A player's view of Kakabad

In lieu of a post about contemporary gaming, what with the sunny weather, afternoons in the pub, and the odd barbecue - and for anyone not in the UK, we get so few really sunny days these must be seized upon - I thought I'd dig out some old player maps and let you see how one of my players interpreted our journey across Kakabad in pursuit of the Crown of Kings.

  Khare

The Baklands

Mampang

AFF2e Sorcerers are Muscle Wizards

In which I argue that Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2e (AFF2e) Sorcerers are ‘Muscle Wizards’, but first I bore you all with a discussion (moan) about transferring rules from the ‘closed’ system and world of a gamebook to the ‘open’ system and world of a tabletop RPG.

AFF2e has four types of magic – Minor Magic, Wizardry, Priestly Miracles, and Sorcery. The first three were designed with a multiplayer, tabletop RPG in mind, while Sorcery is the product of the Sorcery! gamebooks by Steve Jackson, and while this is the source of its great flavour, it is also its great weakness. It is a weakness, as the use of Sorcery in a gamebook allows the ‘dead’[*1] GM to operate a pretty tight control over the use of magic. Steve Jackson limited the player’s access to spell components, the choice of spells in any particular circumstance, and decided on the outcome of spells as he saw fit, unburdened by an ‘objective’ rules system.   

So, in a gamebook, the player can’t declare that he is going to search the fancy dress shops of Arkleton to find a green wig, or divert from his quest collect a sack full of teeth Goblin hunting. You've thought of an innovative use of a spell which will ‘break’ the encounter? Tough. Either Steve Jackson didn’t think of that, or he did and decided not to offer it as an option. You don’t get the option to simply fly over the walls of Khare, or cast MUD at the feet of every monster. And whatever options the player is given, Steve Jackson has used pre-emptive GM fiat to ensure that the results come out the way he wants them to.

And that is fine and dandy. Such is the way of a gamebook.

In an open-ended tabletop RPG, players are free to declare that their characters are going to collect a sack of sand, and ‘spam’ the MUD spell during every encounter. Or that they will hunt Goblins and conduct post-mortem dental surgery, ensuring that the party can outnumber any opponent with some Jason and the Argonauts-style sowing of teeth. This is not to say AFF2e’s Sorcery is ‘broken’, only that it needs co-operative players, and likely some invention on the part of the GM as to what actually counts as a spell component. Do the Goblin teeth used in GOB need to be free of decay? Does the ‘sand’ used in casting MUD need to be filtered silica? Etc.

“Why are you trying to limit players’ powers?” I hear you ask. “Enable their power fantasies and make the players feel awesome!” you shout. But the other voices in my head tell me to make life difficult for the players. And when the arguing voices in my head quieten for just a moment, I remember that limiting the players’ access to Sorcery magic is true to the ‘fiction’ – but that as a ‘living’ GM I have to make my decisions explicit to the players in order to allow them to make meaningful decisions.

But (and here is where AFF2e Sorcerers turn into Muscle Wizards) spell components are not the only limiting factor in Sorcery. The magic systems of many RPGs treats magical capacity as a finite resource, typically by way of ‘magic points’ or ‘mana’, which is often separate from the spell caster’s physical ‘resources’. But in AFF2e, casting a spell eats away at a Sorcerer’s STAMINA (AFF2e equivalent to, say, Hit Points). So an effective AFF2e Sorcerer must have a high STAMINA score – and one way of looking at that is that other words he or she needs to be one of the most vigorous, fittest men or women on Titan. 

Wizards? Pah! Old, weak men digging over dusty books.

Sorcerers look like this!

Now, I am partial to the idea that magic should have a physical cost in my fantasy – both fiction and gaming. I enjoy stories in which Merlin has to recuperate after working some great, taxing magic. When I read Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy, I found myself wanting to model not just the visceral combat, but also the sort of magic that left the Magi Bayaz at death’s door, comatose, after saving the party from an ambush. Having magic ‘damage’ STAMINA is one way of doing this. But, just as with D&D Hit Points, in game terms STAMINA is all or nothing – while we may understand having a single point of STAMINA as being close to dropping from exhaustion, there is no mechanical impact in having 1 STAMINA point as compared to having 24… er, other than to significantly decrease the chances of the character surviving the next physical strain to which he or she is exposed![*2]

[*1]As opposed to a living GM, sitting at the table, applying rules, making rulings, improvising, and accountable to the players.

[*2] This is something that it is easy to miss – and all too often is – when playing (and criticising) a game that has a D&D-type model of ‘attritional damage’.

Sorcery! 2 (Inkle iOS app): I Khare more

Last year I bought Inkle's first Sorcery! app, which turned out to be a reasonably faithful adaptation of The Shamutanti Hills gamebook. There were a few flourishes here and there that, as far as I can remember, were not in the gamebooks (for example, the motivation for the goblin activity is fleshed out), but aside from the gorgeous map and the nifty, but straightforward mechanics, this was The Shamutanti Hills. If you liked the gamebook, you'd like this. But if not, this would fail to satisfy for similar reasons (unless you have something against books as physical object, but then...).

Sorcery! 2, based on Khare: Cityport of Traps, is, however, a totally different beast - though it wears the same skin. My memory of gamebook Khare is of a city that defies reason, filled with fantastical encounters (but little else) in which Bizarre Search Behaviour (as described by Murray of Turn to 400) is the order of the day. And it is fun, for sure, and very 'Fighting Fantasy', but as is the case for many of the gamebooks the only way to collect the information necessary to make meaningful choices is to die. YOUR adventure ends here. 

In the Inkle app, Khare feels like it has some real life to it. Part of this is down to the technical possibilities presented in by an app that would be impossible in a gamebook; it is not so difficult for later 'sections' to be subtly (or not so subtly) tailored in light of previous choices - certainly without doubling or trebling the 'section' and page count of the equivalent physical book. But Khare has also grown. What appeared, in the gamebook, to be disconnected encounters have grown into the spaces around them, producing meaningfully interlinked choices. But there is also more to Khare - political intrigue and underground plots practically beg YOU to investigate. It feels much more like a sandbox setting.

All of this is managed by an automated clue 'inventory'. This records bullet points of information that you gather through your searches and conversations. On the subject of the latter, at various points in the game you have the option to play 'swindlestones' (liar's dice) against a number of different NPCs. While you can try to use this as a way to make some gold, its true usefulness comes in the conversations that you have with the NPCs as you bluff and bet. Different bets produce different dialogue options, meaning that sometimes you just have to bluff big (and likely get called) if you want to ask a particularly probing question. This is a really good mechanic, introducing risk and reward (and a degree of transparency about both) into the information game. 

As far as the other mechanics go, swordplay is still, as it was in the first Sorcery! app, a 'blind auction', in which you try to use just more of your strength than the enemy, or none at all if you suspect that he will 'bid' higher. While there are some clues as to what the enemy will do each round in the text description, it still feels pretty formulaic - thought it allows for some player choice, the meaninfulness of these choices is minimal, once you have your PC settled into a strike-block rhythm. It is certainly appears to be more interactive than 2d6+SKILL, but I feel that adding a couple of choices to modify this roll (as in Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2e) would have produced more genuine choice into the fights. Each fight can be endlessly refought until you have achieved a level of STAMINA loss with which you are happy, which feels a bit 'fingers in the page' to me. Nevertheless, I have used it...

The sorcery mechanic has been revamped across both apps. If I remember right, in Sorcery! it involved a mildly annoying mini-game in which you lined up the three letters of the spell. This was nothing more than a time-sink hurdle for the player - you would line the letters up eventually, and it didn't matter how long it took. Well, it didn't matter for YOU - as in your PC - but it mattered to you, the player. This was a mild example of what I was talking about with regards to the consequences of failure in RPGs and computer games. The new version retains the same visual charm - the letters being written in the stars - but the mini-game is gone. Just tap out S-U-S and burn on point of STAMINA to work out if Steve Jackson has set a trap for you. That really is the most important spell any adventurer on Titan can learn!

I was really impressed with Sorcery! 2. It looks fantastic, plays smoothly, and the new material adds extra life to the city, though I'm still in two minds as to whether the extra stuff included by Inkle dilutes the Titanesque. Regardless, I do wish that I had played this before running the Khare section of the AFF2e Crown of Kings campaign. I guess that is the highest praise that can be given by a GM!