book like this adds a lot, and other times it doesn't justify the addition of another guide to the mix.

And of course, yes, I want Hero Lab support for all of the above as well before I dive in. At this time it is available for the first book in this list, and not for the two unreleased books (obviously). What use is owning these books unless your character creation tool of choice supports them? One bad thing about Hero Lab support is that it lags a little behind the book's final release (and understandably so), so it may push off my purchase of the second two by a couple weeks. It is a thing with me, if I have the books in hand I want to start jumping in and building characters. Having to wait to do that dampens my excitement a little, so I would rather wait a few weeks than to have that gap between reading and using the books.

Star Wars RPG: Spinning Up 100 Characters

DarkgarX and I are spending a couple nights and just spinning up an entire group of characters, around 100 of them in fact. I know you are not supposed to use the PC generation system for NPCs, but it is a fun way to learn the classes and system, and go through all three of the books in order and have fun with different designs and classes.

We are designing from all three books, so our groups are an interesting mix of rebels, criminals, and jedi students. It is a motley crew of a strange mix of personalities and character types, and we love just spinning up characters and playing with character options.

There is a min-maxing thing you can do here, especially in regards to combat skills and your starting scores. However, we play a more balanced game where more skills than just combat are important, and we try to stay true to the character and not worship the combat system. With these dice, it is difficult at times, because the allure of spinning up a character who can toss a fist-full of dice at enemies is so strong.

Resist the urge of the dark-side of min-maxing...

Some of the rules regarding the book-specific stats (obligation, duty, and morality) are weak, and in some cases not explained (how duty changes). We had to hit the forums for answers, and even then it wasn't entirely clear.

Mixed groups with obligation and duty? Sounds fun, and we have some very strange groups that could be hit at all angles for missions and bounty hunters looking for group members. I wish they would have added information on mixed parties, but we managed to figure out a system that works for us with these sorts of groups.

We almost wish jedi had a "external" stat like this, but instead, they have an inwardly-focused morality trait that rates how they act in the world. It is admittedly very jedi, but I like the external book-specific stats and their potential for trouble and complications so much I wish the jedi had something like this as well to force them to get out into the world and put things at risk, be a part of something bigger, or have trouble lurk around every corner. Yes, they are jedi in the Empire and it is not the safest place to be, but I like the mechanics of the other book-specific stats.

The skill system took some getting used to, and we wished there were some character design tutorials to go through. It took us a while to figure out that class skills began at level zero and you had a number of rank-ups to raise 3 or 4 of them to a +1. So there is a difference between an "untrained class skill" and a normal "untrained skill" that threw us. We had to redesign our first couple characters once we grasped this, but having a sample design in the book would have smoothed this out for us greatly.

Once you get a hang of it, character design is fast. I wish the game shipped with "character design sheets" with one side being the class description and skills, and the other having the talent tree. I wish I could print out just these sections to work with, and staple them into a handy booklet. PDF please, I'd buy the game in PDF form a second time just to have this ability. Or I could photocopy. Yes, I could photocopy for personal use, but bleh on the time and mashing the book to get it looking good.

All in all, this is a fun character creation system, and one we will be playing as we run a small campaign this fall with the game. More update on this soon as things get rolling, but until we begin, more character design fun awaits us.

Star Wars RPG: Too Many Books!

With three main books and six add-on character books, our Star Wars RPG experience is feeling a little bloated. I know, these are stand-alone games, but we play in a big universe, and now we are constantly flipping back-and-forth between books to generate characters and reference material.

Yes, this is our fault for buying too many books.

But this is also the game's fault for spreading everything out in so many guides. A lot of the character archetypes in the add-on guides are cool, but I feel they aren't really much different than what you could create from the classes in the main books. There are some cool options, yes, but part of me feels they aren't the 'core experience' classes that we got in the main three books.

Some of them are also very splatbook powerful, by the way. I don't see these as 'oh cool' I see them as a 'oh no why did they escalate character power' sort of thing.

While I love having options, I could see just buying the core three books and sticking with those as a good option. Still, they are nice books with great production quality and tons of info.

Yes, this is starting to feel like Pathfinder. There is a part of me that wants to go back to basics with that game and just play my world with the original two books. There is a point when too much is too much, and I want my simple game back again.

You know, the way things used to be? Part of that feeling is a false 'the old times are better' thing, while another part is a truth that simple was honestly better.

How many more splatbooks can they print? Well, I will admit now I will be buying all of them, but the prospect of sorting through three main books and possibly twelve add-on books has got my head spinning (three books with four add-on class books each).

I guess we will clear another shelf for these and have fun with what we got.

Star Wars RPG: A Slow Session

Our Star Wars campaign is still getting on its feet, and last night's game was a slow session. One of those where "most of the characters get 5 XP for participating and only one or two get a 15 XP reward sort of games.

Yeah, most of the group played salvage bunnies in a junkyard while two of the characters went off and had all the fun.

They need to get a derelict starship up and running, so it is going to take a lot of work. Maybe I will give the entire group a reward after the thing gets space worthy as a story award.

The two characters who had the fun? Card sharks playing a strange version of "Texas Hold-Em Sabacc" that they made up on the spot and conned the rest of the bar into a game of. They actually made up the rules they played, dealt the cards to NPC 'players', and everyone got a good laugh out of all the silly antics these two put on. It made no sense, the rules were setup totally in favor of the house, and my two players kept repeating "everybody wins, everybody plays" so many times it became a running joke - yes, even though any NPC who played got fleeced by this highly silly con job.

It is also a stupid, silly moment uniquely Star Wars. Well, not the Texas hold-em part, but what is Star Wars without something totally stupid and silly happening every once and a while? Players need to be able to laugh and have fun every once and a while, and it brings an occasional break to the seriousness of the game. While I like to run my games really gritty and serious, I know when people need to kick back and laugh, so we take time out to have hilarity like this between the dark and realistic parts.

The larger campaign arc is appearing, and I am starting to see where this game is going! I can't share it here, but it is a fun and very twisted take on the whole Empire and Rebellion thing that will have both sides wondering who to trust, and also be throwing both sides in with each other with shifting loyalties. How is my galaxy setup?

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

We are playing in a post RoTJ galaxy, and this is sort of mixed in with the Star Wars: Aftermath continuity. The Imperials are on the run (and largely holding out in the corporate sector and a large fleet around Courusant as two major factions). The capital fleet holds onto the "Empire as government" view of things, while the corporate sector Imperials have been taken over by a faction seeing the Sith way of life as a religion. This kind of parallels the book, and it is a fun way to split the Empire into two warring yet sometime cooperative factions with a lot of distrust between each other.

It also brings in the more commonplace Jedi and Sith into the game by the RPG's aesthetics. There is a large faction of Sith that see their way of life as a religion, and there is one faction of the Empire holding onto that belief.

The New Republic is what we would call the rebels nowadays, and they are awash in victories and an unstable political atmosphere. What they want is Courusant, and they are blockading the capital system and even resorting to using space pirates to break the will of the Empire. Did I say the good guys are resorting to underhanded tactics? Yes, there is a lot of corruption in the New Republic's halls, and Hutt money is flowing like wine. Any player who deals with the New Republic has come away with a bad taste in their mouth as nobody knows who to trust, and the New Republic's freshman senators back-stab and deal under the table to grab power.

The inmates are running the asylum, and the entire galaxy is worse then when it started off under the Empire. Even Ackbar's fleet has been called back to his homeworld as the bickering raises the possibility of proxy wars between factions inside the New Republic.

The Jedi? Remember, we are in the RPG's world, so the Jedi are a little more common that the official universe. These are the children of those taken down by Order 66, untrained and they are scattered to the wind of the galaxy as they find their own paths. I am keeping the prospect of a new Jedi Academy out of the picture for a while, as this is a bit too EU for this game, and I want Jedi players surviving on their own without a school to run home to. If a player starts a new Jedi order? More power to them, and this could be a force of stability in the galaxy.

If they do.

What is so fun about this setup is there are characters from all sides that can get together and play, plus a clear and defined set of bad guys. Some of the more stability-minded Imperials could team up with the players and work towards a common goal, and the Empire can even play the hero in some situations. The bad guys are clearly the Sith-as-religion types, bloodthirsty Republic power-grabbing types, and the Hutts, and unchecked, they will destroy this galaxy quicker than anything you know. In short, this is a war of stability and civilization against the forces of intolerance and corruption.

Both sides are guilty of corruption and intolerance. And there are heroes on both sides, Empire and Republic, that will stand against that tide.

What am I hoping? That there will be a new faction led by the righteous few who will bring peace and stability to the galaxy. This must be led by the players. If they choose to be profiteers or do otherwise, they will see the galaxy slowly slide into war and madness. It will be a choice I can't force, but one I can subtly present as an option as NPCs from both sides seek their help.