Who? My name is Jasyn, and I'm an amateur game designer. I'm a big fan of Torg, and long ago I began a modest project to make a new Torg game for my friends. Things happened, and the damned thing metastasized. Which brings us to today.

What? I'm building a new system (the Destiny Gaming System) from the ground up. (Or so close as to make no difference.) My goal is to make something that implements the spirit of the Torg rules, fast-paced action-movie pyrotechnics and cinematic heroes. When complete, I can use the system to run various campaigns, incidentally including "Storm Knights".

Back in 2000, the owners of Torg sent around a survey, asking people's opinions on what Torg could be retitled. The suggested names all sucked. My belief is that the game should be titled "Storm Knights". It's an interesting title, and evokes the game's premise (once you know what a Storm Knight is). It also doesn't suck (IMHO).

Since then, "Storm Knights" has been my name for my Torg fan site. It's also the name for the new Torg campaign I'm building. It has variant metaphysics, redesigned cosms, some new cosms, and so forth.

So, when posting in these forums, I'm going to distinguish between discussion of my game system [Destiny] and my new Torg campaign world [Storm Knights]. It should be pretty clear which I'm discussing and why.

Why? Why do this? Because I'm insane, obviously. Because I've sunk many years of work into building this sucker.

Because I've invented a magical meta-system to use for a new Magic Axiom. Because I've researched what bows were like in 60,000 BC, what the State is, and what fine distinctions can be made between magic and religion.

Because, again and again, I've thought through the concepts and themes behind Orrorsh, Aysle, the Nile Empire, Nippon Tech, the Cyberpapacy, the Living Land, and Tharkold. Because I've created four new genre tags (Super-Punk, Steampulp, Cyberpulp, and Urban Wuxia) to describe three new cosms.

Because I'd like to play the damn thing someday, and all of this is a sunk cost if that never happens. Basically, because I'm insane.

That's why. Any questions?

No questions but I dig what I'm seeing so far. Well ok, maybe one question. Why TORG, what drew you in in the first place ?

Edit: And, I like that you are calling it Storm Knights.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;499693No questions but I dig what I'm seeing so far. Edit: And, I like that you are calling it Storm Knights.

Thanks a bunch, David. I hope the ensuing volume of posts will continue to be entertaining reading, if nothing else.

(And I like the name too. Obviously. Simple. Clear. Not boggling. "Torg" was just... confusing and off-putting. IMHO.)

Quote from: David R;499693Well ok, maybe one question. Why TORG, what drew you in in the first place ?

Would you believe my mind was built to like the game? (Okay, I'm only half-serious about that. Still.)

1.) I'm a fan of alternate history novels and stories. Even in mainstream or genre fiction, my favorite episodes are the alt. history ones.

Superman: Red Son (and Elseworlds in general). Age of Apocalypse. Domination of the Draka. That episode of Friends where they showed how things might have turned out. Take a movie or series I already love, and show me an alt history of it and I'm all over it.

Torg is (in large part) about alternate history worlds, invading the "Real World." I'm down with that.

2.) I'm a fan of genre fiction. Cyberpunk, fantasy, pulp, horror, technothrillers, etc. I dig on all that. I also like RPG's of all that.

In Torg, on Wednesday you're punching out a Depression Era mob boss with the Shadow, on Thursday you're breaking into a Data Cathedral on the GodNet while a cybered Jaz Fighter watches your back, and on Friday you're trying to ice a vampire before his minions turn an entire village. (Literally "ice", because this vampire is only susceptible to ice shards, not wooden stakes.)

Tie all this up in a setting where it makes sense for the same characters to traipse from cyberpunk to pulp to horror and back, plus the ability to make your High Fantasy mage's fantasy spells work in the Real World (sometimes, but sometimes not), and I'm sold.

3.) Action movies hit the happy spot in my brain. Die Hard. Mission Impossible III. Predator. (Hell, nearly anything Schwarzenegger.) The Expendables. Bad Boys.

I like fast-paced, high octane movies. Chases. Fist-fights. Mexican standoffs. Taunting goons. Shootouts.

And Torg is exactly that kind of game. All of this stuff is supposed to happen every adventure. (Some genres are more laid back, others more amped up, obviously.)

If you're not taunting the bad guy into charging your position, so your mage can cast a spell causing him to trip, so your edienos warrior has the opening to flank his pals... you're doing it wrong.

4.) And the point of the game is to play a hero of cinema, a character like John McClane, and literally and often save the world.

The world has been invaded. They are here to kill it. You, and those few like you, are all that stands between the bad guys and a worldwide live action re-enactment of The Road.

That's my answer to why I like Torg. I hope it was worth the time it took to read it.

Er...

I seem to recall that some time, not too terribly long ago, a new edition of TORG was put out.

Thus, your unrelenting drive to recreate the wheel and brand this sucker 'Torg Too!' is a little offputting.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not decrying your love of all things Torg. I may not get it, necessarily, but who am I to judge someone else's forbidden love?


However, given the amount of labor that is going into this, why don't you distill out the things ABOUT Torg that you love so much and make your own setting based on those ideas?

I mean, its either that or you get the rights to the setting...

Hi, Spike, thanks for the reply.

Quote from: Spike;499900I seem to recall that some time, not too terribly long ago, a new edition of TORG was put out.

Not a full new edition (IMHO). 7 years ago a "revised & expanded" version of the old game, with some metaphysical and rules changes that were (on the whole) well done, was published by WEG. (The changes were smaller than those from D&D 3.0 to 3.5, by way of comparison).

Torg Revised and Expanded is, with one exception, the best version of Classic Torg there could be. (The one exception being a fix to the GJN problem created by this guy.)

Quote from: Spike;499900Thus, your unrelenting drive to recreate the wheel and brand this sucker 'Torg Too!' is a little offputting.

I can't speak to what is and isn't offputting about it, not really, except to explain why I'm still doing this after (as you noted) all the labor I've already put in.

While Revised and Expanded addressed problems in the mechanics, it left the setting utterly alone. So any conceptual or game balance issues present in the realities were left untouched.

Storm Knights is my attempt to build a new campaign world, with revised realities and a couple of new ones. Torg badly needs this.

As for the system: The game system for Torg, for all that I love it, was clunky, baroque, and in many ways diametrically opposed to the play style of Torg. It had way too many charts. Too many table look-ups. Too much cruft.

It attempted to pedantically track things that the genre didn't need pedantically tracked. And the mechanics to achieve that goal, couldn't work. (I'm speaking here of Speed and Power Pushes, for those familiar with the game.)

And little patches and retrofits weren't sufficient to the task of making it more streamlined, simpler, and easier to learn and play. The Destiny Gaming System began as a series of such retrofits. Torg, Retooled.

Just recently, I realized that, in order to achieve my goals, I have to jettison core parts of the mechanics. Parts utterly essential to the system. (The Value chart, for those familiar). Like removing classes and levels from D&D, it's a radical enough change to make it a wholly different system. (The difference being, classes and levels don't need to be removed from D&D, but the Values chart does need to be excised.)

So, neither of these are really "Torg, Too!" (IMHO.) The setting is my own modified campaign setting (which is commonplace among Torg-ers) and the mechanics, though starting as a retooling, have changed radically enough to be a different system.

I don't expect you to see the value in either of these, or want to play or even read them yourself. That's fine.

This is my private... er... obsession. Project. I meant project. I totally get if it doesn't resonate with people or if they think its pointless. I don't like parcheesi.

Even so, any comments you might have would be welcome, and if you choose to ignore the posts I'll understand that, too.

Quote from: Spike;499900However, given the amount of labor that is going into this, why don't you distill out the things ABOUT Torg that you love so much and make your own setting based on those ideas?

Honestly, I've tried. None have been, even in my own estimation, as compelling a setting as the Possibility Wars. They are, to quote a friend of mine, "cheap Torg knockoffs."

Even a version of the P-Wars with entirely different cosms fell flat. The one benefit of that, was that the different ideas I developed for those cosms could be, and in many cases have been, written back into variant versions of the canon realms.

Against my desires, I found myself returning to the official realities, with new ideas that made them (in my own un-humble estimation) hundreds of times better. More interesting. More compelling. More distinctive.

I may change direction in the future. Right now, this is the route that's been the most fruitful. I've seen the most interesting, most valuable results come from the process of revising the setting and replacing the rule set.

So, here I am.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;499696Torg is (in large part) about alternate history worlds, invading the "Real World." I'm down with that.

I don't think that's true.  I don't think the cosms represent alternate histories; they represent specific mashups of two or more genres of adventure fiction.  An alternate history story doesn't change the ground rules of how physics and causality work.

The Living Land isn't What North America Would Look Like Had the Cenozoic Never Happened; it's What North America Looks Like When Conan Doyle's Lost World Drops By For A Visit.

Quote from: daniel_ream;499927I don't think that's true.

You're right, not all cosms are alternate Earths, they are primarily fictional genres (hence #2, above). But several are alternate Earths:

The Cyberpapacy was Earth where the French pope won a schism in the 1400's. The Nile is an alternate Earth in the 1930's. Orrorsh is an alternate Earth in the late 1800's. Tharkold is an alternate Earth, where demons attacked just after the siege of Troy.

The names of the cosms even represent Earth analogues: Terra. Gaea. Geos. (From the Gaunt Man novel.)

And the name of the game itself was almost (at one point) "Shadow Earths" or a couple of other, similar titles. A last minute vote among the staff is what caused T.O.R.G. (That Other Roleplaying Game) to be chosen, and they had to create an in-game reason to explain the name.

So, not all cosms were alternate Earths. But enough of them were, to twig that part of my brain. (The question was, after all, "why did Jasyn like it?" and the alternate history bits were definitely a part of that.)

EDIT:

Oddly enough, if one were ot push the "alternate Earth" angle to its breaking point, both Takta Ker and Gokuraku (the home cosms of the LL and Nippon Tech) were explicitly described as being Earth-like worlds with 5 continents. They could be said to be highly-variant Earths or, and this is more interesting to me given the diametrically opposed natures of the the cosms, even alternates of each other.

You're making the fairly common mistake of failing to step back to the meta-level of how the cosms were conceived of in the first place, also known as failing to see the forest for the trees.

This is a common problem in RPGs with settings that inspired by existing works: if the designers don't up front acknowledge where they're stealing from, people take the mishmash of inspirational works that is the resulting RPG and try to extrapolate from there, instead of going back to the original inspirational source and stealing more from there, and often get quite muddled about the intent and themes of the RPG in the process.[1]

The Cyberpapacy is not what Earth would look like if the French pope had won a schism in the 1400's (how, exactly, does that inevitably lead to ubiquitous cyberware?).  It's what happened when the designers said "You know what would be cool?  The Inquisition -with cyberware.  W00t!"  Any attempt to make the "alternate history" came well after the initial genre mashup concept.

[1] Best example I can think of is the West End Rebel Alliance book, which contained detailed rules for creating and managing a cell-structured underground resistance movement.

Quote from: daniel_ream;499956You're making the fairly common mistake of failing to step back to the meta-level of how the cosms were conceived of in the first place

I think we're having two different discussions. I was just answering the question "why did you like Torg?" Back in 1990, the fact that some of the cosms were alternate Earths was a reason. It's part of the reason I liked the game.

That's it. That's the whole significance of that part of my post. I didn't mean to state anything about why cosms exist, why they're designed the way they are, or anything like that.

Quote from: daniel_ream;499956It's what happened when the designers said "You know what would be cool?  The Inquisition -with cyberware.  W00t!"  Any attempt to make the "alternate history" came well after the initial genre mashup concept.

I'm sure you're correct. And didn't mean to imply otherwise. Like I said, we're having two different discussions.

I'll go further, not only is that probably what they did, it's the best way to approach cosm & setting design. I posted about this just last week, on the Torg email List. From that post:

QuoteTo boil this down to a "Reality Design" checklist:

1.) Start with the genre.
2.) Choose a way to twist it into something unique.
3.) Tease out the major themes of the Reality. Make sure they're clear and focused.
4.) Write up a mythos, the story of how this all came to be.
5.) Select Axioms and build World Laws.

This seems like a killer way to design Realities. It covers all the bases, and makes sure each element is present and thought-out.

Here's the full post: Designing Cosms: Twisting the Genre

(What's a Mythos? It's a key portion of any setting, game, novel, movie, whatever. Check here.)

I'm new here, but not new to digging through the depths of Torg's various elements. I've been thinking through what cosms are, and the process of building them, for a while.

I've spilled buckets of bits on the subject. The last full series dropped in 2007. (Though since then, I've refined and expanded it.) If you're really interested, here's the original posts (also to the Torg email List).

Introduction (pt. 1)
Genre and Theme (pt. 2)
Setting (pt. 3)
Axioms (pt. 4)
World Laws (pt. 5)  
Alignment World Laws (pt. 6)
Alignment Mechanics (pt. 7)

If people think this material is interesting enough, I can start a new thread about cosm/setting design.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;499912Honestly, I've tried. None have been, even in my own estimation, as compelling a setting as the Possibility Wars. They are, to quote a friend of mine, "cheap Torg knockoffs."

Even a version of the P-Wars with entirely different cosms fell flat. The one benefit of that, was that the different ideas I developed for those cosms could be, and in many cases have been, written back into variant versions of the canon realms.

Against my desires, I found myself returning to the official realities, with new ideas that made them (in my own un-humble estimation) hundreds of times better. More interesting. More compelling. More distinctive.

m.

I never did manage to play a game with any of the stuff that came out using the Torg rules (and I could name a few that I owned, including Torg), so I won't dispute that the mechanics are clunky and in need of an overhaul.  Rare indeed is the game where the mechanics actually serve to improve the setting... so change what you want there.

But its the quoted part I want to look at.  In another, earlier post it seemed very much like you were into the whole alternate reality invading earth aspect. And in the other thread (I think...) it seemed like you were adding new, creative Cosms and performing extensive overhauls of the existing cosms.

To me that sounds very much like... well... redoing everything from scratch but slapping the old name on the new house.


Or even worse, rebuilding the old house so that the pipes still clog up and the floor still creaks, because that's how it was before.

Now, I know we're coming across this at different directions. Me? I liked the concept of Torg but I generally hated the execution, which you obviously didn't.   I mean, the logistics of it were okay (the pylons and so forth) serviceable and all that, but the 'big bad' running the show (and in fact the mini-bads in every cosm), the fated warriors of destiny shit with the storm knights set my teeth on edge... and the general cheesiness of the actual cosms and a lot of the terminology used... even to my teenage self... were all ugly warts on the face of Torg.


BUt honestly, that isn't why I'd point you away from making your own Torg. Chances are, given the particulars, you'd make a new torg that would still have many similar warts for me. Taste matters.

No, the reason I suggest it is that at some point attempting to remain true to an established setting restricts your creative freedom.

Fuck it, I'm gonna go Star Wars for this sucker:

Writing your own Torg (or any fanfic) is like the Dark Side of the Force. Sure, its faster and you feel really powerful on all that borrowed creativity, but it totally kneecaps your ass and as long as you stick to it you're its bitch, not the other way around.

Staying on the light side of the Force is harder work at first, but ultimately far more rewarding. Creating your own setting to taste (and I, for one, advocate liberating ideas liberally. Just not copywrited terms...) gives you a lot more freedom and the eventual ability to see a return on the investment of your efforts should you chose that as a goal.


But then again, what do I know?  I like GURPS for god's sake!

I'm going to say - go with it.

If only because it removes the safety net from players, that arrives when you play in a setting they are supposed to know.

Quote from: Spike;499992And in the other thread (I think...) it seemed like you were adding new, creative Cosms

I'd like to think so.

Quote from: Spike;499992To me that sounds very much like... well... redoing everything from scratch but slapping the old name on the new house.

I take your point, very much so. And I guess my answer goes two ways.

First, if done properly, my Destiny Gaming System can be used as the engine for other settings. (Like how Gumshoe is integrated into other games, or Savage Worlds is the system for several games.) In fact, I've the kernel of an idea for an original setting I call Age of Legends. It's a cool idea, I'd like to flesh it out into a playable campaign.

So, Destiny is wholly mine. There enough in it to see where it came from—I'm using a Deck and "luck" points, fer cyin' out load—but nothing that's proprietary.

"Storm Knights", on the other hand, is Torg. A heavily revised, thoroughly rethought, rebuilt from first principles Torg. (Literally. I've rebuilt everything down to the setting's metaphysics.)

I don't ever intend to become a professional game designer. To paraphrase Yahtzee Croshaw, if I had the urge to liberate myself from the burden of untold wads of cash, I'd just set it on fire. It's easier and less heartbreaking.

But even were I so inclined, Storm Knights isn't and could never be a commercial endeavor. So why do it, especially when...

Quote from: Spike;499992attempting to remain true to an established setting restricts your creative freedom.

Because I want to play Torg. And not the old Torg I've moved past, but the new Torg I'm moving towards. I want to play it with Sino Tech and Techno-Fantasy Tharkold and a Steampulp reality and (maybe) a Super-Punk cosm.

I want to play it using the 5-Stage campaign model where the players start out as scrubs, become known as heroes, get to lead prominent organizations (like the Delphi Council or Project Omen), unify the planet, and eventually face off against the Torg.

In some games, players get help from the Rauru Block or the Delphi Council. In this game, they can become the leaders of the organization, and send help to other SK's around the globe. (Shades of Stolze's Reign and the Nippon Tech Business rules, but done right.)

I want to have players become global heroes who help organize other Storm Knights. Who lead the War. They earn their way to that position, then use that position to fight the War.

I want to see my players take charge of the War and choose which realms to attack and when. Make their own strategy. Not some WEG-imposed metaplot, but a "metaplot" chosen by the players, as the players see fit.

I want to run that campaign. I want to run Torg, and the only way to get there is by finishing what I've started.

Quote from: Spike;499992Chances are, given the particulars, you'd make a new torg that would still have many similar warts for me. Taste matters.

Which, actually, I'm okay with. I want to hear from people who didn't like Torg. That way, they won't be blinded by nostalgia. They'll be more likely to point out what what is right or wrong.

So, please, don't let me rain on your Torg disdain. I like that you don't like the game.

I want the harshest possible accurate criticisms. Cutting. Eviscerating. But accurate. So bring it on!

Quote from: Spike;499992But then again, what do I know?  I like GURPS for god's sake!

The mental wards of the planet are filled with literally dozens of people who agree with you. So you're in good company there.

(A joke, a joke. )

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;499973I think we're having two different discussions.

I think we're just getting hung up on terminology here.  In literature, "alternate history" means something very different from the way you're using it here, but what you're actually doing is talking about cosms as genres first and foremost, which indicates that You Get It.  I quite like your cosm creation checklist, as it's the kind of setting construction advice the hobby completely lacks (setting-as-metaphor/theme instead of setting-as-physics-simulation).

Checklists aside, quality of writing does matter; I know in passing some of the former writers for West End and one of the biggest problems they always had (IMHO) was an inability to keep their tongues out of their cheeks when writing anything, even the serious RPG stuff.

Quote from: daniel_ream;500010what you're actually doing is talking about cosms as genres first and foremost, which indicates that You Get It.

Glad we cleared that up.

Quote from: daniel_ream;500010I quite like your cosm creation checklist, as it's the kind of setting construction advice the hobby completely lacks (setting-as-metaphor/theme instead of setting-as-physics-simulation).

Once the themes are in place, building the setting elements (cultures, languages, history, gear, etc.) is much easier. And it helps the cosm/setting have a unified, coherent feel, which is especially important in a trans-genre setting like the Possibility War.

Here's an actual example of this, from my Tharkold rewrite:

Themes of Tharkold

"The core of Tharkold, what makes it unique, is technomagic. Magic and technology so melded together, its impossible tell where one ends and the other begins. But that isn't the entirety of the cosm.

"Tharkold is techno-horror. Or, to tease the elements out, post-apocalyptic dark urban fantasy.

"Post-apocalyptic: The world has been destroyed. Civilization has fallen. Monsters are everywhere.

"Urban fantasy: Magic in the modern world. Magic interfacing with technology. Technology affecting magic, magic affecting technology.

"Dark fantasy: Fantasy with a horror bent. The supernatural, or most of it, is inherently malign. There are no (or few) good or helpful magical creatures, only monsters.

"Those are the core elements of Tharkold. They describe what the cosm is, what the cosm should be. Taken together, they make Tharkold the cosm of Techno-Horror."

It took me literally years to understand the cosm well enough to state its themes so concisely. Now that its done, building the rest of the reality will be relatively easy.

Any kind of setting can stand to be analyzed like this. It helps to clarify things immensely.

Quote from: daniel_ream;500010Checklists aside, quality of writing does matter; I know in passing some of the former writers for West End and one of the biggest problems they always had (IMHO) was an inability to keep their tongues out of their cheeks when writing anything, even the serious RPG stuff.

Hollywood has that problem. "This is so stupid" tends to ooze from every pore of such works.

I take Torg, and the cosms, very seriously. I've gone to great lengths to try and explore plausible consequences of the Invasion (economic, for example) or to invent plausible reasons why, in Tharkold, magic is technological and technology is mystical. (There are no spells in Tharkold, for a good reason.)

And while the game shouldn't wallow in dreary grimdark details (it's an action movie!), the plausibility of those details helps sustain the implausibility of the "genre invasion" angle. And, knowing that people are suffering, makes what the players do matter.

If you take it seriously, it feels real. And by feeling real, you can get your players to accept unreal elements. Especially ones as implausible as a Reality Invasion.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;500020Any kind of setting can stand to be analyzed like this. It helps to clarify things immensely.

This is precisely what I meant, although I wish we didn't have to analyze anything.  Game writers should be stating their themes up front.  This would also help break the hobby of the insistence that all settings must be perfectly internally consistent clockwork model universes.